I Tried Two New Upstart Social Networks. I Found … Very Little

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for chromas:

I Tried Two New Upstart Social Networks. I Found ... Very Little.:

There have always been new social media sites hoping to take Facebook's place the way it took Myspace's. Diaspora, launched in 2010, is a nonprofit promising users ownership of the site. Ello, created in 2014, vowed to stay ad-free. Mastodon, which is more similar to Twitter, is an open-source and decentralized platform that has been steadily growing since it came onto the scene in 2016. I have accounts on all three, so when Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales took to Twitter to announce his new social media network WT Social in November of this year, I figured I'd join that too. At first glance, the sign-up was typical for any social platform: submit your name and email to join a waitlist. But I also noticed something else. Whereas Diaspora, Ello, and Mastodon are all currently free, WT Social offers an option to buy a paid membership, of a sort. Wales mentioned in his first Twitter thread about the platform that he was inspired to ditch the typical social media advertising model and move toward a system where some users choose to pay, so WT Social gives users the option of contributing $12.99/month or $100/year. To sweeten the deal, doing so allows new users to skip the sign-up waitlist. I am a cheapskate, though, so I joined for free and received instructions about setting up my account just four days later.

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