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Twitter hasn’t been in a great place for months, and that suddenly means that there’s a lot more competition in Twitter-like social media platforms. Mastodon might be the most well-established, but there are many other services vying to be the next place you hang out on the internet, including Post, Substack Notes, T2, the Jack Dorsey-backed Bluesky, and soon, Instagram Threads from Meta and Mark Zuckerberg.
That said, the “next Twitter” might not be decided by its app but by its protocol. Mastodon, for example, is built on top of ActivityPub, a W3C-recommended protocol for decentralized social networking, a protocol with support from Tumblr, Flipboard, and maybe even Instagram’s Twitter competitor Threads. Bluesky is building its own protocol, the AT Protocol, which, yes, is focused on decentralized social networking, but also algorithmic choice and portable accounts.
If one of these protocols (or another) really takes off, it could have a foundational impact on the way social networking functions. Instead of having to cross your fingers that one organization or company is a good steward for the app of your choice, many services will theoretically be interoperable with one another. That could open up some really exciting ways for people to talk and post on the internet, which is something we here at The Verge care deeply about. Maybe we’ll all end up gravitating toward yet another centralized platform instead — but I kind of hope we don’t.
Here’s our up-to-date coverage of the competition between Twitter alternatives — some options like Mastodon have been waiting years for this moment.
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The Twitter competitor from Meta, Instagram Threads, is expected to launch on July 6th, according to the App Store listing for the app showing a version ready for Apple’s iPhone. This follows an Android listing for Threads, an Instagram app, that briefly showed up on Google Play on Saturday with similar screenshots and some initial details. Another listing I saw that’s still live on Google Play doesn’t have a release date, so this App Store page may give us the official date for Threads to launch.
Here is the official — and brief — description of the app, from the App Store:
An era of the internet is ending, and we’re watching it happen practically in real time. Twitter has been on a steep and seemingly inexorable decline for, well, years, but especially since Elon Musk bought the company last fall and made a mess of the place. Reddit has spent the last couple of months self-immolating in similar ways, alienating its developers and users and hoping it can survive by sticking its head in the sand until the battle’s over. (I thought for a while that Reddit would eventually be the last good place left, but… nope.) TikTok remains ascendent — and looks ever more likely to be banned in some meaningful way. Instagram has turned into an entertainment platform; nobody’s on Facebook anymore.
You could argue, I suppose, that this is just the natural end of a specific part of the internet. We spent the last two decades answering a question — what would happen if you put everyone on the planet into a room and let them all talk to each other? — and now we’re moving onto the next one. It might be better this way. But the way it has all changed, and the speed with which it has happened, has left an everybody-sized hole in the internet. For all these years, we all hung out together on the internet. And now that’s just gone.
Bluesky reopens its doors.Over the weekend, decentralized microblogging service Bluesky said it was halting signups after issues at Twitter prompted a flood of new users to join and create stability issues. But as of today, that limitation has been reversed.
That said, Bluesky is still invite-only, so you’ll need a unique code to sign up.
Update July 3rd, 5:35PM ET: Bluesky has resumed user signups again. Our original story follows.
Bluesky, a decentralized Twitter-like social network, is pausing new signups “temporarily” to try and resolve performance issues it’s been experiencing after Twitter introduced limits on the amount of tweets you can see in a day. Even though you still need an invite code to be able to join Bluesky, it seems that the influx of new users has been a problem.
Alessandro Paluzzi, a developer who routinely digs into app code to expose unreleased features, tweeted early this morning that Meta’s Twitter clone, Thread, had been released into the Google Play store. It appears as though that was a mistake, however, because the app is nowhere to be found now.
Paluzzi included screenshots that showed off some of the UI elements, including the login screen, which lets users sign in with their Instagram accounts, and another screen with a list of their followed accounts from the image and video site, so they can choose who to follow on Threads. Check out the screenshots in this gallery:
Meta’s Twitter competitor, Threads, briefly showed up on the Google Play app store today.Twitter user Alessandro Paluzzi, a developer who’s been publishing leaks about Meta’s upcoming Twitter clone, tweeted early this morning that the app had been released, but it was taken down sometime later.
Paluzzi included screenshots showing the posting UI and the ability to login with Instagram.
The app is no longer available as of this writing.
There was a sign in the Google Reader team’s workspace at the company’s headquarters in Mountain View, California. “Days Since Cancellation,” it read, with a number below: zero. It was always zero.
This was in 2006 or so, back when Google Reader was still growing. Back when it still existed at all. Google’s feed-reading tool offered a powerful way to curate and read the internet and was beloved by its users. Reader launched in 2005, right as the blogging era went mainstream; it made a suddenly huge and sprawling web feel small and accessible and helped a generation of news obsessives and super-commenters feel like they weren’t missing anything. It wasn’t Google’s most popular app, not by a long shot, but it was one of its most beloved.
