Being on GNU Social is like having e-mail:
You can send an e-mail from any provider to any address on any other provider or on the same provider.
If you have an account on e.g. Riseup.net, you expect to be able to e-mail to and get e-mail from anyone on GMail, ProtonMail, Outlook.com, Inventati, etc, etc.
We take that for granted. Imagine you sign up for AOL Mail, to then get told that they don’t accept e-mail from outside AOL, nor can you send e-mail to anyone outside AOL.
You couldn’t e-mail from AOL to GMail or get an e-mail from anyone on Riseup.net to your AOL account.
You would not accept that.
Yet, that is exactly what over 300 million users on Twitter accept without question, probably without even considering that things could be different.
Things could be different. They could use GNU Social.
There, you can send your @-messages to and follow accounts that signed up to any provider, not just limited to the one you chose.
If you signed up to Quitter.se, you can still send @-messages to, follow or be followed by people on Quitter.no, RainbowDash.net, indy.im, etc, etc.
Twitter, however, refuses to open up for this.
On twitter, you can only talk to people also on twitter and you can only follow accounts on twitter, even though it is entirely possible for them to do better.
They choose not to.
By thus making their service less good, they presumably hope to keep people from noticing the outside world, as one might put a blanket over a caged bird, to keep it from desiring freedom.
Just as with e-mail, the different providers have different features for different users, so someone that cares about privacy would sign up to Riseup while someone that would rather have flashy things to click would choose GMail.
Most people consider the options compared to their requirements before choosing an e-mail provider.
You should do the same when choosing a microblog provider.
Don’t choose a provider that intentionally blinds you to maximize their own profit, choose any provider within GNU Social instead.
Join GNU Social today!