Social media is in a fickle state. Elon has taken over Twitter and turned it into his political platform. TikTok is on thin ice and might be bought by MrBeast. Meta has pulled its fact checking program and its feeds are full of ads. 

Beyond traditional social media becoming even more of a boy’s club, there’s also more cataclysmic issues that come from censorship, shadow banning, deep fakes, data capture and AI sludge. 

Since Trump won the 2024 presidential election, there’s been a mass exodus from Twitter. Decentralized social media platform Bluesky has doubled its users since the election – with over 30 million as of February. 

Bluesky, Lens, Farcaster, Mastodon and other decentralized social media (DeSo) platforms might be attracting users, but are they retaining them? Mastodon, for example, surged to 2.6 million active users, then lost 60 percent. Farcaster has also experienced a substantial slowdown, with revenue growth $2 million in July 2024 to $2.34 million in October 2024 – despite the $1 billion valuation. Threads has grown fast too, however it’s still one of Meta’s siblings and not decentralized. 

While these platforms can be a refreshing refuge from the toxicity of Twitter, they still lack the critical mass and ease of UX users expect. Even with Twitter’s dwindling user growth, it still has the user base of the United States population. 

Transportable and algorithm-free experiences 

According to Kim Currier, head of Partnerships and Marketing at Decentraland, they’re seeing more interest in the platform due to what’s been happening in the political world.

The metaverse platform has recently repositioned to focus on what it does best, which Currier said is “the social side of the virtual world.”

“We are becoming the virtual gathering space where people come in and they have parties, do meet-ups, and play games together,” she said. Decentraland is doubling down on the social connections that users might not be able to experience in the physical world or in big tech platforms. 

“Traditional social platforms feel very flat. You do something and then someone receives it at another time, but they’re not actually interacting with you live. It’s very 2D. We’ve learned from our community members that they want to feel like they’re hanging out with that person,” she added. 

To make the platform more universal and non-techy, users no longer need a wallet to log in. Users can access Decentraland via social or email sign in. “You don’t have to care about decentralization to like Decentraland,” Currier said. 

While virtual worlds aren’t without their issues, Carrier believes the future of social is traversable. 

“You can stumble into something beautiful and creative, like you would in the real world, like on a New York City block,” she said. 

This is a vastly different experience to the algorithm-fed browsing in big tech platforms. Users can jump into an experience that’s happening in real time, rather than it being based on past interactions or interests dictated by the algo, she explained.

Carrier said Decentraland and similar virtual worlds aren’t a replacement for social platforms, but instead a secondary place to meet and build connections. 

While there is now a DeSo alternative ecosystem of options that can’t be shut down, bought or controlled by a single person, it remains to be seen if they can develop the concentration of users that centralized platforms have.