This article makes excellent points in a cogent fashion.
I partly disagree with the author that simply pointing at the existence of an alternative is sufficient. One of the reasons I've been very lukewarm about Mastodon is that it really lack the networks effects that make Twitter special; federation is a nice idea but the pragmatic benefits are a lot less clear. Being able to follow, track, and have conversations with individual scientists/scholars on Twitter has been a huge benefit for me, and it's not obvious that federated social networking can reliably deliver that. Another issue is that while Mastodon started well out of the gate 5 years ago (which was when is first signed up for it), very little has happened since then. 'We're not those other guys' is not a sufficient recipe for changing the world.
An excellent point that I do agree with is how 'sticky' Twitter is and how (like many other big tech firms) the tools it gives you when you export your data aren't really that helpful/useful unless you have sufficient programming skills of your own to overcome the quirky formatting issues. It seems like there's an audience for a tool that leverages the Twitter API to scrape your following/follower data into a convenient format and perhaps automate the business of finding and reconnecting with those people on another platform.
I think it's reasonable to say Twitter's utility is rapidly waning, both as described and with each new day's manufactured drama. However, the network effect issue is a big one. If 'science twitter' decamps to 'science.social' it could quickly find itself effectively cut off from its public and derided by antagonists as a 'woke echo chamber populated by high IQ stupid people' to borrow a phrase from what passes for political discourse in 2022.
> it's not obvious that federated social networking can reliably deliver that
Why not? It's federated, not isolated. If enough people are available to achieve the network effects you're after, what would you lack?
(Content discovery solutions are already being created for people who want to play with them)
> It seems like there's an audience for a tool that leverages the Twitter API to scrape your following/follower data into a convenient format and perhaps automate the business of finding and reconnecting with those people on another platform.
> If 'science twitter' decamps to 'science.social' it could quickly find itself effectively cut off from its public
Why? What's different from frontend social, infosec exchange, etc.? In the general population is mastodon, I can't imagine science twitter being called out as woke.
There's fediscience.org and sciencemastodon.com already (Sean Carroll created account on fediscience.org and James Gleick - on sciencemastodon.com among people I follow on Twitter).
I agree with you, just the existence of Mastodon/Discourse/others isn't sufficient. The onboarding and home/local/federated timelines of Mastodon can be a bit confusing at first, which does take some time to get used to. Just not being the other guys is the first of many necessary steps to being better.
And yes, scientists can't be entirely insulated from the wider public. Ideas that only stay in academia don't make the same impact that they need to in the wider world. Similarly, academics need to hear from the wider world to learn what problems are important and how their work can impact people. There need to be forums for interacting with large public audiences.
> federation is a nice idea but the pragmatic benefits are a lot less clear
> it's not obvious that federated social networking can reliably deliver
I love the idea of federations / federalism.
I also look at Mastodon and neither want to run my own instance or carry the mental ability to remember what instance I signed up on. Defending the idea of federalism but acknowledging that Mastodon isn't a perfect replacement for Twitter, I'd like to modify your statement:
Federation is a nice idea, but federations are only as strong as their members.
The Mastodon federation, combined, is smaller than Twitter.
So Twitter, while not being a federation, still has a better network effect.
One of the things I noticed and immediately liked about Mastodon was that I quickly found curious academic types who are interesting to chat with. And the whole vibe on Mastodon was different because you'll find quirky and idiosyncratic people who pay a lot of attention to a very specific type of intellectually curious conversation, and your more likely to discover that on Mastodon in my experience, so I think it is an excellent fit for academics.
I haven't used Mastodon and so the impression I get is that it doesn't have an easy way to look up other accounts or discovery of accounts on other instances.
How does user account discovery work? How do you think it could be made better?
They should have left years ago, rather than tolerate the decades of sewage and outrage around the platform. The problem is some think the solution is to replace it with a 'federated' outrage machine (Mastodon) which discoverability is an eternal problem with instance moderators banning entire instances for any reason if they wanted to. For the example of journa.host [0].
The same can easily happen for a Mastodon instance for academics. The whole point of Mastodon is to own and self-host your own instance. If these journalists, academics, artists, etc are still not able to do that and are joining centralized instances; it is no better than being on a worse version of Twitter, but with a significantly limited reach and not truly owning your accounts.
It is fine to believe the delusion that Twitter will immediately be falling over 'any minute now'™ for 100% of users. But if I had to choose where to focus advertising my work on either Mastodon or Twitter it will always be Twitter; both before and after Elon taking over. The reality of the point is, there is still no viable alternative to Twitter that has the same reach and features that make it convenient for many to use.
But this time round, the ToS applies to everyone equally, scam bots are invisible in replies, normal bots are labelled as automated and tells you who owns it and much more. The exact opposite of what I have heard from the 'doomsters' and the screaming minority spreading misinformation about a so-called 'Twitter apocalypse'.
Mastodon's at the "email in 1994" stage--the general public is starting to become aware that it exists, and folks who were running small servers for their own purposes suddenly find themselves in a position to earn social capital by handing out accounts. Obviously in a few years at most, this will get tedious for the admins providing all that undercompensated labor. I think the winning scenario will be old-school webhosts including a personal Mastodon instance with their default package, like email. If that happens, Big Tech adoption will follow and we're quickly talking about a real standard with a lifespan of decades, if not more
Twitter is just as bad as it was before Musk took over with one exception: they removed the blatant partisan censorship. If that makes it worse than before for academics there is more at hand than it just being a viral meme-amplifier unsuited for academic discussions.
The bots are also removed. It's great to see human answers again even to the most provocative tweets (about help with Metamask and ETH just as an experiment)
[+] [-] anigbrowl|3 years ago|reply
I partly disagree with the author that simply pointing at the existence of an alternative is sufficient. One of the reasons I've been very lukewarm about Mastodon is that it really lack the networks effects that make Twitter special; federation is a nice idea but the pragmatic benefits are a lot less clear. Being able to follow, track, and have conversations with individual scientists/scholars on Twitter has been a huge benefit for me, and it's not obvious that federated social networking can reliably deliver that. Another issue is that while Mastodon started well out of the gate 5 years ago (which was when is first signed up for it), very little has happened since then. 'We're not those other guys' is not a sufficient recipe for changing the world.
An excellent point that I do agree with is how 'sticky' Twitter is and how (like many other big tech firms) the tools it gives you when you export your data aren't really that helpful/useful unless you have sufficient programming skills of your own to overcome the quirky formatting issues. It seems like there's an audience for a tool that leverages the Twitter API to scrape your following/follower data into a convenient format and perhaps automate the business of finding and reconnecting with those people on another platform.
I think it's reasonable to say Twitter's utility is rapidly waning, both as described and with each new day's manufactured drama. However, the network effect issue is a big one. If 'science twitter' decamps to 'science.social' it could quickly find itself effectively cut off from its public and derided by antagonists as a 'woke echo chamber populated by high IQ stupid people' to borrow a phrase from what passes for political discourse in 2022.
[+] [-] viraptor|3 years ago|reply
Why not? It's federated, not isolated. If enough people are available to achieve the network effects you're after, what would you lack? (Content discovery solutions are already being created for people who want to play with them)
> It seems like there's an audience for a tool that leverages the Twitter API to scrape your following/follower data into a convenient format and perhaps automate the business of finding and reconnecting with those people on another platform.
https://twitodon.com/ for mastodon already exists
> If 'science twitter' decamps to 'science.social' it could quickly find itself effectively cut off from its public
Why? What's different from frontend social, infosec exchange, etc.? In the general population is mastodon, I can't imagine science twitter being called out as woke.
[+] [-] r721|3 years ago|reply
There's fediscience.org and sciencemastodon.com already (Sean Carroll created account on fediscience.org and James Gleick - on sciencemastodon.com among people I follow on Twitter).
[+] [-] jrhawley|3 years ago|reply
I agree with you, just the existence of Mastodon/Discourse/others isn't sufficient. The onboarding and home/local/federated timelines of Mastodon can be a bit confusing at first, which does take some time to get used to. Just not being the other guys is the first of many necessary steps to being better.
And yes, scientists can't be entirely insulated from the wider public. Ideas that only stay in academia don't make the same impact that they need to in the wider world. Similarly, academics need to hear from the wider world to learn what problems are important and how their work can impact people. There need to be forums for interacting with large public audiences.
[+] [-] sshine|3 years ago|reply
> it's not obvious that federated social networking can reliably deliver
I love the idea of federations / federalism.
I also look at Mastodon and neither want to run my own instance or carry the mental ability to remember what instance I signed up on. Defending the idea of federalism but acknowledging that Mastodon isn't a perfect replacement for Twitter, I'd like to modify your statement:
Federation is a nice idea, but federations are only as strong as their members.
The Mastodon federation, combined, is smaller than Twitter.
So Twitter, while not being a federation, still has a better network effect.
[+] [-] glenstein|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jimkleiber|3 years ago|reply
How does user account discovery work? How do you think it could be made better?
[+] [-] rvz|3 years ago|reply
The same can easily happen for a Mastodon instance for academics. The whole point of Mastodon is to own and self-host your own instance. If these journalists, academics, artists, etc are still not able to do that and are joining centralized instances; it is no better than being on a worse version of Twitter, but with a significantly limited reach and not truly owning your accounts.
It is fine to believe the delusion that Twitter will immediately be falling over 'any minute now'™ for 100% of users. But if I had to choose where to focus advertising my work on either Mastodon or Twitter it will always be Twitter; both before and after Elon taking over. The reality of the point is, there is still no viable alternative to Twitter that has the same reach and features that make it convenient for many to use.
But this time round, the ToS applies to everyone equally, scam bots are invisible in replies, normal bots are labelled as automated and tells you who owns it and much more. The exact opposite of what I have heard from the 'doomsters' and the screaming minority spreading misinformation about a so-called 'Twitter apocalypse'.
[0] https://twitter.com/ajaromano/status/1594432548222152705
[+] [-] N1ckFG|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] the_third_wave|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gerwitz|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xiphias2|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jdkee|3 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] BrainVirus|3 years ago|reply
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