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.
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.
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.
> 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.
How does user account discovery work? How do you think it could be made better?
He covers contact discovery/migration from Twitter, and also mentions a fediverse contact search, although I forget what it was.
[Edit] this is not how to improve it. This is how discoverability in Mastodon currently works.
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
