by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
There are, at last count, now two viable Twitter clones vying for the attention the many people fed up with Elon Musk’s shenanigans. Both Post and Spoutable seem to believe that the path to success is to lean into being a “safe space” for center-Left people.
From what I can tell, however, both services are kind of missing the point. It seems what people want is not a “woke” version of Twitter, but Twitter without Elon Musk. They have certain end-user experience expectations and if they don’t get that, they complain — even if they’re center-Left.
For instance, Spoutable, which is, in my opinion, the Twitter clone that clones Twitter the best, is apparently having a big problem with well-meaning people wanting to post things the service considers “porn.” So, you the squeaky wheels of sex workers and erotica writers screaming at the top of their lungs about how much Spoutable sucks….just as Spoutable is trying to pounce on fleeing Twitter users.
The solution is to give people what they want when it comes to Twitter — an almost no holds barred freeforall where you just come to expect that you’re going to have to block half a dozen people before dawn for being totally, completely insane and malicious.
So, I’m really enjoying Spoutable, but I’m a bit concerned that it will ultimately be just another social media flash in the pan.
There is some chatter about some former Twitter employees working on their own Twitter clone that I have a lot of hope for. If anyone can get a Twitter clone right, it should be them.
I will note in passing, of course, that I still think one could cherry pick the UX principles of the old Usenet News to create a service that would be a lot better than Twitter and would, in fact, explode with popularity if you just were able to implement it.
But I fear that particular delusional daydream of mine is just not going to happen.
