MailOnline tests four Twitter alternatives and picks the best 

It’s been quite the dramatic start for new Twitter owner Elon Musk since he purchased the platform at the end of last month for a whopping $44 billion.

The self-proclaimed ‘Chief Twit’ laid off roughly 3,700 of Twitter’s 7,500 workers, while hundreds more resigned after deciding not to be part of Musk’s ‘extremely hardcore’ Twitter 2.0. 

Musk’s takeover has also raised concerns about the proliferation of misinformation and hate speech on the platform, with many controversial accounts – including Donald Trump’s – reinstated, having been banned in the past. 

According to MIT Technology Review, Twitter may have lost more than a million users since Elon Musk took over – many of whom have sought out alternative apps.

Here, MailOnline tries out four Twitter rivals – Mastodon, Hive Social, Tribel and Donald Trump’s Truth Social – and picks a favourite.  

TRUTH SOCIAL 

Truth Social is the social media platform that former US President Donald Trump founded last year after being banned from Twitter. 

Trump’s Twitter account was removed after the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, although new Twitter owner Elon Musk has since reinstated it. 

Truth Social looks remarkably like Twitter. 

In fact, it feels like a place for people who have been banned from Twitter at one time or another – almost like a rival treehouse for the kids at school. 

Posts are called ‘truths’ rather than tweets, while verified users have a red tick next to their name, rather than a blue one. 

For desktop, the layout feels almost identical, with a menu on the left with ‘Home’, ‘Search’, ‘Alerts’, Profile’ and ‘Settings’. 

On the right there’s a list of trending subjects, which include #Jan6, #CelebrateLifeMonth and #EndTheFBI.  

To create an account, I have to enter my date of birth to confirm I’m at least 18 years old. 

It then wants my phone number, which I begrudgingly give so it can send me a verification code, followed by a username and a photo.

Once my account has been created, Truth Social gives me a list of accounts to follow, with Donald Trump right at the top. 

Also on the list is his wife Melania Trump, his son Eric Trump, American conservative political commentator Dave Rubin, alt-right activist Jack Posobiec and controversial Australian columnist Miranda Devine. 

There are also official accounts for Conservative news and opinion site American Greatness and far-right site Breitbart News. 

I follow Donald Trump and decide to follow more accounts later. I’m then directed to the homepage.

I notice Trump has posted in the last 24 hours ‘MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!’ 

Ah yes, this feels very familiar. This is like a throwback to Twitter in 2016.

Browsing the list of ‘People to Follow’, I notice that there are no accounts that I want to connect with, and instead there seems to be a lot of alt-right figures. 

Truth Social quickly starts to feels like a microcosm of ultra-right commentators who need their own sanitised version of what’s true and what’s not. 

Funnily enough, that’s the opposite of what it professes to offer on the app store – an online space for multiple people ‘to share their different viewpoints’, including ‘die-hard liberals’ and ‘staunch conservatives’.

But then why would a ‘die-hard liberal’ start an account on Truth Social?

I don’t think there’s anything here for me. All of the people or companies that I’m interested in following don’t have an account. 

So it’s time to try another. 

HIVE SOCIAL 

Hive Social is only available as an iOS and Android app and is not for desktop, so I have to pick up my smartphone for this one. 

It claims to have been created by two college students in 2019 ‘with a new approach to social media’, one of whom goes under the name ‘Raluca’. 

Unlike Twitter, Hive Social has a chronological feed rather than an algorithm-powered feed, meaning there’s no personalized content shoved in your face by AI. 

Hive Social says: ‘Raluca was tired of the restrictions she faced on social platforms in which her posts were not seen by many friends and felt the pressures of complicated algorithms.’ 

It recently revealed it’s had one million signups since Elon Musk purchased Twitter in October.  

Creating an account is pretty easy. The Hive Social webpage gives me a link to download the Android app from the Google Play store. 

Once downloaded, I just need to click on ‘Create an Account’ and then I can sign up with email or my Google account. I then have to create an account name and handle.

The app asks me to add at least three interests out of a huge list that includes ‘art’, ‘gaming’, ‘travel’, ‘books’, ‘finance’ and LGBTQ+. I choose ‘music’, ‘food’, ‘tech’ and a few others. 

Concerningly, ‘football’ has an American football next to it rather than a football, making me think this is primarily aimed at US users. 

There are options to list other things such as your pronouns and zodiac sign on your profile, but I don’t bother with either. 

I can also add music to my profile – a feature that seems to pull inspiration from MySpace, generally credited with being the first social media platform. 

On Hive Social you can choose to post text, images and video. 

When users post enough videos, the app displays them on the profile page in a grid orientation, similar to the way photos are displayed on Instagram. 

Unlike on Twitter, posts can’t be  promoted, and instead just appear in chronological order. 

The app also doesn’t have a word limit on posts, meaning Hive Social users can post some really lengthy messages, which, in my opinion, is not a good thing.   

With its combination of text and image-based posts, Hive Social feels like a cross between Twitter and Instagram with a bit of TikTok thrown in – albeit without the algorithms.  

