10 ms·

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

243 points by CharlesW 1y ago

ck2 1y ago
browsing bluesky for astronomy/astrophysics is fantastic stuff only thing that seems to be missing from bluesky migration is athletes and that's probably because it cannot be monetized (well not easily)
- Q6T46nT668w6i3m 1y ago
  I bet they’ll follow the sports media and, my personal taste in sports media, has recently started to migrate (e.g., Defector editors and contributors).
AnotherGoodName 1y ago
X still appears above the fold in a special section on Google with custom previews. Eg. searching 'Anthony Albanese Bluesky' for Australia's leader has a link to X, with custom integrated previews, above the Bluesky link of the PM despite the search explicitly stating Bluesky and despite the account posting to Bluesky. It's hard for anyone to move over since the lack of engagement is rigged like this.
- AnotherGoodName 1y ago
  Btw if you set your browser default search to anything other than Google searching for people works much better. No customized bumping of X based links over other options when searching for people. Duckduckgo and Bing put the bluesky link as #1 for the above. Seems straightforward to make the switch to me. If you haven't changed your browsers default search engine in the past 5 years now's a good time to do so. Much better results await.
  - tartuffe78 1y ago
    I had to switch to DuckDuckGo for work, AI stuff was too annoying
    - tredre3 1y ago
      At least the AI stuff can be disabled. Duckduckgo allows you to store settings in the URL too, if you're the type of person who disables cookies and localstorage. Edit your search URL to: https://duckduckgo.com/?k5=1&kbe=0&kbj=1&kbg=-1&q=%s https://duckduckgo.com/?k5=1&kbe=0&kbj=1&kbg=-1&q=%s
  - cowpig 1y ago
    kagi.com is a superior search engine compared with all three, to the point where I pay for a license for everyone in my company to use it. The kagi assistant is also nice, only responding with AI when you add a question mark to your query, with the option of opening the query in a separate web search RAG w/the LLM of your choice
- rdiddly 1y ago
  We need the "scientists find X less useful" study for Google.
- timeon 1y ago
  Interesting, maybe it also shows quality of search. I know that these are barely relevant compared to google, but Bing, Ecosia, etc. are showing Bluesky link.
  - deleted 1y ago
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- AlecSchueler 1y ago
  For years I've tried switching full time to DDG and always found myself typing !g so much that I gave up and went back to Google. For the past year and a half or so it's finally stuck and I cringe it I'm on a different device and accidentally get a Google result. It's become everything it wasn't at launch.
fishgoesblub 1y ago
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/ https://arewedecentralizedyet.online/
- wat10000 1y ago
  The Twitter buyout should have made this obvious. When one company runs the whole thing, then some rich twat can wreck it on a whim, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
- CamperBob2 1y ago
  They aren't exactly equal evils... and if a federated replacement for Xitter were going to win, I think it already would have. Ease of use (and comprehensibility) are both pretty important in this business, and nobody seems to get that.
- Al-Khwarizmi 1y ago
  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 it could be for an average user. The Fediverse will only be popular if someone releases a client that makes it as easy to use as X and Bluesky. Not sure if it's technically feasible (I don't know much about the innards of the protocol) but it doesn't seem to have happened at the moment.
  - marssaxman 1y ago
    I did sign up for a mastodon account, but the server I used simply disappeared a couple of months later. I haven't worked up the motivation to bother doing it again.
  - archagon 1y ago
    How is it a pain when you can just skip the server selection process and use mastodon.social like pretty much everyone else?
Q6T46nT668w6i3m 1y ago
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.
- chroma 1y ago
  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 the time to craft a reply correcting the poster if it will likely be hidden from everyone? And so you end up with echo chambers. The effect is quite stunning on some topics. For example: Quite a few people on Bluesky believe the Trump assassination attempt in Pennsylvania was staged[1], that the Charlie Kirk assassin's text messages are fake[2][3], and that the recent ICE shooter was a false flag.[4][5][6] Notice the amount of engagement these posts have. Thousands of likes, with little to no disagreement in the replies. The lack of feuding is what allows people to believe these falsehoods. 1. https://bsky.app/profile/jlyncochran.bsky.social/post/3ldy2fqxsxc2t https://bsky.app/profile/jlyncochran.bsky.social/post/3ldy2f... 2. https://bsky.app/profile/cwebbonline.com/post/3lyzvxijtmc2f https://bsky.app/profile/cwebbonline.com/post/3lyzvxijtmc2f 3. https://bsky.app/profile/cwebbonline.com/post/3lyz22btupk2k https://bsky.app/profile/cwebbonline.com/post/3lyz22btupk2k 4. https://bsky.app/profile/junlper.beer/post/3lzlxfrqguc2k https://bsky.app/profile/junlper.beer/post/3lzlxfrqguc2k 5. https://bsky.app/profile/realtexaspaul.com/post/3lzlwg2ueic2n https://bsky.app/profile/realtexaspaul.com/post/3lzlwg2ueic2... 6. https://bsky.app/profile/gilmored85.bsky.social/post/3lzm53d3mcc2w https://bsky.app/profile/gilmored85.bsky.social/post/3lzm53d...
  - gs17 1y ago
    > so disagreement tends to result in a block And the issue is bigger than it looks since blocking is public, so blocking gets you on lists of users to block so you'll be blocked by people you never interacted with for blocking/disagreeing with someone. I don't know that I really want to interact with anyone who uses a block list like that, but it definitely would make echo chambers worse.
hdlothia 1y ago
It would be nice if scientists started being just scientists again instead of activists. Hopefully being cloistered on bluesky will bring the old vibes back
- input_sh 1y ago
  Scientists are allowed to have opinions outside of their work and share them.
  - hdlothia 1y ago
