Climate scientists flee Twitter as hostility surges | Hacker News Reader

Climate scientists flee Twitter as hostility surges

aljazeera.com

27 pointsrunarberg24 comments

> …flee twitter as hostility surges…

You can replace “climate scientists” with just about anybody, and you would capture a snapshot of the “twitter experience” for a lot of people

Yup, it's increasingly becoming another right wing echo chamber.

I really meant “anybody.” Every group is in their own echo chamber. It feels like everybody is being harassed by people who don’t agree with them, and they’re feeling morally obligated to harass other people in turn in order to “fight evil,” whatever their personal definition of evil is, and usually with almost no evidence or benefit of the doubt. It’s a big battleground with 1,000 sides

We'll, let's count the propaganda techniques in use here:

1) Typical loaded words in the title, "surging", "covid SURGING", "russia SURGING", "hostility SURGING", etc.

2) Not a single fact in the article, not a single study linked, 100% of the words in the article is anecdotal data. I would be willing to bet every penny of net worth I have that every person referenced in the article about their "thoughts" on Twitter leans extremely hard to one side of the political spectrum. This isn't impartial legitimate reporting.

3) Typical bias where they'll all day long, every day, post negative stories about Twitter, but would they ever, in any universe, to be fair and impartial, also post an article filled with similar anecdotal experiences of people that think Twitter is better now?

4) Of course it's just a hit piece to convince people to leave Twitter, now that the politics they represent have lost control over it, complete with calling out the service that people should now migrate to. Which is the entire point of the article.

Ideally everyone would flee twitter

I hate these kinds of articles because they never actually point to anything concrete.

> Researchers have documented an explosion of hate and misinformation on Twitter since the Tesla billionaire took over in October 2022

That's great, now where are the receipts? Anytime I ever hear about "misinformation on Twitter" it's always just that blanket statement that were supposed to believe.

I can only add an anecdote in an area where I know the lay of the land:

I live near the war, am aware of the propaganda from both sides, and now when I search for Ukraine the misinformation/Russophile volume is off the previous charts.

Why don't you just google for the articles about that?

Because articles should provide their sources, not simply claim things. It is not the readers job.

This article is based off of interviews with climate scientists. If you want their sources, look up the scientists on your favorite search engine, Twitter, or Mastodon.

Al Jazeera is a news journal, not a science journal, usually news journal don’t publish sources in the same way as science journals do. If you are lucky, and the news is about one study in particular, they might link to the study, but most of the time they simply publish the story and it is up to the reader to seek out more details.

I think we are disagreeing about how they should work. I understand that they currently don’t do this. My point is that they should be doing it. It costs the news agencies 5 seconds of their time. But it saved the readers and independent fact-checkers many multiples of that.

I guess that is the point—as well as the value—of posting news articles like these to forums like HN. An ancestor of yours posted a few studies by the ADL which back up a similar point.

Perhaps it is not ideal, but this way the writers of Al Jazeera can focus on their most obvious target audience—people who just want the story—while the more curious among us can find the sources and share on these forums.

I saw that. But I don’t want similar points. I what the exact points put forth by the article.

But again, they already have the sources. They know exactly what reference they are using for facts they bring up. The extra work involved is Ctrl-C + Ctrl-V.

The exact same argument could be said about scientific papers. The benefit of the community is that they will do the detective work of finding the references. I don’t know about you, but I would see this as a serious step backward.

Business documents also have to back up their statements. Even 15 year olds in school are expected to include references.

Let’s look at what they do include links for: > In another analysis, prominent climatologist Katharine Hayhoe monitored responses to a tweet on climate change that she published twice, as an experiment, on separate dates before and after Musk’s takeover.

The italics are mine and they are a hyperlink in the article. Reading that sentence I, and I suspect many others, would expect the hyperlink to take us to something related to Katharine Hayhoe‘a work. But it doesn’t. It takes us to [1], which is talking about Musk making himself the sole director. That link is basically irrelevant as a reference for that paragraph.

[1]: https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2022/11/1/elon-musk-fires-...

I’m actually not sure the Al Jazeera writer has the sources, as this piece is done by interviewing the scientists. The journalist simply asked the scientists and reported on what they said. Surely the journalist could ask the scientists for sources, and maybe they should have, and maybe they did but the scientist didn’t have them at hand at that exact moment.