What’s more, on Hive it’s not entirely clear how I find accounts that I want to follow, such as celebrities, public figures and companies.  

What I found even more confusing is that when I searched ‘Netflix’, as an example, there were multiple accounts with the same ‘@netflix’ handle, and none of them were an official Netflix account. 

There generally seems to be a lack of official, verified accounts here. I can’t find anyone I know on the app – famous or otherwise – which means I’m pretty much limited to seeing some very boring posts from strangers. 

This is the worst app yet, and is probably one for the Gen Zedders. 

I’ve no interest in strangers posting pictures of their lunch. At least with Truth Social I could read Trump mouthing off against something. Next! 

MASTODON

Mastodon is the app you’ve probably heard about the most since Musk’s takeover. 

It was founded in 2016 by German software developer Eugen Rochko, who recently slammed Musk’s ‘incompetence’ at Twitter. 

Mastodon is not a single website like Twitter, but a network of thousands of sites, called ‘servers’ (also known as ‘instances’) – independent communities that can set up their own guidelines. 

Mastodon posts each have a 500 character limit – more than Twitter’s 280 character limit – and are called ‘toots’ rather than ‘tweets’. 

When joining Mastodon, the first step is choosing a server that lets me connect with other people across the platform. 

These servers are themed, so users can pick one based on their location or interests, such as gaming, football or science. 

I join the UK server (@mastodonapp.uk) because it was the first one I saw that seemed appropriate, although my homepage shows users from other servers too as long as I follow them.

The way Mastodon works is rather unique – I can follow anyone and they appear on the ‘Home’ tab. 

I followed some high profile British names that I could find including Professor Brian Cox, Jay Rayner, Stephen Fry and Minnie Driver. 

But I can also see users on the @mastodonapp.uk server who I haven’t followed under the ‘Local’ tab, which is a good way of discovering relevant posts or people. 

Plus, once you understand how Mastodon works you feel quite clever. 

Every server is operated by an independent organisation or individual, and therefore can differ in its moderation policies. 

However, its ‘decentralised’ way of operating – meaning it’s not owned by one organisation like Twitter – has already courted some criticism.

YouTuber and writer Ian Miles Cheong has described Mastodon as ‘hell’ because every server moderator has too much power over accounts and ‘can read your direct messages’ (DMs). 

‘If they deem you to be talking behind their backs you will get banned,’ he said. ‘It’s the inverse of Twitter, where people can publicly make fun of @elonmusk and not get banned for it.’

Indeed, DMs on Mastodon are not encrypted, meaning they could be read by whoever is administering your Mastodon server. 

DMs on Twitter are not encrypted either, although Musk is working on this. 

What’s more, there is no official verification process for profiles on Mastodon, so I was left wondering if I really was following Minnie Driver or an imitator. 

TRIBEL

Tribel is a ‘kinder, smarter social network’ where you can customise your feed by topic, whether it’s sports, politics or fashion. 

With Tribel I’m able to personalise feeds by adding category filters to find relevant content ‘instead of scrolling all day hoping to get lucky’. 

Tribel is for iOS and Android as well as desktop, which I opted for. 

The desktop layout strongly reminded me of Facebook. 

What’s interesting about Tribel is other users can be added as a friend (like on Facebook), followed (like on Twitter) or both. 

If I’m someone’s friend, I can see their ‘personal posts’, whereas if I only follow them, I can only see their ‘categorised posts’ (music, gaming, arts, etc). 

Also like Facebook, I can join public and private groups based on my interests.  

I can also become a ‘star contributor’, by becoming a contributor to a category and earning enough likes to be ranked in the top 10 per cent of that category. 

Tribel tracks likes that are given to posts in order to rank the most popular posts and contributors in each category.

This isn’t too shabby – I like the idea of having people I follow on one tab and friends and family on another.

The only thing is I can’t find any friends or family on Tribel and the contributors I’ve opted to follow are strangers. 

This is where a big problem lies more generally – platforms like this are relying on PR and word of mouth to establish a significant userbase. 

However, I don’t particularly want multiple accounts for multiple platforms, and I’m sure other people are the same. 

AND THE WINNER IS…

So, can Tribel or Hive really trigger mass migration away from behemoths like Twitter and Facebook? This kind of depends on what lies ahead for Musk and Zuckerberg. 

Either way, I don’t think Tribel will fill a Twitter-sized hole, for the simple reason that the user experience is not as good as, or even that similar to Twitter.  

For me the clear winner is Mastodon, because it’s the most akin to Twitter – albeit with key differences – and how it works is deceptively simple. 

Given the recent spate of media coverage, there seem to be more public figures and celebrities to follow on Mastodon than any of the other rivals.

And if I’m looking for a replacement for Twitter, that’s really what I want.

One thing that might cause problems is the lack of verification for accounts, which Mastodon says is ‘not possible without a central authority’. 

Mastodon’s main selling point is the fact that it’s decentralised, meaning there is no single person, company or sever running it, so it doesn’t seem like blue ticks will be coming any time soon. 

Alternatively, the so-called demise of Twitter could be overhyped and overstated. I’ll keep my Mastodon account handy but I’ll stick around on Twitter until the bomb drops.