(and transition to alternative social media) ?
On this page:
- Stages in escaping X. Where are you on the journey ?
- Get your X data
Our where-to guide can support you in choosing which alternative social media to use, and setting up your account on alternative social media. After setting up your account, you can use the guides and tools below to:
- Find followers/followings and building your feed in alternative social media, including using openportability.org
- Get engagement on alternative social media
- Move your posts to alternative social media
Stages in escaping X. Where are you on the journey ?
Don’t delete your X account just yet! You will need to be able to access or export your X data to use some of the tools such as openportability.org. There is also a danger of identity theft if you delete your account, as someone else could register the same handle. You could leave your X account active and simply don’t use it, or you could freeze it. It’s a good idea to request an archive of your X data now, in case X removes that feature.
- Step 1 – stop promoting X ! If you send out emails with an X link, or have a website with X links, remove them ! By including X links, you are drawing people into X, and providing free promotion to X. Provide links to your accounts on alternative platforms instead.
- Step 2 – stop letting X feed you! Stop reading and engaging with X feeds. Build up your feeds and followings on alternative platforms instead and read and engage with them instead.
- Step 3 – stop posting on X. Post on alternative platforms instead.
- Some people and organisations may want to build up their networks and build engagement on alternative platforms first, before being ready to stop posting on X (step 3). However, in the meantime, tell your followers that you are in the process of moving, and most importantly, do step 1 !
You are here: Stages in escaping X Next: Get your X data Where-to? Find followers/followings/feeds Get engagement Move your posts
Get your X data
You can simply stop engaging with X, without necessarily having to delete your X account. In any case, it is useful to download a copy of your X data, either because some messages or threads you’ve posted are important to you, or because you want to reconnect with your contacts (followers/followed) on one or more new social networks using openportability.org.
Twitter/X, in compliance with European law, allows users to easily request a copy of their data.
Here’s a step-by-step guide to download your X data:
- To access to the page to reclaim your X archive, click on this link or if it doesn’t work, log in to your X account, in the left-hand column scroll to the bottom and click on “More” then “Settings and Privacy”. Next, in the central column, click on “Your Account” and in the right-hand column, click “Download an archive of your data”.
- X will then require strong authentication: first by asking you to re-enter your password, followed by sending you a SMS or email to confirm your identity.
- Once authenticated, you will see a “Request Archive” button in the right-hand column. Click on that button.
- At this point, you’ll need to wait 1 to 3 days for X to prepare your data. Once it’s ready, you’ll receive an email notification. Return to the same location (“Download an archive of your data”) and click on the archive available there to download it in .ZIP format.
- And that’s it! You now have an archive of your tweets, followers, and followees, which you can use on openportability.org to find the X accounts you were following/followed by in Mastodon and Bluesky.
Stages in escaping X You are here: Get your X data Next: Where-to? Find followers/followings/feeds Get engagement Move your posts
How to set up an account on alternative social media
Here is our where-to guide on choosing which alternative social media to use and setting up your account on alternative social media.
Stages in escaping X Get your X data You are here: Where-to? Next: Find followers/followings/feeds Get engagement Move your posts
How to find followers/followings and build your feed in alternative social media
There are also some useful tools to help you find your X followings and followers, on Bluesky and Mastodon:
openportability.org
The openportability.org platform, developed by the CNRS ISC-PIF lab (CNRS – Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France’s largest public scientific research organisation) and a team of volunteers, and promoted by the EscapeX campaign, enables users to re-establish their connections in spaces that are more respectful of democratic debate. This application allows users to link their identities on X, Mastodon and Bluesky, while restoring the links between all the people who use the application.
In France, more than 30,000 users have already joined the application, making it possible to recreate up to 45 million links between registered accounts. With just a few clicks, users can reconnect and reform their communities on alternative platforms, in complete transparency and without losing their previous contacts. All that is needed is to let the platform know who their contacts on X are, using their downloaded X data, and they will be notified as more and more of their X contacts register on the platform and join Mastodon or Bluesky. This initiative marks a concrete step forward in data portability, a fundamental principle enshrined in the Digital Services Act at European level.
The EscapeX campaign is now calling on all information professionals, politicians and, more generally, supporters of a living democracy to shift the centre of gravity of the digital agora towards more peaceful spaces, by using the OpenPortability application now.
When you join openportability.org, it will match you up with others you followed/were followed by on X, who have also joined the open portability initiative, using user IDs (so no false matches). It does depend on your followers/followings also having signed up to openportability. It covers both Mastodon and Bluesky. To use openportability.org, you first download your X data – here are detailed instructions on how to download your X data.
www.sky-follower-bridge.dev
X to Bluesky – name matching: www.sky-follower-bridge.dev finds people/accounts on Bluesky who match your X followers or followings by name/description matching – it inevitably suggests some false matches too, but you can choose to follow the suggestions one by one.
Organic network building
You can also build up your network by searching for a few accounts you are interested in, and if they boost or follow other accounts, check those out too to see if you want to follow them. In Mastodon, sometimes people post lists of interesting accounts on various topics, and some people maintain account directories (on websites). In Bluesky, people have set up “starter packs” which are lists of accounts to follow on different topics to get you going. Keep a look out on websites you visit and email footers you receive for alternative social media icons! And if you have a website or an email footer, put your alternative social media links there! (see engagement section).
