Half of users regularly tweeting about the climate crisis abandoned Twitter after Elon Musk's takeover.
Climate change voices have left Twitter since Elon Musk's takeover
New analysis suggests that the "exodus of environmental users" on the platform - now known as X - is an "existential threat" to a vital way of informing people who want to take climate action.
Musk described himself as a "free speech absolutist" and radically cut Twitter's content moderation after finalising his takeover last October.
The researchers studied 380,000 users who tweeted regularly about global warming and found that 47.5 per cent became inactive on Twitter in the six months following Musk's takeover.
Professor Charlotte Chang, who led the research for Pomona College in the United States, said: "The incredible power of Twitter was that it was this open forum where people could share ideas and opinions and influence other people.
"We have this immense challenge of empowering stakeholders across all sectors of society to take action to halt the loss of biodiversity and to combat catastrophic climate change.
"We were pretty disheartened to find that after the sale, our environmental Twitter community has really declined."
Chang said it was uncertain where the environmental discourse on social media will now take place as Mastodon, Threads, and Instagram are yet to replicate the popularity of Twitter for discussing the issue.