what are platforms you sciency people use to communicate?

i ask because Bonfire is a free libre open source project proposing a federated social media approachqand it seems cool… but i can’t join the pilot program since i’m not in a school or such organization.

Idk what’s already in use though so this is a joint shoutout and a question. Like, what way do you use to chat about nerdy stuff rn? Does this Bonfire.social project fill a niche you’re missing alot in?

[1] https://openscience.network/pilots/

Open Science Network

Reclaim scientific discourse with federated digital spaces where researchers control their conversations, data and collaborations

“sciency people” is a huge community, I think even within computer science, each community have their own perferred platform.

Algorithm, foundation, and automata theory people often don’t have social media or on mailing lists; more foundational fields like programming language people often perfer Mastodon; more flushy system, network, and security people often perfer bluesky; AI/ML people, of course, are often found on xitter.