WT Social

WT.Social, also known as WikiTribune Social, is a microblogging and social networking service on which users contribute to "subwikis". It was founded in October 2019 by Wikipedia cofounder Jimmy Wales as an alternative to Facebook and Twitter. The service contains no advertisements, and runs on donations. On launch it gained 400,000 registered users by 3 December 2019. Member growth was less rapid thereafter, the number being 474,430 on 12 March 2021.
Creation and launch.
Jimmy Wales created WT.Social (originally formatted as "WT:Social") after becoming frustrated with Facebook and Twitter for what he called their "clickbait nonsense". The format is meant to combat fake news by providing evidence-based news with links and clear sources. Users are able to edit and flag misleading links. WT.Social allows users to share links to news-sites with other users in "subwikis". Unlike its predecessor (WikiTribune, which Wales co-founded with Orit Kopel), WT.Social was not crowdfunded. Wales was quoted as wanting to "keep a tight rein on the costs." In October 2019, Wales launched the site. When a new user signed up they would be placed on a waiting list with thousands of others. To skip the list and gain access to the site, users either had to make a donation or share a link with friends. By November 6, the site had 25,000 users. That number was claimed to be 200,000 by mid-November and 400,000 by December 3. However, this rapid growth was not sustained; the number of users reported as of 8 February 2021 was 472,375.
Subsequent development.
Quoted in the "Stanford Social Innovation Review" for Summer 2020, Wales said: "We're not doing a good job of actually exposing the best stuff on the platform. So that's kind of our next phase in evolution." This approach involved highlighting contributions by public figures.
Software.
As of launch, WT.Social runs on proprietary software, rather than on free software like Mastodon or any other interoperable software based on an open standard like the fediverse. However, as of November 7, 2019, Wales stated that he had just learnt about ActivityPub and was looking into it. Later, Wales stated that the code would be released under GPLv3 in the future.