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Climate scientists flee Twitter [to Mastodon] as hostility surges (www.france24.com)

submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

130 comments fedilink hide all child comments

EDIT: I didn't notice in the original post, the article is from 2023

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/19707239

Researchers have documented an explosion of hate and misinformation on Twitter since the Tesla billionaire took over in October 2022 -- and now experts say communicating about climate science on the social network on which many of them rely is getting harder.

Policies aimed at curbing the deadly effects of climate change are accelerating, prompting a rise in what experts identify as organised resistance by opponents of climate reform.

Peter Gleick, a climate and water specialist with nearly 99,000 followers, announced on May 21 he would no longer post on the platform because it was amplifying racism and sexism.

While he is accustomed to "offensive, personal, ad hominem attacks, up to and including direct physical threats", he told AFP, "in the past few months, since the takeover and changes at Twitter, the amount, vituperativeness, and intensity of abuse has skyrocketed".

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[–] ohellidk 204 points 7 months ago (5 children)

I have no clue why all these normal, non-racist non-political people still use twitter. It was bought for the obvious purpose of providing a safe space for conservatives, racists, incels, and other outcasts to society. Mastodon is a perfect replacement for it, and you can pick an instance that suits you. It isn't owned by a mentally unstable billionaire!

[–] [email protected] 21 points 7 months ago (2 children)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect

Twitter hasn't dropped below the critical mass of users necessary for the system to become useless. It's still a major artery of media and social commerce, just one that's been littered with landmines. Yes, its far more dangerous and difficult to navigate now, but its still better than posting into the uninhabited wilderness that is Bluesky or the exact same basket of shitty engagement posts that is Threads.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Counterpoint: Twitter will continue to maintain a critical mass of users until enough people move somewhere else to make it irrelevant. Continuing to use it only serves to further credentialize the platform, making it even less likely that users will find a new home someplace else.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Continuing to use it only serves to further credentialize the platform

The vast majority of users don't care whether the platform is credentialized or not.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

Respectfully, you were the one who pointed out the impact of the Network Effect.

The adoption of a product by an additional user can be broken into two effects: an increase in the value to all other users (total effect) and also the enhancement of other non-users' motivation for using the product (marginal effect).

Thus, users don't need to understand the credentials of the platform if the network effect is strong enough, but as users leave the network, the value (credentials) of the platform as a whole decreases.

Another way to think about it is that the amount Twitter "matters" is directly related to how much we collectively agree it matters. While not directly transferable, I'd suggest that Keynes' Animal Spirits concept can help us to understand why this might be the case - prevailing attitudes towards a platform can have a profound impact on their value.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

Is it actually better than nothing though?

Either these are tolerant folks or someone we might be better off if they stayed on 4twitter.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 7 months ago

It's still usable if you're not on English side of Twitter.

For example, recent Indonesian political movement relied on Twitter for discussion and updates. Mastodon or any fediverse is simply too niche and most people don't have money to fund local general instance. There were several local fedi instance (Mastodon and Lemmy), but all of them quickly dead for low donation.

Japanese-side is still alive (in positive manner) but people are making backup account on Bluesky and Japanese Misskey instances.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago

The otherwise sensible people I know who are still on Twitter all say it's because of a specific interest or group, and the community of people around it who are all on there as well. They all hate what it's become but put up with it because nobody is sure where else to go.

There's also a sense of FOMO when it comes to realtime news updates. Until government, news media, and personalities go somewhere and take all their followers with them, it will be hard to break away.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

Idk either. But it’s really easy to stay where you’re used to, rather than do the work to set something new up