This Free Tool Finds Where Your Twitter Friends Are Moving To

Elon Musk has finally closed the Twitter deal. After months of a very public back and forth, the billionaire spent $44 billion in order to acquire Twitter. For Musk, the first order of business was to start firing people, and there are undoubtedly many more changes to come. With all the changes already set in motion and even more just around the corner, many users are fleeing Twitter and moving on to different social media platforms. If you want to keep in touch with your Twitter friends and find out which platform they're migrating to, there is now a tool that makes it easier to do.

Seeing as Elon Musk spent an obscene amount of money on the Twitter deal, which adds up to about a fifth to a fourth of his overall net worth (via Bloomberg), he's most likely not going to stand by idly and let the website continue as it was. One example of this need for change is that Musk is planning to revamp the Twitter verification process, starting "right now." Musk has also been vocal in the past about how much he values free speech, and he has plans to allow more of that on Twitter. While Musk is a self-proclaimed "free speech absolutist," he may have to tone down those plans because of the laws in the European Union. 

These changes, as well as Musk's stance on some controversial matters (such as the aforementioned idea of absolute freedom of speech), are good enough reasons for some users to say enough. Coders and tech wizards everywhere are jumping on the chance to create something new to make this situation easier for the end users, and there's already a simple tool to help find where your friends are moving to.

When it comes to leaving Twitter, there are several destinations users are migrating to. Most people already know the likes of Facebook and Instagram, and it's safe to say that these platforms are not really a replacement for Twitter in any shape or form. This is why users end up scattered across social media websites. One website that many ex-Twitter enthusiasts are moving to is called Mastodon. Mastodon resembles Twitter in some ways, but it also varies in one key way — it features different servers that host user accounts. You can interact with various servers, but you need to know their address. This lets people pick an interest they most commonly talk about (or just a general server) and join that server to become part of that community.

Mastodon is part of the so-called fediverse, which consists of a bunch of federated servers that are all interconnected. This means they can all communicate with each other. In some cases, Mastodon can work seamlessly with other social platforms that are based on ActivityPub, such as Hubzilla or PeerTube. Seeing as the fediverse consists of a number of different instances, tracking down your Twitter followers across the decentralized network may be tricky. Luca Hammer on Twitter came up with a tool to make the process simple.

The FediFinder tool lets you search through screen names, descriptions, locations, and URL fields. You have to log in with Twitter to let the tool scan your followers and then extract their fediverse handles. If you know that your friends are moving to one of these platforms, it may be a good idea to make your life simpler and try the tool out.