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Bluesky now platform of choice for science community

arstechnica.com

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Re: Bluesky now platform of choice for science community

#61

Post by slipperydippery »

epistasis wrote: post #47
conradfr wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before the take over you couldn't see the linked tweet at all. (it was not always this way though)

I don't believe that's true, in that visibility only disappeared after Musk's takeover. It's hard to find old news with modern search engines, but here's one article from 2023, post-Elon, that matches my memory: > If you currently try to access Twitter without logging in to your user account, you’ll be unable to see any of the content that was previously available to the wider public. Instead, you’ll meet a Twitter w…

Before his take-over, like 50% of my attempts to load a linked tweet in a browser failed with an error, which would sometimes, but not always, be resolved with a few refreshes. If the tweet loaded, I couldn't see the discussion, to include follow-on tweets for "tweet threads", which meant it was often useless even if I did get it to load.

He fixed all that for, like... a month. Then went back to blocking lots of content without a login.

I haven't seen the errors since then, but it is back to not showing me the discussion.

Re: Bluesky now platform of choice for science community

#62

Post by pessimizer »

fxwin wrote: post #21
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No true scotsman's fallacy - no serious person would use X; if you use X you aren't serious .

This makes no sense, the comment obviously implies that there are in fact serious orgs using twitter

The question that motivated the comment obviously implies that this is unbelievable for undisclosed reasons (related to its "current state.") Smarter to argue with the premise than the fluff.

Re: Bluesky now platform of choice for science community

#63

Post by octernion »

cosmic_cheese wrote: post #45
mountainriver wrote: post #26

I found Bluesky to be extremely hostile to AI and mostly far leftists canabalizing each other. I don’t see it as sustainable and fewer people are using it. X is undoubtedly worse but Bluesky doesn’t appear to be the answer.

I don’t know that “AI hostile” is quite accurate. It’s more like it’s not blindly accepted and praised, which is different. Generally any hostility comes down to cases where it’s replacing or could replace people instead of bringing a new capabilities to the table — AI helping detect cancer or discover new treatments for example is a lot more accepted than AI taking the jobs of book cover illustrators, for example. T…

i just went on, searched bsky for variants of ai/llm/generative, and literally did not see one positive post after scrolling for several minutes (beyond some boring generative art slop, which isn't really "positive" imo).

it seems just the same sycophancy, but in the opposite way twitter is.

maybe my searches were poor so i'm curious what you see that is in any way "positive"; even given your example, searching for ai + cancer is just thousands of posts with some variant of "ai is a cancer."

it's so single note that it's no wonder that growth for bluesky has plummeted. it's just boring.

Re: Bluesky now platform of choice for science community

#64

Post by octernion »

Finnucane wrote: post #50
ozmodiar wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Threads is the one really taking off. Personally I'm not thrilled at Meta and Zuckerberg increasing their stranglehold on social media, but it seems to be the way things are going.

The weird thing about that is that very little from Threads seems to bleed out to other places. Does anything actually interesting happen there?

as a threads user since the beginning and a big fan of the platform, my answer is strongly "no."

which is my favorite reason to be there and i hope it doesn't change.

it's full of instagram and facebook users, which to use the common parlance, are all "normies." it's full of normal people have normal opinions in small spaces. there's very little viral posts or bits or memes that are carried outwards.

that being said dril started posting again there recently as have some other bigger ex weird twitter people so who knows.

Re: Bluesky now platform of choice for science community

#65

Post by cosmic_cheese »

epistasis wrote: post #59
cosmic_cheese wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know that “AI hostile” is quite accurate. It’s more like it’s not blindly accepted and praised, which is different. Generally any hostility comes down to cases where it’s replacing or could replace people instead of bringing a new capabilities to the table — AI helping detect cancer or discover new treatments for example is a lot more accepted than AI taking the jobs of book cover illustrators, for example. T…

There's a big difference between the grifters in AI and the builders. Grifters of all sorts quickly get pigeonholed in Bluesky off into separate communities. There are some builders of AI on BlueSky but far fewer. It's mostly the other sciences that have migrated, because X actively suppressed that type of content on X. Its not uncommon for a Bluesky scientist to have 10x the engagement on Bluesky with a tiny fractio…

> There are some builders of AI on BlueSky but far fewer. It's mostly the other sciences that have migrated, because X actively suppressed that type of content on X. Its not uncommon for a Bluesky scientist to have 10x the engagement on Bluesky with a tiny fraction of the followers.

I’ve seen similar patterns with some technical subcommunities on Mastodon. Low follower numbers but vastly higher engagement and overall better signal to noise ratio in the replies.

Maybe instead of there being one big platform, communities will settle into different ones.

Re: Bluesky now platform of choice for science community

#66

Post by summermusic »

noirscape wrote: post #36
izzydata wrote: post #4

It's surprising that any serious organization or person would still use Twitter in its current state.

There's exactly three reasons for people to stick to Twitter: * They don't care/agree with the policies of the guy running it. * Legacy reasons; either they have no reason to leave (automated org accounts keep running until something in the workflow breaks) or they have an existing community that doesn't want to move. This group will eventually leave but is currently stuck with inertia. Most "public service" accounts…

On the note of artists, I always wondered why so many artists don't use a proper gallery/portfolio in addition to social media. This could be a general art-sharing platform, one of the many niche- or fandom-specific gallery sites, or their own website. Get the audience and reach through social media, but link back to a portfolio with the originals for those who care.

Re: Bluesky now platform of choice for science community

#68

Post by epistasis »

pessimizer wrote: post #60
epistasis wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the sampling bias? You dont explain what it could be, and your quote doesn't give any clues about what the bias could be.

> The paper failed both to identify the overall number of scientists using X or the cases where multiple platforms are used (most common scenario)

That would not indicate bias. It's merely beyond the reach of what was in the study.

Re: Bluesky now platform of choice for science community

#69

Post by cosmic_cheese »

anonzzzies wrote: post #54
mountainriver wrote: post #26

I found Bluesky to be extremely hostile to AI and mostly far leftists canabalizing each other. I don’t see it as sustainable and fewer people are using it. X is undoubtedly worse but Bluesky doesn’t appear to be the answer.

I don't have that experience. But perhaps I am far less forgiving of the christofacist community on twitter that seeps through EVEN though I follow not one of them and none follow me. It's easier to read past the artsy crowd for me at least even if I don't agree. But AI hostile? Guess it depends if you don't post AI 'artwork' all day but just interesting things you are doing then I have not seen anyone complain.

The replies are what make it hardest to remain on xitter. You’ll tap into some totally innocuous post and randomly get hit with a reply that’s nasty by even shady imageboard standards.

Re: Bluesky now platform of choice for science community

#70

Post by runjake »

izzydata wrote: post #4

It's surprising that any serious organization or person would still use Twitter in its current state.

X really sucks in it's current state, but it's where the things I'm interested in happen or are discussed first (eg AI state of the art, bootstrappers). There's a bunch of tech people I follow who aren't on BlueSky, Threads, etc.

Interestingly, when I glance at my Bluesky feed once a month or so, it's a lot of complaining about everything. I think I hear more about Elon on Bluesky than I do X. And yeah, I follow reasonably high-value people.

That said, I keep some sort of X exit plan in place, and I look at it a lot less than before. When the signal vs noise value shifts, I'll be done, but I'm not quite there yet.

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