My takeaway is the opposite. If not even this could make people switch to Mastodon nothing can. Even if Twitter got shut down they would find something else that is not AP.
In my circles I'm seeing mass exodus. It's not just the tinkerers and the anarchists. I'm not surprised about the uptake in the open source community, after all I remember identi.ca being a lovely network for GNOME back in the day.
But I'm also seeing authors, actors, journalists, doctors, and scientists I follow make their way over, as well as a few novelty accounts.
Sure, many of them are dual-posting. But I still see them interacting directly on Mastodon and not just mirroring their Twitter posts on it.
I didn't expect this, but I'm finding it very easy not to use Twitter most of the time. The main exception is friends and family messaging various tweets to each other to share news or laugh about something. So I still have an account, it's still useful, but I'm not scrolling it casually anymore.
I setup a Mastodon account back in May as sort of "just in case Musk messes it up" insurance. And man, did he ever mess it up - worse & faster than my more pessimistic expectations. However, up until about 3 weeks ago there just weren't that many people to follow on mastodon. But that has changed more rapidly than I would have expected. Now I'm following several interesting people I used to follow on twitter.
I'm about 40 and I don't know anyone whose mom or dad is on Twitter. They're all on Facebook still.
Teenagers and even 20-somethings are already a lost cause for Twitter. They're on TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, etc.
And yes, I'm seeing artists, writers, and other non-tech people moving over and finding instances that better suit them.
My friends who consume Twitter as a passive way to be entertained by celebrities aren't moving yet. I'm not sitting here trying to say that Mastodon is a drop-in replacement for Twitter for everybody. But I am surprised and encouraged by how easy it has been for me and many others to find a better experience.
But a lot of people are switching over to Mastodon. In the last 3 weeks or so it went from "welp, there aren't a lot of people to follow over here" to "wow, lots of interesting people I used to follow on twitter are here now!" It's really starting to hit a tipping point as more people make the jump.
The thing is, AP is not just Mastodon. Mastodon is only one software and only one usage. If Mastodon numbers grow, then the AP is more interesting and it is suddenly more interesting for other platforms to consider AP, and for users to use the-equivalent-of-X that is not microblogging. Maybe they'll start to follow people on Pixelfed for instance.
Yep. If Twitter really founders, Meta or Google will roll out something to replace it. Most Twitter users already have accounts with one or both, so it would be a very low-friction switch, and they certainly have the resources to do it. Mastodon will never catch on with the general public, for the same reasons that Linux has not.
I think it’s more likely that a new competitor arises. FB is dying and uncool; Google has no social media chops to speak of. See: Vine getting extinguished EDIT: and only being succeeded by TikTok years later
If having users already there was enough, Google+ would be king of the hill.
I mean to say, that having existing users is not a panacea, since Twitter literally bought Vine with all its users, and then proceeded to squander it. And no one else made the short video format work (<10 minute) for a long while until TikTok gave people a kick in the pants again.
But I'm also seeing authors, actors, journalists, doctors, and scientists I follow make their way over, as well as a few novelty accounts.
Sure, many of them are dual-posting. But I still see them interacting directly on Mastodon and not just mirroring their Twitter posts on it.
I didn't expect this, but I'm finding it very easy not to use Twitter most of the time. The main exception is friends and family messaging various tweets to each other to share news or laugh about something. So I still have an account, it's still useful, but I'm not scrolling it casually anymore.