    It is 100% allowed, I just don't think it's really helpful or beneficial for them or society Especially when they try to lean on their status as scientists in order to try and have their opinions be more influential. The cdc for example saying it's ok to disregard their previous guidance in order to protest for black lives matter is one of these credibility damaging moments that is hard to undo.
    - Braxton1980 1y ago
      >Especially when they try to lean on their status as scientists in order to try and have their opinions be more influential. How do they do that?
      - kelipso 1y ago
        The “I am an expert, so listen to me drone about some political topic that’s vaguely related to my expertise” has been a thing for years now. And it’s usually some controversial thing that doesn’t have to do with science anyway. In general, it makes scientists look really naive and makes them lose credibility when they talk about actual science.
        wat10000 1y ago
        Do they have any real influence? I’m about a million times more concerned about politicians who act like they have worthwhile opinions about science.
raincole 1y ago
According to Bluesky API data, it peaked in November 2024 (for obvious reasons...). [1]: https://bsky.jazco.dev/stats https://bsky.jazco.dev/stats
- jsheard 1y ago
  Total activity across the entire site doesn't meaningfully affect users as long as the activity they actually care about is still there, "Bluesky's aggregate metrics are down" and "Bluesky is the best place to talk science" can both be true at the same time. The website you're reading right now has abysmal metrics compared to Facebook and TikTok, but that's not really the point, is it?
  - camel_Snake 1y ago
    yep. This feels like a feature to me, not a bug. As a mostly reader/follower on these platforms I'm surprised when others compare their engagement metrics, rather than the quality of the engagement on these platforms. Obviously their goals and incentives are different than mine, but the more time I spend on the internet the more I value the smaller communities due to the correlation with quality and topical focus.
- lanyard-textile 1y ago
  It’s performing way better than I thought. Peak is only ~ x2 today’s baseline activity of 1.2M daily likers!
snickerbockers 1y ago
Im sorry, twitter had a professional edge!?!?!?!!??
- Q6T46nT668w6i3m 1y ago
  Twitter played a major role in internal scientific communication for several years (for better or worse).
inemesitaffia 1y ago
We've seen this very topic posted in another article/post. The comments took issue with the conclusion
n4r9 1y ago
What are the best current third-party estimates for X's profit and active user figures?
deleted 1y ago
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gguncth 1y ago
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leftistcancer 1y ago
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- deleted 1y ago
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  - leftistcancer 1y ago
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  - leftistcancer 1y ago
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vzaliva 1y ago
My academic twitter migrated to Mastodon. Most my colleagues from different universities who used to be on Twitter are there now and I do not miss not being on X. There are even servers run by organizations like ACM (Association of Computer Machinery).
intended 1y ago
Can we do bluesky a favor and stop mentioning it.
somenameforme 1y ago
I'm rather reminded of the ads from the early 20th century for "More doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette!" [1] [1] - https://tobacco.stanford.edu/cigarettes/doctors-smoking/more-doctors-smoke-camels/ https://tobacco.stanford.edu/cigarettes/doctors-smoking/more...
- cowpig 1y ago
  In what sense?
  - rob_c 1y ago
    [flagged]
  - altcognito 1y ago
    Social media is bad for you. Though I'm not sure that social media enjoyed a "social media is good for you" phase. There are certainly studies I'm sure that are out there, but the general consensus seems to be negative.
    - marc_io 1y ago
      Oh, at least here in Brazil, people still find it strange if you say you don't have an Instagram account. There's this idea of being a bit weird for not following this trend.
      - doodlesdev 1y ago
        Brazil is an exception, though! Did you know we are the third country in the world with the largest number of Instagram users? [0] Social media is very cultural here, so I'm not sure that we are representative of a larger trend in social media acceptance worldwide. [0]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/578364/countries-with-most-instagram-users/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/578364/countries-with-mo...
        1y ago
Aurornis 1y ago
As a light user who bounced around X, BlueSky, Mastodon, and Threads, I completely believe that scientists are weary of X. It’s increasingly toxic and driven by engagement bait posting (“shitposting” as they call it) where the loudest accounts continuously post provocative takes not because they believe it but because they know it will trigger their followers into debating it. Even the levels.io guy that everyone idolizes as the indie hacker hero is now posting a non-stop stream of factually inaccurate claims and taking swipes at contentious issues like burnout because he knows it gets people talking in his replies. X seems to know this is a problem. They hired Nikita Bier who is posting claims that the algorithm is being improved to favor people sharing best in class knowledge every day, but the current meta appears to be posting controversial hot takes that are easily argued or debunked. Tricking your followers into fact checking you is a game in itself because it generates engagement and therefore extends reach. This is why some accounts are deliberate exaggerating facts or posting known misinformation now. That said, I have a hard time believing everyone is migrating to BlueSky instead of simply leaving this type of social media. Bluesky feels relatively dead except for the few accounts playing the BlueSky meta game, which is largely about infighting and creating hyper cliques from what I see. One account I follow went to BlueSky but then returned to X because he couldn’t stand it. He described BlueSky as the place to go if you wanted to be constantly attacked by people who 98% agree with you. My impression is that it’s a smaller pond where the people who were previously small fish on X see it as their opportunity to fight their way to the top of a smaller food chain. It just feels ugly and mean half the time. I’ve had to unfollow a lot of people on BlueSky who I previously enjoyed on X because they got sucked into the BlueSky toxicity competition and now they’re just taking swipes at other people on BlueSky all day instead of posting info I wanted to see.
