[the_third_wave]

Twitter is just as bad as it was before Musk took over with one exception: they removed the blatant partisan censorship. If that makes it worse than before for academics there is more at hand than it just being a viral meme-amplifier unsuited for academic discussions.

[gerwitz]

You’re absolutely correct. Taking the breaks off of American anti-science wingnuts is indeed the “more at hand” that has made it worse than before.

[the_third_wave]

That is not that much of a problem, is it? Any annoying American anti-science wingnut (and what about non-Americans, are they not annoying?) is easily blocked so in that respect not that much has changed. The widening of the Overton window will bring in more of those who previously were censored but that does not make them all - or even most of them - anti-science wingnuts. They just hold opinions which hitherto were deigned off-limits on ideological grounds. As far as I'm concerned this should improve the quality of the discourse instead of diminish it since ideology tends to be more of a hindrance than a help there. That is what the scientific method is about after all: careful observation, applying rigorous scepticism about what is observed, given that cognitive assumptions can distort how one interprets the observation. I want my observations to be scrutinised by those who look at things from a different perspective because they may see problems which I'm likely to overlook. The opposite is true as well, I will see holes which they are likely to overlook.

[xiphias2]

The bots are also removed. It's great to see human answers again even to the most provocative tweets (about help with Metamask and ETH just as an experiment)

[nickthegreek]

That didnt happen.

[the_third_wave]

I don't know and you don't know but xiphias2 seems to know. Can you (xiphias2) describe your 'experiment' and its outcome?

If the bots are 'gone' - are they already, all of them? - that would certainly make it a better place. I'll still not get an account as I find the format not conducive for the type of conversation I'm wont to engage in but it is clear that a bot-free (or at least bot-labelled) and bias-free (as far as possible, there will still be a weird [1] bias but I can live with that) Twitter is less of a problem than the biased bot-hive it used to be.

[1] https://acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/Weird

[xiphias2]

I was looking at this Tweet:

https://twitter.com/coinbureau/status/1602172317022445569?t=...

I don't have more data, and I'm sure there are more bots, but the replies look like they are from humans which is very different from a few months ago.

[nickthegreek]

It is still biased and it is still filled with bots. It will most likely continue to be these 2 things. If anything, chatGPT will make sure its more of both moving forward.