Create your own feed
One of the big differences between X and alternative platforms is that there is no toxic recommendation algorithm controlled by a single owner. On Mastodon, your news feed is populated with posts, in chronological order, from people you follow, as well as posts on topics you follow. You are free to create your own user experience by subscribing to hashtags. In Bluesky, there are tools for you to create your own algorithm or use algorithms (feeds) designed by third parties of your choice – there is a list of Bluesky feed creation tools (e.g. Graze) and “starter pack” indexes here. On PeerTube, you may wish to search for content using SepiaSearch.
Stages in escaping X Get your X data Where-to? You are here: Find followers/followings/feeds Next: Get engagement Move your posts
Organisations ! How to get engagement on alternative social media
If you are in an organisation, or if you are a media or a public figure, growing an engaged community on new social media is key.
Put alternative social links on your website and in your emails!
Prefer to learn this using a video? Here is a video guide ! How to put Share-on-Mastodon buttons on your organisation’s website and emails
The best way to get your organisations supporters to follow your organisation on alternative social media is to tell them you are on alternative social media! Many organisations have icons for various social media on their website and in their email footer. So add your alternative icons there !
This is quite simple – it is a icon and the URL of your profile. Let’s imagine you have an organisation “myorg” – what is the URL of the link you need to put on your website or email footers ?
 Mastodon | Example URL: mastodon.social/@myorg | This is a link to a Mastodon profile – Mastodon.social is an example of a mastodon server |
 Bluesky | Example URL: bsky.app/profile/myorg.bsky.social | This is a link to a Bluesky profile – If you have an account on Bluesky itself |
| Bluesky (bridged) (bridging this way is second best option) | Example URL: bsky.app/profile/myorg.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy | You can use this link to your account if you have a mastodon.social account bridged to Bluesky |
| Mastodon (bridged) (bridging this way is third best option – awkward to link to – it is better to have an original mastodon account) | Example URL: fed.brid.gy/bsky/myorg.bsky.social/followers where the user can type their mastodon server in the box and click a “follow” button to follow you. (myorg section of this URL is case sensitive) | You can use this link to your account if you have a Bluesky account bridged to Fediverse (mastodon) |
 | Example URL: pixelfed.ie/myorg | This is a link to a pixelfed profile. Pixelfed.ie is an example of a pixelfed server based in Ireland |
 | Example URL: spectra.video/a/myorg | This is a link to a PeerTube profile. spectra.video is an example of a PeerTube server |
Encourage post sharing on alternative social media !
Many organisations like to help their followers share content on social media by pre-writing a post for them, such as a post saying “I have signed a petition….”. Your organisation can encourage followers to share pre-written posts on alternative social media too!
Prefer to learn this using a video? Here is a video guide ! How to put Share-on-Mastodon buttons on your organisation’s website and emails
| URL | Example which produces this: I have signed this petition, calling on @ThisPerson to act. I hope you’ll sign too? myorg.org/my-page | Credit | |
| Mastodon and some other Fediverse platforms | s2f.kytta.dev/?text=your+text+here (substitute “your+text+here” with your text) | https://s2f.kytta.dev/?text=I+have+signed+this+petition%2C+calling+on+%40ThisPerson+to+act.+I+hope+you%27ll+sign+too%3F+https%3A%2F%2Fwww.myorg.org%2Fmy-page | Share2Fedi tool provided for free by developer Nikita Karamov |
| Bluesky | bsky.app/intent/compose?text=your+text+here (substitute “your+text+here” with your text) | https://bsky.app/intent/compose?text=I+have+signed+this+petition%2C+calling+on+%40ThisPerson+to+act.+I+hope+you%27ll+sign+too%3F+https%3A%2F%2Fwww.myorg.org%2Fmy-page | Provided by Bluesky company |
The text after “text=” is a URL encoded string, you can convert your draft post into this format using a tool like https://www.urlencoder.org/.
Stages in escaping X Get your X data Where-to? Find followers/followings/feeds You are here: Get engagement Next: Move your posts
How to move posts to alternative social media
Importing your posts
From X to Bluesky: You can import all your old tweets from X into Bluesky for about 5 euro using blueark.app
From Instagram to Pixelfed: You can export photos from Instagram and import them to Pixelfed by following these instructions: https://www.cnet.com/news/social-media/irked-by-instagram-heres-how-to-move-your-photos-to-pixelfed/
Automatically copy your posts
You automatically copy your posts from your account on one network to your account on another, as you post them, using “If This Then That” paid subscription service ifttt.com . This includes a tool for automated copying of your Bluesky posts to your Mastodon account . Note that this doesn’t always work perfectly, links and mentions may not get copied properly, and if there are different text limitations your posts might get truncated.
This page explains how to automatically sync YouTube videos to your PeerTube server https://fedihost.co/blog/slug/automatically-syncing-youtube-to-peertube
Stages in escaping X Get your X data Where-to? Find followers/followings/feeds Get engagement Move your posts
xodus8.fr 