3 ms·

> how would you characterize "the sentiment of the headline"? A lot of scientists are abandoning Twitter, and this is a significant development. In reality, t

by smsm42 3y ago

> how would you characterize "the sentiment of the headline"? A lot of scientists are abandoning Twitter, and this is a significant development. In reality, they could only talk to a tiny minority of people they tried to (which by itself causes selection bias - if I were ok with Twitter, I wouldn't talk to journalists about it, but if I had an ax to grind, I'd surely jump at the chance) - who are also a tiny minority of all Twitter users. And of those that did respond, they had about half using Twitter less (how much less? why? maybe they are busy doing, you know, actual science, instead of tweeting?) - what does it tell us? Pretty much nothing. But they are trying to build a narrative from it: The survey from Nature asked whether people had changed their use of Twitter in the past six months and why. The reasons respondents gave varied, but many of those who had markedly reduced or stopped their activity on X mentioned Musk’s management of the platform. Many said that they had noticed an uptick in the amount of fake accounts, trolls and hate speech on the platform. Žiga Malek, an environmental scientist at the Free University of Amsterdam, mentioned in the survey that he had started seeing a lot of “strange” political far-right accounts espousing science denialism and racism in his feed. The message is clear: Musk removed the censorship and now far-right fascist racist trolls took over twitter and the scientists are fleeing from it. We need much more censorship - especially, political censorship - on the social media, or the science (especially female researchers struggling with inequity!) is doomed. That's the sentiment embedded in the message. That's why this article is written, actually.

LexiMax 3y ago
> But they are trying to build a narrative from it: I feel like the reality is that it has less to do with unbanning a bunch of alt-right trolls and more having to do with changes to tweet discoverability and blue-checks. It's not hard to find people even in this thread complaining about how their feed has turned into a "ghost town," which foots with complaints I've heard from my Twitter-using acquaintances. That is a serious problem for a site that used to function as a shared social space.
- smsm42 3y ago
  It very well may be so, but Nature chooses to highlight exactly the "alt-right trolls" aspect of it, and pretty much brings no other possible reasons why it could be happening. Especially hilarious part is when they explain how Twitter is very important because "Scientists could discuss suspicions of research fraud, often anonymously" - when we fully know that Twitter has been consistently hunting down and removing any dissent from the self-appointed "scientific consensus", even about topics that we already know where the "consensus" was wrong (such as the question of COVID origins), and that an anonymous complaint about something that is considered part of the "consensus" would most certainly be dismissed as "troll". Even blue-checks could have been de-checked and suppressed for dissenting take on a "consensus" topic, but an anonymous there'd be no chance. But the important part is that "Twitter helped to raise awareness and accountability for concepts such as scientific colonialism". I mean, this article is positively stuffed with political references and shibboleths (which all lean to one side, of course), it's impossible to take it as any kind of neutral non-political research about what is happening with twitter.
  - LexiMax 3y ago
    Maybe, but the truth is that Twitter is not doing okay. It hasn't been doing okay ever since Elon bought the site, and it's because his purchase saddled the company with so much debt that he basically had no choice but to drastically change course. In other words, the pretense that the site is doing just fine and that reports of its death are being overblown by a bunch of people with political axes to grind is _also_ a narrative, and one that simply doesn't foot with reality.
    - smsm42 3y ago
      > It hasn't been doing okay ever since Elon bought the site No, it hasn't been doing ok way before that, if you accept the criteria that the article purports to have (like supporting scientific discussion and surfacing complaints of dissenters, ignored by the mainstream sources) as the face value. Of course, that would be silly, because the real purpose of the article is to say "see, a bad man from the bad tribe took over Twitter and it's all awful now". > because his purchase saddled the company with so much debt that he basically had no choice but to drastically change course. He didn't hide his intentions to "change course" from the start. So it's not something that anything forced him to do - it's something that he bought it for. You can argue he was wrong to want it, but it's certainly was the goal, not a consequence of debt or anything else. > the pretense that the site is doing just fine and that reports of its death are being overblown by a bunch of people with political axes to grind is _also_ a narrative Of course. To argue against this narrative, one has to define what "just fine" means. I saw useful links on twitter before (occasionally), I see them now in pretty much the same quantity. Is it fine for me? Sure. Somebody got their safe space bubble ruined. Is it fine for them? Probably not. How do I generalize that? I don't know. I certainly know people with political axes to grind are significant part of the crowd claiming it's not fine, and this article provides massive amount of evidence for that. But yes, I do not know if there are other significant groups of people whose problems are of non-political nature, and how big these groups of people are and how vital their presence for twitter. This article is no help to me in that question.

