What's the community of academics? I haven't joined Twitter specifically because I think it's a horrible medium for communicating science or meeting with academics. Can you point me there?
currently not taking signups:
I’m on fosstodon which has this as the local timeline.
https://fosstodon.org/web/public/local
On many servers I can do the obvious substitution to see that server’s local timeline. I don’t think I’ve seen any servers that link that from their top level page.
This presents me with a log in form.
> Due to the massive influx of users from Twitter, we have had to temporarily close registrations. Please check back later if you wish to join Fosstodon.
Under the covers this sets up the federated follow relationship, but the UX feels the same as following someone on twitter.
There is one slightly more complicated scenario; if for some reason you're exploring a different server and find someone there you want to follow. In that case you still click the follow button but have to provide _your_ username@server string which triggers the necessary back-and-forth to get the follow relationship set up.
How would you do that on Twitter? Follow the hashtags. Why do you insist on limiting it to a server? That's not really how it is supposed to work anyway, it's not those things you mentioned.
Otherwise for someone who posts frequently and has a good following, then it's probably worth it to start posting on Twitter and Mastodon at the same time, that's the only way it happens. Big movers and shakers are either going to stay on Twitter or drag everyone else with them, basically unlikely to happen.