Amid more Twitter disruption, users are considering a switch to a social media site set up by former Twitter employees after Elon Musk sacked them.
Alphonzo “Phonz” Terrell and DeVaris Brown set up the invite-only app Spill, which launched its beta version on the Apple App Store in January.
The whizz kids say Spill is aimed at everyone, but marginalised groups in particular.
It comes as Musk's Twitter faces backlash for further restrictions placed on the site. Earlier this week, he confirmed all accounts would be limited in the number of tweets they could see.
Phonz, the former global head of social and editorial at Twitter, said on the site: "While Spill is for everyone, we are catering to culture drivers who frequently set new trends yet routinely get overlooked and under-compensated.
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"Yes, we mean Black creators, Queer creators, and a variety of influential voices outside the US."
DeVaris Brown, one of Spill's designers (LinkedIn)
Spill is invite-only (Spill)Spill began trending on Twitter in the US as a number of Black American users said they had begun to sign up to the site, finding its USP appealing.
Mr Musk bought Twitter last year for an astronomical $44billion last year, slashing what he says is around 80 per cent of the workforce in the process.
He called the cuts "painful", but claimed they were necessary to stop the company bleeding cash.
“This is not a caring [or] uncaring situation. It’s like if the whole ship sinks, then nobody’s got a job,” Mr Musk said in an interview with the BBC in April.
Since the takeover, data collected by researchers from the University of Southern California (USC), University of California (UCLA), University of California, Merced (UC Merced) and Oregon State University said hate speech had increased on the platform.
The app is similar to Twitter in that it has a main feed that displays accounts users already follow, but its user interface has also been compared more to Tumblr by some.
Spill's has been likened to Tumblr (Spill)Global Vice President Kenya Parham said to Tech Crunch: "We’re starting off with them at the front of the line, and we think that’s going to create a really healthy ecosystem."
Parham added: "Spill is an app for everybody... We’re just making sure that we’re demonstrative about who we’re centering, and who we’ve built all these protections and features for."
It isn't just hate speech that is causing some users to reconsider their use of Twitter, however.
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Earlier this week, Mr Musk announced Twitter would temporarily restrict the number of tweets users can read in a day.
The billionaire tech mogul said: "To address extreme levels of data scraping & system manipulation, we’ve applied the following temporary limits."
"Verified accounts are limited to reading 6000 posts/day. Unverified accounts to 600 posts/day. New unverified accounts to 300/day."
Mr Musk added it was a "temporary emergency measure" and that Twitter was "getting data pillaged so much that it was degrading service for normal users."
The change left users logging on to be confronted with a message that read "rate limit exceeded."
Another change, the introduction of a monthly subscription charge, was also controversial.
Users with the subscription receive the tick and are also able to post longer messages and edit tweets.
Hate speech has increased on Twitter since Musk's takeover, a study said (AFP via Getty Images)The move was criticised by some who think reputable news sources will be harder to find, parodies easier to confuse with a real person and lead to misinformation.
High-profile Twitter users including members fo the royals like Prince William, Pope Francis and former President Donald Trump were among those to lose the blue ticks.
Musk's Twitter caused a backlash among major news organisations when he named them as 'state-affiliated' media in April.
This move included the likes of the BBC and NPR.
NPR said it was supported by its listeners and the labelling was "unacceptable" as comparisons were drawn to labels given to the likes of Russia Today.
Russia Today is controlled by Vladimir Putin's Russia and essentially acts as the mouthpiece of the Kremlin.
The BBC said it was "funded by the British public through the license fee", but Twitter did not give a description of what it considers to be 'government funded' and this label was later removed.
In a response to a tweet by NPR that said it produces "independent journalism" Musk quote tweeted a picture of NPR's site that said it received federal funding.
He also said: "What have you got against the truth NPR?"
NPR operates a mixed-funding model and says it relies on sponsorships, fees paid by members and donations.
The news outlet left the site and said Twitter was "taking actions that undermine our credibility by falsely implying that we are not editorially independent".
The statement added: "We are not putting our journalism on platforms that have demonstrated an interest in undermining our credibility and the public's understanding of our editorial independence."
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