YouSaid · the spoken record

Zeynep Tufekci

lines on the record: 72
first: 2021-08-25
most recent: 2021-08-25
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Out of your depth. But I think there's great value to be added from being, it's not really interdisciplinary. You're rooted in one discipline, but you're really not like you're going and learning stuff and you're interacting with the field directly as much as you can. So I think that's kind of how it's been broadly beneficial.”
2021-08-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Zeynep Tufekci on the Sociology of The Moment (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, a layperson's, but a professor, an educated layperson, and somebody who taught some of this stuff. So I had some level of reading. And whenever possible, I kind of just deepen. I read textbooks. I read like primary papers and a lot of fields that I'm trying to do sociological analysis. And I think that's something we don't do enough of in the academy in that because we're so siloed and we treat it like dabbling. It's not dabbling if you do it right. Yes, you can do it in a bad way, but it's not dabbling to sort of get some level of understanding of a field. And you need to be careful. You need to be humble about what you're doing and then apply your own field sociology to that base. So if you don't have any of the other, you can kind of get things wrong quite easily. If you're overconfident, yes, it can get into that heavily criticized dabbling where you're just completely.”
2021-08-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Zeynep Tufekci on the Sociology of The Moment (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, it's great question. So, the thing is, like, it's not just the technological side. Like, for example, I did a lot of on trying to understand, and I was going to write a book about that for the pandemic. I'm super fascinated by machine learning. And I think there's a lot of misunderstandings around it. And one of the reasons that I think I can do some of what I do is that I can read the papers. I'm not a machine learning researcher. I'm not going to develop advanced science or anything like that. But I understand what's going on in a way that someone who's just looking at the sociology of its impacts might not because of my background. And I had the same thing happen with the pandemic. This is not like I actually used to teach sociology of pandemics because I thought it was really fascinating sociologically. But I was always interested in the science side too. So I didn't like start knowing nothing. I started knowing.”
2021-08-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Zeynep Tufekci on the Sociology of The Moment (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Crossed the pond sometimes. That just doesn't going to work. Though I differ in some of those ways, like the way I look at Europe. And I think that's partly because of that I have an immigrant's view of the United States, which I think is in some ways more realistic. But I've lived in Europe too. So I think a lot more positive feelings about certain things that might not be as apparent to somebody who's looking at Europe from this side of the Atlantic because some things look good if you're an American but are not necessarily great if you're not if you're living in Europe.”
2021-08-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Zeynep Tufekci on the Sociology of The Moment (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, so I think for example, I think US is a less racist society than most of Europe because I lived in Europe and I have a feeling like this is where I kind of sometimes differ from my own intellectual circles is that they think of Europe as because they tend to see the social democrat side of it, right, compared to the US. Europe is a lot more government oriented in some ways for good or bad, but it can be suffocated sometimes. But it's actually a much more in some ways racist society in my experience than the United States. And that's sometimes I differ. Another thing I differ is that I think GDPR, the sort of the digital regulation, I think it was just at the wrong level. And if anything, it backfired. I think you can't just regulate something by, I don't know, wagging your finger.”
2021-08-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Zeynep Tufekci on the Sociology of The Moment (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I understand, man. I'm just going to say something different now, but I think it's an interesting thing to kind of expand on, is that I think most of what I said in the past year that appeared to be controversial or contrarian is actually very straightforward and boring. Lab accidents and screw-ups happen by a medical research has potential risks, especially if we can manipulate the viruses, we should wear masks for respiratory pathogens, widespread coverage first. I mean, these are sure.”
2021-08-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Zeynep Tufekci on the Sociology of The Moment (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Really low odds, but here's a free vaccine. You know, why wouldn't you take advantage of it? The argument against vaccinating 11-year-olds now for me is that, you know, healthcare workers around the world aren't vaccinated. So that seems the wrong order of things. But once, you know, you take the supply part out of the question. Cure 11, I'd be like, yeah, why risk the low but real?”
2021-08-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Zeynep Tufekci on the Sociology of The Moment (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think we didn't even have to do that because people are very risk averse with their kids, generally speaking. So I think it's fair to say that your 11-year-old is almost certainly fine, but I still want them not to risk the secula, right? Because when you have an unknown virus, there's always like the post-viral syndrome that people talk about long COVID is not like it's probably not as bad as some of the reporting, but it's real and it's real for other viruses. I mean, it's something we've long ignored. It's not just that. So at 11, you're still kind of close to a risky age. It might be a small risk, but I feel like we can tell people the truth. It's not likely that your kid is going to die from this. It's really baseline risk for your kid. But if you could spare your kid even the anxiety because it occasionally you could just be the unlucky person. I think we could just tell people that love.”
2021-08-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Zeynep Tufekci on the Sociology of The Moment (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You should wear a mask if you're vaccinated because you're at risk. I would just say I think you're fine, but the business can't just sort of check your vaccination card. We don't have something like that. And this is how it's got to be. Even though this is not very complicated, so I don't think there's any point at which, like even if you did lie and get away with it, it would eventually come out. It's 2021. There's internet. There's social media. Like the stuff would come out. And all you end up doing is.”