Decentralized Twitter alternative Bluesky has published a moderation manifesto.A Friday blog post details the Bluesky team’s moderation proposals for “a shared public commons,” using things like lists, hashtags, and even “per-thread” tools that would give moderation power to each poster.
The latter treats threads like a mini-forum: if you don’t like a reply, you can yeet that skeet (or just hide it). The post acknowledges why this might be problematic:
If a thread contains misinformation, then giving reply controls to the author means they might use it to suppress corrections from other users. Our hypothesis… is that giving users more tools to protect themselves from harassment is worth some downsides like not always having the record corrected in the replies.
Along with algorithms, hands-off moderation fits right into Jack Dorsey’s original concept for decentralized social media.
Mark Zuckerberg wants more fans?A write-up in The Washington Post says the Zuck’s latest attempt at image rehabilitation (remember the “only eating meat from animals he’d personally killed” phase?) is, in part, a bid to win over Musk stans.
Zuckerberg has appeared on podcasts hosted by provocateur Joe Rogan and AI researcher Lex Fridman, both popular among fans of Twitter owner Musk. He has posted sweaty action shots on Instagram displaying his jujitsu skills. And this week, he accepted Musk’s challenge to a cage fight after news reports on Meta creating a Twitter competitor.
But Zuckerberg has really ramped it up over the past year, one of the people said, courting the same “tech bros” who have been captivated by Musk — who is suddenly Zuckerberg’s competition in more ways than one.
The cage match between him and Musk may just be the most recent part of his new pitch, even before Instagram’s “sane” Twitter alternative arrives.
Flipboard made a custom feed in Bluesky.If you have a Bluesky account, you can now follow Flipboard’s custom feed that curates posts about technology. According to the company’s blog post about the feed:
For our Tech feed, our AI topic extraction algorithms don’t just look at the raw text being posted to Bluesky. Instead, they dig into shared articles, categorize the content inside them, and confirm that the article meets Flipboard’s quality standards. This delivers streams of stories that are both topical and high quality.
You can also see Bluesky feeds within Flipboard, if you want.
a:hover]:text-gray-63 [&>a:hover]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&>a:hover]:text-gray-bd dark:[&>a:hover]:shadow-underline-gray [&>a]:shadow-underline-gray-63 dark:[&>a]:text-gray-bd dark:[&>a]:shadow-underline-gray”>Image: The Verge One of Meta’s top executives showed employees a preview of the company’s upcoming Twitter competitor during a companywide meeting today that was watched by The Verge. You can see some of the screenshots above.
The new standalone app will be based on Instagram and integrate with ActivityPub, the decentralized social media protocol. That will theoretically allow users of the new app to take their accounts and followers with them to other apps that support ActivityPub, including Mastodon.
This scientist’s posts got more proportional engagement on Mastodon than anywhere else.Second place? Instagram. The Nature Conservancy’s chief scientist, Dr. Katharine Hayhoe, decided to track social engagement on a post about her recent Scientific American essay (via Hacker News).
The numbers are all relative — of six platforms, Mastodon won according to the percentage of engagement per follower, calculated as (likes + shares + comments)/followers. But for absolute numbers, Hayhoe’s experiment has Twitter on top.
a:hover]:text-gray-63 [&>a:hover]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&>a:hover]:text-gray-bd dark:[&>a:hover]:shadow-underline-gray [&>a]:shadow-underline-gray-63 dark:[&>a]:text-gray-bd dark:[&>a]:shadow-underline-gray”>Image: Dr. Katharine Hayhoe Bluesky now has more than 100,000 users.The still invite-only social network just crossed the 100K mark. I’ve had a lot of fun on the platform so far, and I think the new custom feeds could be a big differentiator. But I’m curious to see how the vibes change once the social network is available to everyone — and we still don’t know when that might happen.
a:hover]:text-gray-63 [&>a:hover]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&>a:hover]:text-gray-bd dark:[&>a:hover]:shadow-underline-gray [&>a]:shadow-underline-gray-63 dark:[&>a]:text-gray-bd dark:[&>a]:shadow-underline-gray”>Screenshot by Jay Peters / The Verge One of Bluesky’s potentially biggest features is here: custom algorithms, or what it calls “custom feeds.” The idea is that you can subscribe to feeds that have algorithms tuned to showcase different kinds of posts than what you might see in Bluesky’s main “What’s Hot” feed.
