After that whole disaster which was the Twitter takeover by Elon Musk, a whole slew of new social media platforms have appeared trying to lure people in.

I have been trying out some of the new ones (Bluesky, Threads) and re-evaluating the existent ones (Twitter, Mastodon, Instagram, TikTok). Then I decided it was time to take inventory and make a cut what to keep and what to drop.

Drop 👎

Twitter

It's been nearly 2 years already when I realized that I needed a break from Twitter and its toxicity and uninstalled the iPhone app. Admittedly, I used the Twitter website regularly but I hardly ever found myself falling into sam ethe doom-scrolling trap that used to be their app.

I'm tempted to say, I would have happily continued that way, if it hadn't been for a certain deranged billionaire taking over this platform. Since then, Twitter has become even more of this cesspool of hate and toxicity, annoying bot interactions and obtrusive advertisement.

Of course, I will lose content that I'm going to miss but I decided that it's time to take this step. It's really difficult ... but: here goes!

I'm close to a panic attack now, but I clearly remember how I felt the same way when I deleted my Facebook account 10 years or so ago (and I never regretted it).

Bluesky

Bluesky looked promising initially but I never really got into it. It's just too boring, to be honest. From my experience so far (and I was an early adopter) their algorithm is really bad. I keep seeing the same posts over and over and those aren't even the interesting or relevant ones. I tried curating my feed for a while but it never improved. So that's it. Bye, bye.

Mastodon

I looked into Mastodon when I first pondered the idea of leaving Twitter a year ago. But honestly, Mastodon was such a poor replacement experience that it's almost not worth mentioning it here.

I once heard a comparison that describes Mastodon perfectly: In some countries, retirement homes put up fake bus stops that prevent people with dementia from wandering around aimlessly and getting lost. Mastodon is just that when compared to Twitter ... it looks like the real thing but nothing is going on there.

I won't even bother deleting my account because there's literally zero danger of spending and wasting my precious time on Mastodon.

Keep 👍

Threads

Threads only became available a few weeks ago here in Europe, but I must say that I actually like it so far. I already found a couple of interesting accounts that I follow and curating my stream worked really well. Accounts and posts that bored or annoyed me, I blocked or muted and the algorithm responded as expected. Let' s see how this develops.

Instagram/TikTok

I probably spent way too much time in these apps in the past and admittedly it's really easy to get sucked into whatever rabbit holes you find there. However, I find myself spending way less time there recently. Actually, it was the arrival of Threads that directed my attention away from Instagram and TikTok.

Apparently, I always need something to sink my time into 😆.

For this reason I decided to limit myself to 20 minutes daily of using social media apps. I'm doing this for more than a month now and I can proudly say that I have been successfully observing this self-imposed limit so far.