The reputation crisis caused on Twitter by the irregular management of Elon Musk, and the resulting escape from users and advertisers, increases concern about the future of science communication on social networks.
About Twitter and scientific communication has already been asked here with Professor Ignacio López-Goñi. Along the same rules, Pablo Otero Tranchero, from the Spanish Institute for Oceanography, has thought about what science loses if Twitter loses.
In addition to the mastodon option as an alternative or plan B, the uncertain evolution of Twitter leads to a deep reconsideration of the way in which both networks between the communities of scientists have been managed so far, as well as the distribution of research results.
Fortunately, the wealth and diversity of the digital ecosystem sends out to Twitter on a large scale. Since Tim Berners-Lee released the World Wide Web software in 1991, his channels to share and multiply knowledge, expression, information, opinion, complaint and criticism.
Reconsideration of science communication on the network
One of the most important consequences of the Twitter crisis is that it has given its users the opportunity to assess how they use the internet and discover that from the commercial entertainment of the website and the proliferation of application markets, a large part of the daily practices in the network is performed under the course of large technological platforms that are managed with your own software.
The researcher Mark Carigan is raised in the blog of the London School of Economics (LSE) if time has not come to reconsider the academic use of Twitter and other commercial platforms.
The good reception of mastodon for the scientific communities makes it possible to see a future for academic networks and the spread of science, which has more to do with the protocols (open for closed) than with the platforms (free against owners).
A few years before this crisis, Mike Masnick, editor of the Techdirt -Blog, had formulated – almost proven – that protocols and not the platforms were the right technological approach to protect freedom of expression, escaped the economic and digital infrastructure by large technological companies.
After what Professor Carlos Scolari has mentioned the war of the platforms, it seems that what is coming is the war of the protocols.
Photopoulos / Unsplash, CC Door
From platforms to protocols
The Mastodon Boom has demonstrated the potential of the Actocol Actocol Actionocol for the management of decentralized social networks. But there are other protocols that also strive to shine in this revolution, such as the Matrix project or the AT protocol, promoted by Jack Dorsey (Twitter Co -Founder) under the Bluesky brand, who proposes to decentralize the experience of the social network user, recurring control of their personal data.
At the same time, Dorsey offers up to a million dollars annually to finance internet projects based on open protocols.
Under the competition protocols, special attention will be needed for the emerging NOSTR project, which promises to overcome the limitations of Twitter and Mastodon to create a social resistant social network and to release the identities of the users of the servers of the servers of a federated network.
In this process, which goes from platforms to protocols, it is foreseeable that the concern of scientists will speed up transitions that are slow and expensive to assume for universities.
This is mentioned by the expert Andy Tattersall: “Academics can easily leave the Twitter square, but it will be much more difficult for their institutions.”
Take care of brands and have a plan B
It is clear that the social capital on Twitter on personal and business brands cannot be canceled. But it is also clear that personal and business brands are humiliating in an environment that remains entangled in chaos and whose future model remains a great unknown.
In this scenario it is reasonable to have a plan B. But that decision should not make without the lessons that have been learned about the internet model that the commercial platforms have built and the teachings that leave behind in the scientific community, the change in open protocols to manage our presence and work on the network.
This article has been published in ‘The conversation. ‘
