Many people and organisations are leaving Twitter.
Are there any plans for iNaturalist to move to Mastodon?
It would be nice if iNaturalist would at least crosspost so people who leave Twitter can stay in touch.
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I follow iNat on FB.
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I follow iNat on iNat.
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Were any on Twit-ter?
Twitter has been an absolute dumpster fire from its very beginning.
I don’t imagine Twitter’s future has much impact on iNat.
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iNat has a twitter account with 60,000+ followers, with things like observation of the day, blog posts, etc being posted. Not an inconsiderable audience, especially for more casual users who may not see these things on iNat itself
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That’s 2.4%% of iNat users.
Not insignificant, but not significant either.
Sure, Twitter has an impact, but pretty much all anyone needs to know about Twitter is in the first 4 letters.
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Remember recently, when iNat suddenly went dark? It happens.
Then we NEED an alternative to find out - where have you gone? When will you be back?
I can’t even log in to the forum, because I use my (gone dark) iNat profile.
It’s not about using Twitter, it is about the news feed aspect when it is required.
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Automated email alert?
Simple and doesn’t require any other resources.
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Most people - including most iNat users - aren’t obsessively focused on the US culture wars. I doubt many iNatters will leave Twitter, and it would be a shame if iNat stopped posting to them for the sake of making a political statement.
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It’s not my place to make any judgment, and I avoid most social media personally, but it does seem important that research bodies remain impartial.
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Yes, but what happens when the platform itselft (Twitter) fails to be impartial?
What happens when Twitter mutates into something like, Parler?
I don’t think participating in platform that is contributing measurable harm to our society has any merit whatsoever.
While I see companies like GM and Audi divesting from and leaving Twitter as largely performative, GM and Audi aren’t going to sell less products because they’re not maintaining pointless social media accounts, period.
I do however, think it’s highly admirable for any individual user, or organization to “rip off the bandaid” and begin to divest from Twitter and similar social media platforms.
it’s just like quitting smoking cigarettes. you know it was stupid from the beginning, but you started doing it, and you know that it’s not helping you at all, it’s just slowly killing you, it’s time to stop.
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As Diana mentioned, the problem is that Twitter collates many uses, some harmful and some beneficial. When I need to find out about a service outage (be it a website or my regional train running late/being cancelled), Twitter is by far the most convenient tool, compared to websites which will often go down with the service, don’t allow for fast-paced interaction with a community manager and where the info can be harder to find for the average less-technically minded user. Mailing lists/alert aren’t ideal, since they require registration and add to our daily “173 unread emails” problem.
Another aspect is outreach, which is one of, if not the, primary purposes of iNaturalist. Social media, whether we like it or not, is where the general public is and most likely will continue to be, whatever happens to Twitter or Meta as companies. I’m skeptical about whether you can restrict yourself to ethical platforms and still engage with the general public (Instagram is still owned by Meta, TikTok is its own can of worms, television and radio are and always were a breeding ground for dubious harmful stuff).
I’m not saying that I’m not concerned or that iNat absolutely needs to stay on Twitter until their last server shuts down, but I’m not sure I want iNat needs to be the vanguard in that particular fight.
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When it fails to be impartial?! It has (edit to remove “been”) failed to be impartial for a long time. That’s why Parler was created.
I agree with your bandaid/cigarette ideas. I stopped using Twitter a long time ago. Missed it at first, but not anymore. I consider it and most similar platforms antisocial media, not social media.
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To answer the OP: currently there are no plans for iNat to leave Twitter (or Facebook or Instagram). Yes, they all have serious problems but they are also useful avenues for outreach.
And really, we post to those platforms maybe 8-10 times a week and I sometimes retweet cool papers or projects to give them a boost, so it’s not like we’re hardcore contributers of content. IMO Twitter is still valuable for those things, as well as keeping an eye on discussion about iNat, and there’s no need to rush any decision (which, of course, is one of the main criticisms of social media).
As for Mastodon, I personally haven’t investigated it yet but it’s worth considering. Word is that they’re currently suffering some overload issues so I’m going to give them a break for the moment.
I’m going to leave this thread open for now, but as the original question has been answered, it will be closed if the conversation turns into a broader discussion about Twitter or other social media.
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I’m going to treat this as if it was written exactly as intended, with no typos.
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Thanks for the answer!
I have no idea why anyone would expect twitter to become worse, bot-invested damp where you will be socially killed for any ideas that are different from views of masses, now bought by a guy owned by Pentagon, hated by sjw-s that fight for freedom of speech by banning anyone they don’t like from the platform. I don’t know a worse site that is so widely known. If it worked to post iNat news before, it’ll work in the future.
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