Per Shiffman and Wester, an “overwhelming majority” of respondents mentioned that Bluesky has a “vibrant and wholesome on-line science group,” whereas Twitter not does. And lots of Bluesky customers reported getting extra bang for his or her buck, so to talk, on Bluesky. They could have a decrease follower rely, however these followers are much more engaged: Somebody with 50,000 Twitter/X followers, for instance, may get 5 likes on a given submit; however on Bluesky, they could solely have 5,000 followers, however their posts will get 100 likes.
In response to Shiffman, Twitter all the time was once within the prime three by way of referral site visitors for posts on Southern Fried Science. Then got here the “Muskification,” and immediately Twitter referrals weren’t even cracking the highest 10. In contrast, in 2025 to date, Bluesky has pushed “100 instances as many web page views” to Southern Fried Science as Twitter. Mockingly, “the blog post that’s gotten probably the most web page views from Twitter is the one about this paper,” mentioned Shiffman.
Ars social media supervisor Connor McInerney confirmed that Ars Technica has additionally seen a gradual dip in Twitter referral site visitors to date in 2025. Moreover, “I can say anecdotally that over the summer season we’ve seen our Bluesky site visitors begin to surpass our Twitter site visitors for the primary time,” McInerney mentioned, attributing the expansion to a mixture of things. “We’ve been posting to the platform extra typically and our viewers there has grown considerably. By my estimate our viewers has grown by 63 % since January. The platform basically has grown rather a lot too—they’d 10 million customers in September of final yr, and this month the most recent numbers point out they’re at 38 million customers. Conversely, our Twitter viewers has remained pretty static throughout the identical time period.”
Bubble, Schmubble
As for scientists trying to share scholarly papers on-line, Shiffman pulled the Altmetrics stats for his and Wester’s new paper. “It’s already one of many 10 most shared papers within the historical past of that journal on social media,” he mentioned, with 14 shares on Twitter/X vs over a thousand shares on Bluesky (as of 4 pm ET on August 20). “If the objective is exhibiting there’s a extra lively educational scholarly dialog on Bluesky—I imply, rattling,” he mentioned.
And whereas there was a gradual drumbeat of op-eds of late in sure legacy media outlets accusing Bluesky of being trapped in its personal liberal bubble, Shiffman, for one, has few considerations about that. “I don’t care about this, as a result of I don’t use social media to argue with strangers about politics,” he wrote in his accompanying weblog submit. “I exploit social media to speak about fish. Once I discuss fish on Bluesky, folks ask me questions on fish. Once I discuss fish on Twitter, folks threaten to homicide my household as a result of we’re Jewish.” He in contrast the present incarnation of Twitter as no higher than 4Chan or TruthSocial by way of the proportion of “conspiracy-prone extremists” within the viewers. “Even if you wish to keep, the algorithm is working in opposition to you,” he wrote.
“There have been numerous opinion items about why Bluesky shouldn’t be helpful as a result of the folks there are typically comparatively left-leaning,” Shiffman instructed Ars. “I haven’t seen any of those self same folks say that Twitter is dangerous as a result of it’s comparatively right-leaning. Twitter shouldn’t be a consultant pattern of the general public both.” And given his give attention to ocean conservation and science-based, data-driven environmental advocacy, he’s more likely to discover a extra engaged and persuadable viewers at Bluesky.
