i know a lot of communities (art, indie etc) are quite tied up in their twitter platform, but what are your favorite alternative platforms that you've tried or heard of so far?
Pokécommunity </thread> ^_^
i've seen tumblr and Discord touted but they're both sort of very different in style and community-mechanisms from the way people use twitter, right?
Tumblr is not a *social* platform, at least in the terms we understand "social platform" interaction to be nowadays. They're basically a personal blogging service of sorts, and IMO should be treated like that since that's where its power really lies, as we have seen every. single. time another platform dies or almost dies and as a result Tumblr reemerges.
Discord... is a chat, and a lackluster one at that. Not only is it not a social platform like Twitter is, but it has
exactly the same kinds of problems that have caused these communities issues with being "too tied to Twitter": centralized, privative, ad- and interaction-focused, and tied to one unique legal authority over content (California courtrooms, IIRC).
Alternatives nowadays there are many (pro tip:
there have always been), but my personal favourite in terms of "social platform"-ness is Mastodon instances. Takes some time and hard decisions to choose where to start from in Mastodon, since there's basically various topical instances for anything, but actually that works quite better for us Pokémon fans: we are *already* used to stand and face the hard choice of which Starter to pick, or what to nickname our character, so similarities and differences between instances are bread and water to us.
If Mastodon feels too heavy (which is kinda is, due to what it aims for in its protocol management), there are alternatives providers and tooling like Pleroma and Misskey that handle things differently, but I haven't tested enough of them to form a solid opinion.
interestingly i haven't really heard anyone suggest Facebook x) maybe it is truly the "that's what my parents use" platform at this day and age.
Communities that know the problems they face due to Twitter, are also smart enough to avoid promoting Facebook, Instagram, Discord or the like. You're basically swapping a blue caged jail for another blue caged jail, and to no good avail because due to recent news in Europe FB is going to have to moderate their content somewhat more strongly. And honestly, I don't know anyone from college or university that has actually ever used Facebook since around 2015.
I wonder if personal web pages will ever make a return. Basically, your own website that is built exactly the way you want it to be. These used to be very common during the 00s but fell out of favor with the rise of dA, Tumblr, Facebook and lastly Twitter.
IMO, personal websites are the way to go. They are reasonably easy to make and maintain nowadays. Whiel HTML wizardry levels are welcome, they are no longer anywhere even close to "required".
There are some meta-social platforms like SDF where you can create your own homepage
plus have access to IRC chats
and a shared Minecraft server, for about a one-time payment of $15 USD. One-time. No "monthly subscription fee for a blue checkmark" shit. And then there's payment-free website platforms like neocities, which attempts to restore the glorious old days of Geocities where everyone had their own personal sites full of BLINKING TEXT and "under construction" .gifs.
And if you are into the esoteric, "plain"-er web, there's Gemini protocol, which is basically an evolution of Gopher and a sort of alternate web where it's very easy and cheap, storage-wise, to have your own webpage.
But, when it comes down to it, an alternative to Twitter depends on what do you want as a community. If what you want is the community
interaction, the best suggestion I can give is a combination of a self-maintainable forum platform service (like phpBB or Discourse, that get you something very close to Pokécommunity mechanics-wise) + a sovereign chat system, even if it is third-party (something like Revolt, Jabber, or a registered oficial IRC channel, for example).