By Climate activists of Extinction Rebellion wearing masks of company CEOs including X’s Elon Musk take part in a demonstration in Berlin, Germany, on April 13th, 2023 | Photo by JOHN MACDOUGALL / AFP via Getty Images
Almost half of “Environmental Twitter” has vanished from the platform now called X, new research shows. A wave of “environmentally oriented” users abandoned the site after Elon Musk took over, according to a study published this week in the journal Trends in Ecology & Evolution.
The study confirms fears about how Musk’s leadership might quell climate discourse and scientific research on the platform. Before he took the wheel, Twitter was an important tool for environmental researchers and activists alike.
“We saw that there was a vibrant community engaging in discourse around environmental topics. This then raised the question of how this community may be impacted by changes to Twitter’s governance,” Charlotte Chang, lead author of the…