Where did the tech people on Twitter go?

I can't speak for others but I just stopped. I still hang out on IRC and in a couple Discords but I mostly scroll through RSS now -- or read books.

I briefly scan X maybe once a week, but its a firehose of brainrot and view farming. My Bluesky feeds seem very politically angry and they talk about Elon more than people do on X. I feel for the anger, given the situation in the US, but it's just not mentally healthy. Mastodon is that, but worst -- share any non-mainstream thought and your replies are full of haters. I follow "famous" tech people and engineers, if it matters.

In many ways, I like it better this way. I'm forced to be bored more, and when I get the urge to check X or something, the mess that it is, curbs that pretty quickly.

I don't know where they went. The devs I personally know who left the platform didn't go anywhere. They just stopped using services along those lines entirely. They're an older group, though. That might matter.

> Where do you go for casual interactions with a broader range of tech-ish folk across disciplines?

I go here.

Somewhere less loathesome.

Of all the social media platforms I use, X is the easiest to shape into what I want. Use muted words, unfollow and mute engagement farmers, and follow small high quality accounts. If you’re still seeing gas station fights, your feed needs further curating.

My own blog, and then having conversations with people through e-mail (strangely enough). I feel that if I just am on my own platform, nobody is going to rug-pull me in a few years to come, contributing online to social media has left a bad taste in my mouth. I don't care for the other platforms either.

I still use it. But frequent algorithm changes is making me lose the motivation to post. No engagement. It's become full of AI slop rage and engagement baiting.

A lot of noise only works if you have a huge audience.

I went to threads. I'm not anti-twitter, I just stopped getting engagement from real people. I knew many hundreds of real people who follow me, and I know they're active on twitter, but I just stopped appearing in their feeds.

I follow plenty of technical accounts on Mastodon, a lot more gamedev accounts on Bluesky (which is where most of the Twitter diaspora ended up I think.) Discovery can be a bit awkward on Mastodon (it seems easier on Bluesky.)

from my pov, tech people are still primarily on X. like 90-95%.

Meta's gemma team was on X recently looking for advice on MOE and reasoning for gemma.

Qwen announces on X: @Alibaba_Qwen or @JustinLin610

Basically all of linux and programming happens on X.

discord for sure has discussions. LM studio pretty much only exists there. Reddit is most just dead internet at this point.

Freenode's hostile takeover during covid pretty much ended irc. An official end to the IRC era.

>Where did they go? I have found a few, but not many, on Mastodon and Bluesky.

The USA dominates tech to be sure, so the USA political polarization would disproportionately impact this sure. But it was temporary as mastodon and bluesky declined and everyone seems to be back to X.