dartharva 1y ago
Except for AI research
billy99k 1y ago
[flagged]
- timeon 1y ago
  Biggest difference is that one can read thread on Bluesky without account while X has login-wall (like most corporate 'social' media).
  - deleted 1y ago
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  - deleted 1y ago
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  - tempaccount421 1y ago
    xcancel.com gets around Twitter's login-wall.
- CyberMacGyver 1y ago
  This all true for Twitter ? Plus one giant egomaniac who will silence anyone he wants.
- cmxch 1y ago
  You aren’t wrong. The filtersets are made to aid left leaning causes and to inhibit right leaning ones.
- tomhow 1y ago
  Could you please stop posting in this inflammatory style? The guidelines ask us not to fulminate, to eschew flamebait and to avoid using HN for ideological battle. It's fine to have an ideological lean and to argue for your positions, but this inflammatory style of commenting is not what HN is for and it destroys what it is for, and you've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
AlienRobot 1y ago
I wonder why they didn't move to Tumblr instead. It has more features.
mannanj 1y ago
Why is this scientific post?
tptacek 1y ago
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 see how you can raise at all for a social network in 2026 with flat numbers, let alone the declining numbers Bluesky actually has. I've been dual-wielding Twitter and Bluesky for about a year (after a year off Twitter where I was mostly Mastodon), and, anecdatally, we've hit a point where the engagement and volume of stuff I see in Bluesky is lower than what I was getting even on Mastodon. Earlier on, there was some truth to the idea that Twitter had a much larger audience, but you'd get better engagement on Bluesky. I now get better engagement on Twitter. I can see people I had followed into Bluesky moving back to Twitter. I have no idea what's going to happen, but I'm curious to hear a coherent story about how Bluesky isn't cooked.
- jghn 1y ago
  What I've found is that most of the people I really want to follow are exclusively on bsky. BUT most of the people I'd prefer to casually follow either exclusively or mostly only posts on Twitter. And the 2nd group is a much larger pool than the first group. I really dislike Mastodon so gave that up a while back. I know there are a few people I'd like to follow who only post there, but such is life.
  - packetlost 1y ago
    I've found Bluesky does a really bad job at not showing me stuff I don't want to see. Furry p*rn on the "cute internet cats" feed? Yup. Heaps and heaps of political rage bait on the main discover feed? Yup. I wanted to like BlueSky, but it's such a bizarre echo chamber of people who left Twitter for ideological reasons that it basically filters for people that I actively don't want to engage with. Those types of people are still there on Twitter (mostly on the other side these days), but I don't see them because the algorithm filters them out.
    - 1y ago
mensetmanusman 1y ago
That place that erupted in celebration a couple weeks ago. Surprising to see it there and on LinkedIn.
labrador 1y ago
[flagged]
- verteu 1y ago
  Agreed. Who in good conscience would use a site where the owner regularly posts hateful, trivially-debunked BS? https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1970336290148434391 https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1970336290148434391 https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1969087195798475263 https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1969087195798475263 https://x.com/Rightanglenews/status/1971546061169987846 https://x.com/Rightanglenews/status/1971546061169987846
  - Sammi 1y ago
    Everyone who reads a Rubert Murdoch tabloid. I am constantly surprised by the amount of people who enjoy drivel, but this has always been like this. Only we used to also have printed media that held itself to higher ideals than tabloids and worked as a counter weight to them. What is different atm is that for a long time there haven't been social media that shoot for higher ideals. Maybe bsky is that? The market for tabloid social media is already saturated by meta, tiktok, x, snapchat, and the like. It would be interesting if bsky could find their own market with the more "serious" end of the media spectrum.
    - AlecSchueler 1y ago
      > people who enjoy drivel, but this has always been like this. It's much more visible now, though. In the past it was quite easy to ignore the entire existence of someone like Rupert Murdoch but now the entire world knows what Musk is. He just appeared in last week at a rally of 100,000 people encouraging them to violently overthrowing the government. He appeared in the oval office giving speeches. Murdoch usually kept to himself.
waltercool 1y ago
[dead]
firefax 1y ago
Most of my hard science contacts (physics, biology etc) from my days in student government have moved to Bluesky. Newer academics seem to be starting out there and skipping Twitter entirely. If you have heard of Metcalfe's Law, you'll understand why this is not good for Twitter long term. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe's_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe's_law
- nomdep 1y ago
  So Bluesky for academia and X for tech and everyone else. I don’t think X is in trouble. Scientist tend to form their own closed communities anyway.
  - firefax 1y ago
    >Scientist tend to form their own closed communities anyway. Do you have a source for that?
  - Sammi 1y ago
    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.
    - tredre3 1y ago
      In your analogy I suppose bluesky is the serious one? Have you spent any amount of time there?
      - Sammi 1y ago
        They have the scientific community, so that's the direction they could be trending. But this is of course not settled yet.
  - cmxch 1y ago
    [flagged]
anonym29 1y ago
[flagged]
biomedicalist 1y ago
Most scientists don't have a professional profile on Twitter or Bluesky. It's the most self-aggrandizing ones who tend to do that. The rest of us are just writing papers, presenting at conferences, collaborating with other research groups without any interest in putting it all out there on social media. This whole X versus Bluesky thing is basically irrelevant. Neither of these platforms are good venues for dissemination of scientific research.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 1y ago
