via yourfavouriteguy
This is not the first time that people have proclaimed themselves to be “TikTok refugees”; when the clock app was threatened with a US-wide ban last year, many turned to Rednote, the Chinese e-commerce and social networking platform. When it became apparent that it was not going to be offline for too long, the hype died down.
TikTok is not the only major social media to see a mass exodus to an alternative in recent years, with Twitter's takeover by Elon Musk and subsequent transformation into X also leading it to bleed users. Bluesky, started by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, and Threads, connected to Instagram, quickly sprang up as competitors. The former, which was initially invite-only, has around 3.5 million daily active users, and the latter 141.5 million, surpassing X's 25 million earlier this month.
Even without an influx of users designating them as the next best option to larger, more established platforms, a lot of these places don't really offer the revolution that brings in big numbers of people. When they do, it sometimes drives them away. For example, Mastodon was touted as one of the top Twitter alternatives, but many complained that its decentralized, server-based structure made it difficult to use.
As well as this, the initial sign-ups may look impressive, but many of these do not yet boast the numbers to overpower their competitors. In the case of Twitter/X, Threads seems to be the most credible threat—but for those with a social conscience that objects to billionaire-owned properties with a dubious moral compass, why are you looking at a property owned by Meta?
As it stands, many of these substitute platforms remain imitators with a promise that all the bad stuff will be kept out, more a space to enjoy social media as a hobby than a cultural turning point where a significant proportion of internet users turn to be entertained, informed, and up to date, such as the likes of Twitter and TikTok in their prime.
Which is fine, of course, but to propose that they are going to change the internet for good may turn out to be a little far-fetched. Social networking is a form of communication that a lot of us would find difficult to live without. The environment in which it thrives is not one that makes it easy for the so-called good guys to survive without eventually making the kind of concessions that so many of their users were rebelling against. Activism for an online experience worth having requires more than just switching the place where we doomscroll.
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