“X is a toxic media platform.” With these frank words, British media outlet The Guardian joined many in November in leaving the platform formerly known as Twitter, rebranded and transformed under the ownership of tech billionaire Elon Musk.

The number of users on rival platforms has increased following Elon Musk’s vocal and financial support for Donald Trump’s successful presidential election campaign in the United States.

Meanwhile, Musk has angered some X users by dismantling previous measures against misinformation and conspiracy theories, while research suggests hate speech has flourished under the platform’s new leadership. X rejects this.

If you’re thinking of joining the millions of people who sign up with X rivals, then there’s no way around Threads, Bluesky or Mastodon – the biggest platforms aiming to be the next generation of what once was Twitter.

Deciding for or against any of these services isn’t easy at first glance, given that most share largely comparable features. Here’s a look at the main factors that could influence your decision

Financing: Only one is non-commercial

It might be helpful to first consider the fundamental differences between the services: The Meta-owned Threads platform is a commercial enterprise, as is the startup Bluesky, launched in 2019 by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, so that he was still at the head of the most used network in the world. abbreviated social media platform.

Mastodon is non-commercial, privacy-focused, and relies on free and open source software.

The flows: Blue sky allows you to fine-tune your algorithm

The user experience also differs because each service handles feeds differently: Mastodon displays posts exclusively chronologically.

With Threads, on the other hand, a single algorithm determines the flow. And Bluesky, in turn, allows users to create algorithmic feeds themselves.

THE Fediverse: All three are increasingly interconnected

The three companies, while rivals, are not trying to be the only short-form social media platform, as all three are designed as a decentralized alternative to X and as platforms on which many networks interconnected online can exist.

In some places, Threads accounts can now be linked directly to Mastodon and something called Fediverse, meaning you can see posts from another platform without having to create an account there or even leave the website.

Bluesky can also be linked to Mastodon, and here the link even works both ways. So if you decide to join Mastodon first for example, you are not necessarily disconnected from Bluesky or Threads.

With Bluesky and Threads, you can at least read without an account. In theory, you can see everything, just search for an account or post. It just works in a browser on Threads.net or Bsky.app.

Lists: a major gap in discussions

Creating a list of certain accounts has long been a favorite feature of Twitter business users. Bluesky and Mastadon already have their own versions of the same functionality. However, Threads has not implemented it yet.

In October, however, the Instagram boss expressed hope that it would also appear on Threads: “Lists are a good idea, it’s definitely something we’re looking into.”

The number of users: The meta weight gains

Earlier in November, Bluesky announced that it was following a strong growth spurt following the results of the US presidential election.

Some 700,000 users, mainly from the United States, joined the platform in a week, the company told technology news site The Verge, bringing Bluesky to a total of 14.5 million users, more than 10 million users who would be registered on Mastadon.

However, both nascent social media platforms are still significantly smaller than the legacy Twitter platform, which likely still has hundreds of millions of users. Since Musk’s takeover, X has not provided any regular information on user numbers.

The strongest competition to date is from Facebook group Meta, whose Threads platform reached 175 million monthly active users in the year since its launch.

Threads’ growth following the US election was also the highest, with Mosseri reporting that the platform gained 15 million users in November, roughly the entirety of Bluesky’s user base.

So anyone leaving X can find the most familiar accounts on Threads, although the feeds on Bluesky and Mastadon are far from empty either.