  "Neither of these platforms are good venues for dissemination of scientific research." These "platforms", i.e. other peoples' gigantic websites, are fantasy worlds that cater to self-aggrandisement where relevance requires a presence in that world The outside world, aka the real world, is under represented and thus ignored
ChrisArchitect 1y ago
Heard this all year, including a number of stories recently. Related: Bluesky now platform of choice for science community https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45039397 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45039397 Scientists No Longer Find X Professionally Useful, and Have Switched to Bluesky https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44978815 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44978815 Science research gets more engagement on Bluesky than X, study finds https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45092672 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45092672
grigio 1y ago
[flagged]
deleted 1y ago
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paulvnickerson 1y ago
Most likely this is due to political bias of the group that was surveyed [1]. Liberals in general dislike X because of the owner. It's the same reason that the average Hacker News reader favors Bluesky over X. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-022-01382-3 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-022-01382-3
- tzs 1y ago
  From the abstract of that link, with emphasis added: > Scientists in the United States are more politically liberal than the general population. This fact has fed charges of political bias. To learn more about scientists’ political behavior, we analyze publicly available Federal Election Commission data. We find that scientists who donate to federal candidates and parties are far more likely to support Democrats than Republicans, with less than 10 percent of donations going to Republicans in recent years. The same pattern holds true for employees of the academic sector generally, and for scientists employed in the energy sector. This was not always the case: Before 2000, political contributions were more evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans. We argue that these observed changes are more readily explained by changes in Republican Party attitudes toward science than by changes in American scientists. We reason that greater public involvement by centrist and conservative scientists could help increase trust in science among Republicans.
lollobomb 1y ago
This and the recent HN entry on "open social" smells to me like an astroturfing campaign from BlueSky. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45388021 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45388021 Protip: BlueSky is "decentralized" only in name. Don't. With all their drawbacks, ActivityPub and Nostr are way better.
know-how 1y ago
[dead]
tomgag 1y ago
Personal opinion: Bluesky is "fedi-washing". Better Mastodon or Nostr. https://gagliardoni.net/#20250818_battle_of_socials https://gagliardoni.net/#20250818_battle_of_socials
Pamar 1y ago
What about Cara, Vero and MeWe? This are just the last three Social Media I subscribed in the past and range from Stagnant to Pretty Much Dead. I suppose that the problem is that if you already have 1000+ followers on, say, Twitter or IG you try posting the same stuff in parallel on both... after 1 month of doubled effort you notice that your followers on the new platform is an order of magnitude smaller... you want to stop double posting because it is too time consuming. Guess which one you will opt out of?
- jsbisviewtiful 1y ago
  IMO even Bluesky borders on “dead”. Not from an activity standpoint, but from the standpoint of “what the hell are people posting here”.
TimMeade 1y ago
I think the interesting part of that article was "distributed to 813... who had used bluesky and X". That seems a little misleading. What if you just picked 813 at random and asked how many had even used bluesky at all?
AfterHIA 1y ago
I miss the olden days when all fucking around on the internet was considered unprofessional and we read books and shit.
skybrian 1y ago
I've had trouble finding interesting content on Bluesky that's not politics. Any recommendations?
amadeuspagel 1y ago
There are studies of how twitter affects academic citations[1]. Why not make a similar study of bluesky and compare the results? [1]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165176523002951 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016517652...
1vuio0pswjnm7 1y ago
"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/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40637733/ See also: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02554-0 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/Shiffman2012_Article_TwitterAsAToolForConservationE-4.pdf https://davidshiffmancv.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Shiff... https://arxiv.org/abs/1305.0435 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/Shiffman-et-al-Twitter-assignment-1.pdf https://davidshiffmancv.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Shiff...
- BergAndCo 1y ago
  Wow, imagine that, 99% of academia is left-wing and they're afraid to have a presence on X because the the "tolerant" left calls it a "Nazi echo chamber" and will come after their careers. BlueSky is totally winning, you guys!
cmxch 1y ago
[flagged]
JeremyNT 1y ago
Why on earth is this flagged? Is discussing alternative platforms to Elon Musk's X now too "political" for HN?
SnuffBox 1y ago
Bluesky is far from professional.
AlecSchueler 1y ago
Is this thread flagged by the Musk bots? I don't see how the argument that this isn't tech related can fly here.
- frm88 1y ago
  Maybe not bots, but the Musk fanclub is certainly awake and trolling.
IAmGraydon 1y ago
I see X / Bluesky as a digital representation of the societal split that has happened in the US. The dynamic that unfolded is the same one that causes wars in the real world - two ideologies too at odds to coexist in the same space. In the real world, one ends up destroying the other. The digital world has the convenient ability to spawn a new space and the other side just migrated en mass to it.

