THE REAL CANCEL CULTURE 
Climate scientists flee Twitter as hostility surges following Musk's takeover

NEWS WIRES
Tue, 23 May 2023 at 11:22 pm GMT-6·1-min read


Scientists suffering insults and mass-spam are abandoning Twitter for alternative social networks as hostile climate-change denialism surges on the platform following Elon Musk's takeover.

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".
Climate tweets decline

Robert Rohde, a physicist and lead scientist at the non-profit environmental data analysis group Berkeley Earth, analysed activity on hundreds of accounts of widely followed specialists posting about climate science before and after the takeover.

He found climate scientists' tweets were losing impact. The average number of likes they received was down 38 percent and average retweets fell 40 percent.

Others have abandoned Twitter altogether.