So, Substack is nothing like Twitter. I personally like it better, but it’s a fancy mailing list as far as I know - provides subscription options and a web archive. I honestly think this microblogging is not really want a scientist (or anyone who has nuance in their writing or opinions or thoughts) would want - it’s a soundbite at best. So going back to basically a mailing list (that operates like a blog) is a big improvement to me. And providing monetization for the posters and platform via subscriptions seems more sustainable for more types of content.

I can see some people who thought Twitter pre Musk was golden going for Bluesky simply because of the founder’s personal brand. Otherwise, I have trouble thinking why people would go for Meta’s anything new - given how poorly their new products have gone recently (metaverse?). So in the free and open, of course Mastodon makes sense, and I’m on that, but I don’t find any community or real discussions on it. The format just isn’t conducive to that IMHO.

I’ve been seeing more and more credible journalists and scientists popping up on Mastodon. No idea if that’s a wider trend or just my limited experience.

Something to keep on mind is that Twitter (and Twitter followers) never had a log of weight in academic promotion discussions. You could be a “public scholar” on Twitter but that might not help you with tenure.

Something like substack might work better because it will give academics a “hard count” of followers with whom they share their work beyond scholarly publications.

Long story short, moving from Twitter benefits academics more than staying.

Why am I not surprised that Joe Rogan was involved in this?