Climate scientists flee Twitter as hostility surges
www.france24.com
Scientists suffering insults and mass-spam are abandoning Twitter for alternative social networks as hostile climate-change denialism surges on the platform following Elon Musk's takeover.

EDIT: I didn’t notice in the original post, the article is from 2023

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/19707239

Researchers have documented an explosion of hate and misinformation on Twitter since the Tesla billionaire took over in October 2022 – and now experts say communicating about climate science on the social network on which many of them rely is getting harder.

Policies aimed at curbing the deadly effects of climate change are accelerating, prompting a rise in what experts identify as organised resistance by opponents of climate reform.

Peter Gleick, a climate and water specialist with nearly 99,000 followers, announced on May 21 he would no longer post on the platform because it was amplifying racism and sexism.

While he is accustomed to “offensive, personal, ad hominem attacks, up to and including direct physical threats”, he told AFP, “in the past few months, since the takeover and changes at Twitter, the amount, vituperativeness, and intensity of abuse has skyrocketed”.

    • Siegfried@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1314·
      2 months ago

      Oh, i didnt know this was like IT. i’ll tell my russians friends just to ignore putin’s regime

      • Eximius@lemmy.worldEnglish
        271·
        2 months ago

        If by ignore, you mean stop paying taxes and working in any capacity for government in one go, yes would work. The only fear is being singled out, if more than 0.5% of the people do it, army wont even have the guts to get tanks out, they will join.

        • Siegfried@lemmy.worldEnglish
          141·
          2 months ago

          Touché

          Venezuela has ~70% of the people against the regime, (nearly 90% counting the 5M that were not allowed to vote) and the needle isn’t even moving.

          And in Russia being “singled out” is apparently a national tradition.

          Sorry, I may be over pessimistic today.

          • Eximius@lemmy.worldEnglish
            4·
            2 months ago

            I guess that’s a fair example. But logically sounds impossible for such control over the population to be had. If a group went out to the streets to oust the government, you would say at least maybe 45% would join.

        • rottingleaf@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          2 months ago

          No. Dunno where did you take that 0.5% from, it’s not empirically confirmed by anything.

          Like 20% if you want to see civil war. Like 40% if you want to see regime change.

          • Eximius@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            2 months ago

            There is the semi-usually-known research that suggests 3.5% is enough for non-violent protests to reach changes. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7312/chen15682

            0.5% is 1 in 200 people, essentially everyone knowing personally one person who is against the government. Maybe it isn’t enough.

            But also, 0.5% homogenously (instead of country-wide being concentrated in Moscow), would be 600k people peacefully marching in Moscow streets

            • rottingleaf@lemmy.worldEnglish
              2·
              2 months ago

              It doesn’t work. It’s some urban legend that this is sufficient. Even those 600k may or may not be stopped by a threat of real ammo being used. I’m not even talking about coordination.

              One can “prove” anything with selectively chosen statistics.

              • Eximius@lemmy.worldEnglish
                1·
                2 months ago

                They werent selectively chosen. " An original, aggregate data set of all known major nonviolent and violent resistance campaigns from 1900 to 2006 is used to test these claims." As well as any researcher who isn’t a complete buffoon would only look at statistics that has only a 2-3 sigma chance of only being stochastic noise.

                • rottingleaf@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  1·
                  2 months ago

                  The set of indicators, of course, was selectively chosen. The authors, of course, have decided which of these they consider important and which don’t, that is, decided upon weights and criteria.

                  • Eximius@lemmy.worldEnglish
                    11·
                    2 months ago

                    That is complete unfounded fluff words. No paper would be published if it was biased and as selective as you say. Look at the paper at least briefly and we can discuss.

                    I think you can download it here: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/240678278_Why_Civil_Resistance_Works_The_Strategic_Logic_of_Nonviolent_Conflict

                    Of interest maybe would be the indicators of a campaigns success:

                    The outcomes of these campaigns are identiªed as “success,” “limited success,” or “failure.” To be designated a “success,” the campaign must have met two criteria: (1) its stated objective occurred within a reasonable period of time (two years) from the end of the campaign; and (2) the campaign had to have a discernible effect on the outcome.40 A “limited success” occurs when a campaign obtained signiªcant concessions (e.g., limited autonomy, local power sharing, or a non-electoral leadership change in the case of dictatorship) although the stated objectives were not wholly achieved (i.e., territorial independence or regime change through free and fair elections).41 A campaign is coded a “failure” if it did not meet its objectives or did not obtain signiªcant concessions.42

      • tourist@lemmy.worldEnglish
        4·
        2 months ago

        Pardon my ignorance. I may have a mild brain injury.

        Could you perhaps rephrase?

        I’m not sure if I understood what you said.

        • Siegfried@lemmy.worldEnglish
          7·
          2 months ago

          In IT (the movie and, i presume, also in the book) ::: spoiler spoiler The kids realize that IT feeds on attention and that the only way to fight it is by ignoring it :::

          Imo, shitter (X) is a cesspool as it is now, but I dont believe that leaving it to the hordes is a solution to anything. We need a better approach to deal with this people.

          • tourist@lemmy.worldEnglish
            2·
            2 months ago

            Ah, that makes sense. I thought you meant IT as in information technology. Was very confused.

            Brain still good yey

            edit: typo. perhaps I need to make that appointment