Chaos has reigned over the social network Twitter since it was acquired by American entrepreneur Elon Musk. The South African has revolutionized the platform with every tweet he has posted since taking over the company: the service Excellent For eight bucks a month, a change in content moderation policy, mass layoffs…but in the last few hours things have accelerated. Hundreds of workers rejected the ultimatum he gave to the employees, and it ended on Thursday, so that those who did not want to continue on the ship could leave. Many of these employees posted videos on the social network saying goodbye or expressing their discomfort with the new course of the company.
The protests and humorous comments spread like wildfire across social networks. One of the videos that has gone viral in recent hours shows Musk’s name being dropped on the front of Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco, followed by a series of adjectives that don’t agree with him. Among them, the term Space Karen was particularly influential, a mockery of their stated intent to colonize Mars.
Calls abound to migrate to other platforms such as the Mastodon forums or Reddit. There are also many tweets as a farewell to Twitter, as if it would implode imminently, extolling all the good and bad it has brought us. The departure of several engineers from the company has fueled rumors about the vulnerability of the platform in the face of potential attacks by cybercriminals or about its viability as we know it today.
She was the old secretary. He warned us about the downfall of Facebook, WhatsApp and even Instagram. Earthquakes, UFOs, gossip. Too toxic but the best social network.
I miss you…
Bye Twitter#ByeTwitter pic.twitter.com/5I5HIWbPp8
– Ivan Estrada (Estradamyers) November 18, 2022
Meanwhile, Elon Musk appears to be unimpressed by the situation. His Twitter activity, hardly interrupted, indicates that he is sleeping: no more than two hours pass without permission on his social network. He has said, among other things, that he is not interested in stampeding workers because, in his opinion, the best are to stay.
The best people stay, so I’m not too worried
– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 18, 2022
He also responded defiantly to public figures, such as Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, asserting that the situation was under control. In fact, he is getting off his chest: in another tweet published a few hours ago, he asks himself: “How to make a fortune on social networks? Start by buying a big one.”
How to make a small fortune in social media?
Start with a big one.
– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 18, 2022
Twitter alternatives
Twitter has more than 250 million users. However, if Musk’s intention to create an eight-dollar monthly subscription materializes, there could be a stampede from users unwilling to pay for the service.
Mastodon is one candidate to accommodate these frustrated users. Its process is similar, though not the same: You can write messages of up to 500 characters that are public to all network users. You can give “Like” and “Share”. However, although its managers maintain that its user base has tripled since Musk took over Twitter, the critical mass is far less than that of the bird social network (it recently passed 1 million, compared to 250 for Twitter), so Its contents are less impressive.
Other options are Reddit, Tumblr, or Discord. These are other platforms than Twitter, but they, unlike Mastodon, have a broader user base and are therefore more cohesive.
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