Anecdotally, the answer is a resounding yes. The two major academic communities I follow, mathematics and geology, have wholesale abandoned Twitter in the last several months for (mostly) Bluesky.
The net is bifurcating and, twitter vibes aside, I think we should all be a bit concerned with this “balkanization” of the internet. I don’t blame any one person, and it’s arguably better than everyone on one platform, still…
I agree we do not want one, or a few platforms, for social media.
What we need is a protocol for social media that is widely adopted, like http did for small websites. This is where I think ATProto shines (Bluesky). Meta is testing out ActivityPub with Threads, but that apparently has discoverability limitations that ATProto addresses. I also like how they make the four core components modular (App, data host, algo feed, moderation)
As an aside, the bifurcation is already well on the way between authoritarian govts and the free world
… I mean, for most of its history, the Internet was a bunch of small sites. The extreme centralisation of the last decade arguably shouldn’t be seen as a _good_ thing.
In any case, Bluesky, Threads, and Mastodon/mainstream ActivityPub can all, with varying degrees of clunkiness, talk to each other.
I for the first time decided it's worth using after abandoning it very early on. I prefer to use it mostly read-only these days. So there's definitely opinion differences to be had about whether Elon broke twitter or "rescued it". One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter!
At least in my experience it wasn't all due to Musk. My part of the academic world was quite small, and seemed to be increasingly uncomfortable with the enshittification of Twitter before Musk's purchase. Observing that the new owner was a shitlord probably coordinated a departure earlier than otherwise would have happened, but I think the process was well underway already.
We mostly ended up on Mastodon, I think. Personally I'm quite grateful that it's no longer professionally necessary to have an extra social media account.
Who, aside from the extreme right wing, Elon Musk stans, and grifters, has not been pushed off twitter in the past year (and especially the past couple months)?
Admirable for someone to try to quantify this, though. The Brazil mass migration to Bluesky seems to have broken through another floor for twitter's userbase, we're likely atop another inflection point right now as basically everything Musk touches turns into MAGA hats.
> While the old Twitter was censoring people because they were criticizing the left, which is just plain wrong
What some conservatives fail to realize is that often their critic is laden with offensive speech, prejudice, or straight-up calls to violence.
I was talking to this guy, and he was lamenting how he does not feel comfortable airing his conservative opinions at work due to the threat of HR. But HR focuses on harassment, bullying, offensive speech. If you could, say, air your grievances with the LGBT in a way that was not homophobic, nobody would really have an issue. And you can, actually, in infinite ways - the left does it all the time to themselves. But conservatives struggle a lot with this and typically can't do it. And that's where the problem is.
Just look at someone like Trump. Yes, he's a republican, but that's not the focus. Compare and contrast how he commonly speaks about women to how Kamala or Walz speak about women. One is OK in the workplace, one isn't. Not because of left or right per se - but rather because one is insensitive, and the other isn't.
You can absolutely critic the left in such a way that does not devolve into identity politics. How many on the right do? Almost none. No, instead they talk nasty, say vile things, use slurs, etc. That doesn't fly in every circumstance. The solution is to be professional and critic with rationale, not critic someone's race, or sexuality, or gender, or their weight, etc. And, certainly, do not call for violence. Conservatives seem to struggle with that too, particularly online.
> I mean: you can disagree with Jordan Peterson (I'm certainly not a religious person, for a start) but what did he do that warranted the old Twitter censoring him?
This tweet[0] was the kickoff point as I recall. I don't really think that getting banned pending deleting the tweet is that egregious. It's one thing to have non-woke opinions and argue for them. I don't follow Jordan Peterson, but I imagine he had posted many times on transgender issues, before he posted the offending tweet.
The issue seems more to have been specifically calling out specific persons, "criminal physician", Elliot Page, in a way that could be construed as inciting to violence
i didn't say they should be forced to endure political content, they left because they can't handle the content...then gave an alternative situation where people didn't like the message and left something. it's just something people do, i wouldn't say anyone was pushed out ?
