Ten years ago, science entered an extremely online era. On Twitter, some academics, traditionally siled in their niche fields, have developed unprecedented public profiles. Neil Hall, a genome scientist in the United Kingdom, responded by creating what he called theKardashian Index“, a satirical measure comparing a scientist’s publications with his followers on Twitter. The K-index – and countless lists of scientists to follow – has sparked an intense debate about the role of scientists in communicating their work (and more) to the public.

Last week, Hall, now director of the Earlham Institute, joined several of his fellow scientists in leaving Twitter, more recently known as X, for the new social media platform Bluesky. Some have left it permanently, deleting all their old tweets, while others are simply creating an outpost as millions of new users join Bluesky in the wake of the US election. While a decade ago, science and health researchers were preoccupied with new public-facing roles online, they now face a new challenge: how to support scientific conversations and public health messages as the voices of experts and institutions are scattered across Internet platforms.

It’s difficult to quantify the scale of the scientific exodus to Bluesky, designed by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and launched in February 2023. This week, the total number of accounts on Bluesky surpassed 20 million, including the owners of many of X’s most followed accounts. publication on science, medicine, and health policy. Members of these communities describe a slow collapse in engagement on won a second presidential term. Since then, Bluesky has become a possible successor to X as a meeting place for science and health experts, finding a scale of feedback and engagement that was lacking on other alternatives like Mastodon and Threads.

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