I'd go a step further -- there was never a public forum on Big tech for the past 15 years. Big tech was always the illusion of a thing and not the thing itself.
Open protocols are the only way to have a real public forum.
Comment on The fediverse is an opportunity learned societies can’t ignore
seaQueue@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I see mastodon as an opportunity for the education community in particular to take back the public forum they had before twatter went to shit.
IMO the best outcome for everyone is universities offering hosted mastodon service to their students and faculty the same way they offer hosted email. That makes Twitter-style discussion possible in the academic sphere without the profit-motivated problems that traditional social media is saddled with.
sj_zero 11 months ago
Emotional_Series7814@kbin.melroy.org 11 months ago
Genuine question, as a non-Twitter user, what was Twitter-style discussion that held value like? I only ever heard about it being a quick source for certain official outlets to broadcast to others, a place for political fighting and general nastiness, and about how you weren't able to have nuanced discussions within the small character limit.
Hjalamanger@feddit.nu 11 months ago
I’ve been on Mastodon (but not twitter) for a little while and I wonder the same thing. I basically saw no interesting discussion, just “microblogs” and many that’s just how it is.
VubDapple@lemmy.world 11 months ago
It’s a great idea but driving eyeballs there would be so difficult given how conservative academics can be with regard to where they prefer to communicate.
vivadanang@lemm.ee 11 months ago
eh, given the choice between literal ‘nazi filled cess pool’ and this… I think the academics know which would be better in the long run.
seaQueue@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Twitter has been the medium of choice for a bunch of fields for years now. You don’t see a lot of academic communication there because much of it is private to followers only to avoid harassment. Followers only Twitter started being a pretty normal thing maybe 10 years ago in response to right wing harassment of women, academics and anyone not conservative white and Christian.