LATE LAST MONTH I did an interview with GQ about technology and the coronavirus pandemic. “This is a little bit flippant,” I told the reporter, “but in terms of closing things down for public health, one of the big boosts they could make would probably be shutting down Twitter.” I don’t fully believe this anymore. Though Twitter is still overrun with toxic anger and fear-based nonsense (now more than ever), it is also, in one crucial way, beginning to play an important role in our response to the pandemic. But it needs help.
Let’s start with what’s going right: So-called Expert Twitter seems to be rising to the occasion. Pandemics are immensely complicated, and understanding them requires knowledge from obscure technical fields, like epidemiology, genetics, virology, and immunology. Identifying smart ideas and leading experts in these niche subdisciplines is a daunting objective. Twitter is helping.