this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2024
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EDIT: I didn't notice in the original post, the article is from 2023

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/19707239

Researchers have documented an explosion of hate and misinformation on Twitter since the Tesla billionaire took over in October 2022 -- and now experts say communicating about climate science on the social network on which many of them rely is getting harder.

Policies aimed at curbing the deadly effects of climate change are accelerating, prompting a rise in what experts identify as organised resistance by opponents of climate reform.

Peter Gleick, a climate and water specialist with nearly 99,000 followers, announced on May 21 he would no longer post on the platform because it was amplifying racism and sexism.

While he is accustomed to "offensive, personal, ad hominem attacks, up to and including direct physical threats", he told AFP, "in the past few months, since the takeover and changes at Twitter, the amount, vituperativeness, and intensity of abuse has skyrocketed".

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 2 months ago (3 children)

The Franklin Standards need to be on everyone’s radar. They don’t want your kids to learn about climate change.

Explain how and why Earth’s climate changes over time.

Climate changes continually at all time scales and Earth’s climate has never remained constant.

The Earth's climate has varied greatly between glacial advances and retreats that correlate with cyclical oscillations in Earth's orbit around the Sun (Milankovitch Cycles, precession).

In addition to being affected by the climate, the biosphere also has a significant effect on the climate, including self-regulation and resiliency (carbon-oxygen cycle, hydrological cycle).

Humans are just one of the many influences on Earth’s climate (urban heat island effect, wetland drainage, deforestation, agriculture).

Computer models of climate are simplified simulations of the real world, and make prognostications that are inherently uncertain.

Global weather forecast models (short term) and climate models (long term) are quite different in their design, their strengths, weaknesses, value, limitations, and uncertainties.

The wording is subtle, but you can see how they are attacking the idea of anthropogenic climate change. (There’s similar fuckery with evolution and some subtle anti-trans stuff.) Oil and gas companies have a lot of money and can afford a lot of propaganda. No states have adopted these standards yet - we think Florida and Texas will go first, then Oklahoma will follow. But this information warfare.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Never understood why nobody calls him an "american oligarch"

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago

That was a year ago.

[–] [email protected] 104 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Reality: you can stop fascism by deleting the app

Everyone: doesn’t

[–] [email protected] -1 points 2 months ago (5 children)

Oh, i didnt know this was like IT. i'll tell my russians friends just to ignore putin's regime

[–] [email protected] 27 points 2 months ago (19 children)

If by ignore, you mean stop paying taxes and working in any capacity for government in one go, yes would work. The only fear is being singled out, if more than 0.5% of the people do it, army wont even have the guts to get tanks out, they will join.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago

If we can't abandon Obvious Disaster Twitter we definitely can't abandon the obvious disaster that is everything we think of as normal that's driving civilization off a cliff.

[–] [email protected] 55 points 2 months ago (7 children)

Considering Meta is doubling down on disinformation, more people should go to Mastodon and Bsky over Threads or Twitter.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Is blue sky really ok? Considering who started it...

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

I just wish there were a way to preserve these records in a format with enough longevity to survive until the next sapient species evolves after we destroy ourselves and the human habitability of the planet for a couple million years.

They could use the warning against indulging greed and willful ignorance, and we deserve to have others laughing at our species' expense through time. We inherited paradise just to set it on fire eyes wide open. It's an extremely low bar, but I hope the next global apex predator chooses to do better.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago

You can find utterly vile replies from blue checks on that site now, even on the most heavenly, innocent, morally correct tweet. It's insane.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I think this is going to happen more and more. As the delta semi-morons continue to erode civilization we are just going to "take our ball and go home" so to speak. We can science, tech, and culture around them and they will eventually be left out in their echo chamber desert fighting each other over the last minions meme scraps.

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[–] [email protected] -2 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Among the sad stories about climate scientists having to deal with misinformation and abuse on the regular, suddenly, a unicorn: a statement purportedly by Musk that I wholeheartedly agree with:

Musk wrote in January: "People on the right should see more 'left-wing' stuff and people on the left should see more 'right-wing' stuff. But you can just block it if you want to stay in an echo chamber."

Of course with the average Xitter post becoming ever more toxic, most people that have anything of value to add will probably leave sooner or later, whether lefties or righties or whatever.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

When I still used Twitter, I followed people and that was the only content I wanted to read. I didn't care about content from people I wasn't following.

That's why I'm now on Masto. No algorithm to decide that I should also get the very much not valuable opinions of xXx_nOnwoke_1488 in my timeline.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago
[–] [email protected] 22 points 2 months ago (1 children)

That's great news. Looking forward to having more climate scientists on Mastodon.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Hell, I would like to have ANYONE on Mastodon. It feels so dead.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Does it?

