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Twitter was a valuable platform for scientific discourse in the past

jrhawley.ca

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Re: Twitter was a valuable platform for scientific discourse in the past

#11

Post by rvz »

They should have left years ago, rather than tolerate the decades of sewage and outrage around the platform. The problem is some think the solution is to replace it with a 'federated' outrage machine (Mastodon) which discoverability is an eternal problem with instance moderators banning entire instances for any reason if they wanted to. For the example of journa.host [0].

The same can easily happen for a Mastodon instance for academics. The whole point of Mastodon is to own and self-host your own instance. If these journalists, academics, artists, etc are still not able to do that and are joining centralized instances; it is no better than being on a worse version of Twitter, but with a significantly limited reach and not truly owning your accounts.

It is fine to believe the delusion that Twitter will immediately be falling over 'any minute now'™ for 100% of users. But if I had to choose where to focus advertising my work on either Mastodon or Twitter it will always be Twitter; both before and after Elon taking over. The reality of the point is, there is still no viable alternative to Twitter that has the same reach and features that make it convenient for many to use.

But this time round, the ToS applies to everyone equally, scam bots are invisible in replies, normal bots are labelled as automated and tells you who owns it and much more. The exact opposite of what I have heard from the 'doomsters' and the screaming minority spreading misinformation about a so-called 'Twitter apocalypse'.

[0] https://twitter.com/ajaromano/status/1594432548222152705

Re: Twitter was a valuable platform for scientific discourse in the past

#13

Post by gerwitz »

viraptor wrote: post #3
anigbrowl wrote: post #2

This article makes excellent points in a cogent fashion. I partly disagree with the author that simply pointing at the existence of an alternative is sufficient. One of the reasons I've been very lukewarm about Mastodon is that it really lack the networks effects that make Twitter special; federation is a nice idea but the pragmatic benefits are a lot less clear. Being able to follow, track, and have conversations wi…

> it's not obvious that federated social networking can reliably deliver that Why not? It's federated, not isolated. If enough people are available to achieve the network effects you're after, what would you lack? (Content discovery solutions are already being created for people who want to play with them) > It seems like there's an audience for a tool that leverages the Twitter API to scrape your following/follower…

Of all the tools for helping find your follows in the fediverse, I hope https://movetodon.org/ gets more attention. It is easier (no “download and upload this CSV”) and also serves a purpose over time to discover new migrants.

Re: Twitter was a valuable platform for scientific discourse in the past

#14

Post by anigbrowl »

paranoidrobot wrote: post #10
jimkleiber wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't used Mastodon and so the impression I get is that it doesn't have an easy way to look up other accounts or discovery of accounts on other instances. How does user account discovery work? How do you think it could be made better?

I found DeviantOllam's introduction on Mastodon/Fediverse[1] to be quite interesting and useful. He covers contact discovery/migration from Twitter, and also mentions a fediverse contact search, although I forget what it was. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-jYZLs2j1Q

Seconding this

Re: Twitter was a valuable platform for scientific discourse in the past

#15

Post by gerwitz »

the_third_wave wrote: post #6

Twitter is just as bad as it was before Musk took over with one exception: they removed the blatant partisan censorship. If that makes it worse than before for academics there is more at hand than it just being a viral meme-amplifier unsuited for academic discussions.

You’re absolutely correct. Taking the breaks off of American anti-science wingnuts is indeed the “more at hand” that has made it worse than before.

Re: Twitter was a valuable platform for scientific discourse in the past

#16

Post by the_third_wave »

gerwitz wrote: post #15
the_third_wave wrote: post #6

Twitter is just as bad as it was before Musk took over with one exception: they removed the blatant partisan censorship. If that makes it worse than before for academics there is more at hand than it just being a viral meme-amplifier unsuited for academic discussions.

You’re absolutely correct. Taking the breaks off of American anti-science wingnuts is indeed the “more at hand” that has made it worse than before.