You might be missing the fact that members of "echo chamber" like communities often do not have discourse on their viewpoints outside of their echo chambers. Truthfully few people do, because that isn't as much fun as "fighting the good fight" and experiencing feelings of membership.
While communities are prone to confirmation bias and groupthink, or "echo chambers" they also reinforce social norms, provide feedback on statements, and connect people. This is not restricted to online social networks. University communities have people who "think different". Often this leads to wider perspectives, more meta-level discussions, and more historically informed viewpoints.
University communities however may not include marginalized experiences, "man on the street" opinions, or "what do the unwashed think." Though this is somewhat less likely as academics do spend time outside of the university grounds like other members of the surrounding population and are exposed to other people and their ideas.
I also found the scientific-ness of the term "Vibes" sprinkled throughout hillarious.
And the article plays back and forth with it's own claims, one momeng saying it will answer the question then saying later it is yet to be determined and then again saying it will quantify it...
Got quite deep into it, but had to give up along the way.
It was somewhat fun to read but could not get what was the point they wanted to make, other than play what appears to be very self indulgent word games. Maybe this is what is required of academic writing nowadays?
Your comment itself, is, of course an "in-group signifier". But I guess if you're not an academic it's less gross? Or if you are an academic, you're virtue signaling how "not an in-group signifier" you are by "out-of-group" signaling. Or something.
I'm not really meaning to attack you, even though it sounds like it - but just noting a certain irony of judgement about in-group signifiers without acknowledging that one is always signifiying.
One cannot escape signification. And to judge it as something to be avoided (as opposed to observed and noted), is... well... IDK. No man is an island and all that. Even stones cannot escape being signified, but they are incapable of signifying. Humans on the other hand. Cannot even escape the process of doing the signifiying. There is no "gross" as it is a social phenomenon and all ingroup/outgroup dynamics always hold, and all such organizational referents happen across the domains, regardless, and no-one is above this, no matter how much we wish to absolve ourselves of this process.
And that was a hell of a signifier, on my part. (one signifying I'm a wannabe academic with no actual formal education, I suppose).
EDIT: Further - what exactly do you think the point of Academics is? To get published, and how do you get published? Via RECOGNITION OF PEERS. So this fits fully hand in glove with entirely WHAT academia is. Academia is a social function, it is not a sterile lab with pure physics and escaped from the social dimension.
I guess I am critiquing you, despite what I said earlier, as I've thought about it more, and think - this sounds very much like something someone who works in a pristine 'logical' domain of computing thinks academia should be, not what it is. It further reinforces the fact that comp-sci people SHOULD take social sciences to understand such things, and it also explains why Elon is such a shit lord cuz he thinks the greats like Norbert Wiener and other systems theorists were abstracted away from society, when they knew full well just how integrated society is in everything.
Hopefully my account here is not tied to my IRL identity in any meaningful way. I can signal this or that but it offers no upside to my life, unlike people using platforms like twitter to elevate their "brand".
My opinion expanded:
It's gross for academics to create in-group echo chambers because they are supposed to be exploring new things, or reproducing novel things, or otherwise expanding our world.
The social dynamics in-play for getting work published, cited, and elevated are, in my view, a corruption. It's obvious charismatic and connected people/institutions corrupt the publishing system (so practical science in general), distorting research, and causing real harm in the world at large.
Academic influencers are no different than other social media influencers but their reach into the serious real world of consequences is more real.
Anecdotally, the answer is a resounding yes. The two major academic communities I follow, mathematics and geology, have wholesale abandoned Twitter in the last several months for (mostly) Bluesky.
The net is bifurcating and, twitter vibes aside, I think we should all be a bit concerned with this “balkanization” of the internet. I don’t blame any one person, and it’s arguably better than everyone on one platform, still…
The Internet began on it's long path of Balkanization the moment people realized they can make money off of the Internet.
I agree we do not want one, or a few platforms, for social media.
