I gave in to peer pressure and finally got Twitter right before shit completely hit the fan, even though I was already uncomfortable with it. I already had a Mastodon user, but not under my real name.

Then, during the exodus, I created a Mastodon user for academic use. This was a few months before defending my PhD in social sciences.

For a while, I was posting the same content on both platforms. On Twitter I am followed by a lot of people in my field, and many of them are still active. On Mastodon, there's like.. two active people specifically in my field.

Still, whenever I post anything both places, I have gotten more interactions on Mastodon than on Twitter. On Twitter a couple of people see it and boost, and they can be somewhat central in the field. But then it kind of deflates. On Mastodon, I get boosts from the ones there in the field, people in adjacent fields (for example the #rstats crowd), interested people from civil society, commentators, a real variety of people. Hell, the other day I was boosted by a folk singer I've been a fan of for years but that I didn't even know was on there.

Meanwhile, I occasionally check the temperature on Bluesky, and I bridge my posts there. Many in my field signed up while it was invite only. Some of them posted one or two posts back then. I haven't seen any actively since, and nobody from my field has followed my bridged account - but one R stats person has.

I guess they must be on Twitter still, if they are anywhere.

Anyway, point is, my field indeed failed to migrate. But I still achieve more by posting on Mastodon than on Twitter.