That is not that much of a problem, is it? Any annoying American anti-science wingnut (and what about non-Americans, are they not annoying?) is easily blocked so in that respect not that much has changed. The widening of the Overton window will bring in more of those who previously were censored but that does not make them all - or even most of them - anti-science wingnuts. They just hold opinions which hitherto were deigned off-limits on ideological grounds. As far as I'm concerned this should improve the quality of the discourse instead of diminish it since ideology tends to be more of a hindrance than a help there. That is what the scientific method is about after all: careful observation, applying rigorous scepticism about what is observed, given that cognitive assumptions can distort how one interprets the observation. I want my observations to be scrutinised by those who look at things from a different perspective because they may see problems which I'm likely to overlook. The opposite is true as well, I will see holes which they are likely to overlook.

Re: Twitter was a valuable platform for scientific discourse in the past

#17

Post by linker3000 »

gerwitz wrote: post #13
viraptor wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's not obvious that federated social networking can reliably deliver that Why not? It's federated, not isolated. If enough people are available to achieve the network effects you're after, what would you lack? (Content discovery solutions are already being created for people who want to play with them) > It seems like there's an audience for a tool that leverages the Twitter API to scrape your following/follower…

Of all the tools for helping find your follows in the fediverse, I hope https://movetodon.org/ gets more attention. It is easier (no “download and upload this CSV”) and also serves a purpose over time to discover new migrants.

The site could do with some text explaining what it does, who operates it and a privacy policy etc. rather than just starting off by immediately asking for permission to access my Twitter account. Looks as shady as ... as it is.

Re: Twitter was a valuable platform for scientific discourse in the past

#18

Post by xiphias2 »

the_third_wave wrote: post #6

Twitter is just as bad as it was before Musk took over with one exception: they removed the blatant partisan censorship. If that makes it worse than before for academics there is more at hand than it just being a viral meme-amplifier unsuited for academic discussions.

The bots are also removed. It's great to see human answers again even to the most provocative tweets (about help with Metamask and ETH just as an experiment)

Re: Twitter was a valuable platform for scientific discourse in the past

#19

Post by sshine »

anigbrowl wrote: post #2

This article makes excellent points in a cogent fashion. I partly disagree with the author that simply pointing at the existence of an alternative is sufficient. One of the reasons I've been very lukewarm about Mastodon is that it really lack the networks effects that make Twitter special; federation is a nice idea but the pragmatic benefits are a lot less clear. Being able to follow, track, and have conversations wi…

> federation is a nice idea but the pragmatic benefits are a lot less clear

> it's not obvious that federated social networking can reliably deliver

I love the idea of federations / federalism.

I also look at Mastodon and neither want to run my own instance or carry the mental ability to remember what instance I signed up on. Defending the idea of federalism but acknowledging that Mastodon isn't a perfect replacement for Twitter, I'd like to modify your statement:

Federation is a nice idea, but federations are only as strong as their members.

The Mastodon federation, combined, is smaller than Twitter.

So Twitter, while not being a federation, still has a better network effect.

Re: Twitter was a valuable platform for scientific discourse in the past

#20

Post by sshine »

glenstein wrote: post #9
anigbrowl wrote: post #2

This article makes excellent points in a cogent fashion. I partly disagree with the author that simply pointing at the existence of an alternative is sufficient. One of the reasons I've been very lukewarm about Mastodon is that it really lack the networks effects that make Twitter special; federation is a nice idea but the pragmatic benefits are a lot less clear. Being able to follow, track, and have conversations wi…

One of the things I noticed and immediately liked about Mastodon was that I quickly found curious academic types who are interesting to chat with. And the whole vibe on Mastodon was different because you'll find quirky and idiosyncratic people who pay a lot of attention to a very specific type of intellectually curious conversation, and your more likely to discover that on Mastodon in my experience, so I think it is…

I joined Twitter some years ago with the only interest of growing my network of functional programmers. I specifically only followed people who do Haskell, Scala, or some kind of abstract algebra. I eventually quit because I don't subscribe to platforms that promote cancel culture. I did try Mastodon, but didn't discover as many interesting people before I lost interest.
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