On shooting the messenger
I've been keeping an eye on Zeynep Tufekci's work from around the time her book Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest1 came out in 2017 and she's definitely been one of the more interesting people to follow in the COVID era. Here now it seems that the latest US intelligence has concluded basically the same thing she said in February - i.e. the news didn't make it upstream as quickly as it might have in a more open system.
There's a lesson for stakeholders dealing with security folks here: when you consistently "shoot the messenger" you may stop getting the messages... https://t.co/1XjXevU1Cv
— Jake Williams (@MalwareJake) August 20, 2020
Here's a tweet of hers' from back in February:
New piece. Hear me out. What if Xi Jinping didn't even *know* of key details of the coronavirus outbreak until it was too late? What if his authoritarian blindspot was *worsened* by China's use of surveillance and censorship technology? https://t.co/rDmUgAYSrh pic.twitter.com/Zof3Ct6taI
— zeynep tufekci (@zeynep) February 22, 2020
It's been kind of interesting to see the sorts of influence that she's managed to have. e.g. this bit from a profile of her that the New York Times recently did on how the CDC wound up shifting it's advice on mask-wearing:
If you see something, say something!
— Lisa Letostak (@lisaletostak) August 24, 2020
“... a senior health scientist at the agency [the CDC] who had been pushing internally to recommend masks, told me Ms. Tufekci’s public criticism of the agency was the “tipping point.”” https://t.co/3ByIUGi0Tr
And again, this is the sort of personality you're looking for when it comes to making critical decisions - i.e. in her words:
I feel charmed that I get to do this: do my best to call things as I see it regardless of considerations of popularity
It's definitely not a zero-risk environment, as I recall her tweeting about how she'd expected her New York Times op-ed advocating for mask to kind of bring an end to her public relevance.
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There's a free digital version of Tufekci's book on the book's official website. ↩︎