243 points by CharlesW 1y ago

ck2 1y ago

browsing bluesky for astronomy/astrophysics is fantastic stuff only thing that seems to be missing from bluesky migration is athletes and that's probably because it cannot be monetized (well not easily)

Q6T46nT668w6i3m 1y ago
I bet they’ll follow the sports media and, my personal taste in sports media, has recently started to migrate (e.g., Defector editors and contributors).

AnotherGoodName 1y ago

X still appears above the fold in a special section on Google with custom previews. Eg. searching 'Anthony Albanese Bluesky' for Australia's leader has a link to X, with custom integrated previews, above the Bluesky link of the PM despite the search explicitly stating Bluesky and despite the account posting to Bluesky. It's hard for anyone to move over since the lack of engagement is rigged like this.

AnotherGoodName 1y ago
Btw if you set your browser default search to anything other than Google searching for people works much better. No customized bumping of X based links over other options when searching for people. Duckduckgo and Bing put the bluesky link as #1 for the above. Seems straightforward to make the switch to me. If you haven't changed your browsers default search engine in the past 5 years now's a good time to do so. Much better results await.
- tartuffe78 1y ago
  I had to switch to DuckDuckGo for work, AI stuff was too annoying
  - tredre3 1y ago
    At least the AI stuff can be disabled. Duckduckgo allows you to store settings in the URL too, if you're the type of person who disables cookies and localstorage. Edit your search URL to: https://duckduckgo.com/?k5=1&kbe=0&kbj=1&kbg=-1&q=%s https://duckduckgo.com/?k5=1&kbe=0&kbj=1&kbg=-1&q=%s
- cowpig 1y ago
  kagi.com is a superior search engine compared with all three, to the point where I pay for a license for everyone in my company to use it. The kagi assistant is also nice, only responding with AI when you add a question mark to your query, with the option of opening the query in a separate web search RAG w/the LLM of your choice
rdiddly 1y ago
We need the "scientists find X less useful" study for Google.
timeon 1y ago
Interesting, maybe it also shows quality of search. I know that these are barely relevant compared to google, but Bing, Ecosia, etc. are showing Bluesky link.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
AlecSchueler 1y ago
For years I've tried switching full time to DDG and always found myself typing !g so much that I gave up and went back to Google. For the past year and a half or so it's finally stuck and I cringe it I'm on a different device and accidentally get a Google result. It's become everything it wasn't at launch.

fishgoesblub 1y ago

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/ https://arewedecentralizedyet.online/

wat10000 1y ago
The Twitter buyout should have made this obvious. When one company runs the whole thing, then some rich twat can wreck it on a whim, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
CamperBob2 1y ago
They aren't exactly equal evils... and if a federated replacement for Xitter were going to win, I think it already would have. Ease of use (and comprehensibility) are both pretty important in this business, and nobody seems to get that.
Al-Khwarizmi 1y ago
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 it could be for an average user. The Fediverse will only be popular if someone releases a client that makes it as easy to use as X and Bluesky. Not sure if it's technically feasible (I don't know much about the innards of the protocol) but it doesn't seem to have happened at the moment.
- marssaxman 1y ago
  I did sign up for a mastodon account, but the server I used simply disappeared a couple of months later. I haven't worked up the motivation to bother doing it again.
- archagon 1y ago
  How is it a pain when you can just skip the server selection process and use mastodon.social like pretty much everyone else?

Q6T46nT668w6i3m 1y ago

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.

chroma 1y ago
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 the time to craft a reply correcting the poster if it will likely be hidden from everyone? And so you end up with echo chambers. The effect is quite stunning on some topics. For example: Quite a few people on Bluesky believe the Trump assassination attempt in Pennsylvania was staged[1], that the Charlie Kirk assassin's text messages are fake[2][3], and that the recent ICE shooter was a false flag.[4][5][6] Notice the amount of engagement these posts have. Thousands of likes, with little to no disagreement in the replies. The lack of feuding is what allows people to believe these falsehoods. 1. https://bsky.app/profile/jlyncochran.bsky.social/post/3ldy2fqxsxc2t https://bsky.app/profile/jlyncochran.bsky.social/post/3ldy2f... 2. https://bsky.app/profile/cwebbonline.com/post/3lyzvxijtmc2f https://bsky.app/profile/cwebbonline.com/post/3lyzvxijtmc2f 3. https://bsky.app/profile/cwebbonline.com/post/3lyz22btupk2k https://bsky.app/profile/cwebbonline.com/post/3lyz22btupk2k 4. https://bsky.app/profile/junlper.beer/post/3lzlxfrqguc2k https://bsky.app/profile/junlper.beer/post/3lzlxfrqguc2k 5. https://bsky.app/profile/realtexaspaul.com/post/3lzlwg2ueic2n https://bsky.app/profile/realtexaspaul.com/post/3lzlwg2ueic2... 6. https://bsky.app/profile/gilmored85.bsky.social/post/3lzm53d3mcc2w https://bsky.app/profile/gilmored85.bsky.social/post/3lzm53d...
- gs17 1y ago
  > so disagreement tends to result in a block And the issue is bigger than it looks since blocking is public, so blocking gets you on lists of users to block so you'll be blocked by people you never interacted with for blocking/disagreeing with someone. I don't know that I really want to interact with anyone who uses a block list like that, but it definitely would make echo chambers worse.

