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Scientists say X has lost its professional edge and Bluesky is taking its place

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Re: Scientists say X has lost its professional edge and Bluesky is taking its place

#271

Post by jghn »

tredre3 wrote: post #263
jghn wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. I still don't understand why there's so much consternation over choosing a Mastodon server. It doesn't limit who you can follow. I suppose if you're the sort of person who actually likes seeing random content from people you don't explicitly follow it could matter, but that's not for me.

> It doesn't limit who you can follow. That's simply not true. All servers maintain blacklists of other servers they don't like and won't federate with, including mastodon.social: https://mastodon.social/about (last section, "Moderated servers") You could argue that it's normal to block problematic servers, but it's not you the user who gets to define what is problematic, it's your server. Therefore your choice of se…

Sure, and I did almost mention that. This is an outlier though. When people normally discuss this they act as if their choice of server has a huge impact on whom they can follow. Except for degenerate cases this isn’t true

Re: Scientists say X has lost its professional edge and Bluesky is taking its place

#273

Post by gs17 »

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #77
fishgoesblub wrote: post #4

If only Bluesky could be as decentralised as the Fediverse [0] Trading one corporate overlord for another is not the smartest play. [0] https://arewedecentralizedyet.online/

Opening an account on Mastodon was a pain even for me, a long-time Internet user and a nerd. I'm confronted with a choice of servers, but if I love cheese and golf, do I open my account on the cheese server or the golf server? What will be the disadvantages of choosing one over the other? Instant blocker right in the sign up process that made me actually give up several times. If it was like that for me, imagine how…

> a long-time Internet user and a nerd

This is the reason why it was a pain. You or I might think "this is a decentralized platform, I should look at all the servers and find the best one for me" and immediately get choice paralysis looking at who has what rules, who federates with who, who runs which one, etc. An average user will probably stick to the main instance and not even think about it.

Re: Scientists say X has lost its professional edge and Bluesky is taking its place

#274

Post by tptacek »

x0x0 wrote: post #268
tptacek wrote: post #111

I don't understand how Bluesky is going to continue to exist past 2026, based on the sharply declining usage, their headcount, and the amount of funding they've taken. It has apparent value propositions past the social network, but none of those use cases are visibly taking off and none of them appear to be monetizable. The social network itself is what will be evaluated when they go out for more funding. And I don't…

I googled: $23m raised (8 seed, 15 A in Oct 24). Also, linkedin says 53 people, though crazies like to say they're employed places. It does say 29 in the US so that's more likely real. Assuming that skews eng a bit, that's probably (225 fully loaded eng, 150 fully loaded the rest) $6m in payroll alone. Not to mention server expenses. That's tough. The case for more funding: 1 - yolo; 2 - non-economic investments; 3 -…

Yeah, this is basically where I'm coming from. There are ideologues and stans arguing both ways whether Bluesky is a moribund platform. I don't think it's intrinsically moribund. But I think that's the wrong question. The more important question is: is it succeeding to the point where it will attract another round of investment? That case is I think pretty hard to make based on the available public evidence --- but the Bsky people obviously know a lot more about this than I do!

Re: Scientists say X has lost its professional edge and Bluesky is taking its place

#275

Post by Q6T46nT668w6i3m »

chroma wrote: post #184
Q6T46nT668w6i3m wrote: post #5

In my experience, the change has been positive. I rarely see feuds on Bluesky and when they happen I find them especially embarrassing because it’s so unusual. I stopped posting on Twitter around the acquisition but kept my account. When I do randomly check my timeline I’m genuinely disturbed by the disinformation and pseudo-science, especially in machine learning.

In general that's true, but it's because on Bluesky, blocking causes the blocked person's replies to be hidden from everyone who views the original post. It's much easier to block than to engage with a contradictory reply (especially if the reply is correct and you're wrong), so disagreement tends to result in a block. This behavior is common enough that it creates a chilling effect for anyone who disagrees. Why take…

None of these are related to what the OP is about, scientists communicating with other scientists.

