If you keep your finger on the pulse with social media platforms, you'll know that there are many Twitter alternatives around. Twitter has been around for a long time, playing an important role in many significant historical events of the 21st century. There's a good chance that Twitter, or Twitter-lite platforms, are not going anywhere.

However, despite the backlash towards Twitter and public opinion becoming more divisive over the platform, none of its alternatives seem to be succeeding. If you're wondering why these alternatives are struggling to succeed, read on for some of the reasons this may be happening.

1. Security Issues

A finger pointing at a digital padlock with data all over the background with various popular platform icons

Users are more conscious of security issues these days, as well as their privacy. Platforms such as GETTR, Mastodon, and Hive Social all seem like worthy Twitter alternatives, until you consider that they have had glaring security concerns. You may have wondered what happened to Hive Social, which seemed to blow up and then quietly disappear. That was the result of glaring security issues, which the developers have apparently resolved with an update.

Even Mastodon, which is meant to be decentralized and secure, has obvious security issues. As Forbes reported, cybersecurity researchers spotted vulnerabilities and other security issues on the platform, relying heavily on individual instance administrators to secure their servers.

GETTR had a security issue so significant that thousands of users' emails were leaked, as The Independent reported.

You'll be forgiven if you don't feel comfortable jumping to a platform that hasn't quite resolved its own security issues yet, and so will many other people. As it stands, this is probably a core reason that these Twitter alternatives are struggling to succeed.

2. Twitter Alternatives Are Uninspired

Right from the start, a Twitter alternative has a glaring identity issue that gets in the way of it making a name for itself. If it tries to be too much like Twitter, you're likely to judge it as a carbon copy that isn't offering anything new. If it tries to be too different from Twitter, you're not getting a full Twitter alternative.

In either case, any Twitter alternative is starting off on the back foot in terms of how it's perceived by users and other companies. Very few people will want to be on a "less popular Twitter", and even fewer companies would.

You may have seen the backlash from users towards Instagram when it tried copying TikTok with a bunch of features, an aspect of the larger TikTok-ification of social media. You could argue the same thing is happening with Twitter alternatives. This is not a problem Twitter alternatives can easily overcome, as they are fundamentally set up to be an alternative to a pre-existing platform rather than their own thing.

3. Infrastructural Issues

Lines of code on a computer screen

Everywhere you look, no one seems to be able to achieve an ideal, stable version of Twitter—not even Twitter itself.

Mastodon, which takes a non-corporate and user-first stance in terms of its branding, is not user-friendly for beginners because of how it's built. Truth Social has suffered hours-long outages. GETTR, Mastodon, and Hive Social all have had security issues that are the result of poor infrastructure.

These infrastructure issues go on and on no matter which Twitter alternative you're talking about.

While there are always downsides to signing up to new social media sites, you probably wouldn't expect the actual infrastructure to be an issue. If you had the choice between an app that has infrastructure issues, or an app that has infrastructure issues as well as a low user base—which would you pick?

It's not hard to see that infrastructural issues are one of the most significant aspects holding back these Twitter alternatives from succeeding. Twitter can weather the storm because of its dedicated user base, but alternatives aren't afforded that same benefit of the doubt.

4. A Lack of Users

There is a lack of users across the board when it comes to Twitter alternatives.

According to HubSpot, Twitter's direct competitors such as Mastodon and Hive Social have less than three million monthly users. This pales in comparison to Twitter's 450 million monthly users, showing that there is a long way to go until these alternatives are viable.

5. Many Twitter Alternatives Aren’t a Perfect Substitute

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For the amount of Twitter alternatives around, you'd expect there to at least be one perfect substitute. And yet, that's not the case.

Mastodon is complicated with its decentralized servers and fragmentation of the user base. Post hones in on journalists and commercial exploits, not really appealing to the average user. Truth Social and GETTR are too politically oriented. Even Hive Social, arguably the closest thing to a perfect substitute, deviates with differing feed options and content categories in the Discover tab—and having closed DMs due to security issues doesn't help.

There's nothing truly offering the free-for-all that Twitter provides, which is leaving you and other users stuck on Twitter for the foreseeable future. Even when one of the aforementioned platforms rejigs into something more viable as a Twitter alternative, you run back into the lack of user base problem that has been plaguing them all.

Twitter Is Still on Top

Twitter alternatives seem to be struggling now, but there's no telling how long that will remain the case. There is clearly a market for it, else there wouldn't be so many alternative options available. You may have noticed how chaotic Twitter is in terms of announcing features and updates only to take them away again the same week. People could get annoyed with that and decide to move on to a more stable alternative.

Trends change, as do users' needs, so there's no guarantee that Twitter will always remain ahead of its direct alternatives. For now, there are many reasons to stay on Twitter compared to its alternatives.