by smsm42 3y ago

LexiMax 3y ago

> But they are trying to build a narrative from it: I feel like the reality is that it has less to do with unbanning a bunch of alt-right trolls and more having to do with changes to tweet discoverability and blue-checks. It's not hard to find people even in this thread complaining about how their feed has turned into a "ghost town," which foots with complaints I've heard from my Twitter-using acquaintances. That is a serious problem for a site that used to function as a shared social space.

smsm42 3y ago
It very well may be so, but Nature chooses to highlight exactly the "alt-right trolls" aspect of it, and pretty much brings no other possible reasons why it could be happening. Especially hilarious part is when they explain how Twitter is very important because "Scientists could discuss suspicions of research fraud, often anonymously" - when we fully know that Twitter has been consistently hunting down and removing any dissent from the self-appointed "scientific consensus", even about topics that we already know where the "consensus" was wrong (such as the question of COVID origins), and that an anonymous complaint about something that is considered part of the "consensus" would most certainly be dismissed as "troll". Even blue-checks could have been de-checked and suppressed for dissenting take on a "consensus" topic, but an anonymous there'd be no chance. But the important part is that "Twitter helped to raise awareness and accountability for concepts such as scientific colonialism". I mean, this article is positively stuffed with political references and shibboleths (which all lean to one side, of course), it's impossible to take it as any kind of neutral non-political research about what is happening with twitter.
- LexiMax 3y ago
  Maybe, but the truth is that Twitter is not doing okay. It hasn't been doing okay ever since Elon bought the site, and it's because his purchase saddled the company with so much debt that he basically had no choice but to drastically change course. In other words, the pretense that the site is doing just fine and that reports of its death are being overblown by a bunch of people with political axes to grind is _also_ a narrative, and one that simply doesn't foot with reality.
  - smsm42 3y ago
    > It hasn't been doing okay ever since Elon bought the site No, it hasn't been doing ok way before that, if you accept the criteria that the article purports to have (like supporting scientific discussion and surfacing complaints of dissenters, ignored by the mainstream sources) as the face value. Of course, that would be silly, because the real purpose of the article is to say "see, a bad man from the bad tribe took over Twitter and it's all awful now". > because his purchase saddled the company with so much debt that he basically had no choice but to drastically change course. He didn't hide his intentions to "change course" from the start. So it's not something that anything forced him to do - it's something that he bought it for. You can argue he was wrong to want it, but it's certainly was the goal, not a consequence of debt or anything else. > the pretense that the site is doing just fine and that reports of its death are being overblown by a bunch of people with political axes to grind is _also_ a narrative Of course. To argue against this narrative, one has to define what "just fine" means. I saw useful links on twitter before (occasionally), I see them now in pretty much the same quantity. Is it fine for me? Sure. Somebody got their safe space bubble ruined. Is it fine for them? Probably not. How do I generalize that? I don't know. I certainly know people with political axes to grind are significant part of the crowd claiming it's not fine, and this article provides massive amount of evidence for that. But yes, I do not know if there are other significant groups of people whose problems are of non-political nature, and how big these groups of people are and how vital their presence for twitter. This article is no help to me in that question.