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| From top: home screens from Threads, Mastodon, Telegram. |
Back in 2018, when data harvesting and the manipulative use of social networks were attracting lots of attention, I wrote this blog post about Facebook and Vkontakte. I described and defended my use of these services, and listed some of their virtues and hazards. I still use them in more or less the same ways.
A year or two earlier, while we were still living in Russia, I had joined another service, Twitter, where I expressed political opinions I usually didn't post on Facebook and Vkontakte, the services that I relied on for news of family and friends. Part of the thrill of Twitter was seeing news stories and opinions fresh from journalists' and commentators' keyboards, before they had been sanitized and published (or sometimes even verified!). I abandoned Twitter shortly after it became X, not because my own feed had become appreciably more toxic, but because of the way its new owner treated employees and critics. Still, I admit that I missed that outlet, and still do.
Some of that craving is taken up by Telegram, which I joined shortly after leaving Russia. Telegram combines elements of instant messaging, microblogging, interest groups, and news feeds. Those news feeds include such users as The New York Times, Washington Post, TVRain (Дождь), the BBC (and its Russian service), and numerous Russian-language and Ukrainian channels—media outlets and individual journalists and commentators.
Telegram is also a platform for personal messaging, but so are many other platforms. I'd just as soon stick with the reliable (so far) channels for that kind of communication (e-mail, Facebook and FB Messenger, Vkontakte, and phone-based texting) and, less often, Whatsapp (important for overseas contacts), and not have to cover every possible channel. There are some apps and clients that promise to combine personal messages from a number of sources, but I've never found that covers all of them, and most are not Web-based. (If you have suggestions for cross-platform message handlers that are browser-based or Linux-compatible, please comment! I prefer desktop platforms, not services that are exclusively phone-based.)
Back to news and opinion: Threads, Mastodon, and Bluesky are among the services that may take over Twitter's place in my search for fresh news and opinions. So far I've found a number of my favorite authors on all three of them. In a promising development, all three services are finding ways to become mutually accessible. For example, here's the way to bridge Mastodon and Bluesky; and you can authorize Threads to share posts in the larger fediverse.
The days are not long enough to camp out at all of these various sources, and it remains to be seen whether their cultures remain as mellow as they mostly are now. (Well, Telegram can't exactly be called mellow, but in my chosen feeds, it's not snarly!) How well might they resist external predators and internal exploiters? In the meantime, dipping around in each of them for brief visits seems more productive than developing a premature loyalty to any one in particular. However, if you've become committed to one or two platforms out of all these choices, and would like to tell me why, I'd love to know.
Here are a few other overviews of these various platforms, their similarities and differences:
- Amaris Castillo at Poynter: As journalists think of leaving X for Bluesky and Threads, media experts see pros and cons.
- Jay Peters at The Verge: The hunt for the next Twitter: all the news about alternative social media platforms.
- Marie Boran at Newsweek: How Top X Rivals Fared Since Elon Musk Sparked Twitter Exodus.
- David Gewirtz at ZDNET: I tried replacing Twitter with Bluesky, Threads, and Mastodon: Here's what I found.
The latest Humanitarian Situation Updates for Palestine from the United Nations: Gaza Strip; West Bank.
Chimène Keitner of Lawfare on the Netanyahu/Gallant arrest warrants.
The Haaretz newspaper’s editorial board described the ICC’s decision as an “unprecedented moral nadir” for Israel. (Netanyahu responded to Haaretz’s coverage of the war by sanctioning the newspaper.) Hungary’s Victor Orban greeted news of the ICC warrant with an invitation for Netanyahu to visit, deepening cleavages between European countries committed to the rule of law and those challenging the “liberal international order.” Absent a change in leadership, Israel’s international isolation from that order will continue to deepen. Even if the Israeli government changes course (which is highly unlikely, especially given the results of the recent U.S. presidential election), the damage to Israel’s standing and reputation—with ripple effects on Jews in the diaspora—will take decades to repair. Meanwhile, the human toll is irreversible, and rebuilding Gaza will take decades, if not centuries.
John Crace of The Guardian on the UK House of Commons debate on assisted dying: "...ultra-rare Commons sight: intelligent debate." You can see the debate itself on parliamentlive.tv.
Human rights defender Olga Karach doesn't want to "disappoint" Lukashenko.
William Barber on CNN: here's what Trump's second coming tells us about the country and the future.
But what you saw election night is not the whole of America. It’s a part of America in a particular moment around the election. You have to stop and say, wait a minute, this is the same America that I went to sleep in the night before. It’s not some strange America. This is part of America. America has always had multiple stories running at the same time.
Austin John and McKinley James perform B.B. King's "Ruby Lee." Enjoy the whole set; they're fine musicians.
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