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Social media for research: Alternatives to twitter/X

In recent months, due to the new ownership of Twitter (and renaming to X, among other business decisions), people have been seeking alternatives to the platform for their professional communities of practice and work as well as for personal use. Below are some alternatives you might want to check out.

Bluesky

"Bluesky is a decentralised social network created by Jack Dorsey, the former Twitter CEO who started it while still in the role. Its decentralized nature comes from the AT Protocol, developed by the Bluesky team, and provides transparency into how the app was built and works." - Tamilore Oladipo

You need an invite code to sign up to Bluesky, so you might need to ask your friends and acquaintances if they have one they can give you.

Mastodon

Mastodon is written as free and open-source software (FOSS) for federated microblogging, which anybody can contribute code to, and which anyone can run on their own server infrastructure, if they wish, or join servers run by other people within the fediverse network. - Wikipedia

A slightly tricky thing about Mastodon is that you need to choose a server when you sign up. Some severs let anyone join, whereas others are invite-only or require approval by an admin after you've verified your identity (for example as a scientific researcher). You can see and interact with content posted from people on any other server (unless one server has blocked the other).