Sean Whalen 👨🏼🦼🏳️🌈🇺🇦🕊️<p>Lately, I've spent a good chunk of time thinking about how critical Twitter has been to InfoSec, OSINT, politics, geopolitics, human rights, and more. Since taking over Twitter, Elon Musk has burdened the company with massive amounts of debt, driven away advertising revenue by letting trolls run rampant, lost trust by obliterating the original verification system, and has now replaced an iconic brand with a meaningless X. The only ads I see there now are for crappy mobile apps. I fear its days are numbered — sacrificed for an arrogant billionaire's insatiable need for attention. </p><p>A ton of Twitter alternatives have sprung up, but the communities are fragmented, and so far, none of them have started to build Twitter-like levels of influence. Mastodon is great, but with servers being run by volunteers, there is a risk of the owners deciding to close down their server for whatever reason.</p><p>I'm currently reading We are Bellingcat. <span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://mstdn.social/@Bellingcat" class="u-url mention" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@<span>Bellingcat</span></a></span> sources material from a verity of social media platforms, but the book makes it clear how Twitter has played an outsized role in the dissemination and collection of real-time information. It's so frustrating to watch it burn and not be able to do anything about it.</p><p><a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/07/twitter-alternatives-bluesky-mastodon-threads/674859/" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/</span><span class="invisible">2023/07/twitter-alternatives-bluesky-mastodon-threads/674859/</span></a></p><p><a href="https://infosec.exchange/tags/SocialMedia" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>SocialMedia</span></a> <a href="https://infosec.exchange/tags/Twitter" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Twitter</span></a> <a href="https://infosec.exchange/tags/X" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>X</span></a> <a href="https://infosec.exchange/tags/Mastodon" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Mastodon</span></a> <a href="https://infosec.exchange/tags/Bluesky" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Bluesky</span></a> <a href="https://infosec.exchange/tags/Threads" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Threads</span></a> <a href="https://infosec.exchange/tags/Post" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Post</span></a> <a href="https://infosec.exchange/tags/CounterSocial" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>CounterSocial</span></a> <a href="https://infosec.exchange/tags/ElonMusk" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>ElonMusk</span></a> <a href="https://infosec.exchange/tags/Bellingcat" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Bellingcat</span></a> <a href="https://infosec.exchange/tags/InfoSec" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>InfoSec</span></a> <a href="https://infosec.exchange/tags/OSINT" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>OSINT</span></a> <a href="https://infosec.exchange/tags/Politics" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Politics</span></a> <a href="https://infosec.exchange/tags/Geopolitics" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Geopolitics</span></a> <a href="https://infosec.exchange/tags/HumanRights" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>HumanRights</span></a></p>