Ours is one of many fields troubled by Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter (see Nature https://doi.org/jnbn; 2022). Conservation culturomics gathers and analyses digital data to gain insights into people’s interactions with nature (R. J. Ladle et al. Front. Ecol. Environ. 14, 269–275; 2016). Twitter has been one of the most important sources for this field, allowing researchers to explore, for example, public awareness of biodiversity and biological invasions.