2021-08-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Zeynep Tufekci on the Sociology of The Moment (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I just cannot imagine where we should not tell people the truth. I mean, sometimes it gets complicated. For example, I do agree that for the most part, that the vaccinated are back at baseline risk, but that's not the same as saying like we should not have any indoor mask mandates for now. Now, there's been a sort of a crisis over that because people are taking it to me and the vaccinated is not safe, but that's not true. What you're saying is that you can't expect a business to differentially police. Are you vaccinated? Are you not vaccinated? And we're still both vaccinating people and we have immuna compromised people and we have children under 12 who are not even eligible. So while we work through this for a couple more months perhaps, it makes sense for, especially if it's in a less ventilated space just to keep it up. So at that point, I wouldn't say.”
2021-08-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Zeynep Tufekci on the Sociology of The Moment (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's what you should say to the course because the peer networks, but you could say you could be first, but I will necessarily not necessarily have a lot of authority. So the peer networks, I mean, they don't have to be like your sibling, right? They're heterogeneous. They just have to be somebody socially similar to you. So that's clearly one thing. And the one argument that I make to people a lot that my most strong abstract argument that I think I can make is that you're going to encounter this virus, either through infection or vaccination. There's not encountering this virus. You're going to, I've written this many times. You're going to eventually encounter it. So you either encounter it in its full form where anything can happen or you encounter what we have, which is just a spike. So there's no avoiding the virus. It's just a question of, you know, do you want to fight it with your?”
2021-08-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Zeynep Tufekci on the Sociology of The Moment (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Lecturing is all correct. It just doesn't work. I would say I would try to say, hold on, my State and Island friend, I'm going to find you somebody who is somebody that you relate to, who's going to tell you why you should get vaccinated.”
2021-08-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Zeynep Tufekci on the Sociology of The Moment (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The thing is, I'm going to go back to the sociology fallback, which is that people don't exist as sort of independent atoms. The person to convince that person is a friend, an acquaintance, or somebody else from State and Island, right? So the way you want to deploy these convincing is that we have this from so much sociology. If I come to you and say your field is terrible and you're wrong about everything, all of a sudden like me, right? So if we want to convince people, we need to deploy the people on the ground that we have, whoever it is, who's closest to those people. So if you want to convince people in State and Island, you got to sort of send people who live in State and Island who you can sort of work for this or whatever community it is. And instead, we're like lecturing at them. And I'm kind of like nobody likes being lectured. And even if the”
2021-08-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Zeynep Tufekci on the Sociology of The Moment (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So that's the way I feel about sociology that it's actually conceptually really powerful, but the theory part can be really dry because if you read it from like early 19th century person, that person is talking about early 19th century. That's boring and dry and crazy to you. Whereas what you need is somebody to do it now. And Ritzer does it for like 28th century. And it's really good. All his books are good. And I'm not sure if somebody's updated because with sort of the internet and stuff, we have 21st century stuff to bring in. But they're still equally valid, like institutions and the way they work. Humans are remarkably human.”
2021-08-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Zeynep Tufekci on the Sociology of The Moment (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“dice and she loses because she's betting the wrong way and then she meets someone says I can teach you how to you know windows game and then the book it's just a novel I still have the book it's amazing walks you through probability theory including you know walks you up to I think the binomial theorem and it's like something you can read when you're in the third grade and understand and at the end of the book the little girl discovers that you know there's textbooks and she says that's probability I hate it like my older sister reads it and hates it and the sort of the person in the neighborhood who's been teaching her says that's because you have like this preconception that theory is something boring and dry like probability is something boring and dry and complicated instead of as we were talking something really exciting understanding a bit better about you know probability and probabilistic thinking is really empowering and fascinating”
2021-08-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Zeynep Tufekci on the Sociology of The Moment (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the best way is to not read Weiber because you do not want to start there. Seriously, the language is so complicated, but I have a colleague, I've never been in his department, but George Ritzer was a sociologist and he wrote a lot of sort of theory books and they're really good. And I believe he has one called McDonaldization of Everything. But that's kind of like that's a very much a barbarian rationalization. But he has it on many other things as well. So I would read someone like George Ritzer to read about Waver because his books are a lot more accessible. It provides like reading Ritzer. So I learned probability theory from a book in Turkish. It only exists in Turkish. It's written by someone from Turkey. And the premise of the book is there's a little girl who wants to win at a game of”
2021-08-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Zeynep Tufekci on the Sociology of The Moment (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Might be writing a book. It will come out after the first crop of the post pandemic initial, like there's probably dozens of books in the next year, but mine will come after all those are over.”
2021-08-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Zeynep Tufekci on the Sociology of The Moment (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Balanced book. It's not for or against social media. It's also not saying the movements were triumphant or not. But I had the sort of the gift and I gave myself sort of time to let it play out. So I feel the same way about the pandemic now. I feel like it was a stress test. And I think there's going to be a first crop of books that put most of the blame on Trump's lap, which is not unjustified. Like that administration has a lot, I think, to answer for. But I think the things that it has shown us is much bigger than one administration's admittedly very real failings. So I'm thinking like maybe just maybe there is space for a book that looks at some of the things you are talking about, which is there's something like we have to revitalize how our society works and we haven't come to grips with it. So I'm thinking.”
