I noticed a huge influx of new users which I immediately linked to the Musk/Twitter deal. After all, the second "wave" of newcomers was when Musk just announced his interest in the deal (the first one was after Trump got banned from Twitter). However I also noticed that the majority of the newcomers are scientists/academics and wondered why... Then I found out why... Science Mag wrote a fucking article about Mastodon! 🤣🤣

Not sure how I feel about it though. On one side, I welcome more meaningful content and interesting profiles that are actually "alive". On another hand, Twitter always was an algorithm-centered, biased, privately-owned company so leaving it only NOW is just hypocrisy imho. I feel like most of these newcomers don't really hate biases and censorship, they just hate when right-wingers do it (or even just people they personally perceive as right-wingers). Not to mention, they will quickly realize that the freedom of speech here is arguably more extreme than Twitter will ever have.

In any case, welcome. I am a scientist myself although I'm trying to distance myself from the "academic" dimension of it. Just try not to be insufferable.