What is the fate of Twitter? Why scientists, scientists and the academic community are worried about the disappearance of social media in the last six months: a coastal engineer in Amsterdam
Nature obtained the e-mail addresses of thousands of scientists who were identified through a social-media research project as having tweeted about papers on which they were a corresponding author1. Some people were asked if they had changed their use of social media in the past six months. Many of those who stopped or reduced their activity on X mentioned Musk’s knowledge of the platform. Some people said that they had seen an increase in the amount of fake accounts and hate speech on the platform.
For now, it’s hard to predict what will become of X, but the changes are creating angst in the scientific community and challenging scientists and the academic establishment to redefine how they share science and build community. “If everybody disappears from Twitter, if it goes belly up or just becomes completely useless, I think that’s going to limit the reach of some of my work,” says Stuart Pearson, a coastal engineer at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. He is not ready to leave himself, because he has been building his network for years and it took him many years to build it. I can’t say I’m eager to do it again.
This migration has created a lot of uncertainty. Many academics worry that the changing social- media landscape is undoing advances that have been made in diversity, equity and inclusion.
A scientist at the Free University of Amsterdam mentioned in the survey that he is starting to see a lot of strange political far-right accounts in his feed. He has to block them constantly. “Twitter has always been not so nice let’s say, but it is a mess right now,” he said.
Hate speech increased after he took over, contrary to public claims from Musk. At least one group that studies these trends will be sued by Musk.
A lot of experts and specialists are leaving the platform, says Timothy Caulfield, a law scholar and science communicator at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada. If it happens, are we just making room for a large echo chamber that can spread misinformation that is very harmful to society?
X: Breaking down the Linkedin, Threads, Meta, Mastodon, or why people are unhappy with their Twitter accounts?
Mastodon doesn’t have a big user base like other social-media platforms. In a survey by Nature, Linkedin was the second most popular place for respondents to open new accounts. It was just a few days before the survey was launched that Threads was started, also owned by Meta. It reportedly attracted 100 million users in its first five days, and was the fourth-most-popular platform among survey respondents, with about 1,000 people saying that they had joined (See ‘Signs of dissatisfaction’).
Some researchers are trying to stay in their job. Malek says that, for the time being, he will continue using X to promote his work; he published a paper on land degradation in Asia in July and he’s working on another one about livestock grazing in Europe that he also hopes to promote through X. But a lot of the people that he follows have left and he’s not sure how much longer he will continue.
There is no consensus about whether or not X will survive its current chaotic management. Musk said the company is on a negative cash flow, because it has lost 50% of its advertisement revenue. The company is being sued by a former employee, who is claiming the company owes her 500 million dollars.
Source: Thousands of scientists are cutting back on Twitter, seeding angst and uncertainty
The Impact of Musk’s Twitter Takeover on Climate Discourse and Scientific Research: An Empirical Study of Environmental Impact on the Social Web
In February, the platform announced that it would close the free access to its API, although the change didn’t come into effect until the end of June. Research on misinformation, disaster responses, and social dynamics on the Internet has been hampered since then. New data isn’t free for Costas and Dudek to further their research on how users engage with science and create communities. They now have to rely on information from previous analyses. There are still so many things that I would love to do.
He and Costas also worry that these changes will halt their collaborations with other scientists in the field. “The way academics could access Twitter also created a nice framework for sharing data,” Costas says. Now, someone who pays to access X data will not be able to share it with others to do complementary research or replicate findings unless the other team also pays, he says.
The members of Environmental Twitter were more likely to leave the platform than the other users. The researchers compared them to a group of people that did not have any involvement in the presidential election. There were 458,000 members of Politics Twitter after removing accounts that were also part of Environmental Twitter in order to avoid double counting. The majority of users went inactive over the same time period.
The study confirms fears about how Musk’s leadership might quell climate discourse and scientific research on the platform. Before he took the wheel, Twitter was an important tool for environmental researchers and activists alike.
A climate scientist with nearly 100,000 followers on X said in May that he couldn’t remain active because of his loyal followers. He says he will only post new material on Mastodon, Telegram, and other social networks that will provide opportunities to communicate and interact with justice, respect, and ethical perspectives that are now completely abandoned here.
We will get back to you soon after The Verge replied to X with an email. The line has become a typical response to reporters, replacing a poop emoji that was a standard reply for months after Musk’s takeover.