hdlothia 1y ago

It would be nice if scientists started being just scientists again instead of activists. Hopefully being cloistered on bluesky will bring the old vibes back

input_sh 1y ago
Scientists are allowed to have opinions outside of their work and share them.
- hdlothia 1y ago
  It is 100% allowed, I just don't think it's really helpful or beneficial for them or society Especially when they try to lean on their status as scientists in order to try and have their opinions be more influential. The cdc for example saying it's ok to disregard their previous guidance in order to protest for black lives matter is one of these credibility damaging moments that is hard to undo.
  - Braxton1980 1y ago
    >Especially when they try to lean on their status as scientists in order to try and have their opinions be more influential. How do they do that?
    - kelipso 1y ago
      The “I am an expert, so listen to me drone about some political topic that’s vaguely related to my expertise” has been a thing for years now. And it’s usually some controversial thing that doesn’t have to do with science anyway. In general, it makes scientists look really naive and makes them lose credibility when they talk about actual science.
      - wat10000 1y ago
        Do they have any real influence? I’m about a million times more concerned about politicians who act like they have worthwhile opinions about science.

raincole 1y ago

According to Bluesky API data, it peaked in November 2024 (for obvious reasons...). [1]: https://bsky.jazco.dev/stats https://bsky.jazco.dev/stats

jsheard 1y ago
Total activity across the entire site doesn't meaningfully affect users as long as the activity they actually care about is still there, "Bluesky's aggregate metrics are down" and "Bluesky is the best place to talk science" can both be true at the same time. The website you're reading right now has abysmal metrics compared to Facebook and TikTok, but that's not really the point, is it?
- camel_Snake 1y ago
  yep. This feels like a feature to me, not a bug. As a mostly reader/follower on these platforms I'm surprised when others compare their engagement metrics, rather than the quality of the engagement on these platforms. Obviously their goals and incentives are different than mine, but the more time I spend on the internet the more I value the smaller communities due to the correlation with quality and topical focus.
lanyard-textile 1y ago
It’s performing way better than I thought. Peak is only ~ x2 today’s baseline activity of 1.2M daily likers!

snickerbockers 1y ago

Im sorry, twitter had a professional edge!?!?!?!!??

Q6T46nT668w6i3m 1y ago
Twitter played a major role in internal scientific communication for several years (for better or worse).

inemesitaffia 1y ago

We've seen this very topic posted in another article/post. The comments took issue with the conclusion

n4r9 1y ago

What are the best current third-party estimates for X's profit and active user figures?

deleted 1y ago

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gguncth 1y ago

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leftistcancer 1y ago

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- leftistcancer 1y ago
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- leftistcancer 1y ago
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vzaliva 1y ago

My academic twitter migrated to Mastodon. Most my colleagues from different universities who used to be on Twitter are there now and I do not miss not being on X. There are even servers run by organizations like ACM (Association of Computer Machinery).

intended 1y ago

Can we do bluesky a favor and stop mentioning it.

somenameforme 1y ago

I'm rather reminded of the ads from the early 20th century for "More doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette!" [1] [1] - https://tobacco.stanford.edu/cigarettes/doctors-smoking/more-doctors-smoke-camels/ https://tobacco.stanford.edu/cigarettes/doctors-smoking/more...

cowpig 1y ago
In what sense?
- rob_c 1y ago
  [flagged]
- altcognito 1y ago
  Social media is bad for you. Though I'm not sure that social media enjoyed a "social media is good for you" phase. There are certainly studies I'm sure that are out there, but the general consensus seems to be negative.
  - marc_io 1y ago
    Oh, at least here in Brazil, people still find it strange if you say you don't have an Instagram account. There's this idea of being a bit weird for not following this trend.
    - doodlesdev 1y ago
      Brazil is an exception, though! Did you know we are the third country in the world with the largest number of Instagram users? [0] Social media is very cultural here, so I'm not sure that we are representative of a larger trend in social media acceptance worldwide. [0]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/578364/countries-with-most-instagram-users/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/578364/countries-with-mo...
      - 1y ago

Aurornis 1y ago

As a light user who bounced around X, BlueSky, Mastodon, and Threads, I completely believe that scientists are weary of X. It’s increasingly toxic and driven by engagement bait posting (“shitposting” as they call it) where the loudest accounts continuously post provocative takes not because they believe it but because they know it will trigger their followers into debating it. Even the levels.io guy that everyone idolizes as the indie hacker hero is now posting a non-stop stream of factually inaccurate claims and taking swipes at contentious issues like burnout because he knows it gets people talking in his replies. X seems to know this is a problem. They hired Nikita Bier who is posting claims that the algorithm is being improved to favor people sharing best in class knowledge every day, but the current meta appears to be posting controversial hot takes that are easily argued or debunked. Tricking your followers into fact checking you is a game in itself because it generates engagement and therefore extends reach. This is why some accounts are deliberate exaggerating facts or posting known misinformation now. That said, I have a hard time believing everyone is migrating to BlueSky instead of simply leaving this type of social media. Bluesky feels relatively dead except for the few accounts playing the BlueSky meta game, which is largely about infighting and creating hyper cliques from what I see. One account I follow went to BlueSky but then returned to X because he couldn’t stand it. He described BlueSky as the place to go if you wanted to be constantly attacked by people who 98% agree with you. My impression is that it’s a smaller pond where the people who were previously small fish on X see it as their opportunity to fight their way to the top of a smaller food chain. It just feels ugly and mean half the time. I’ve had to unfollow a lot of people on BlueSky who I previously enjoyed on X because they got sucked into the BlueSky toxicity competition and now they’re just taking swipes at other people on BlueSky all day instead of posting info I wanted to see.

