McCaughrean has been moving his house. McCaughrean, an astronomer at the European Space Agency, has had a profile on the social networking site for a long time. Musk called himself a "free speech absolutist" and promised to stop censoring after he suggested buying the social media platform. It was beyond that for McCaughrean. I made a choice that I don't want to support his ecosystems.
McCaughrean decided to start a profile on Mastodon. He said he left a usernames there. McCaughrean began to use the new platform after the sale of the old one. I have been more active there than I have been on the social networking site.
McCaughrean is one of many scientists who have used the platform to connect with colleagues in the same field, as well as scientists from other fields, artists, journalists, and the general public.
Hate speech, including abuse directed at scientists, has been included in the hate speech section of the website. Over time, it has become a major public good. It has played a role in the dissemination of knowledge between scientists and the public during the Pandemic.
Many of the thousands of medical and scientific experts on the platform have started to look for alternatives or are considering giving up on social media altogether because of uncertainty about how the platform will change under Musk Many researchers have been posting their new Mastodon handles, encouraging others to follow them to the site, which has gained more than 100,000 new users within days of Musk finishing his purchase.
Researchers are waiting to see what happens with the social networking site. Carl Bergstrom is a Biologist at the University of Washington, Seattle. Many people are doing the same thing. Even if there isn't much change, the groundwork is being laid for a mass migration of scientists.
There is fear that Musk's discourse will get worse. He let go of the curation team, which is responsible for quelling misinformation on the platform. The combination of this and an exodus of experts would make misinformation more likely. Having expert voices to counter the rampant misinformation is something that has always been important to me.
The idea of free speech is worrying others. "While I agree with the importance of free speech on social media, I also worry whether some of Musk's rhetoric on the issue is taken by some users as a relaxation of the norms governingTwitter interactions" Research shows that the level of hostility in a social media group can be influenced by the rules of the group.
Even though Musk has said the rules have not changed, the use of racial slurs on the platform spiked after he took over. Titanji will leave if it becomes too toxic and abusive.
The problem of toxicity on the platform only adds to long-standing worries about the protection of women and people of color from harassment and abuse. Abuse and threats on the platform are what they rarely act on. She will see how things develop before making a decision.
A researcher at the University of SASKATCHEWAN has been the recipient of abuse. She says that she was able to find her current job and start some scientific collaborations because of the help she received from the social networking site. She says that she will stay on the platform as long as the good outweighs the bad. The cost-benefit is that if the people who like to tell me that I am stupid, fat, ugly, old,unfuckable, corrupt,conflicted,incompetent, and so on, get a free pass to say whatever they want, I can say whatever I want
Many researchers bristle at the idea of paying a subscription fee to one of the world's richest people. Musk wants a paid service that includes the blue check mark, which indicates a verified account and less ads. It will push me out the door. Social media users are free content creators for these platforms and accessing them should not come at a cost to users.
If people leave the platform, some of the challenges will be meaningless. In recent years, the company has had revenues between $1 billion and $5 billion, mostly from advertising, but it only ever made a profit in the last two years. Bergstrom says that Musk's attempts to make the business profitable again could doom the platform. It is possible that the whole thing will collapse in a few years.
A researcher at the University of Colorado, Boulder, who has studied the migration of online communities, says there is a cost to leaving the social networking site, too. The decision to move elsewhere means starting from the ground up for many researchers, who have built large followings on the social networking site. Fiesler says that some people have put a lot of effort into building a following on the social networking site. I don't know if I'd move to Mastodon immediately or if I'd just use this as a reason to stop using social media.
Online migrations tend to be gradual. She described it as akin to watching a shopping mall go slowly out of business. She was surprised by the fast pace at which academics are flocking to Mastodon. Fiesler says things are changing fast. McCaughrean concurs. He says he is seeing institutions join Mastodon. There are already programs that can automatically post on both platforms. There needs to be an immediate viable alternative option for a mass exodus to happen.
The big question is whether the general public will move to Mastodon to allow scientists to communicate with more than just each other. Fiesler says he talks to his neighbor, a person in the grocery store and a teenager about studying science in college. Scientists use social media.
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