In practice, the custom feeds work a lot like Twitter lists. Similar to those, you can pin specific custom feeds, and they’ll show up at the top of your timeline as different tabs to pick from. You can pick which feeds to pin from a new “My Feeds” menu in the app’s sidebar. By default, that tab has feeds for “What’s Hot” (“Top trending content from the whole network”), “What’s Hot Classic” (“The original What’s Hot experience”), “Bluesky Team” (“Posts from members of the Bluesky Team”), and “Popular With Friends” (“A mix of popular content from accounts you follow and content that your follows like”).
The official Bluesky FAQ means well, but it’s not telling the truth.Whether you’ve snagged an invite code or not, the User FAQ for Bluesky is here to explain what you need to know about the Twitter-like service, the AT protocol, and even how to find your friends from other networks once you’re in.
But we will have to fact-check a section that is incorrect:
What is a post on Bluesky called?
The official term is “post.”
Liz Lopatto already told you, they’re skeets now. They even have a song.
We finally have an idea of what Instagram’s rumored text-based Twitter competitor might look and feel like, as reported by Lia Haberman, who shared in her ICYMI Substack newsletter what appears to be a leaked marketing slide and details about the app.
The slide doesn’t give the app a separate name — instead, it just calls it “Instagram’s new text-based app for conversations” — but the app is apparently codenamed P92 or, alternately, Barcelona, according to Haberman. Users will be able to sign in with their Instagram username and password, and your followers, handle, bio, and verification will transfer over from the main app.
Artifact, the AI-powered news app from Instagram co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, has a new feature that makes it even more of a news-focused social media app. With the latest version of the Artifact app, you can now follow individual writers. Articles from those writers will be prioritized in your feed and you can opt to get notifications when those writers post.
Writers can also claim their profiles on Artifact to get a verified checkmark beside their name in search and in Artifact’s comments. (Writers can only claim profiles on iOS, but it’s coming to Android soon, Systrom tells The Verge.) Yes, Artifact lets users comment on individual articles, meaning those comments live outside of stories that may already have comment sections of their own. Writers can also get notifications about how many people read their articles on Artifact and when other publications link to your work.
Why does it feels like everybody’s on Bluesky? And is AI moving too fast for its own good?Those and other big questions — questions like, “why is Microsoft so weird about Edge?” and “why are there blue checks in Gmail now?” — on this Friday’s Vergecast. Like and subscribe!
Bluesky, the chaotic, invite-only “errors and asses” platform, told its users today there’s a new rule: no heads of state. I’m guessing the posters are too feral to be trusted.
In some sense, this is understandable. The thing is still in beta. The team is tiny, and actively juggling moderation while trying to ship features. I’m not sure who got invited, but something prompted today’s announcement.
On The Vergecast: all the butts on Bluesky, and all the worries about AI.I refuse to believe that they’re actually skeets now, but the Bluesky momentum seems to be real. And also insane. Plus, if the godfather of AI is worried about AI, should we be too? All that, and a bunch of laser bongs, on the show today.
a:hover]:text-gray-63 [&>a:hover]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&>a:hover]:text-gray-bd dark:[&>a:hover]:shadow-underline-gray [&>a]:shadow-underline-gray-63 dark:[&>a]:text-gray-bd dark:[&>a]:shadow-underline-gray”>Photo Illustration by Rafael Henrique / SOPA Images / LightRocket via Getty Images If you want to be a member of Mozilla.Social, Mozilla’s new Mastodon instance, you’re not allowed to harass other users. You’re also not allowed to use derogatory language about gender, sex, sexual orientation, race, age, ability, or any other “physical, social or cultural attributes or classifications.” You can’t spread misinformation and disinformation, either. Or impersonate someone. Some of these are normal policies, some are unusually heavy-handed, and they’re all hard to litigate. But Mozilla’s stance is pretty simple and extremely unusual in the social media universe: if it’s debatable, it’s gone.
“We’re not going to advertise that we’re some kind of neutral platform,” says Steve Teixeira, Mozilla’s chief product officer. He says too many platforms try to find a middle ground between, say, people who want to do others harm and people that don’t, when in reality, there is no middle ground at all. “You have to land on the side of people who don’t want to do harm to others.” By not pretending to be neutral and not claiming to be the free speech wing of anything, Mozilla hopes it can be much more active in making Mastodon a good place to be.
Discord is taking away the four-digit tag that it puts after its usernames as it looks to make it “easier to connect” with other users. As noted in a post on Discord’s blog, this change will force most users to change their usernames, as Discord will no longer have the four-number tag that distinguishes one person with the same username from another.
Instead of having a four-number discriminator appended to your username, you will now have a unique alphanumeric username with the “@” symbol in front of it. You’ll also get to choose a non-unique display name that can include special characters, spaces, emoji, and non-Latin characters, making the platform a lot more like other mainstream social networks, such as Twitter and Instagram. It also makes it less like the gaming platform it started life as, with suffixes similar to the ones used on services like Steam, Battle.net, and Xbox.
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