What we need is a protocol for social media that is widely adopted, like http did for small websites. This is where I think ATProto shines (Bluesky). Meta is testing out ActivityPub with Threads, but that apparently has discoverability limitations that ATProto addresses. I also like how they make the four core components modular (App, data host, algo feed, moderation)
As an aside, the bifurcation is already well on the way between authoritarian govts and the free world
… I mean, for most of its history, the Internet was a bunch of small sites. The extreme centralisation of the last decade arguably shouldn’t be seen as a _good_ thing.
In any case, Bluesky, Threads, and Mastodon/mainstream ActivityPub can all, with varying degrees of clunkiness, talk to each other.
I blame Elon Musk. He bought twitter and broke it.
I for the first time decided it's worth using after abandoning it very early on. I prefer to use it mostly read-only these days. So there's definitely opinion differences to be had about whether Elon broke twitter or "rescued it". One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter!
At least in my experience it wasn't all due to Musk. My part of the academic world was quite small, and seemed to be increasingly uncomfortable with the enshittification of Twitter before Musk's purchase. Observing that the new owner was a shitlord probably coordinated a departure earlier than otherwise would have happened, but I think the process was well underway already.
We mostly ended up on Mastodon, I think. Personally I'm quite grateful that it's no longer professionally necessary to have an extra social media account.
Who, aside from the extreme right wing, Elon Musk stans, and grifters, has not been pushed off twitter in the past year (and especially the past couple months)?
Admirable for someone to try to quantify this, though. The Brazil mass migration to Bluesky seems to have broken through another floor for twitter's userbase, we're likely atop another inflection point right now as basically everything Musk touches turns into MAGA hats.
[flagged]
Yes, once more the persistent, left-leaning bias of reality.
> While the old Twitter was censoring people because they were criticizing the left, which is just plain wrong
What some conservatives fail to realize is that often their critic is laden with offensive speech, prejudice, or straight-up calls to violence.
I was talking to this guy, and he was lamenting how he does not feel comfortable airing his conservative opinions at work due to the threat of HR. But HR focuses on harassment, bullying, offensive speech. If you could, say, air your grievances with the LGBT in a way that was not homophobic, nobody would really have an issue. And you can, actually, in infinite ways - the left does it all the time to themselves. But conservatives struggle a lot with this and typically can't do it. And that's where the problem is.
Just look at someone like Trump. Yes, he's a republican, but that's not the focus. Compare and contrast how he commonly speaks about women to how Kamala or Walz speak about women. One is OK in the workplace, one isn't. Not because of left or right per se - but rather because one is insensitive, and the other isn't.
You can absolutely critic the left in such a way that does not devolve into identity politics. How many on the right do? Almost none. No, instead they talk nasty, say vile things, use slurs, etc. That doesn't fly in every circumstance. The solution is to be professional and critic with rationale, not critic someone's race, or sexuality, or gender, or their weight, etc. And, certainly, do not call for violence. Conservatives seem to struggle with that too, particularly online.
> I mean: you can disagree with Jordan Peterson (I'm certainly not a religious person, for a start) but what did he do that warranted the old Twitter censoring him?
This tweet[0] was the kickoff point as I recall. I don't really think that getting banned pending deleting the tweet is that egregious. It's one thing to have non-woke opinions and argue for them. I don't follow Jordan Peterson, but I imagine he had posted many times on transgender issues, before he posted the offending tweet.
The issue seems more to have been specifically calling out specific persons, "criminal physician", Elliot Page, in a way that could be construed as inciting to violence
[0] https://nypost.com/2022/06/30/twitter-suspends-jordan-peters...
What tweet?
Ah that's embarrassing. I had wanted to link to this article since it contained some context. https://nypost.com/2022/06/30/twitter-suspends-jordan-peters...
Thanks for pointing it out, will fix.
I mean, I think that Tweet was more a last straw; he had been making a nuisance of himself for years.
Elon Musk is censoring people.
So no, he’s not fighting against censorship.
Only someone extremely divorced from reality or wearing extremely partisan blinders could believe this.
