Faced with the possibility that Twitter will close in Europe, many users are looking for alternatives to the popular social network.
Twitter has little left in the European Union; At least, that’s what the latest rumor suggests. According to this information, billionaire Elon Musk would be considering the withdrawal of X from Europe, due to the new regulation of Internet platforms.
The Digital Services Act (DSA) imposes certain limitations and obligations on large Internet service providers, which have more than 45 million users in the European Union. One of the main obligations affects the content moderationas platforms are now required to remove posts deemed illegal, rather than relying on the industry’s “code of good practice.”
That is precisely the reason why Elon Musk received an ‘ultimatum’ from the EU, due to the proliferation of fake news and illegal content due to the conflict between Israel and Hamas.
In his time at the helm, Musk has opted for a lax policy when it comes to moderation in the name of “freedom,” undoing and criticizing the advances in that field made by his predecessors. For all this, the rumor indicates that Musk would be willing to close X in Europe, rather than follow the new laws. An extreme that Musk himself has now denied; in your official accountstates that it is a “falsehood” and that the medium that published it, Business Insider “is not a true publication.”
Whether or not it is true that X closes in Spain, that is not the only reason why many users are looking for a way out. One is obvious: the aforementioned moderation policy, which according to critics has caused the social network to be filled with bots that automatically respond to all posts that become popular. Another controversial aspect has been the decision to start charging new users for Twitter, in addition to hiding the headline of publications shared on the platform. For all this, many users are migrating or have created an account on the following social networks, in anticipation of the closure or blocking of Twitter.
The alternative to Twitter that is gaining the most followers was born, ironically, at the hands of Twitter itself. This network was an initiative led by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey in 2019 as the “Twitter of the future”; Its main characteristic is that, in reality, it is not a social network but a protocol to create decentralized social networks. This means that there is no single server that hosts the information, but rather each network is independent and therefore more difficult to shut down and censor. In practice, most users are on the ‘official’ network, Bluesky Social.
The Bluesky app will be incredibly familiar to any veteran Twitter user, and the community is also the one that most resembles the ‘Twitter of old’. For all this, it is gaining many users who are not happy with the changes introduced by Elon Musk.
The main drawback of Bluesky is at the entrance; the service still requires an invitation to create an account, although it is becoming easier to get one as more users sign up. And Bluesky is already a company independent of Twitter, so it’s in no danger of shutting down if Twitter does.
Mark Zuckerberg managed to get on Musk’s nerves when he announced Threads last summer. This is the fastest growing social network in the history of the Internet, and hosts many users who migrated when X began introducing the most controversial changes. Although its growth rate has fallen, it is still one of the main alternatives and in recent weeks the app has received many improvements.
Thanks to these updates, Threads is now a more complete and independent app from Instagram; and furthermore, more changes are expected such as a button to edit postswhich unlike in X, will be completely free.
On the other hand, using Threads can be complicated for many users. To begin with, the app is not officially available in the European Union, and cannot be downloaded from Google Play; However, there are ways to use Threads in Spain. And although for a time Meta blocked users from Europe, a recent test carried out by EL ESPAÑOL – El Androide Libre found that that block appears to have been removedand that it is possible to use the app if it is installed on your mobile.
Mastodon was one of the first alternatives that welcomed users who fled Twitter when Musk bought the social network. Unfortunately, at that time the platform was not ready for such a flow of new users without technical knowledge, who did not understand how it worked. Like Bluesky, Mastodon is a protocol for decentralized networks, which allows the creation of independent communities, each with its own rules and themes.
Since then, the Mastodon app has focused on improving the adoption of new users, with changes that make the app more user-friendly. That is being noticed in a notable growth in user baseand two weeks ago it exceeded 1.8 million monthly users.
Now, creating an account on Mastodon and starting to use the app is very simple, as is following users from other communities and servers. However, it is still an app for a niche of advanced users, and the separation of communities is still a problem in finding people to follow.
