Unless you are living under a rock, you should know that Twitter is now under the control of Elon Musk - yes, that Elon Musk of Tesla and SpaceX. With a new leader, Twitter is undergoing a lot of changes and whether it is for the better or worse is still up in the air. However, based on what is happening right now, with that "blue check" changing from being verified to simply being able to pay, it seems like it is getting a bit worse. I know I said that before that having a paid model would help, but not at the expense of reducing what a verified account means. If you are looking to ditch Twitter, then the alternative, IMHO, is a service on the ActivityPub-based federated universe, or fediverse. 

The fediverse is made up of different types of online services that support a common W3C standard, ActivityPub, to communicate with each other. It means, a server can talk to another, very much like email. You don't need to have an account on all email servers to communicate with those on the same server. However, each email server has its own features, rules, pricing and what not - you select whichever you fancy (and can afford). You can even host your own email server with your own domain and still send and receive email! The same with ActivityPub-based services.

Mastodon - a Twitter-like Fediverse service
Mastodon, a free and open source software that very much works like Twitter (timeline and all), but is not exactly the same as Twitter, so please do not expect it to be an exact replacement of Twitter. Unlike Twitter where there is only one Twitter to join where you can find users to follow and interact with, on the fediverse, there are multiple Mastodon instances available - join one and you can start communicating with others on other instances or servers, like email. And like email, you just look for friends to follow using their username and their instance/server address, e.g., @[email protected]. 

Some tips for new Mastodon users:
- Select a Mastodon instance/server that has been online for more than 3 months. This ensures that whoever is maintaining it has the time to keep it running and up to date. Find a way to support the maintainer since they are providing the service for free. Do NOT forget to enable multi-factor authentication.

- Start populating your timeline. There are online services that would help you find the Mastodon accounts of those you follow on Twitter, but I leave that up to you to discover. Anyway, go to the Local and Federated tabs of Mastodon to find people to follow (note that there are also bots on Mastodon). You can also search for #introduction, which new users are encouraged to post as well - for easier discoverability. 

- Learn how to back-up your data. This is recommended. Mastodon provides a tool that allows you to transfer your account from one Mastodon instance to another. To be sure, back-up your data (followers, posts, etc.), won't hurt, you know.

- As a rule of thumb, when posting images, videos, links, be mindful of adding ALT TEXT description and/or Content Warning (CW). And when posting hashtags, use CamelCase, e.g., #DeleteFacebook instead of #deletefacebook (for more accessibility).

- Posts are *not yet* encrypted, so be warned. And yes, Twitter posts and DMs are not encrypted as well.

Pleroma, Misskey, PixelFed, PeerTube, Micro.blog, and others
Like Mastodon, you can also use other software to be part of the fediverse. Pleroma and Misskey are more similar to Mastodon and Twitter, but each one has its own different features. 

Micro.blog and an ActivityPub-plug-in enabled Wordpress allow your blog posts to be followed by other fediverse users. User interaction might be a bit different, as after all, they are blogs and not like Twitter.
PixelFed and PeerTube are the fediverse's Instagram and YouTube alternatives. Non-PixelFed/PeerTube users can follow PixelFed/PeerTube accounts from other fediverse services like Mastodon, and vice versa. Cool, huh? 

Time to try it out
With Twitter rolling out paid 'blue check' subscriptions, determining between verified as true and officially belongs to the person and/or organization/government account and a troll is more difficult now. At the moment, the Twitter timeline is getting a lot of these "blue check" trolls. What will happen to Twitter is still up in the air, and IMHO, it will get worse before it gets better. That being said, I will retain my Twitter account and see what happens BUT until the storm subsides, I won't trust RTs and LIKEs, and neither should you.

For companies and organizations, specially news networks, it is important that their staff are verified and differentiated against impersonators and trolls. The fediverse will allow this without depending on a select team of people. Imagine an organization like Manila Bulletin setting up their own Mastodon instance, social.mb.com.ph, and providing accounts for all their journalists , e.g. @[email protected] - users can follow them and be assured that the accounts are legit! Now imagine the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) setting up social.gov.ph with accounts only authorized by the government agencies, e.g., @[email protected], who needs Twitter employees to verify it? If the European Union (EU), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and even the University of the Philippines (UP) have their own presence in the fediverse, why not the others, right?

For individuals, it won't hurt to try it out. Join one and see for yourself - at least you have a back-up plan if the toxicity on Twitter never subsides.