Zeynep Tufekci

“The coronavirus is airborne, so stopping its spread requires more focus on ventilation, air filtering and better masks, like N95s or KF94s, or surgical masks, preferably with braces that make them fit better.”

“Surprising as it may seem, norms matter, even in the hell that is war.”

“Containing Ebola is a no-brainer, and not that expensive. If we fail at this, when we know exactly what to do, how are we going to tackle the really complex problems we face?”

“If you're on Facebook and you're trying to reach out, you really have to figure out how to feed and please its algorithm. If you don't, people aren't going to see your stuff because the algorithm is not going to show it to them.”

“Behavioral research increasingly confirms what one might suspect: when confronted with a long-term catastrophic problem which requires short-term unpleasant consequences, many people will try to avoid making a decision altogether even if it makes the problem worse over the long run.”

“You might be tempted to think that China has a Streisand-effect problem, in which trying to censor an event creates even more publicity. But that assumes the Chinese government doesn't understand the Streisand effect, and that can't be right, because if one government understands attention dynamics online, it's China's.”

“Many of my favorite restaurants in Hong Kong seat diners elbow to elbow, knee to knee.”

“Epidemiologists routinely turn to models to predict the progression of an infectious disease. Fighting public suspicion of these models is as old as modern epidemiology, which traces its origins back to John Snow's famous cholera maps in 1854.”

“I'm a lifelong exerciser, and also an academic with interest in, and access to, research, so I tend to read the research about most things I do regularly.”

“Humans have only so many 'irreplaceable' skills, and the idea that we'll just keep outrunning the machines, skill-wise, is a folly.”

“In complex systems, one can think about linear interactions and complex or nonlinear interactions.”

“In a time of information avalanche, focusing on what is true and important can be a revolutionary act.”

“It seems to me that states (and corporations) have become increasingly secretive and opaque, while people are increasingly exposed.”

“Trump's ploy to defund the WHO is a transparent effort to distract from his administration's failure to prepare for the COVID-19 pandemic.”

“Ability to disseminate one's ideas on the Internet is now a sine qua non of inclusion in the global public sphere. However, the Internet is not a true public sphere; it is a public sphere erected on private property, what I have dubbed a 'quasi-public sphere,' where the property owners can sideline and constrain dissent.”

“Given exponential growth dynamics of infectious diseases, containing an epidemic is straightforward early on, but nearly impossible once a disease spreads among a population.”

“The secret truth of power of broadcast is that while very effective in restricting limits of acceptable public speech, it was never that good at motivating people individually.”

“Silicon Valley engineers and employees may well be overwhelmingly liberal, but Facebook is run by the algorithms they program, which optimize for the way the site makes money, rather than sifting through posts one by one.”

“I choose not to block all ads partly because it's useful to my research to see how things work online, and also partly because I thought this had little to no effect on me, personally.”

“Bike-friendly cities provide some of the best quality of life.”