With Elon Musk seemingly destroying Twitter, we decided it was time to ask two experts whether we need to be rethinking social media as freelance journalists. Can we live without Twitter and what are the alternatives? Should we be more mindful about how our data is used? And how on earth does Mastodon work? We spoke to tech and internet journalists Chris Stokel-Walker and Steven Asarch to find the answers.

The guests

Chris Stokel-Walker stokel-walker.com

Twitter https://twitter.com/stokel

Steven Asarch https://muckrack.com/steven-asarch

Twitter https://twitter.com/IAmAsarch

Resources

Mastodon https://mastodon.social/

Blue Sky https://bsky.app/

Threads https://www.threads.net/

Reddit https://www.reddit.com/

Discord https://discord.com/

Signal https://signal.org/

Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson https://www.amazon.co.uk/Elon-Musk-Walter-Isaacson/dp/1398527491

TikTok Boom by Chris Stokel-Walker https://www.amazon.co.uk/TikTok-Boom-China-Superpower-Social/dp/1912454793

The History of the Internet by Chris Stokel-Walker https://www.amazon.co.uk/History-Internet-Byte-Sized-Chunks-Bite-Sized/dp/1789295599

Google accidentally leaking AI chats by Chris Stokel-Walker https://www.fastcompany.com/90958811/google-was-accidentally-leaking-its-bard-ai-chats-into-public-search-results

Recommendations

Miles Klee, internet culture journalist https://www.rollingstone.com/author/miles-klee/

Jessica Lucas, There's a Deadly Drinking Problem on TikTok https://www.huffpost.com/entry/deadly-drinking-tik-tok_n_64760b90e4b02325c5dd1b33

Seth Simons, Who's afraid of Lorne Michaels? https://longreads.com/2023/08/17/lorne-michaels-saturday-night-live/

Taylor Lorenz, tech journalist on TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@taylorlorenz

Sophia Smith Galer, journalist https://twitter.com/sophiasgaler

Laura Garcia, BBC Mundo https://lauragrb.com/