I’ve never been a Twitter power user. At least not writing posts. I use social media mostly for reading. And that’s the main reason why I didn’t hesitate to sell my Twitter handle when someone offered me to. But that’s a story for another day.
It’s a fact that the X algorithm and the lack of moderation has transformed a very good social media into an uncomfortable place to say the least. Some are recommending to swap the algorithmic timeline for the “following“ timeline as a solution. That certainly could be a patch but it doesn't solve the main problem.
One of the benefits of following an algorithmic timeline is that it recommends you accounts you don’t follow but may be interesting for you, so you are not limited to read just the accounts you follow and discover new people. And that’s the experience that has been ruined since Elon Musk took over Twitter.
Lately there’s been a trending topic of media and influencers abandoning the platform, so the debate is in the air. That's the reason why I'm writing this lines. So I can share my take on that matter. Spoiler altert: I'm not closing (yet) my account, but I'm going to try to replace X with another one.
So what now?
Some people will tell you to stay and not give up the place but I have a couple of reasons for not to:
- X is just a business. We are giving them our content and/or our time and attention for free. We don’t need to fight for something we don’t own.
- Luckily, there are free and open alternatives. The two more important are Mastodon and Bluesky.
We can discuss whether Bluesky is or isn’t as open as Mastodon (it probably isn’t), but they are rapidly gathering a big portion of the X exodus. And I think that’s because it is easier to switch from Twitter for a regular person. You don’t need to be a techie to open an account, but if you are, you can benefit from it. And that’s because you have the ability of creating your own instance (server) of Bluesky, just like on Mastodon.
On both, there’s a verification system based on a web domain you already own. And I think that’s a clever and transparent way to do it.
On one hand, Mastodon let's you to verify as many websites as you want and link them on your profile with a green check. So people visiting your profile are certain that this is you.
On the other hand, I think Bluesky method is even better. They let you change your handle for a domain name. As simple as that. You don't need to run your own instance of Bluesky to do so, and people know for certain that this is you, even without visiting your profile, because it's in your username. And that benefits the discoverability also.
So we are here for a better algorithm, leaving political considerations apart at the moment. Let's talk about it.
How good are Bluesky and Mastodon algorithmic timelines?
Both platforms let you customize your timelines in diferent ways. Mastodon let you follow hashtags. That's an interesting way to discover new accounts, but it also provides a lot of noise. It also provides a default timeline of your instance, but in my experience it provides a lot of noise too.
On the other hand, the default "discover" timeline of Bluesky it blendes your following with some interesting accounts. But this can be easily tampered by the owners of the instance, and it could end in the X hell, second part. But here is the interesting thing. It also provides a powerful tool to build your own timelines based on custom algorithms, made by you or by the community. This has the potential to become the definitive timeline. One that suits your needs and no the needs of a big corporation.
To sum everything up, these are interesting times to explore social media platforms and pick the one that suits you. The most important thing is that you must keep a critic spirit on what media you consume, no matter what.