dartharva 1y ago

Except for AI research

billy99k 1y ago

[flagged]

timeon 1y ago
Biggest difference is that one can read thread on Bluesky without account while X has login-wall (like most corporate 'social' media).
- deleted 1y ago
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- deleted 1y ago
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- tempaccount421 1y ago
  xcancel.com gets around Twitter's login-wall.
CyberMacGyver 1y ago
This all true for Twitter ? Plus one giant egomaniac who will silence anyone he wants.
cmxch 1y ago
You aren’t wrong. The filtersets are made to aid left leaning causes and to inhibit right leaning ones.
tomhow 1y ago
Could you please stop posting in this inflammatory style? The guidelines ask us not to fulminate, to eschew flamebait and to avoid using HN for ideological battle. It's fine to have an ideological lean and to argue for your positions, but this inflammatory style of commenting is not what HN is for and it destroys what it is for, and you've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

AlienRobot 1y ago

I wonder why they didn't move to Tumblr instead. It has more features.

mannanj 1y ago

Why is this scientific post?

tptacek 1y ago

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 see how you can raise at all for a social network in 2026 with flat numbers, let alone the declining numbers Bluesky actually has. I've been dual-wielding Twitter and Bluesky for about a year (after a year off Twitter where I was mostly Mastodon), and, anecdatally, we've hit a point where the engagement and volume of stuff I see in Bluesky is lower than what I was getting even on Mastodon. Earlier on, there was some truth to the idea that Twitter had a much larger audience, but you'd get better engagement on Bluesky. I now get better engagement on Twitter. I can see people I had followed into Bluesky moving back to Twitter. I have no idea what's going to happen, but I'm curious to hear a coherent story about how Bluesky isn't cooked.

jghn 1y ago
What I've found is that most of the people I really want to follow are exclusively on bsky. BUT most of the people I'd prefer to casually follow either exclusively or mostly only posts on Twitter. And the 2nd group is a much larger pool than the first group. I really dislike Mastodon so gave that up a while back. I know there are a few people I'd like to follow who only post there, but such is life.
- packetlost 1y ago
  I've found Bluesky does a really bad job at not showing me stuff I don't want to see. Furry p*rn on the "cute internet cats" feed? Yup. Heaps and heaps of political rage bait on the main discover feed? Yup. I wanted to like BlueSky, but it's such a bizarre echo chamber of people who left Twitter for ideological reasons that it basically filters for people that I actively don't want to engage with. Those types of people are still there on Twitter (mostly on the other side these days), but I don't see them because the algorithm filters them out.
  - 1y ago

mensetmanusman 1y ago

That place that erupted in celebration a couple weeks ago. Surprising to see it there and on LinkedIn.

labrador 1y ago

[flagged]

verteu 1y ago
Agreed. Who in good conscience would use a site where the owner regularly posts hateful, trivially-debunked BS? https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1970336290148434391 https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1970336290148434391 https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1969087195798475263 https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1969087195798475263 https://x.com/Rightanglenews/status/1971546061169987846 https://x.com/Rightanglenews/status/1971546061169987846
- Sammi 1y ago
  Everyone who reads a Rubert Murdoch tabloid. I am constantly surprised by the amount of people who enjoy drivel, but this has always been like this. Only we used to also have printed media that held itself to higher ideals than tabloids and worked as a counter weight to them. What is different atm is that for a long time there haven't been social media that shoot for higher ideals. Maybe bsky is that? The market for tabloid social media is already saturated by meta, tiktok, x, snapchat, and the like. It would be interesting if bsky could find their own market with the more "serious" end of the media spectrum.
  - AlecSchueler 1y ago
    > people who enjoy drivel, but this has always been like this. It's much more visible now, though. In the past it was quite easy to ignore the entire existence of someone like Rupert Murdoch but now the entire world knows what Musk is. He just appeared in last week at a rally of 100,000 people encouraging them to violently overthrowing the government. He appeared in the oval office giving speeches. Murdoch usually kept to himself.

waltercool 1y ago

[dead]

firefax 1y ago

Most of my hard science contacts (physics, biology etc) from my days in student government have moved to Bluesky. Newer academics seem to be starting out there and skipping Twitter entirely. If you have heard of Metcalfe's Law, you'll understand why this is not good for Twitter long term. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe's_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe's_law

nomdep 1y ago
So Bluesky for academia and X for tech and everyone else. I don’t think X is in trouble. Scientist tend to form their own closed communities anyway.
- firefax 1y ago
  >Scientist tend to form their own closed communities anyway. Do you have a source for that?
- Sammi 1y ago
  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.
  - tredre3 1y ago
    In your analogy I suppose bluesky is the serious one? Have you spent any amount of time there?
    - Sammi 1y ago
      They have the scientific community, so that's the direction they could be trending. But this is of course not settled yet.
- cmxch 1y ago
  [flagged]

anonym29 1y ago

[flagged]

biomedicalist 1y ago

Most scientists don't have a professional profile on Twitter or Bluesky. It's the most self-aggrandizing ones who tend to do that. The rest of us are just writing papers, presenting at conferences, collaborating with other research groups without any interest in putting it all out there on social media. This whole X versus Bluesky thing is basically irrelevant. Neither of these platforms are good venues for dissemination of scientific research.

