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.
This may be one of the most pretentious things I have ever read. But on the other hand, it gives us these amazingly un-self aware sentences like these:
> Each of these changes influenced the broader social-network characteristics in ways that are not yet fully understood, quantitatively, but which entailed a shift in the user experience that we colloquially refer to as “vibes.”
> In addition, the significantly greater declines in engagement among more popular accounts were consistent with a reputational driver, wherein scholars with larger profiles may have been more concerned about being perceived as tacitly endorsing the platform.
You know, I've seen a fair share now of academics using academia to complain about the state of Twitter. But I have yet to see one that actually compared the quality of academic output of Twitter users vs non-Twitter users. To quote this article:
> Twitter is a social network where academics can feel seen by their peers, learn in-group signifiers, and express themselves in ways that produce positive feelings of solidarity (Jünger and Fähnrich Reference Jünger and Fähnrich2020). In this sense, the academic Twitter community operates according to the same psychological incentives as any other online community (Bail Reference Bail 2021)
Was Twitter manufacturing the feeling of an "insiders" group actually a good thing? In nearly every other community it seems to generate confirmation bias and groupthink.
You'd think this would be an easy thing to quantify - did academics who used Twitter actually produce more or better quality work?
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.
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.
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…
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.
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 ?
> Twitter has been a prominent forum for academics communicating online, both among themselves and with policy makers and the broader public.
Academics are incredibly leaning left. Raised by public money, working a job paid by public money. These are people who have one religion: the religion of the state. I've got such people in my family.
> Twitter’s approach to censorship and mis/disinformation;
As opposed to the full-woke, ultra left Twitter of yore where people like Jordan Peterson were censored because they had an anti-woke discourse?
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?
That person got censored because he wasn't a leftist: as simple as that.
> Why might Elon Musk’s acquisition of the corporation have driven academics off the platform?
Because academics cannot stand a world in which everybody is allowed to speak.
As a sidenote I see Elon Musk's StarLink and SpaceX's insane successes... The man achieved more in ten years than any government in 30. So at the very least I'd give him the benefit of the doubt regarding his Twitter acquisition.
And when someone fights for the 1st amendment, even if he posts memes and trolls and Diablo IV achievements (yup, Elon Musk really posts that regularly), you should cheer for him.
While the old Twitter was censoring people because they were criticizing the left, which is just plain wrong.
> 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
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.
This may be one of the most pretentious things I have ever read. But on the other hand, it gives us these amazingly un-self aware sentences like these:
> Each of these changes influenced the broader social-network characteristics in ways that are not yet fully understood, quantitatively, but which entailed a shift in the user experience that we colloquially refer to as “vibes.”
> In addition, the significantly greater declines in engagement among more popular accounts were consistent with a reputational driver, wherein scholars with larger profiles may have been more concerned about being perceived as tacitly endorsing the platform.
You know, I've seen a fair share now of academics using academia to complain about the state of Twitter. But I have yet to see one that actually compared the quality of academic output of Twitter users vs non-Twitter users. To quote this article:
> Twitter is a social network where academics can feel seen by their peers, learn in-group signifiers, and express themselves in ways that produce positive feelings of solidarity (Jünger and Fähnrich Reference Jünger and Fähnrich2020). In this sense, the academic Twitter community operates according to the same psychological incentives as any other online community (Bail Reference Bail 2021)
Was Twitter manufacturing the feeling of an "insiders" group actually a good thing? In nearly every other community it seems to generate confirmation bias and groupthink.
You'd think this would be an easy thing to quantify - did academics who used Twitter actually produce more or better quality work?
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.
> 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.
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 blame Elon Musk. He bought twitter and broke it.
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]
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 ?
> Twitter has been a prominent forum for academics communicating online, both among themselves and with policy makers and the broader public.
Academics are incredibly leaning left. Raised by public money, working a job paid by public money. These are people who have one religion: the religion of the state. I've got such people in my family.
> Twitter’s approach to censorship and mis/disinformation;
As opposed to the full-woke, ultra left Twitter of yore where people like Jordan Peterson were censored because they had an anti-woke discourse?
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?
That person got censored because he wasn't a leftist: as simple as that.
> Why might Elon Musk’s acquisition of the corporation have driven academics off the platform?
Because academics cannot stand a world in which everybody is allowed to speak.
As a sidenote I see Elon Musk's StarLink and SpaceX's insane successes... The man achieved more in ten years than any government in 30. So at the very least I'd give him the benefit of the doubt regarding his Twitter acquisition.
And when someone fights for the 1st amendment, even if he posts memes and trolls and Diablo IV achievements (yup, Elon Musk really posts that regularly), you should cheer for him.
While the old Twitter was censoring people because they were criticizing the left, which is just plain wrong.
> 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.
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.