The Carpentries retires its X/Twitter accounts and Facebook profile

Late last year we released a statement in which we stated that we will continue “to monitor changes at Twitter in conjunction with internal discussions about whether our presence on the platform will continue,” and we can now announce that as of today, 20 October 2023, we will no longer be active or engaging on any of our accounts on X (formerly known as Twitter).

The developments at X that we have tracked over the past year have left us with no hope of its compatibility, as it is currently configured, with our core values, and the platform fosters engagements that run counter to our Code of Conduct. It is no longer a safe space for many members of our community, and our continued presence on the platform is not reflective of our organisation’s commitment to “building a diverse, equitable, and inclusive community that values all individuals and their unique identities.”

The main account from which we have been engaging on X lately has been @thecarpentries, but previously we have also engaged with our community on @swcarpentry, @datacarpentry, @LibCarpentry, and on @CarpentryCon. All five accounts will now be inactive.

As part of this change, but for the purpose of realigning and streamlining our communications, we have also decided to retire our Facebook page and we will also no longer be engaging there.

Even though we will no longer engage from these accounts, we will not delete them so as to preserve the archive of our past activities and interactions, and to maintain the integrity of The Carpentries by making sure none of our past handles are taken up by anyone else intending to present as us on these platforms in our absence.

The Way Forward

All our social media engagement from this point will be on Mastodon as hachyderm.io/@thecarpentries, on LinkedIn as the-carpentries, and on YouTube as The Carpentries. We encourage members of our community to join us on these platforms and follow our accounts there. If anyone needs assistance with joining Mastodon, we have co-developed with rOpenSci a Mastodon Quick Start Guide to support our members making such a move.

We will be utilising the following hashtags in our social media, and we encourage members of the community to do the same to make it easier to find relevant communications:

• #Carpentries
• #CarpentriesCommunity: for posts relevant to our community
• #CarpentriesWorkshops: for posts about Carpentries workshops
• #Carpentries(Community Role; e.g. #CarpentriesInstructors): for posts relevant to a specific community role
• #Carpentries(Subcommunity; e.g. #CarpentriesAfrica): for posts relevant to a specific subcommunity
• #CarpentriesGratitudes: for posts sharing gratitude within the community
• #CarpentriesLessons: for posts about Carpentries lessons
• #CarpentryCon: for posts relevant to CarpentryCon as our CarpentryCon Twitter / X account will be inactive
• #CarpentryConnect: for posts about CarpentryConnect events
• #CarpentriesCommunitySessions: for posts announcing upcoming Community Sessions
• #CarpentriesLocalisation: for posts relevant to our localisation efforts

If there are other platforms that you know that we should consider and where our community is active, please let us know as we are continuing to monitor the developments on the social media landscape. You can email us at community@carpentries.org.

Lastly, if you are not yet on any of the platforms where we will be engaging, please sign up for Carpentries Clippings, our newsletter where you can keep up to date with developments and announcements from the Core Team.

We are quite excited about this new journey in our communications, and we hope to engage with many of you through our newsletter and social media accounts.