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Nicholas A. Christakis Profile picture
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8 Jan, 11 tweets, 4 min read
Twitter permanently suspends Donald Trump account. I understood why they resisted until now, despite his prior violations, given the fact that he was president, but consistency is so important to values and public policy. Still, better late than never. nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news…
My key issue here is consistency. If others had to abide Twitter rules, I never liked that politicians, incl Trump, didn’t.

Distinctly, I also feel that monopolistic companies (eg, public square ones — see classic case of malls) might need to be regulated like public utilities.
This is a good example of why consistency is important and also so difficult. Will Twitter now delete any other accounts violating its rules?

To be clear, directly fomenting violence (and insurrection) is a special kind of speech.
This is also surely true. Again: consistency is key issue for me.
For completeness, here is Twitter’s explanation of the public interest exception for politicians (though I do understand the rationale).
For subtle and fearless and consistent thinking about the issue of whether and why politicians should have their accounts suspended from public-square-type platforms (and for much other wise commentary about myriad subjects) check out @conor64
Another set of good points.
A senior member of the @ACLU weighs in.
And now here is @navalny, a man I admire risking his life for free elections, making two arguments similar to these: 1) consistency in banning is important, and 2) do we really want corporations in charge of the public square. These are not easy issues.
One essence in this complex situation is that Twitter etc are functioning as quasi-monopolies over the public square.

Let me add this classic case to this thread for those unfamiliar: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruneyard… SCOTUS ruled a private mall could not block leaflet distribution.
This is also a nice summary of the situation, via @KAnthonyAppiah

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Nicholas A. Christakis Profile picture
4 Jan
I had assumed that the #DisruptTexts movement was organic. But I recently discovered disrupttexts.org, and I think that, in addition to publishers springing into action to meet market demand, they may possibly be playing a role in fostering abandonment of classics. 1/
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I need to be VERY clear that I am wholly in favor of *expanding* the cannon and adding relevant, engaging texts for students in middle school, high school, and (of course) college. Students can and should read Baldwin, Marquez, Tan, Walker, Morrison, Malcolm X, and on and on. 3/
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6 Dec 20
People have been talking about the Joe Rogan Experience #JRE podcast @joerogan, which I am happy to have been on twice. I think Joe is a first-rate interviewer, a great and genuinely curious conversationalist. And the breadth of the guests is astonishing, and to his credit. 1/
The breadth of his *listeners* and his reach are also astonishing and to his credit.

Here is a short personal illustration: After my first appearance, in March of 2019, I left my apartment in New Haven @yale the next morning to walk to work. 2/
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25 Nov 20
I’d need to better understand the motivations for this bill. And I’m not opposed per se. I find “period poverty” disconcerting.

But if the bill is based on righting an innate gender inequity, will the parliament also mandate equal life insurance premiums for men and women?
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19 Nov 20
Actually, this could be a serious problem for COVID19 vaccine trials. I would have to look at the specific details of outcome ascertainment of the trials, but if participants have used testing to unblind themselves, this could affect their behavior and also measured outcomes. 1/
And here is a mention of a participant in the placebo arm who may have known their status (via @mjaeckel). 2/
Whether such unblinding has increased or decreased the estimated efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccine being assessed depends sensitively on a host of factors. 3/
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Nicholas A. Christakis Profile picture
30 Oct 20
I am ashamed of how bad our great nation has done in combatting COVID19. When China locked down its country, on January 24, 2020, we should have used that time to better prepare. #ApollosArrowChat 1/
On January 24, 2020, China essentially put 930 million people under home confinement. Along with Chinese colleagues, we showed this in this @nature paper: nature.com/articles/s4158… Movement in the country stopped. 2/
In essence, China felt that SARS-CoV-2 was so powerful that it had to detonate a "social nuclear weapon," as I argue in #APOLLOSARROW (for some details, see this thread from March 9: ) 3/
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Nicholas A. Christakis Profile picture
30 Oct 20
Yes, I do think that COVID19 *might* be remembered differently, in part because of the superior (electronic, real-time) documentation of our predicament. #ApollosArrowChat 1/
And yet, the Black Death had quite an impact on collective memory, as I also discuss in APOLLO'S ARROW, deploying what was, for its day, cutting edge (artistic) communications. 2/
I also think we're now more aware of the periodicity of global pandemics. We understand that they recur every 10-20 years, and have *serious* recurrences every 50-100 years (though there is no reason a serious one could not recur sooner). This is in Chapter 8 of #APOLLOSARROW 3/
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