Julia Programming Language on Bluesky

We have a new social media account for the Julia Programming Language!

Follow us for release news, JuliaCon updates, package announcements, community events, and other social media fun!

We look forward to building a thriving Julia community on Bluesky :slight_smile:

A reminder to follow the Community Standards when interacting with official Julia Language social media.

Interested in volunteering to help us improve our social media outreach? Email us at contact@julialang.org or raye@julialang.org

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nice to be followed by my favorite lang! followed back, thank you!

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Are you discontinuing the Xitter account?

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We have not made plans to do so currently, but it may happen. I can say as one of the people with access to social media I am more likely to post on Bluesky than X, so we shall see…

If we end up seeing little to no traction on X posts (we already see vastly more on Bluesky this week) we may just squat on the username but leave it mostly quiet.

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I think I saw that the JuliaLang Mastodon server was discontinued, but did the account just migrate to a different instance or was shut down entirely?

Not to go down the same route as the current Slack vs Zulip discussion, but the Community Channels section should probably be updated at some point. We probably shouldn’t have a section “Twitter” but maybe “(Short-Form) Social Media”, “Microblogging” or whatever the appropriate title is for the category that encompasses X/Mastodon/Bluesky/Threads. Then, as text, we could have

On microblogging platforms such as X, Mastodon, Bluesky, and Threads, use the #julialang hashtag. There are official accounts on … that will post Julia updates.

What “official” accounts do we currently have on what platforms? Maybe I’ll make a PR on the website, if you can fill me in on which accounts we might want to link to.

I would actually agree that perhaps it would be good to drop support for X. That platform has come a very long way since the original Twitter. With the overt desire of its current owner to provide a platform centered on misinformation and abuse, one might even come to the conclusion that engaging on X (and thus encouraging others to be on the platform) is not really compatible with our community standards. Not a decision that needs to be made immediately, obviously, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with squatting the name, as long as that’s still allowed. I do the same.

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I am sorry if this is a silly question, but: Why yet another channel? There is slack, zulip, discourse. Why is there a need for another one?

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Because microblogging services are not a closed space with only the Julia community like our internal forums (Slack, Zulip, Discourse). They are shared with the rest of the world, and especially for academics, very important to gain visibility and publicize results.

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Ah, that makes sense! And it also makes sense to move away from X, as that odious platform is hardly compatible with the ethos of our community.

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Uhh… I wouldn’t jump to that conclusion so fast. The tech community is not only diverse in Gender, disability, etc but also in political orientation and so on. The only thing that we share as a community IMHO is the love for the Julia language. I think spreading out to multiple platforms is good though, as it would reach a diverse audience.

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X spreads hate, lies, misinformation, and abuse. I don’t think that is what we aspire to here.

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Just a wee friendly note! I have been amassing a list of Julia programmers on BlueSky so if you are considering joining BlueSky, check out this list:

Right now we are nearing 100 people on that list. If this comes up, we’re going to need a bigger list! :scream: :juliaheartpulsing:

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I think every platform can spread hate, lies, misinformation, etc to some degree, but they also spread truth, contrarian ideas, diverse opinions, etc. Moderation is about balance. The only platform that doesn’t spread hate is no platform. Diversity of ideas is important to me. X is not 4chan.

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It’s pretty close to 4chan. This isn’t as much about individuals spreading hate speech as the platform itself actively pushing misinformation and abuse. This is also not about political diversity. We can have all kinds of disagreements about policies. But I would urge the community not to engage with platforms that are antithetical to its core values of inclusion and tolerance. We don’t hold meetups in nazi bars, either. That doesn’t mean you (or anyone else) can’t be on X, or discuss Julia there. Just that there are no official accounts posting there, and that we don’t encourage engagement on that platform.

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If contrarian and diverse means mendacious as opposed to truthful, hateful as opposed to tolerant, abusive instead of respectful, etc., then I pass.

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My god it’s gotten that bad? I’ve never been on 4chan or X so I can’t compare them directly, but my impressions of 4chan from other media is that it’s a dysfunctionally moderated cesspool, so it’s hard to imagine the mainstreamed Twitter could devolve to that even with its rebranding and widely reported reduction of moderation. It certainly would be a waste of time to promote a programming language and civil discourse on a platform with frequent trolling and flamebait.

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Nice to see Julia moving away from X!

Its not just trolling and flamebait, but as an unregulated place it fuels the toxic cycle of hatred and allows this cycle to be turbo-charged by bad powerful actors applying AI (e.g. russia).

Lets just hope bluesky doesn’t sell out to another immoral tech bro… (personally I believe this is just a matter of time, and proper discourse will only be possible if participants are authenticated as humans and it’s moderated to minimal but robust standard of hateful speech).

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IMO it is actually worse than unregulated because it actively suppresses people that e.g. talk about gender diversity, criticise Trump and his first lady Elon, push back on hate speech…

While in theory you are right for any somewhat neutral and sane platform, Twitter is definitely beyond that. It actively promotes the spreading of hate, lies and misinformation while actively prohibiting the converse. As such diversity is severly hampered (of course it’s not 100% one-sided but it is very much apparent imo). Twitter is not a free platform, no matter how often Elon says so. In fact, when he says “free” the only freedom he thinks of is his own to blabber whatever he wants and ban everyone criticising him.

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I am in :slight_smile:

My reason to join Bluesky is you.

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Thanks! This motivated me to make an account. Appreciate all your work for the community as always @rayegun :slight_smile:

I hope that we all eventually move completely away from Twitter. There is no room in a community like this for the ideas spread on that platform or its owner (make a new account on Twitter and see how much misinformation is immediately shown to you, for example). This is not a matter of “political orientation” - if the ideas spread by a certain political side happen to perfectly align with hate and discrimination (amongst countless other things) then no I don’t think it deserves to be respected or seen.

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