My Mastodon feed is more alive than my twitter feed used to be years before its demise. And also in my native language, if I were to follow english speaking people I'd be overwhelmed.

The trick is not to rely to much on the instance local feed and start following people from every instance.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

Yes, and...

You can follow (and use) hashtags of topics you like.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

Start following hashtags of things you're interested in. And interact with people in those threads.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

Light speed -> ridiculous speed -> ludicrous speed

"They've gone to plaid!"

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

Ah Twitter. Nearing its evolution as the internet’s premier perpetually-full septic tank.

[–] [email protected] 204 points 2 months ago (6 children)

I have no clue why all these normal, non-racist non-political people still use twitter. It was bought for the obvious purpose of providing a safe space for conservatives, racists, incels, and other outcasts to society. Mastodon is a perfect replacement for it, and you can pick an instance that suits you. It isn't owned by a mentally unstable billionaire!

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago

The otherwise sensible people I know who are still on Twitter all say it's because of a specific interest or group, and the community of people around it who are all on there as well. They all hate what it's become but put up with it because nobody is sure where else to go.

There's also a sense of FOMO when it comes to realtime news updates. Until government, news media, and personalities go somewhere and take all their followers with them, it will be hard to break away.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 months ago

It's still usable if you're not on English side of Twitter.

For example, recent Indonesian political movement relied on Twitter for discussion and updates. Mastodon or any fediverse is simply too niche and most people don't have money to fund local general instance. There were several local fedi instance (Mastodon and Lemmy), but all of them quickly dead for low donation.

Japanese-side is still alive (in positive manner) but people are making backup account on Bluesky and Japanese Misskey instances.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 2 months ago (2 children)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect

Twitter hasn't dropped below the critical mass of users necessary for the system to become useless. It's still a major artery of media and social commerce, just one that's been littered with landmines. Yes, its far more dangerous and difficult to navigate now, but its still better than posting into the uninhabited wilderness that is Bluesky or the exact same basket of shitty engagement posts that is Threads.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Counterpoint: Twitter will continue to maintain a critical mass of users until enough people move somewhere else to make it irrelevant. Continuing to use it only serves to further credentialize the platform, making it even less likely that users will find a new home someplace else.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Continuing to use it only serves to further credentialize the platform

The vast majority of users don't care whether the platform is credentialized or not.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

Is it actually better than nothing though?

Either these are tolerant folks or someone we might be better off if they stayed on 4twitter.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

Idk either. But it’s really easy to stay where you’re used to, rather than do the work to set something new up

[–] [email protected] 51 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

I agree with this assessment for the most part but one side of me plays devil’s advocate on this:

I sort of came to realize in the end that it was possibly purchased to push all leftists off the platform, allowing Musk to compete with Google and Facebook in heavily manipulating and censoring discourse in American society (and let’s be clear, they did. Just because it was an attempt to help “the good guys in the DNC” by Google and Facebook doesn’t make it not an open and shut case of treasonous manipulation of discourse.

As an absolutely prolific Twitter user pre-2016, I was very quick to leave….but at the same time, I eventually came to the sad conclusion that Xitter (pronounced Shitter) actually does need leftist voices as long as it exists. IMO, it (and Google and Facebook) should be dissolved, open sourced, decentralized, and socialized for the crime of treason/undermining democracy.

We (people of the fediverse with a strong sense of integrity) basically fled to our own decentralized, open source platform where we have 1 millionth of the reach with our voices. Being around such a cesspool where astroturfers working for Progressive think tanks and their conservative buddies would gaslight me about the popularity of things like Single Payer or student loan reform…which was not great for my well-being…But let’s not pretend that leftists that remain on the platform are bad people for doing so. An echo chamber has a way of brainwashing people. So, conservatism would be even stronger had more of our brethren not stayed.

Just a small counterpoint. I strongly dislike conservatism and the conservative ethos of “fuck you, got mine”…but perhaps they were playing 4D chess with us a bit.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (3 children)

The bit in the square brackets in the title was mine, because that's what I went into the article to look for. If you're on Mastodon and interested in that content:

The text from the article:

Glaciologist Ruth Mottram had more than 10,000 followers on Twitter but left in February and joined an alternative scientists' forum powered by Mastodon -– a crowdfunded, decentralised grouping of social networks founded in 2016.

"It's really been a revelation in many ways. It's a much quieter and more thoughtful platform," she told AFP.

On Mastodon, "I haven't had any abuse at all or even people questioning climate change. I think we'd become far too used to it on Twitter... I had blocked loads of accounts over on the birdsite (Twitter)," she said.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

Is there a list of all scientists that made the move to Masto?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago

I gave her a follow. She seems like a nice lady. I hope she enjoys the fediverse a little more than the "nether world"

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

Ruth is a very kind person, her posts are amazing!

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