Twitter is increasingly hostile toward Tor and recently it is difficult to even login via Tor. 10+ Google captchas just to receive the error “Oops, something went wrong. Please try again later.” and attempt the 5 minute process again with a fresh exit node. You can waste 10+ minutes in this loop and still have no success to login.
In comparison, Liberdon (https://liberdon.com) is a Mastodon instance that doesn’t block Tor and is compatible with all Mastodon and Pleroma instances (which use ActivityPub).
Ideally, libertarians, devs, Bitcoiners, Monero users and more should move to any suitable Pleroma or Mastodon instance (e.g. https://liberdon.com, https://bitcoinhackers.org) and use Nitter (e.g. https://nitter.net) as a read-only alternative to Twitter when necessary. Nitter also offers a RSS feed option for every Twitter profile, so you can add your favorite content creators to your preferred RSS reader.
Pleroma and Mastodon are better than Twitter in many ways: Tor-friendly, uncensored, open source, many instances and you can even host your own.
But how to bring more libertarians, Bitcoiners and Monero users over from Twitter?
Some ideas:
– A KYC-free Bitcoin/Monero tip bot (similar to Noise.cash or Stacker.news)
– Integration of read-only Nitter into the ActivityPub feed
– Allow people to comment on and retweet Twitter posts from Mastodon/Pleroma
– Bots that automatically mirror your Tweets to your Mastodon/Pleroma profile
Right now, some of these are already available:
– You can add your Bitcoin/Monero address to your profile, but there is no integrated tip button yet.
– Birdsite provides a bridge from Twitter to Mastodon (similar to Nitter, but integrated into Mastodon’s feed): https://github.com/NicolasConstant/BirdsiteLive (https://beta.birdsite.live)
– You can automatically mirror your Mastodon posts to Twitter: https://github.com/bitkeks/mastodon-to-twitter
– And there are many solutions to mirror your Tweets to Mastodon: https://pypi.org/project/pleroma-bot/, https://gitlab.com/yogthos/mastodon-bot, https://gitlab.com/ayush-sharma/tweet-toot, https://github.com/FGRibreau/import-tweets-to-mastodon
Ideally, people would start to post directly to Mastodon and like, comment, follow, retweet and discuss there. However, Twitter –> Mastodon mirrors can provide activity, content and a bridge, until the activity on Mastodon increases.
If you don’t like the standard Mastodon UI, you can try Pleroma, which is more lightweight. Otherwise you can check this list: https://wedistribute.org/2019/04/your-guide-to-alternative-frontends-for-mastodon-and-pleroma/ for alternative frontends, such as Brutaldon (https://brutaldon.org/) or Pinafore (https://pinafore.social/).
There are many links, tools and bots for Mastodon and Pleroma here: https://project-awesome.org/tleb/awesome-mastodon
Try to decrease your usage of Twitter. It’s hostile toward Tor, is censored, often bans people, and requires doxxing (=KYC) for its integrated Bitcoin tips. Mastodon and Pleroma instances provide an open-source, self-sovereign, decentralized and uncensored alternative for your content, followers and community. Even if you don’t want to move 100% to Mastodon right now, consider to setup a profile and install one of many easy-to-use scripts to mirror your tweets.