1vuio0pswjnm7 1y ago
"Neither of these platforms are good venues for dissemination of scientific research." These "platforms", i.e. other peoples' gigantic websites, are fantasy worlds that cater to self-aggrandisement where relevance requires a presence in that world The outside world, aka the real world, is under represented and thus ignored

ChrisArchitect 1y ago

Heard this all year, including a number of stories recently. Related: Bluesky now platform of choice for science community https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45039397 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45039397 Scientists No Longer Find X Professionally Useful, and Have Switched to Bluesky https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44978815 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44978815 Science research gets more engagement on Bluesky than X, study finds https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45092672 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45092672

grigio 1y ago

[flagged]

deleted 1y ago

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paulvnickerson 1y ago

Most likely this is due to political bias of the group that was surveyed [1]. Liberals in general dislike X because of the owner. It's the same reason that the average Hacker News reader favors Bluesky over X. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-022-01382-3 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-022-01382-3

tzs 1y ago
From the abstract of that link, with emphasis added: > Scientists in the United States are more politically liberal than the general population. This fact has fed charges of political bias. To learn more about scientists’ political behavior, we analyze publicly available Federal Election Commission data. We find that scientists who donate to federal candidates and parties are far more likely to support Democrats than Republicans, with less than 10 percent of donations going to Republicans in recent years. The same pattern holds true for employees of the academic sector generally, and for scientists employed in the energy sector. This was not always the case: Before 2000, political contributions were more evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans. We argue that these observed changes are more readily explained by changes in Republican Party attitudes toward science than by changes in American scientists. We reason that greater public involvement by centrist and conservative scientists could help increase trust in science among Republicans.

lollobomb 1y ago

This and the recent HN entry on "open social" smells to me like an astroturfing campaign from BlueSky. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45388021 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45388021 Protip: BlueSky is "decentralized" only in name. Don't. With all their drawbacks, ActivityPub and Nostr are way better.

know-how 1y ago

[dead]

tomgag 1y ago

Personal opinion: Bluesky is "fedi-washing". Better Mastodon or Nostr. https://gagliardoni.net/#20250818_battle_of_socials https://gagliardoni.net/#20250818_battle_of_socials

Pamar 1y ago

What about Cara, Vero and MeWe? This are just the last three Social Media I subscribed in the past and range from Stagnant to Pretty Much Dead. I suppose that the problem is that if you already have 1000+ followers on, say, Twitter or IG you try posting the same stuff in parallel on both... after 1 month of doubled effort you notice that your followers on the new platform is an order of magnitude smaller... you want to stop double posting because it is too time consuming. Guess which one you will opt out of?

jsbisviewtiful 1y ago
IMO even Bluesky borders on “dead”. Not from an activity standpoint, but from the standpoint of “what the hell are people posting here”.

TimMeade 1y ago

I think the interesting part of that article was "distributed to 813... who had used bluesky and X". That seems a little misleading. What if you just picked 813 at random and asked how many had even used bluesky at all?

AfterHIA 1y ago

I miss the olden days when all fucking around on the internet was considered unprofessional and we read books and shit.

skybrian 1y ago

I've had trouble finding interesting content on Bluesky that's not politics. Any recommendations?

amadeuspagel 1y ago

There are studies of how twitter affects academic citations[1]. Why not make a similar study of bluesky and compare the results? [1]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165176523002951 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016517652...

1vuio0pswjnm7 1y ago

"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/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40637733/ See also: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02554-0 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/Shiffman2012_Article_TwitterAsAToolForConservationE-4.pdf https://davidshiffmancv.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Shiff... https://arxiv.org/abs/1305.0435 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/Shiffman-et-al-Twitter-assignment-1.pdf https://davidshiffmancv.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Shiff...

BergAndCo 1y ago
Wow, imagine that, 99% of academia is left-wing and they're afraid to have a presence on X because the the "tolerant" left calls it a "Nazi echo chamber" and will come after their careers. BlueSky is totally winning, you guys!

cmxch 1y ago

[flagged]

JeremyNT 1y ago

Why on earth is this flagged? Is discussing alternative platforms to Elon Musk's X now too "political" for HN?

SnuffBox 1y ago

Bluesky is far from professional.

AlecSchueler 1y ago

Is this thread flagged by the Musk bots? I don't see how the argument that this isn't tech related can fly here.

frm88 1y ago
Maybe not bots, but the Musk fanclub is certainly awake and trolling.

IAmGraydon 1y ago

I see X / Bluesky as a digital representation of the societal split that has happened in the US. The dynamic that unfolded is the same one that causes wars in the real world - two ideologies too at odds to coexist in the same space. In the real world, one ends up destroying the other. The digital world has the convenient ability to spawn a new space and the other side just migrated en mass to it.