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”.
You need a couple of people to follow, then it’s great! I met most of my Twitter folks on conferences and such. The majority has now moved to Mastodon. It’s mostly programming folks.
But what if I don’t want to follow people, but topics?
That’s why I’m here, and one thing that made Twitter acceptable.
Twitter is people based as well, no?
Idk, I haven’t used it in years. But I thought you could just follow hashtags, no?
I don’t use Mastodon either, so maybe that’s already a thing, idk. It was advertised as “federated Facebook,” and I really don’t like the people-based nature of Facebook (though TBF, haven’t used Facebook in… 10 years?).
There are hashtags on Mastodon as well.
Can I follow them in a reasonable way? I don’t really care who makes the content, I care that it’s reasonably engaging.
Yes, very easy > explore > hashtags > select follow icon in top right
Maybe I’ll check it out then.