This post is aimed at scientists, especially computer scientists, who use Twitter to discuss their research.
TL;DR Bluesky is a great alternative to Twitter, and you should join! You don’t need an invitation, it has creative features like custom feeds while also being very easy to use, and there is already a strong and active community.
Don’t believe me? Check out my feed or the feeds of some of the accounts I list below. There are really good conversations happening here!
Whatever you think Bluesky doesn’t have, it probably has it by now. This includes:
I often struggle to remember which app I have open; Bluesky and Twitter are that similar, at a usability level.
Bluesky has been creating some innovative and wonderful new features. You can completely ignore them if you want to keep things simple, but I highly recommend exploring the custom feeds, at a minimum. These features include:
If you’re ready to leave Twitter but feel like Mastodon is a better alternative than Bluesky, please check out my post outlining all the problems, mostly unfixable, with Mastodon.
Threads is owned by Meta (aka Facebook), and they have been explicit about their goals with Threads, which include discouraging political content. Threads has no plan to include the innovative features that Blueksy already has (like custom feeds), and you’ll be gifting your data to Meta.
If you’re an ML/NLP/DH person, you can check out the 500 people I follow, hashtags like #MLSky or blueskAI or #DH, or the blueskAI custom feed, and you can follow arxiv cs.CL for daily digests of arXiv papers.
I also enjoy following these non-NLP accounts:
Twitter has been forced swiftly downhill. It’s full of grifters, fake accounts, trolls, and scams, and this behavior is rewarded by Twitter’s new financial scheme, which pays users for engagement, and is unregulated because of the gutting of its workforce and removal of any meaningful verification process. I often see real academics wasting time arguing with what are almost certainly “bot” accounts (accounts paid to impersonate ordinary people and sow discord, including by the U.S. government). Ads have become disgusting and harmful (I’ve received graphic ads for both dieting schemes and pornographic AI tools to “undress any girl you know”) and dark patterns are used to increase ad clicks, such as hiding that ads are ads. While no platform is immune to these issues, Twitter is now designed to foster this kind of experience, led by its chief troll, Elon Musk.
Musk is a dangerous person. He is not interested in building a healthy community, nor does he have expertise about how to run a social media platform. He has specific and radical political goals that are certainly not aligned with mine and perhaps not aligned with yours. If you’re not already convinced of this, I’m not sure that I will be able to convince you, but for posterity, I’ll list some of the evidence here.
Elon Musk publicly mocks Twitter worker with disability who is unsure whether he’s been laid off
Did Musk Propose Hyperloop to Stop California High-Speed Rail?
Elon Musk calls British diver in Thai cave rescue ‘pedo’ in baseless attack
Tesla violated labor laws by blocking union organizing, judge rules
Musk is being sued for falsely suggesting a 22-year-old Jewish man was part of a neo-Nazi brawl
Musk’s ‘Funding secured’ tweet cost Tesla investors $12 billion, jury told
Elon Musk Has Said He Is Committing Around $45 Million a Month to a New Pro-Trump Super PAC
None of this inspires confidence in Musk’s decision making and ability to run a public goods company like Twitter.
NB: What about Community Notes? Isn’t this evidence that he knows how to run a social media platform? NO. Community Notes was formerly a project called Bird Watch, and all of its essential features were developed and rolled out publicly before Musk took over. He had nothing to do with its success, despite pretending otherwise and journalists failing to do basic research.
Come to Bluesky! You can even keep your Twitter account while also posting on Bluesky! The cost is so small, and the potential upside is big!
August 12, 2024