Earlier this year, Pew Research reported that the majority of US Twitter users are spending less time on the platform since Elon Musk’s acquisition last year. New data shows that another important user group is now moving away from the platform.
According to a survey of thousands of scientists by Nature, more than half of the scientists who use Twitter reported that they have reduced or completely reset their time spent there. And nearly half of those surveyed said they turned to alternative social networks like Mastodon.
Of the 9,200 scientists surveyed, more than 47 percent said they had reduced their use of the site, while about 7 percent said they had abandoned the site altogether. Remarkably, almost the same proportion of people said they opened an account on at least one new platform in the last year.
Among them, Mastodon has been the most widely used, which has seen significant growth since Musk’s announcement of his takeover of Twitter. About 47 percent of scientists said they started using the open-source platform last year. LinkedIn and Instagram were the next most popular platforms with 35 percent and 27 percent respectively. Interestingly, Meta’s rival on Twitter, Threads, took fourth place.
As with previous data from Pew, Nature’s findings show that Twitter usage is declining among those once active on the platform. It also highlights how much Twitter’s dynamics have changed over the past year.
As Nature magazine notes, Twitter has historically been an important medium for researchers and scientists. It was used to publicize research and encourage scientific debate. Twitter has also been a valuable source of data for countless researchers working in everything from public health to linguistics.
But now most of that has changed. Many users now feel that their voices have been suppressed on a platform that prioritizes paid verification content. And the company has made its API so expensive for researchers that many no longer have access to it. While not all scientists who spoke to Nature are ready to give up on Twitter entirely, they think the company’s tactics are affecting a large part of the scientific community.
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