Thread by @jonst0kes

The problem for the military that this video highlights is the same problem all institutions have right now in the age of social media -- universities, professional guilds, orgs of all kinds: you can't have randos in your ranks speaking to the world on behalf of your group.

https://twitter.com/LadyJayPersists/status/1431241717844414467

In an earlier, saner era, no member of the military would be able to spend institutional creidibility by donning a uniform & address the general public on whatever random matter. No MD or nurse would be able to spend hospital or uni credibility by doing the same, etc

Any public-facing comms where the person even appears to speak for the institution or is associated visually in any other fashion with the inst. would have to go through a press office & be vetted, & delivered by trained professionals.

But now, you can get dressed up in professional garb, put your institutional affiliations in your bio, & mouth off about whatever even explicitly wrapping yourself & your words in the authority & credibility of those institutions.

We can either have institutions or we can have this foolishness. We gotta pick, because we can't have both. Health care professionals, academics of all types, military, law enforcement -- they all have to either get off social media, or we have to develop a new set of norms...

...that firewall their speech from that of the institutions they're affiliated with. If these folks are going to be on social media, then they'll have to not be there in any kind of professional capacity. Again, we can either have institutions or we can have this, but not both.

Everyone needs to look at what has happened to my profession (the media) when we let everyone floss their credentials & affiliations & then publish a torrent of hot takes & opinions. Everyone needs to look at how that same sorry fate befallen public health, & the consequences.

Because God help us all, the military is now headed in that same direction. People at every level of the hierarchy in every branch are getting in uniform & addressing the public on divisive political issues all over social media. Mark my words, this will end in violence on CONUS.

The person in this video needs a court martial, & Twitter is full of academics who go straight to the public wielding their institutional creds who need to be either fired & given ultimatums. No more of this stuff, man. We can't have a society this way.

I rant this way because I do indeed want to hear what academics & other professionals think. But I want to hear some vetted consensus, vs. the hot mess of crusading, feuding, clout chasing, culture warring, & boundary policing we have happening now on the hellsite & on FB.

Ok this impromptu rant kinda blew up, so I feel compelled to clarify: I have benefitted personally & professionally from the early, free-wheeling pandemic Twitter discussions among specialists on my "Outbreak" list. It was huge.

But despite all that, it was a net negative.

As much as I got from that list & from Twitter early on, I find the infospace & discourse to be so poisoned as to be unusable. And in hindsight, society would have been better off had those professionals done had all that back-&-forth in a more closed, curated online forum...

... or under a much different set of norms & practices meant to firewall their institutions from their online presences. So I've benefitted from a thing that, in hindsight, I now think was bad & should be ended immediately. We screwed up.

I also feel compelled to say that not everyone has been irresponsible. There have been some real stand-outs who've wielded their institutional credibility on social platforms very responsibly & effectively. But the few who also happen to be good at Twitter are not the problem!

For every 3 professionals with X credential who are explicitly swinging that credential around on here to get the public to listen to them, at least 2 of them are bad at Twitter & are acting a fool in the eyes of ~30% of the population. This is so, so bad. Again, it's gotta stop.