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Thousands of scientists are cutting back on Twitter, seeding angst and uncertainty

A Nature survey reveals scientists’ reasons for leaving the social-media platform now known as X, and what they are doing to build and maintain a sense of community.
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  1. Myriam Vidal Valero
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A partially removed sign at Twitter headquarters in San Francisco, California with a distant bird flying across the sky

Hundreds of respondents to a Nature survey say they have left the platform formerly known as Twitter. Credit: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty

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Emilia Jarochowska joined Twitter in 2016 in the hope that it might help to enhance her career. She was finishing her PhD in palaeontology at the time, and felt that the platform would help her to connect with colleagues and find job opportunities. But that was, she says, before the platform became a “sea of bad trolls”.

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Nature 620, 482-484 (2023)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-02554-0

References

  1. Arroyo-Machado, W., Torres-Salinas, D. & Robinson-Garcia, N. Preprint in 27 Int. Conf. Sci. Tech. Inn. Ind. (2023).

  2. Hickey, D. et al. Proc. Int. AAAI Conf. Web Soc. Media 17, 1133–1137 (2023).

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  3. Mongeon, P., Bowman, T. D. & Costas, R. Quant. Sci. Stud. 4, 314–324 (2023).

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