Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales Is Working On A Twitter Rival.
https://www.slashgear.com/1078436/wikipedia-founder-jimmy-wales-is-working-on-a-twitter-rival/Ever since Elon Musk took over Twitter, it's been a tumultuous time on the site. Understandably, a certain percentage of users are not happy at all with the sudden and drastic change in leadership. Many users are rightly worried that the promised lack of moderation and supposed "censorship" will leave users from vulnerable communities susceptible to harassment, bullying, threats, and a host of other problems.
Predictably, Twitter alternatives have popped up in an effort to attract a new userbase who wants to escape from the prospect of a Musk run and moderated Twittersphere. One such existing Twitter alternative is Mastadon, a flexible open-source social media platform that looks promising but has its own host of pitfalls. Some enterprising Twitter users have even suggested starting their own social media platform. Jimmy Wales, the founder of everyone's favorite college paper primary source Wikipedia, has proposed plans for a rival to the Elon's bird-site.
While still in its infancy, Wales hopes to turn WT.Social into a full-fledged social media platform that does away with the algorithm and will "rank based on trust," according to a Twitter thread posted this morning. According to WT.Social's homepage, it calls itself "The non-toxic social network."
Essentially, instead of relying on an algorithm determined to make you scroll forever, WT.Social will prioritize content based on which accounts the users trust. According to Wales: "I don't know if it will be perfect, and I'm sure we'll have to adjust on the way, but it has to be better than this hellsite, yeah?" A social media platform based entirely on trust may have its own downsides, but it could also be a step in the right direction. Wales says that this new trust-based ranking system will be at the center of a "totally revamped" version of the app that will be going live at some point in the near future.
https://wt.social/
The non-toxic social network
Welcome to a place where advertisers don’t call the shots.
Where your data isn’t packaged up and sold.
Where you – not algorithms – decide what you see.
Where you can directly edit misleading content.
Where bad actors are kicked out and kept out.
Where you actually like spending time.
Welcome to social media the way it should be.
Welcome to WT.Social.
See also:
Some Alternatives to Twitter
https://www.lifewire.com/best-twitter-alternatives-5114545
The 7 Best Twitter Alternatives in 2022
More micro-blogging platforms you should try this year.
Oddly, they left out Discord.
https://discord.com/
Imagine a place...
...where you can belong to a school club, a gaming group, or a worldwide art community. Where just you and a handful of friends can spend time together. A place that makes it easy to talk every day and hang out more often.
Create an invite-only place where you belong
Discord servers are organized into topic-based channels where you can collaborate, share, and just talk about your day without clogging up a group chat.
They have a moderation academy!
https://discord.com/moderation
= new reply since forum marked as read
Jimmy Wales is a great guy. If his network is as good as Wikipedia, it will be massively successful. I’ll keep an eye on this.
Interesting info about Discord. I occasionally see links to and mentions of Discord, but I haven’t been sure it was worth my time. I’ll take a look.
A human can relate meaningfully to no more than 150 people.
By associating with like-minded people, you can have some influence in order to make things better.
Plus, I really choose to keep garbage out of my brain. Just being aware of stuff, in a "Wikipedia" kind of way, is enough to help me do positive things.
Like DU:
Or like twitter:
Some things, especially ideas, deserve to be quality ones.
Like physicians! Go for cheap and mass-produced?
Not so good.
We're mostly middle-class (or what's left of it) or retired, on DU
But I do get a sense that our good ideas find their way into the bully pulpit or the hands of influential (translation:rich) people.
Just found this:
https://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/elon-musk-exposes-the-truth/
Elon Musk exposes the truth -- Nobody is happy with the private public square.
Open Rights Group
CC license, free to reprint in its entirety:
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
The basic problem, as we have spelt out many times, is that:
Moderation of content at scale is extremely difficult; and
The attention business model pushes provocative content as it engages users
What users need is pretty clear. They need greater control over what content they receive, how it is prioritised and how it is presented. The way this is done, in a digital world, is to create more “open” systems that allow third parties to repurpose, filter and represent content in ways that users want. This can and should include better ways to moderate content.
A few years ago, a number of people who were very unhappy with what they perceive as the toxic environment on Twitter decided to create Mastodon, a platform which prides itself on ensuring a much more welcoming environment. It provides features like user “content warnings”.
However, the really clever thing about Mastodon is that it is not is single website, with a single moderator. Rather, it is many services that talk to each other. The result is that moderation on Mastodon services is much better. Small numbers of people police other people. So far it has managed to scale to around 5 million users. Given the low toleration given to abuse and negligent servers, this seems to work pretty well.
There is a lot to explain and think about with the concept of ‘federated social media’, but to make it simpler, think about email – which is not owned by a single company, but works across many and any; or even your mobile telephone, which can call any other telephone, regardless of the network.
Federated social media is not owned by a single company and cannot be bought or sold, even if individual services can. This places users in a much better relationship with their providers, because it is possible to move provider without losing your networks and contacts.
In principle, there is no reason why Mastodon could not federate with Twitter. It is Twitter’s choice to prevent this. Of course, it suits Twitter to keep its users within a walled garden. To do otherwise would create new competition and allow some users to move away.
Monopoly: BIG
Monopoly: You have no value, nor influence. Monopolies buy politicians first, their "lever of control"
Very interesting and useful information, thank you.
Interesting point about the meaningful reach of 150 people. That puts a great deal in perspective for me.
I think this is the second or third time I've seen a reference to Mastodon. but didn't quite get the full picture.
toons are great too!
and honed in on modernizing the earlier tech of the long-form "blogs" ( "weblogs" ), where that (often commentary) content would be regularly updated by the blog's owner . 
In a way, Twitter, took the blog concept and made it into a distribution-style platform like the old LISTSERVs were (and still are).
it looks like Musk wants to directly monetize content like that for Twitter.
And if that is the case, it might end up being the decision between "free" and "paid". 
He's off to a good start with the mass firings and charges.
Wonder if he'll make it self-driving, like his cars.
https://i.cbc.ca/1.5413964.1578063716!/fileImage/httpImage/image.JPG_gen/derivatives/original_300/tesla-autopilot.JPG
Or "content" to your auto?
Democracy! 
in a few phrases it's referred to as the Non Toxic Netwprk, but elsewhere it is referred to as WT Social.
Enjoy a rainbow I snapped yestrday.
uplifting and useful. I love that, and just thought it was the very kind of thing we need more of 
Thanks for that gorgeous rainbow. What a lovely evening.