[flagged]
Why should people be forced to endure political content, especially that with which they disagree
People are leaving Twitter because the new owner is thrusting his politics and preferences on them, algo be damned
i didn't say they should be forced to endure political content, they left because they can't handle the content...then gave an alternative situation where people didn't like the message and left something. it's just something people do, i wouldn't say anyone was pushed out ?
[flagged]
You might be missing the fact that members of "echo chamber" like communities often do not have discourse on their viewpoints outside of their echo chambers. Truthfully few people do, because that isn't as much fun as "fighting the good fight" and experiencing feelings of membership.
While communities are prone to confirmation bias and groupthink, or "echo chambers" they also reinforce social norms, provide feedback on statements, and connect people. This is not restricted to online social networks. University communities have people who "think different". Often this leads to wider perspectives, more meta-level discussions, and more historically informed viewpoints.
University communities however may not include marginalized experiences, "man on the street" opinions, or "what do the unwashed think." Though this is somewhat less likely as academics do spend time outside of the university grounds like other members of the surrounding population and are exposed to other people and their ideas.
I also found the scientific-ness of the term "Vibes" sprinkled throughout hillarious.
And the article plays back and forth with it's own claims, one momeng saying it will answer the question then saying later it is yet to be determined and then again saying it will quantify it...
Got quite deep into it, but had to give up along the way.
It was somewhat fun to read but could not get what was the point they wanted to make, other than play what appears to be very self indulgent word games. Maybe this is what is required of academic writing nowadays?
> feel seen by their peers, learn in-group signifiers
Especially gross for academics
Your comment itself, is, of course an "in-group signifier". But I guess if you're not an academic it's less gross? Or if you are an academic, you're virtue signaling how "not an in-group signifier" you are by "out-of-group" signaling. Or something.
I'm not really meaning to attack you, even though it sounds like it - but just noting a certain irony of judgement about in-group signifiers without acknowledging that one is always signifiying.
One cannot escape signification. And to judge it as something to be avoided (as opposed to observed and noted), is... well... IDK. No man is an island and all that. Even stones cannot escape being signified, but they are incapable of signifying. Humans on the other hand. Cannot even escape the process of doing the signifiying. There is no "gross" as it is a social phenomenon and all ingroup/outgroup dynamics always hold, and all such organizational referents happen across the domains, regardless, and no-one is above this, no matter how much we wish to absolve ourselves of this process.
And that was a hell of a signifier, on my part. (one signifying I'm a wannabe academic with no actual formal education, I suppose).
EDIT: Further - what exactly do you think the point of Academics is? To get published, and how do you get published? Via RECOGNITION OF PEERS. So this fits fully hand in glove with entirely WHAT academia is. Academia is a social function, it is not a sterile lab with pure physics and escaped from the social dimension.
I guess I am critiquing you, despite what I said earlier, as I've thought about it more, and think - this sounds very much like something someone who works in a pristine 'logical' domain of computing thinks academia should be, not what it is. It further reinforces the fact that comp-sci people SHOULD take social sciences to understand such things, and it also explains why Elon is such a shit lord cuz he thinks the greats like Norbert Wiener and other systems theorists were abstracted away from society, when they knew full well just how integrated society is in everything.
Hopefully my account here is not tied to my IRL identity in any meaningful way. I can signal this or that but it offers no upside to my life, unlike people using platforms like twitter to elevate their "brand".
My opinion expanded:
It's gross for academics to create in-group echo chambers because they are supposed to be exploring new things, or reproducing novel things, or otherwise expanding our world.
The social dynamics in-play for getting work published, cited, and elevated are, in my view, a corruption. It's obvious charismatic and connected people/institutions corrupt the publishing system (so practical science in general), distorting research, and causing real harm in the world at large.
Academic influencers are no different than other social media influencers but their reach into the serious real world of consequences is more real.
https://www.acs.org/pressroom/reactions/library/alzheimers-r...
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1497700/
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/13/493739074...
https://www.apa.org/monitor/2021/09/career-research-miscondu...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis