Franciska, Ivo, Bart, I miss you! Where have you gone? Until two years ago we were in regular contact. There were a lot of us. It felt like a fun party with all kinds of interesting people. There were also many international guests who provided original topics for discussion. I never saw some of you in real life, but we still had daily contact. I read your news, followed your comments, learned new things, read unexpected articles, and felt connected. We had found a way to keep each other informed and to make it clear to society what is fact and what is fiction. We showed that scientists are people too, with hobbies, a family, doubts. And we had a lot of contact with that society. Directly, or through the journalists who were there. Outwardly we were quite unanimous. About the need for a radical change in the way we waste resources and treat our planet. We talked to each other, but also to the media and society.
Until Elon.
When he took over Twitter, a large number of active scientists left the platform. Things went from bad to worse quite quickly. On Twitter you have always suffered from anonymous bullying, hatred, threats and trolling. But since the takeover by Elon, the anti-scientific sentiment, the misogyny, the racism, the hatred, the homophobia no longer knew any bounds. Since Elon, the amount of hate comments has doubled, probably because the platform hardly moderates anymore. The number of fake accounts and trolls has grown significantly.
It didn’t work anymore
It quickly became clear within the academic world that things would no longer work with Elon at the helm. Not only because Twitter became anti-social media, but also because many scientists no longer wanted to cooperate in principle with a revenue model that goes against everything science stands for. And so many scientists left the platform, became inactive or closed their accounts.
Most researchers seem to have ended up on Mastodon, an open, decentralized social medium that is built and maintained by users themselves. Mastodon feels a bit like the Twitter of ten years ago. Civilized, interesting, relaxed, it makes you curious. It is still a bit awkward, but we are slowly finding each other again.
Yet today’s Mastodon is far from what Twitter once was. And that’s because there are few outsiders. No audience, no society. Scientists talk to each other on Mastodon, but hardly to others. And that’s a problem.
Because Maarten, Heleen, Rolf. Where are you? And the editors of A.D, The Telegraph, de Volkskrant, NRCNu.nl, NOS, RTL, Linda, On 1, Jeroen and Sophie? Why don’t you listen anymore? On Mastodon we have plenty to say, but no audience. That is worse than it seems at first glance.
One of the biggest advantages of Twitter was that it made it easy to publish your own research. With a bit of luck it would be picked up by the newspaper, radio or even TV. Journalists and writers were all also on Twitter. Many scientists have said goodbye to Twitter, but the journalists are all still there. And that is, I think, because politicians are still there. Media and politics hold each other captive on a platform where facts disappear and only opinions remain.
Scientist on a talk show
In any case, many scientists have lost a powerful channel of communication with society. That communication took place directly or via journalism. Nothing has been returned yet. In my experience, the loss of Twitter means that fewer scientific results and analyzes reach the news. When was the last time you saw a committed, interesting scientist on a talk show? Just sayin. The voice of science is now less amplified. Hardly any scientific news goes viral anymore. The implosion of Twitter has given science communication a blow from which it has not yet recovered.
I hope things will turn out well again. It is almost inevitable that an alternative to Twitter will emerge. If it were up to me, that would be Mastodon. That’s where most scientists are already located. And it is a fairly democratic, reasonably well-moderated platform. But scientists are not the ones who decide, we must recognize that. These are journalists, opinion makers, politicians. Are you coming to Mastodon? Or will it be something else? It would be nice to get in touch again. I look forward to seeing each other again. Because a few more facts between the opinions certainly wouldn’t hurt.
Peter Kuipers Munneke is a glaciologist at Utrecht University and weatherman at NOS