But if you are interested, here is the tweet in question: https://twitter.com/KHayhoe/status/1640915926152298497

In journalism it is often more important to find sources which back each other up, rather then finding original research. In this case the journalist interviews a few scientists that all tell a similar story. I think the journalist here is simply doing what they have been trained to do.

The link you provide unfortunately cannot be the source. The article discusses an A/B test on an identical tweet that they put out. The tweet is talking about follower changes (research that was done by Ketan Joshi "and a few other climate folks", which based on Katharine's wording of the tweet it doesn't look like she had a part in).

I would agree with you, but articles almost never cite their sources directly, and never really did.

Poor past practices are not an argument for continuing to do them.

They also used to be written on actual paper which doesn’t support hyperlinking, but the Internet thankfully does.

The Anti-defamation League(ADL) has reports on

How reinstated accounts are posting antisemitic content(hate)

https://www.adl.org/resources/blog/threads-hate-how-twitters...

A surge in QAnon content which coincides with Musk's takeover(misinformation)

https://www.adl.org/resources/blog/qanon-resurgent-twitter

The Center for Countering Digital Hate(CCDH) has reports on

How Anti-LGBTQ narratives have risen 119% after Musk bought Twitter(hate)

https://counterhate.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Toxic-Twi...

More information in other reports are available at both https://www.adl.org/resources/search/research-analysis?keywo... and https://counterhate.com/research/?_sf_s=twitter

I'm not exactly interested in discussing what exactly constitutes an "explosion" or what's "hateful" or "misinformation," but those are fine starting points for garnering more receipts as you put it.

> In another analysis, prominent climatologist Katharine Hayhoe monitored responses to a tweet on climate change that she published twice, as an experiment, on separate dates before and after Musk’s takeover.

> She counted the hostile comments and examined them for signs they came from bots – automated accounts that researchers say are pushing mass misinformation.

> Inauthentic accounts can be identified by analysis tools such as Bot Sentinel.

> Replies from apparent trolls or bots increased 15 to 30 times over a two-month period compared with the previous two years, Hayhoe tweeted in January 2023.

> in the past few months, since the takeover and changes at Twitter, the amount, vituperativeness, and intensity of abuse has skyrocketed

> vituperativeness

> vituperative - : uttering or given to censure : containing or characterized by verbal abuse. [1]

I suppose I've got my word of the day.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/vituperative

We've banned this account for using HN primarily for ideological battle. That's not allowed, regardless of what ideology you're battling for or against, and—before the inevitable objections roll in: yes, we ban plenty of accounts battling from opposing sides (and I have the flame burn scars to prove it), and no, we don't care about your ideology or opinions. We care about protecting this forum for its intended purpose, which is curious conversation on topics of intellectual interest. Flamewar and internet drama are off topic because they destroy that.

If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

Please, however, don't create accounts to break HN's rules with. That will eventually get your main account banned as well.

p.s. This post is not about the comment I'm replying to. I'm putting it here simply because this was your most recent comment and I want you to see it. Rather, it's about the account history as a whole, which includes way too much ideological flamewar to be in keeping with the site guidelines.

But climate change measures are all hypocritical and unscientific

1) The Carbon credits system

2) Forcing developing countries to reduce their energy usage, while still maintaining the Petrodollar. Sucking up to oil states and keeping the dollar strong at all costs

3) Controlling nuclear tech and restricting it from those who need it most

4) Blaming India and China for overall energy use while using 2x to 10x per capita energy

5) Pushing the foolish adoption of wind and solar which are just going to help oil companies always sell you base load

6) Shutting down existing nuclear reactors, not building new ones (looking at Germany here especially and the US)

7) Making stupid laws like rationing power

8) Blaming cryptocurrency as a bogeyman

So IMHO - if you're worried about climate change, it's legit, but whatever the US and EUs reactions to this has been a complete farce. So if you want to be heard as a scientist, maybe some criticism of the way in which its being handled is due

That I will agree with. Much of the problem is that most of the people who support doing something (voters, not scientists) have bought into the small-is-good hysteria. Nuke is inherently big. Politicians unfortunately respond to voters over science.

5) is not factually true.

One viable alternative, that would not require extra building, is to change how hydro power is used. Instead of running it semi-continuously, run it as the counterpart to solar and wind instead of fossil fuels. So in the day it does nothing, while at night it runs at higher capacity that usual.

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