Big tech platforms and social media no longer fit nonprofits or volunteer organizations. In Part 1 of a 2 part series we will cover the alternatives and reasons to leave Meta and X.
In 2025 we are facing an uncertain future in Canada—our relationship to the United States is severely damaged, tech billionaires have aligned with the second Trump administration, and platforms like Meta have abandoned moderation practices which experts say will make already marginalized users more vulnerable. In light of this, we have choices to make about how we engage online.
I recently gave a brief talk at TechSoup Connect Canada’s “Top Technology Trends for Nonprofits in 2025” about social media alternatives to Meta and X. below I extend on my slides from that presentation.
My pitch in that talk was simple–There is more to gain than lose by leaving Meta and X, even with the challenges of moving to a new service, because:
- Big tech companies, which have already degraded their platforms, seem poised to make them even worse.
- The developing landscape of alternatives has matured over the last year.
- These alternatives likely better align with your values and goals.
- These alternatives are better for sharing your message and connecting with people who care about your work.
Why do we at CoSocial care? We are a member-owned non-profit cooperative that provides open social media for Canada. Individuals and organizations can join and be co-owners and help set the direction of our services, which as of March 2025 include:
- Mastodon microblogging server at cosocial.ca
- Castopod podcasting host podcasts.cosocial.ca
Beyond our purpose as a coop, we care because the stakes are extremely high: our local communities and connections are being harmed by the practices of these big platforms and we need open alternatives that can be democratically governed.
Landscape of open social media
There are a number of alternative open social media services that have been well-covered in the news. There are also introductions on these topics that I will not try to recreate in depth here. However to summarize a few services and protocols at a high-level–
The Fediverse is a network of applications that relies on the ActivityPub protocol and open standard. Mastodon, a service for microblogging short posts, is one of the more popular applications (it shares similarities with X). Pixelfed, a photo-sharing application, is another. Bluesky is a different microblogging service that runs on a different federated protocol called AT Protocol. Both are under development by Bluesky Social PBC which originated as an independent research group in Twitter. In addition, there are other networks, protocols, and dozens of applications in various stages of development.
What these alternatives all share is a move away from social media on closed platforms to open infrastructure based on protocols. However there are many differences across how services are built and sustained:
- Product: The size of development teams who provide different levels of polish and technical support. For example, Pixelfed is relatively young and so how the application matures is yet to be seen.
- Funding: Some services and their development are funded by Venture Capital (Bluesky Social PBC has gone through a seed and Series A round) whereas other projects and services are funded by the users of services, donations, or grants (Mastodon has non-profit status).
- Ecosystem: Funding differences also impact relationships and key actors in ecosystems. For instance, functions like developing software and providing services anyone can join can be provided in the same organization or across different ones.
- Moderation: Organization boundaries and product design lead to different approaches to moderating harmful behaviour. There are trade-offs, albeit different from the moderation challenges of big tech, and regardless, if your organization or the community you serve has vulnerable or marginalized people, care is required when selecting your next social media home.
Align with your values and goals
You want to be on services that treat you and the people you connect to with dignity, respect, and openness. All those can help rebuild a sense of trust. Your organization may already choose products or services for their positive impacts in addition to meeting their needs. Or, you may have defined social procurement policies based on social, economic, cultural, or environmental factors.
While big tech platforms often penalize or de-prioritize posts that share links to content off site, open social media does not, meaning that these services can count among their positive impacts as contributing to a healthier online environment for us all.
Get your message to those who care
There are early signs that you can have comparable (or better!) engagement and fundraising reach on open social media. The value-alignment on media where you own your audience helps you find higher engagement and connect authentically. Early adopters have more prominence because there are fewer organizations in the space. Here are a couple examples of what others have found:
Viral hashtag on Mastodon for political fundraising
In 2024, a donation campaign went viral, with significant funds being collected over a short period of time:
The results have been nothing short of incredible: in the course of two weeks, the initiative has raised over $485,000 for Vice President Kamala Harris’s election campaign. Supporters are coordinating through the #MastodonForHarris hashtag, sharing everything from news stories to new donations as the total number continues to go up.
Traffic back to the Guardian’s website already 2x more than on platforms with more followers
From Dave Early:
Traffic from Bluesky’s @bsky.app to @theguardian.com is already 2x that of Threads. In its first week on the platform & with 300k followers, Bluesky traffic from @theguardian.com posts is already higher than it was from TwX in any week in 2024, where the account had 10.8m followers
Recognize the challenge and opportunity
We recognize there are still challenges and trade offs to leaving in spite of these benefits. However, open social media presents opportunities to stay up to date with 2025 marketing and social media trends by:
- Supporting a strategy that puts your website at the heart of your marketing and honours your links to your content elsewhere (Charity Digital Marketing Trends for Charities in 2025)
- Allowing you to diversify, in some cases across multiple formats with one account, and
- Providing a moment for “social listening” during migration that renews or retains trust
How are other organizations leaving?
Some are just leaving X and using other channels: BCcampus deleted their account and The Guardian archived theirs and stopped promoting tweets in stories. Others are coordinating group exits and using that moment to connect back to their purpose as organizations: 87 French NGOs moved with an open letter along with more than 60 German and Austrian universities and research institutions.
We want more organizations using these services to help build a vibrant future where social media supports civic conversations and human connections over the profits of tech oligarchs. Come join us and be part of something better.
Next week, we’ll talk about some of the nuts and bolts of how you can make the switch in Part 2 of this series.