Twitter punished me for literally doing my job.
Imagine the future of journalism once Section 230 is repealed or reformed.
(No, I won't be using this platform as I have been. I've been "admonished" on the word of a religious lobby.)
Opaque to even get a contact person.
What they want is for me to "check myself" before reporting. They got it.
This is WITH SECTION 230 IN PLACE.
Now imagine post-repeal.
I hate to agree with Trump on anything, but his rants about Twitter's deliberate opacity and arbitrary doling out of punishment are not incorrect.
More from Twitter
Today's threads (a Twitter thread).
Inside: Twitter's Project Blue Sky; Brazil's world-beating data breach; Evictions and utility cutoffs are covid comorbidities; "North Korea" targets infosec researchers; and more!
Archived at: https://t.co/eCzogk14kg
#Pluralistic
1/
Join me this Thursday for the launch of the print edition of my 2020 book HOW TO DESTROY SURVEILLANCE CAPITALISM!
https://t.co/8Op6IEocPB
2/
Twitter's Project Blue Sky: Fix the internet, not the platforms.
https://t.co/KoZNABMJrE
3/
Brazil's world-beating data breach: More than 100% of the population doxed.
https://t.co/6tcbcX2gQ6
4/
Evictions and utility cutoffs are covid comorbidities: 143,000 covid deaths due to economic precarity.
https://t.co/pZM80W5DuR
5/
Inside: Twitter's Project Blue Sky; Brazil's world-beating data breach; Evictions and utility cutoffs are covid comorbidities; "North Korea" targets infosec researchers; and more!
Archived at: https://t.co/eCzogk14kg
#Pluralistic
1/
Join me this Thursday for the launch of the print edition of my 2020 book HOW TO DESTROY SURVEILLANCE CAPITALISM!
https://t.co/8Op6IEocPB
2/
Twitter's Project Blue Sky: Fix the internet, not the platforms.
https://t.co/KoZNABMJrE
3/
It's been more than a year since @jack announced Project Blue Sky, inspired by @mmasnick's "Protocols, Not Platforms," paper - a critical work explaining how walled gardens can be transformed into open protocols.https://t.co/1yDSNJehRP
— Cory Doctorow #BLM (@doctorow) January 26, 2021
1/ pic.twitter.com/xwDIErMFLJ
Brazil's world-beating data breach: More than 100% of the population doxed.
https://t.co/6tcbcX2gQ6
4/
Brazil's public health agency has suffered what is arguably the worst data-exposure in world history, losing 243m+ records in a country of 211m people (the excess represents dead peoples' records).https://t.co/VsQUtIEnC7
— Cory Doctorow #BLM (@doctorow) January 26, 2021
1/ pic.twitter.com/DV6k2NfvHW
Evictions and utility cutoffs are covid comorbidities: 143,000 covid deaths due to economic precarity.
https://t.co/pZM80W5DuR
5/
"Public health" isn't just about vaccinations, clinics and urgent care: it's a holistic discipline that encompasses all the contributors to health outcomes, which include things like housing, employment, transportation, pollution and more.
— Cory Doctorow #BLM (@doctorow) January 26, 2021
1/ pic.twitter.com/UQRgLVoczQ
After hearing about @JanelSGM from @csallen, I spent the past few hours digging into her Twitter feed to see how she has been building Newsletter OS in public, from ideation to launch.
Here are some highlights in chronological order and what you can learn from the process:
1/ August 5 2020: Janel digs into '50+ newsletters' (note the number to build credibility) and creates a thread to discuss the lessons learnt. She also mentions that this is for a side project, which raises awareness of something she may be working
2/ August 5 2020 (cont): Each tweet in the thread is focused on a key message, with clear pointers for newsletter writers to
3/ September 1 2020: Janel tweeted about #buildinginpublic (note the hashtag) with @pabloheredia24 for @makerpad's challenge. While the project is https://t.co/tMb1qCnxVY and not NewsletterOS, Janel is getting in the reps on how to build in
4/ October 18 2020: Janel hints at building her new product using @NotionHQ and @gumroad. But instead of telling the audience directly what the product is, she invites her audience to take a guess.
Here are some highlights in chronological order and what you can learn from the process:
1/ August 5 2020: Janel digs into '50+ newsletters' (note the number to build credibility) and creates a thread to discuss the lessons learnt. She also mentions that this is for a side project, which raises awareness of something she may be working
Just subscribed to 50+ newsletters in the past hour
— Janel (@JanelSGM) August 4, 2020
(for a side project)
Here are some lessons I've learned
Thread \U0001f447
2/ August 5 2020 (cont): Each tweet in the thread is focused on a key message, with clear pointers for newsletter writers to
1/ Clear Value Proposition
— Janel (@JanelSGM) August 4, 2020
Do you articulate clearly the following?
