What is Hive Social? The Twitter rival explained

(Pocket-lint) – Twitter’s trajectory since Elon Musk completed his controversial takeover has many users concerned for a variety of reasons about the lifespan of the social media service.

Whether it’s bringing back controversial banned figures or axing large teams of developers, rumours are swirling that Twitter could be in trouble, and plenty of people are looking for backup services and alternatives. One contender is Hive Social, which has picked up plenty of new users in recent times. Here are all the details you should know about Hive Social.

What is Hive Social?

Hive Social is a social media app that’s been very steadily growing over the last few years, with occasional spikes when rivals have encountered turbulence.

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It’s very similar to Twitter in many ways, with a feed of accounts that you follow serving you up their updates and images, while you have the chance to do the same.

There’s a Discover page where you can see trending content, and profiles even look pretty similar to Twitter.

It’s therefore probably one of the most like-for-like replacements you’ll be able to find, moreso than the likes of Mastodon in our opinion.

How to download Hive Social

Hive Social is a mobile-first social site – you can’t currently access your feed or anything else through a desktop or browser connection, although that may come in time.

You can download it for you iPhone on the App Store here, or for your Android phone on the Google Play Store here.

What are Hive Social’s rules?

Hive Social might be pretty small, but for now it does have guidlines on how the network works, and what sort of things you can post on it.

You can see these in full on the Hive website, but we’ve pulled out some important bits.

For one thing, when it comes to “Not Safe For Work” content, Hive has been relatively clear. It doesn’t ban this content, but does insist that it be tagged as “NSFW” in order to have it redacted for accounts held by minors.

This applies to “Nude images that are inherently artistic or creative in essence. This includes photos, videos, and digitally-created content that show sexual intercourse, genitals, and nude close-ups, as well as nudity in photos of paintings and sculptures.”

That’s something that may be tested by a major influx of users, but having a flag to hide this material is probably better than Twitter’s more vague approach down the years.

How to delete a Hive Social account

If you try out Hive Social but decide it’s not for you, you can quite easily delete your account.

First, tap your profile icon in the bottom right of the app.

Then, hit the settings cog in the top right corner of the display.

From here, go into Security and tap Deactivate.

You’ll have to type out a confirmation to make sure it’s not accidental, and then confirm the decision.

This wil deactivate your account for 14 days, and if you don’t access it or reinstate it in that time, it’ll be permanently deleted, freeing up your username.

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Writing by Max Freeman-Mills.