The current frustration with Twitter and Facebook have causes many to wish they had options. Options do exist and I can direct you to them, but you are likely to be frustrated by the lack of action you presently find on Facebook and Twitter. The major problem a new product faces as Facebook or Twitter options is not the quality of the technology, but the fact that fellow users will not be there if they make the switch. POSSE is a way to increase the likely options will become more desirable.
POSSE – publish on your own site, syndicate everywhere. This is not my concept, I borrowed it. It usually means publish from your own server, but also on existing mainstream outlets. What I am proposing here is a similar idea – publish on Twitter and Facebook, but add the same content to alternatives. If this became a more common strategy, it would eventually more feasible to just make the switch if desired.
At present, I would recommend Mastodon as a Twitter alternative and Diaspora as an alternative to Facebook. Both Mastodon and Diaspora use a different model from Twitter and Facebook – they federate or loosely link multiple versions of the basic service. You join one of these services. You have immediate access to those in your own “instance”, but you can view posts from all instances and can interact with those from other instances. For example, I belong to diasp.org and mastodon.social.
You will find that Mastodon and Diaspora are not supported by ads or by selling your personal information. You are encouraged, but not required to contribute. I have sent a few bucks to each organization. These organizations are growing. I tried Diaspora several years ago and still have an account on one of the original servers. I was surprised to see how much more active the present version is.
While these new services allow you to avoid ads and data security issues, they still work in the manner that will see mostly what your “friends” offer unless you make the effort to see the group feed.
It is not my intention to destroy Twitter or Facebook. I do not totally blame the present state of social media on purposeful actions by these companies. I do feel that increasing the popularity of alternatives will encourage existing services to be more assertive in addressing problems and spreading participants across several services will reduce the impact of everyone being accessible through the same service.