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Comment by nluken | Hacker News Reader

I don't know why anyone still bothers with twitter at this point. I got off the site in December and my quality of life has noticeably improved, which surprised me because I didn't think a single social media site could have that big an impact.

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In my academic circle, it remains important for my career. Even as some people have left, it's still super useful for discovering other peoples research, seeing what the post-publication conversation is for published or preprinted research, and for sharing my own. I think most people would be perfectly happy if the community moved to another platform, but to date there has been no real consensus on where that is.

I bookmarked a lot of tweets over the years featuring papers in my research area. Last time I was doing a literature review I found most of them do not exist anymore. Which is sad.. I should've bookmarked the DOIs instead of the tweets.

Any chance they're on archive.org?

I hear a lot of people say this but I find it suspect when you probe. I think it is entertaining for sure given the water cooler, but does it actually drive your productive work?

Here's an example from my area: https://twitter.com/IvanWerning/status/1643930683578916864

Right, a huge self posted thread on a paper with very few replies. A bunch of retweets though. Just read the paper! If it's important it will be talked about at next conference. But it feels good to scroll through economics paper announcements on twitter like HN and call it "work." (That's what I call my HN time too! No offense intended. I do it too. I think it's human nature.)

I think the two biggest areas it's useful is discoverability and networking. I often catch interesting papers on Twitter that I missed through other avenues. And a lot of people post threads highlighting the main takeaways of their papers which often saves a lot of time and confusion once I get into the paper itself. Also, I've definitely made connections on Twitter with whom I went on to meet up with at conferences and build both lasting professional connections and friendships, and which have led to some collaborations. It's also where a lot of people post job opportunities (especially postdoc openings). Back when I was looking for a postdoc (years back now), about half of my interviews came from people that had posted open calls on Twitter.

So, all told -- I don't think there's a lot of productive work (i.e., research) directly going on on twitter, but that doesn't mean that it isn't still making important contributions to the profession.

Also, yes, the water cooler is fun

Social networks' usefulness is proportional to their size. That makes them sticky because any new network will be smaller and thus less useful.

Twitter is run by a guy who is becoming Emanuel Zorg before our eyes, eh?

The fact that it's still useful makes it more important to switch, not less. You're putting career before your basic values (I'm guessing) and as an academic I would hope you know that's wrong and have the honor to correct it.

It's been suggested on mastodon that all Universities should have their own Mastodon instance, maybe that would go some way to alleviate this problem?

Universities used to be the pioneers of online communication but they seem to have become a lot more conservative in recent years.

Perhaps each research area need a mastodon instance to provide a locus for discussion and sharing of new work? Organised nationally or trans-nationally.

You don’t need to make it that complicated, really not.

Mastodon can already be a drop-in replacement for Twitter for many use cases. The biggest hurdle are, as ever, network effects. Not infrastructure, not features.

For me personally most of the people I care about already are on Mastodon. It was a smooth transition for me personally and I don’t miss a thing. All that needs to happen is for that to be also true for you and Mastodon is a drop in replacement.

On a personal level this is all true, but on an infrastructure level Mastodon can only survive and grow (and remain federated) with many well managed and well funded instances.

I’m really not too worried about that.

The biggest issue I can see developing is a Gmail-ification of Mastodon (with a lot of people being on a single instance).

That would be a pity – but in terms of freedom e-mail is still pretty great.

That's harder to manage. Universities have dedicated IT teams and infra; individual research groups, especially underfunded ones, do not, and organising research groups on any grand scale is like herding cats.

I'm on Mastodon now - for me, it neatly fills in the gaps where I'm waiting for a train or a bus, but it doesn't constantly draw me in when I should be doing something else. I have a much healthier relationship with it than I ever did with Twitter.

Twitter is awesome if you have a use case for it or want to dive into a specific bubble.

I use it as a free news feed which has the quality of the paid Refinitiv subscription, and many activist investors publish their reports there. I get incredible value out of Twitter, as long as the network doesn't move elswhere.

I've avoided the "toxic hellsite" vibe by just being judicious in who I follow.

I get almost no politics, outrage, etc. in my timeline.

Instead, I get people goofing around, or dissecting cultural norms, or sharing their project updates, or discussing what they've learned about an in-depth topic.

It's like quitting alcohol. You miss it for a while, and every know and again you have urges to go back, but you know you're better without it.

Given the extent that alcohol related establishments serve as the third space for young adults, at least in stereotypical US culture, I do wonder if there is a point where increasingly avoiding alcohol becomes detrimental. I'm thinking not merely bars, but social drinks with coworkers after work (with a chance of informal skip levels), social events where alcohol is a main attraction, and even college organizations where alcohol access (often before 21) is a primary motivator to join.

When I wasn’t drinking, I was able to participate in 3rd places just fine while getting a club soda with lime.

Most people didn’t really care. The only reason I carried the club soda was because I didn’t want to explain for the 100th time why I wasnt drinking. And there’s always that one guy pushing you to drink even if you don’t want it, in which case the club soda basically looks like a vodka soda.

Of course that’s not a valid strategy if you have a problem with alcohol, and cannot be around it. But it’s useful if you just don’t like drinking but would still like to participate socially.

The only problem is that once people get kind of drunk you have to be really drunk yourself to find them tolerable. Drunk people are extremely boring if you’re sober. And there’s an easy solution there too. Just leave early.

I eventually started doing much the same, down to the club soda and lime, but I only did so after my young adult years had passed and even then I would receive a few comments that indicated a disapproval of me remaining fully sober while others around me were not. I am still puzzled by this because almost everyone around me was driving home that night, so either they weren't drinking enough for it to matter, or they were and yet their plans to drive drunk were less notable than my avoidance of alcohol. It was done in more of a joking way, but the sort of joking way that social norms are enforced because even a friendly callout is different than no callout at all.

I’ve experienced this as well and some people can get really weird about it. It’s often insecurity and/or narcissism in thinking you’re making a statement about someone’s life choices. Maybe they do in fact have a problem and you’ve caused them a moment of reflection they don’t want to have. It’s never fun dealing with other peoples neuroticism while you’re trying to have a good time and couldn’t care less they are drinking. The ones I know that hit the bottle the hardest are usually the ones making a big deal about it.

I left even a bit earlier - Oct 2022 and man, what a good decision that was. Huge instant positive impact on the quality of life - i’m reading more stuff that has some value instead of shitstorms, long and unispring threads and always the same memes. I’m not going back.

I got the same effect when I gave up trying to get value from Reddit and blocked it at my router. And to a certain extent, I get a similar QOL improvement when I block myself from HN for a few days.

Seems like a reasonable place to plug my new project:

https://theapricot.io

Follow Substack newsletters, YouTube channels, Spotify podcasts, and subreddits in a Twitter-style feed without all the Twitter junk.

Needs an OPML import and export.

Totally, working on it.

FWIW, Apricot's OPML import is done.

Go to https://app.theapricot.io/, then the settings page.

I think people are still addicted to it. or people who use it a lot think the world actually happens on twitter. its a bubble, and don't realize the world actually goes on with out it. most americans dont use twitter.

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