- What content you write about
- Who your newsletter is for
- How your audience will benefit from your newsletter?
3/ September 1 2020: Janel tweeted about #buildinginpublic (note the hashtag) with @pabloheredia24 for @makerpad's challenge. While the project is https://t.co/tMb1qCnxVY and not NewsletterOS, Janel is getting in the reps on how to build in
4/ October 18 2020: Janel hints at building her new product using @NotionHQ and @gumroad. But instead of telling the audience directly what the product is, she invites her audience to take a guess.
I've been launching a product a month, with the aim of launching 12 in 12 months (w/ @LaunchMBA)
— Janel (@JanelSGM) October 18, 2020
This month, I'll be launching an actionable info product.
Core Tools: @NotionHQ @gumroad
Want to guess what I'll launch?
Free copy for the first person who guesses right.
So regarding to my "bombshell"...it's perhaps a bit less dramatic than many presumed, yet it still troubles me a lot, to the point that I wondered whether I should stop posting on certain things
You see, I realized in the last few months that, by translating information and news related to one of the fastest growing spaceflight powers of the world...I inadvertently became a spreader of PRC propaganda.
And with me exactly 180 degrees away from them, I feel scared.
It actually started a few years ago - it's not hard to meet Chinese Twitter users interested in spaceflight, either those living overseas or find a way to climb over the wall. Not surprisingly, many of these S/F enthusiasts are interested in their own military too.
This steadily grew with my followers' count until the flagship Chinese spaceflight missions of 2020 (Chang'e 5 especially but also many others) brought in dozens of them liking/re-tweeting my info tweets sometimes, and similar no. of such followers every month.
I do casually check these new followers/users sometimes. To my horror, far too many of them routinely insults, attacks, mocks others who they see as "anti-China" or spread potential mis-information, even blatant attacks, that started off w/ their state media/spokesperson.
I'm going to make a bomb shell statement here around the turn of the year, something so risky that I face prospects of the Twitter account being attacked or even banned.
— Cosmic Penguin (@Cosmic_Penguin) December 31, 2020
It's about my very uneasy Twitter experience over the past 2-6 months, the worst I could ever remember.
You see, I realized in the last few months that, by translating information and news related to one of the fastest growing spaceflight powers of the world...I inadvertently became a spreader of PRC propaganda.
And with me exactly 180 degrees away from them, I feel scared.
It actually started a few years ago - it's not hard to meet Chinese Twitter users interested in spaceflight, either those living overseas or find a way to climb over the wall. Not surprisingly, many of these S/F enthusiasts are interested in their own military too.
This steadily grew with my followers' count until the flagship Chinese spaceflight missions of 2020 (Chang'e 5 especially but also many others) brought in dozens of them liking/re-tweeting my info tweets sometimes, and similar no. of such followers every month.
I do casually check these new followers/users sometimes. To my horror, far too many of them routinely insults, attacks, mocks others who they see as "anti-China" or spread potential mis-information, even blatant attacks, that started off w/ their state media/spokesperson.
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"I lied about my basic beliefs in order to keep a prestigious job. Now that it will be zero-cost to me, I have a few things to say."
We know that elite institutions like the one Flier was in (partial) charge of rely on irrelevant status markers like private school education, whiteness, legacy, and ability to charm an old white guy at an interview.
Harvard's discriminatory policies are becoming increasingly well known, across the political spectrum (see, e.g., the recent lawsuit on discrimination against East Asian applications.)
It's refreshing to hear a senior administrator admits to personally opposing policies that attempt to remedy these basic flaws. These are flaws that harm his institution's ability to do cutting-edge research and to serve the public.
Harvard is being eclipsed by institutions that have different ideas about how to run a 21st Century institution. Stanford, for one; the UC system; the "public Ivys".
As a dean of a major academic institution, I could not have said this. But I will now. Requiring such statements in applications for appointments and promotions is an affront to academic freedom, and diminishes the true value of diversity, equity of inclusion by trivializing it. https://t.co/NfcI5VLODi
— Jeffrey Flier (@jflier) November 10, 2018
We know that elite institutions like the one Flier was in (partial) charge of rely on irrelevant status markers like private school education, whiteness, legacy, and ability to charm an old white guy at an interview.
Harvard's discriminatory policies are becoming increasingly well known, across the political spectrum (see, e.g., the recent lawsuit on discrimination against East Asian applications.)
It's refreshing to hear a senior administrator admits to personally opposing policies that attempt to remedy these basic flaws. These are flaws that harm his institution's ability to do cutting-edge research and to serve the public.
Harvard is being eclipsed by institutions that have different ideas about how to run a 21st Century institution. Stanford, for one; the UC system; the "public Ivys".
