Much-Needed Alternatives to Meta

Five months ago I wrote about losing access to my personal Facebook account and to my professional Facebook pages due to a scam initiated on Instagram (an update for those interested: it appears that Facebook has deleted my former personal account as well as the business page in my name; my other two business pages are still up, but I have no way to access them).

Well, folks, things in social media land have not improved. In fact, they’ve gotten worse. But perhaps there’s hope.

Here’s the bad news. Meta has dropped fact-checking on its platforms and loosened moderation to allow for all kinds of hateful language. This applies to Facebook, Instagram, and Threads equally. These platforms are sure to become, once again, cesspools of misinformation due to Meta’s revised policies. (Just yesterday it was reported that Instagram was hiding posts including the word “democrat”.)

There may be something good to come of all this, though.

In the three weeks since this Meta news broke, a good number of people have either left their Meta accounts behind or have begun to limit their use of Meta accounts. After watching the decline of Twitter into X, social media users are more wise now to how these types of policy changes can impact their experience on a platform. And, as I pointed out in my previous post on this topic, since many businesses promote themselves via Meta’s platforms, it’s become imperative to establish a presence on one or more alternative social networks as a safeguard.

What are the alternatives?

For those seeking a Twitter-like experience, Bluesky has emerged as the top choice. I joined Blusky myself two months ago (find me at karenpickell@bsky.social) after seeing a lot of chatter about it, and I’m glad I did. As a former Twitter junkie, I found it easy to understand how to take off running on the platform, as its interface is nearly identical to old-school Twitter in many ways. So far, my experience there has been mostly good. I’ve been able to quickly find my communities via starter packs; a starter pack is a list of people with common interests curated by a member of that community. Unfortunately, starter packs also make it easy for bots and other nefarious accounts to find you, and I’ve had to block a whole bunch of these. (I’ll note that I regularly need to block these types of accounts on Instagram as well.)

Bluesky utilizes hashtags as well as a feature called Feeds, which can be created by anyone with the technical know-how. The main feed at Bluesky is chronological and so far there is no advertising. It’s refreshing to be on a platform that’s not ruled by algorithms trying to steer you toward making a purchase or toward a particular social or political viewpoint. However, it remains to be seen if Bluesky will continue to be so independent. Currently, Bluesky is privately owned and operates as a social benefit corporation, however there have been questions about motivations behind who has provided funding for the company, and there are concerns that funding going forward may run out and that allowing advertising may become a financial necessity.

I’m still also on a Mastodon instance (another Twitter-like platform), and I plan to maintain my presence there as well. Recently the founder of Mastodon announced that it is transitioning into a European-based nonprofit organization so that it will, hopefully, remain user-focused and independent of any single person’s whims. I’m optimistic about this approach. I acknowledge, though, that Mastodon still has a problem attracting regular, non-techy people. It is somewhat more difficult on Mastodon to connect with your communities due to its decentralized structure. I hope that in the future someone will figure out a way to make Mastodon easier for the average person to navigate. Rather than continue to argue that Mastodon is better because of its decentralization, I’d like to see its developers respond to all the complaints about its ease of use by creating a way for people to communicate on the platform without having to think so much about how its structured.

You’ll note that I’ve mentioned that both Bluesky and Mastodon have a Twitter-like interface and feel. I think when we’re talking about alternatives to Meta products, Bluesky and Mastodon can be considered alternatives to Threads, but not so much to Facebook or Instagram. It’s worthwhile to consider why each product attracts the users it does.

The reason I loved old Twitter and why I prefer Bluesky or Mastodon is that I like communicating primarily via text rather than via images. I’m a writer. I’m most in my element when sharing my thoughts via writing, and I also prefer to get information via reading rather than, for example, by watching videos.

Other people want images and videos primarily, which is why Instagram became so popular. So far, the only Instagram alternative that seems to have any traction is Pixelfed. I’ve just joined myself, so I can’t yet fairly evaluate the platform, but my understanding is that its display and usability is similar to Instagram although it is a federated service similar to Mastodon. This means that, just as with Mastodon, you have options regarding on which server you choose to establish an account. (Technically, this is true of Bluesky as well, but Bluesky uses a different protocol and is not as open, so in practice the majority of Bluesky accounts are, in fact, on the same server.)

I know, I know, here we go again talking about servers, and who cares? Well, it seems that this is the direction all social media is headed. Why does the server matter? Because whoever owns and controls the server controls your data. Simple as that. In the Meta universe, your data is controlled by that one guy who once upon a time wanted a way for college dudes to be able to rank girls on their looks. Never forget that that’s how we got here!

I should point out that all of the alternative platforms I’ve mentioned so far stress their lack of advertising, their chronological feeds, and their commitment to privacy and safety. I don’t know about you, but I am worn out trying to find the information I want to see on Facebook amidst all the trash the app insists on inserting into my feed, none of which I asked for and much of which I’ve told Facebook over and over again that I DO NOT want to see. There is currently no way to create a feed on Facebook or Instagram including only the people I’ve chosen to follow. I can do this on Bluesky, Mastodon, and Pixelfed.

What I can’t do on any of these alternative platforms is post paragraphs upon paragraphs of text. This is one way that Facebook (and Instagram, too, actually) is different, and for some, this may be why they don’t want to leave Facebook. They don’t want to be constricted by a character count. They’re using Facebook not so much as a microblogging platform, but more like an actual blog, making very long posts, posting entire essays even.

Speaking of long text, another newish platform that’s gained popularity is Substack. Substack is primarily a newsletter generator but with a website component and a limited social media feed. People who formerly maintained their own blog sites use Substack. People who formerly wrote for newspapers or magazines use Substack. Everything is about subscriptions on Substack, and a significant number of people have been able to generate good income by writing a newsletter there. On the app, there is a social media feed that I thought at first would function similar to the reader app for WordPress and then thought might be trying to be Twitter-ish, but which has devolved into yet another algorithmic mess, though without all the advertising because the newsletters themselves are the advertisement. So, while Substack allows for writing long diatribes, it’s not really a social network the way Facebook is and could not really be considered an equivalent replacement.

As far as I know, there is not yet a viable alternative to Facebook itself. We desperately need one.

Besides the ability to post unlimited paragraphs of text, I think the appeal of Facebook is that it does so much. You can share photos and even create photo albums, which has long been appealing to family and friend groups, particularly those that are spread across many miles, states, and even countries. You can schedule events and invite people to events, or track the events you’d like to attend. And—the biggie—you can join groups. There are stand alone services for photos and events, but there really is nothing equivalent to the functionality of Facebook groups. I’ve seen other services mentioned, but none that includes every aspect of what Facebook groups do. All these features, as well as others I haven’t even touched on here, are probably why Facebook is the most difficult social media app to migrate away from. No one wants to manage three or four different accounts at different places when they can do all the things with one account on Facebook. And Meta knows this. The fact of there being no good alternative keeps people there, captive to all that algorithmic yuck.

A lot of us are on the lookout now for an equally functional platform with ethical ownership, where our privacy and data preferences are respected. In the meantime, we’ll need to be more careful than ever of how we navigate Meta-owned spaces.

Photo by Hugh Llewelyn via Flickr