An app that could post simultaneously to a range of social media websites would be ideal, but it would be promptly blocked by websites that wish to corral their user base - quite reasonable business-wise.
Barring that, a desktop program that would emulate twitter-X’s UI (creating breaks after the character limit for example) then prepping the posts with a multi-layer clipboard for quick previewing, copying, and pasting into multiple social media websites would be helpful.
I imagine it as a browser extension, complete with a macro that would create a window with tabs open to each social media site, plus a tab for the app UI itself.
If cross-posting by high profile accounts were easier, users would have more options and obnoxious policies would be discouraged. None of this will make social media websites necessarily more profitable, though that’s a preexisting issue and some do quite well besides.
Many people post from apps on their phones: I imagine that it would be more challenging to create a useful emulator in that environment, but not impossible.
The underlying concept is to create a social media post manager that doesn’t rely on the good will of eg X’s, Facebook’s, or Bluesky’s management.
1st. problem. (And, it may no be a problem, just seems like it is) are these social media sites mostly taken over by certain age groups? If they’re not, they are at least universal so it would be redundant there.
2nd. Someones probably doing it, as we speak. Just hasn’t went viral yet.
You’ll need a more catchier name than CME. Isnt that something already?
There was a cross-platform social posting app that was something like this; only trouble was, it was on Windows Phone. People Hub, I think it was called (might have changed to Social Hub later).
This, I think is the reason it’s difficult. Facebook doesn’t really care very much about which of your friends’ social posts you are reading and only cares a little bit about the social posts and photos you yourself upload (and the extent of that care is ‘can we monetize this?’); what they do care about, a great deal, is that you consume as many ads and sponsored posts as possible.
If you design an app that just extracts the social content you are interested in, minus all the ads for scams and paid-for commercial fluff, there’s no reason for Facebook to want to continue serving you.
To do that with their approval, you’d ideally need an API where your app can just query the site for the pieces of content you want, but for reasons stated above, unless they can insert monetized content into that, they’re not going to be very enthusiastic about supporting it.
You could do that without their approval, by means of something like an ad blocker inside an emulated browser, that works by whitelisting just the pieces of content you want (rather than trying to blocking the elements you don’t want), but if your app gets popular, Facebook will try to break it because they’d be serving social content without making money on all the garbage ads and sponsored stuff alongside. Same for any other social platform that isn’t a nonprofit.
I dimly recall this being a problem with the Social Hub on Windows Phone - it would just break for days or weeks, while the devs presumably caught up with changes that the social platforms made - notionally, just for their own reasons, but cynically, to deliberately degrade service of off-platform access.
For a somewhat analogous comparison, consider the proposed third-party tool which would allow a Facebook user to unfollow every single one of their interests. This would allow you to rob Facebook of a substantial amount of profile data they use to target you with ads. (Probably not a majority, considering how much their algorithm hoovers up, but it would be at least meaningful.)
Meta, unsurprisingly, has been cool to the proposal, though their public posture falls short of outright opposition. Their statement on the matter basically amounts to, We won’t commit, one way or the other, to filing suit to block the tool, unless and until it’s released and we can see how it works. The presumption is that they will sue, but they’re being coy about it.
It seems reasonable to assume that any other third-party tool that interferes with their business model would be received with an equivalent level of hostility. And the other social-media hubs would, most likely, take a similarly dim view on the subject.
I imagined this app would be used more by professional posters, such as companies and reporters. Those wanting to pivot away from Twitter-X would use it make cross-posting easier.
Honestly, much of the functionality can be captured by creating a bookmark folder with Twitter-X, Bluesky, Threads, and Mastodon open, and composing in a text editor.
Pics, hosted by Bluesky:
As noted in the OP, the app would emulate Twitter-X et al: I assume whatever posting functionality it had would be promptly blocked by the social media companies. The app would include a more sophisticated clipboard than offered by MS.
Killer-app was a bit of a joke referring not to the program’s success but by the way it kills or curbs bad corporate actors.
