Reconsidering Our School’s Engagement with Twitter | Hacker News Reader

Reconsidering Our School’s Engagement with Twitter

bu.edu

25 pointssohkamyung16 comments

"As an academic community, we are committed to a vision of inclusive debate and free and open inquiry."

Which has recently been revealed wasn't possible on Twitter, especially since 2016. Shadow banning, de-trending, and canceling accounts at the behest of government agencies such as the FBI purely on ideological grounds is not a culture of "inclusive debate". Some of it was warranted, much of it wasn't. This is no longer a conspiracy theory, it is fact.

It was unprofessional to use it in the first place.

Government officials and learning institutions don't belong on Twitter or other non-regulated, for-profit conduits.

That kind of dismissive gatekeeping seems pretty strange. When people are trying to reach some target audience, they typically need to go where the audience is.

I think there's a distinction to be made between using Twitter as one form of conveying information to some target audiences, and using Twitter as the primary or even sole form of conveying that information. The latter is extremely problematic, and I think is often what people are thinking of when they complain about political, public sector, and academic use of Twitter. It does seem unacceptable, for example, that some public service providers (transport, municipalities, etc) do actually use Twitter as the only practical way to receive up to date information on service changes and outages, and that many politicians now seem to use it as both their primary means of political communication and the first place they post official letters and actions.

Here, however, it just seems to have been another outreach mechanism for the university.

I sort of agree, and sort of not. The internet is still in its youth. It's understandable that governments and institutions use what is already there and working today, as opposed to holding out for something for better.

But as the alternatives get better, they would ideally migrate away to some solution that a) gives them more autonomy, b) let's all people contact them. Twitter has a right to ban people, but government instiutions often don't have a such a right. They are for everyone - they are for murderers, they are for frauds, they are for thieves and they are even for people who insult Musk.

> But as the alternatives get better, they would ideally migrate away to some solution that a) gives them more autonomy, b) let's all people contact them

The EU has already set up their own Mastodon Server [1] to do a) and maybe b)

[1] https://social.network.europa.eu/

Facebook is a walled garden, but Twitter is indexable and searchable. It has become a megaphone for celebrities, companies, individuals, and institutions.

Before the musk acquisition you could not use it without being logging in. I heard that changed slightly but haven’t checked. But that sounds like a walled garden…

Huh.

On one hand the idea that a school is leaving twitter because ole Musky started shitting it up is just wild. It feels like a punchline. A hint of “why is this important”.

On the other, as some one who has remained aloof from twitter, this brings home the idea that twitter is a sort of town square, or digital public venue - not talking about public vs private companies, it just seems to be a place where an incredible amount of public discourse is happening.

Which then makes this seem like a pretty reasonable and principled thing to do. They don’t approve of the new leaderships conduct so instead of participating and being part of that network effect they lean out.

I really struggle to understand what causes people to become this sensitive over a bunch of people writing what is mostly BS

Boston University still mandates the Covid vaccines:

Boston University students, faculty, and staff must complete a COVID-19 initial vaccination series and a single COVID-19 booster shot.

Faculty and staff who are not in compliance with the vaccination booster requirement will be placed on an unpaid leave of absence in accordance with the terms of the employee handbook, relevant collective bargaining agreement, or Faculty Handbook until they comply with the vaccine requirement or the risk of infection from COVID-19 is deemed to have ended as determined by Boston University.

https://www.bu.edu/hr/hr-covid-19-resources/vaccine-required...

Whether BU is still mandating COVID vaccines or not is not really relevant to the article about the BU SPH's twitter account.

And also, BU vaccine requirement is in-line with other schools in the area, Harvard and others have similar requirements.

> is not really relevant to the article

Oh, but it is. Have you read the article?

It has long seemed to me that one of the core responsibilities of academic institutions is to aspire to always align what we do with our mission.

We are committed to igniting and sustaining positive change that leads to health and well-being around the world. We strive for a respectful, collaborative, diverse, and inclusive community within our School of Public Health. We aim to promote justice, human rights, and equity within and across our local and global communities.

As an academic community, we are committed to a vision of inclusive debate and free and open inquiry.

When I wrote those guidelines for speech, I had in mind speech that we tolerate in our community—an academic space dedicated to ideas and the pursuit of respectful, open inquiry.

Our commitment remains to pursue an inclusive vision of a better world, in which all voices can be heard, valued, and respected.

As with all decisions, we leave open the door to changing our approach if the data suggest we should reconsider.

> And also, BU vaccine requirement is in-line with other schools in the area, Harvard and others have similar requirements.

I guess the science/biology is different in the US than in Europe, for example.

All because Musk committed blasphemy for using joke pronouns and criticized Fauci? FTA:

> However, we do not in our community tolerate speech that is demeaning and non-rebuttable, dangerous, or factually false. By way of one example, Musk’s tweet on Sunday is at least two of these, both demeaning and potentially dangerous. In the tweet, Musk mocks the importance of pronouns in respecting someone’s identity and humanity. He also incites opprobrium against a public health professional, Dr. Fauci, who has served the country well for decades through challenging times. Given the potential for actual violence to emerge from social media instigation, this tweet seems to me to be tantamount to endangering others.

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