Re: Scientists say X has lost its professional edge and Bluesky is taking its place

#276

Post by archagon »

tptacek wrote: post #111

I don't understand how Bluesky is going to continue to exist past 2026, based on the sharply declining usage, their headcount, and the amount of funding they've taken. It has apparent value propositions past the social network, but none of those use cases are visibly taking off and none of them appear to be monetizable. The social network itself is what will be evaluated when they go out for more funding. And I don't…

I have the opposite problem. My Bluesky (and Mastodon) feeds have gotten so active that I have a hard time catching up these days. And Twitter seems to be mostly full of bloviating narcissists who are addicted to feeling like “influencers” of the unwashed masses, not co-equal participants of public discussion.

More broadly, Twitter’s problem is that it carpet bombed the bridge with a substantial portion of its intelligent population. I’m pretty sure half the tech, game dev, and research people I follow on Bluesky/Mastodon will not return under any circumstance, myself included.

Re: Scientists say X has lost its professional edge and Bluesky is taking its place

#277

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

"A new study published in Integrative and Comparative Biology suggests that scientists are leaving X (formerly known as Twitter) in significant numbers due to its declining professional value."

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40637733/

See also: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02554-0

Co-author Shiffman recommended Twitter in 2012 and 2013

https://davidshiffmancv.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Shiff...

https://arxiv.org/abs/1305.0435

He even required his students at ASU to use Twitter as recently as 2023

https://davidshiffmancv.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Shiff...

Re: Scientists say X has lost its professional edge and Bluesky is taking its place

#278

Post by Braxton1980 »

kelipso wrote: post #230
Braxton1980 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a person is an expert on a topic then it makes sense for them to have a higher probability of being correct. >And it’s usually some controversial thing that doesn’t have to do with science anyway. What evidence do you have that most scientists are giving opinions about things unrelated to their expertise and then stating you should trust them more due to their expertise or position?

Yes, that’s the typical argument but the problem is that they veer way out of their lane. And their lane is in reality very narrow and academically focused. When these experts go into politics and activism, their biases show and consequently the credibility of them and their unfortunate colleagues who don’t go into politics get lowered. > What evidence do you have that most scientists are giving opinions about things…

> When these experts go into politics and activism

What if the issue is related to their expertise?

Veering out of the lane implies they start offering their opinion about a topic that has nothing to do with their field after discussing one that does without making a clear disclaimer

>credibility of them and their unfortunate colleague

It's wrong to judge all due to the actions of some. This is a huge flaw of people in general but I wanted to mention it.

Re: Scientists say X has lost its professional edge and Bluesky is taking its place

#279

Post by Braxton1980 »

kelipso wrote: post #230
Braxton1980 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a person is an expert on a topic then it makes sense for them to have a higher probability of being correct. >And it’s usually some controversial thing that doesn’t have to do with science anyway. What evidence do you have that most scientists are giving opinions about things unrelated to their expertise and then stating you should trust them more due to their expertise or position?

Yes, that’s the typical argument but the problem is that they veer way out of their lane. And their lane is in reality very narrow and academically focused. When these experts go into politics and activism, their biases show and consequently the credibility of them and their unfortunate colleagues who don’t go into politics get lowered. > What evidence do you have that most scientists are giving opinions about things…

>I don’t live under a rock.

Here's an example of what you are claiming. A chemist publicly states his opinion on the current illegal immigrant crackdown and implies or directly states that his opinion has more value because he is a chemist.

Alternative example the chemist is interviewed for his opinion on immigration by the news (except as a bystander when they want random people to chime in).

For example CNN is discussing Trump's crackdown and says "here to talk about what Trump is doing is Harvard professor of Chemistry and (other titles) Chemist John Bismuth"

-----------

Can you provide an example of this?

Re: Scientists say X has lost its professional edge and Bluesky is taking its place

#280

Post by Sammi »

tredre3 wrote: post #265
Sammi wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like internet media is reaching a new level of maturity in that it is bifurcating into the tabloids and the serious magazines, like printed media was before.

In your analogy I suppose bluesky is the serious one? Have you spent any amount of time there?

They have the scientific community, so that's the direction they could be trending. But this is of course not settled yet.
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