Scientists move to Bluesky, transitioning away from X and Meta platforms
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Diaspora doesn't use ActivityPub, does it? It's still a Fediverse app though, and still fairly widely used.
It would be one hell of a stretch to assert that a single platform with its own home made protocol that doesn’t talk to any other technology in the entire fediverse as part of that fediverse. So at best you can say Bluesky has its own fediverse.
I agree with this.
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thing is lot of that is on purpose. mastodon and fediverse are more of an attempt to come back to the state where there is no algorithm picking for you... but too many people nowdays are simply too lazy to search and actively choose what they want to see.
what we really need is to separate content (keep that in fediverse) and content access and presentation (the interface people use to access the content). if you want a bot feeding you content whole day and for your internet to become a tv you nobody can stop you. but if you want to think amd search nobody should stop you either
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My question was about the "scientists are not allowed to" part. I've never heard to such restrictions, and been in the field for more than a decade.
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Oh, looks like it doesn’t. It’s Friendica that uses both ActivityPub and Diaspora protocols
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Same here, well said. Bluesky’s not perfect, at least it’s not Twitter. I wish more people would use it though
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what are those?
existing issues in the structure of the Fediverse and ActivityPub
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Sorry, should have clarified - I was speaking on the part of many academics. In my department, most people (faculty) have abandoned Twitter and a fair few have started on bluesky although more just don't use the format in any context anymore. I only know of one who uses Mastadoon.
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I believe you've hit the nail on the head, the only people I've noticed that really want such a social media account are generally people who were older than millennial, out of Millennials, gen Z and gen A, I don't really see much interest in a social media account that is directly linked to your actual identity. Most of them are more interested in a pseuado-anonymous style account that only asks for a username and doesn't actually link you to a real world identity.
Facebook was great in principle, it was intended as like a college student community and evolved from there, it was never meant to fill the goal of what the platform is doing today.
As such as Facebook deteriorates, there isn't a huge demand for a Facebook alternative, because the people who are leaving the platform aren't actively seeking to replace what is lost.
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Never worked in academia eh? Plenty of dumb (and, more importantly here, computer illiterate) people there too.
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You could spin one up this evening if you wanted.
That's not the point. The point is, there are reasons Mastodon is being rejected, just like there are reasons you seemingly cannot pay people to use a Misskey-based or Hubzilla-based website.
It's not where the people are going, and the public or semi-public figures are going to follow the people.
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Being a scientist kinda means to me you're able to follow a very easy to understand guide to install mastodon on ...
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Mastodon is great.
The only reason why it doesn't get as much traction is because it doesn't manipulate your dopamine and serotonin receptors like other networks do with their black box algorithms that are designed to steal as much of your attention as possible, while almost certainly throwing you into an unhealthy filterbubble/echochamber.
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while I agree, the reality of the situation is that when you get down to comparing feature to feature, open source solutions tend to be technically inferior to proprietary ones.
Yes. But there is nothing bluesky does that mastodon doesn't. It's a platform to write short text posts and have it viewed by other people. It's not rocket science.
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I'm pretty sure there are a handful of technically literate scientists who are able to install servers lmao.
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Yeah, honestly Friendica has been around for ages at this point and I assume is pretty damn mature in terms of most features.... what is exactly missing here that it isn't even worth mentioning by name when talking about replacing Facebook?
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May not be much, but it’s a start.
Actually, when you tell people something is a start but it is actually a false start that doesn't deliver on the fundamental promises at all, it is much worse than having a much slower start....
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Being a scientist also kinda means understanding what are your strengths, and how you can combine them with other people who are smart along very specific narrow vectors.
Being a scientist means understanding that if you work together with the right kind of smart, curious people you can build amazing things that will improve the world.
Being a scientist means understanding the modern business world is utter bullshit and will rot any science it touches to the core.
Being a scientist, like truly living that ethos means being someone who believes the truth is important and that there are power structures who will fight tooth and nail to subdue that truth or hoard it to themselves for personal gain.
Being a scientist thus effectively means I would expect that after having a brief conversation with you that you would at least understand the grave danger that entrusting science communication in another for profit social media company poses and how it doesn't seem sensible to take that risk when the actual material barriers to creating Fediverse communities aren't actually that high.
Don't get me wrong, those hurdles are real, the fediverse can be confusing, there are lots of growing pains here.... however, not every scientist needs to become an expert in selfhosting Fediverse software, and not every scientist needs to become a Fediverse evangelist (although it wouldn't hurt), but we do need to connect boldly and clearly the hypocrisy of supposedly truth valuing people all shepherding dutifully onto another platform that will silence and betray them violently.
Scientists are inherently aligned with modern progressive politics, or rather scientists need to understand they are at everything up to physical danger from being hurt by conservatives and they need to understand that makes them fundamentally aligned with modern progressive politics.
There is no "I don't want to get political here" and the failure of the science community at large to recognize how embracing Bluesky as if it was a genuine solution to the unfolding catastrophe of science being defunded and destroyed is embarrassing. Those of us on the Fediverse should be kind, but also we should make fun of them for not using their brains. They clearly have them. Fucking use them you fools.
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When I first got a Bluesky account, back when it was invite-only a whole bunch of the Physicists and Astronomers I used to follow on Twitter were already there. If anything it seemed like scientists were early adopters.