2021-08-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Zeynep Tufekci on the Sociology of The Moment (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Besides the unpacking boxes, I have moved to New York, which is wonderful. I really miss living in a city. I'm from Istanbul and I haven't lived in a city for a while, like full-time. So that, and especially sort of as the pandemic kind of last phase, that's interesting. I am pondering to finally write a book. When the Arab Spring ended, not ended, but when the first, like during the first phase of the Arab Spring in 2011, I was there the whole time. Like I kept going, I was entirely square. I went to Tunisia. I went all over the region. And there are a lot of books that came out quickly at the time. And I just kind of resisted writing a book just then. I felt like I'm from the Middle East too. I felt like this is not over yet. A lot of books were quite triumphant. And it was only after the Gezi protests and how they played out. I felt like I'm going to write a book. And I feel like it's a more durable and better.”
2021-08-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Zeynep Tufekci on the Sociology of The Moment (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Time, but before that, it was the last bit of the Greek East Roman Empire sort of empires and countries too. So there's a lot of history there as well. So two interesting places outside the usual tourist places.”
2021-08-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Zeynep Tufekci on the Sociology of The Moment (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I have never been to Martin, it's in the southeast region, and spoke Assyrian, Kurdish, and Armenian, and Turkish in history. So amazing and beautiful architecture. And I've never been there, so I would like to take us all on a trip that I'm coming along for Martin, which is a place I heard a lot about. And the other place that, I mean, everybody knows the Aegean, and I don't really need to explain it. It's the same. It's the other side of the Greek island. It's just most beautiful place, but you know about it already. Another place that's, I think, less known is the Black Sea region where you have dramatic green hills meet the sea, not like San Francisco, because the hills are very steep and then you have a fairly little strip. So a very different climate and visuals, and there's a lot of historic stuff there too, because it was, you know, for obviously it was the Ottoman Empire for a long time.”
2021-08-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Zeynep Tufekci on the Sociology of The Moment (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, well, it's actually also on the downside. I don't know when you've last been there, but if I was looking at the poles and like the current under 30s are saying they're much less religious, I wouldn't really be completely sure. Like if and when this government changes, I think we'll have a better sense of it. When you have like a religious government in power for 20 years, and if you're 30, like that's all you've ever known, it can actually create the opposite effect. I think it's a little early to say the fundamentalism part is on the rise or not. I mean, we have a more religious government, so there's more religious official stuff and more encouraged and more sort of rules about it and allowances and alcohol is more expensive, for example, and more restricted. Are people drinking less alcohol? I'm not so sure. You know, it's kind of like, I think.”
2021-08-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Zeynep Tufekci on the Sociology of The Moment (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And you go from, you know, I don't know, zero to a million users or 10 million users, well, Facebook can come by you and you're great. So that kind of speedy exponential growth is not a problem. How is this going to end? Because they realized I was a researcher because I'm doing interviews and they would ask. And I already knew in Egypt my friends were in jail. And it was already demurring saying you're a researcher. You're not going to make predictions there. So I think the fizzling out of social media field movements, it's not that they aren't impactful. They're just on a different trajectory. They start big. And if they're in an oppressive repressive environment, they can get crushed. Whereas if they're in a different kind of country, they could have time to build something. And I think we're seeing some of that in Western nations, like Black Lives Matter, whatever else you want to say. It is a sustained movement that has changed a lot of things in the country. But unlike, say, Turkey or Egypt, they're not going to face a government that's coming for them in the same degree, say.”
2021-08-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Zeynep Tufekci on the Sociology of The Moment (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And from an idea to March, it was about 10 years. So that kind of preparation work arduous. And it kept dissident movements weak because you had to build that before you could do anything. But if you did build it, right, you had something to stand on. Whereas right now with social media, you can kind of overcome censorship like this, especially if the government's not really very up on it, which at the time they weren't. But you're not ready for what's coming. So I feel like it's kind of like coming into a curve, like from going from zero to 100 miles an hour and you're coming into a curve, but you haven't built the car. You don't have a steering wheel. Like you just know how to speed up, right? And you see this in very many other aspects of society as well where digital technology lets people scale up very quickly. And if you're Instagram,”
2021-08-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Zeynep Tufekci on the Sociology of The Moment (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, I was both optimistic and realistic at that point. And this is something I write about in my book, because by the time the Gezi protests had happened in 2013, I'd already been through as a researcher the Arab Spring, right? So I kind of knew the up and down wave. And one of the things that I think, and this is not necessarily a criticism or not criticism of social media, this is just kind of explaining the reality of what happened is that so in the past, if you wanted to have a movement, you necessarily had to build a lot of tools because you were out of power, right? You had to build a lot of tools. If you wanted to organize, so say the Montgomery Post boycott in the 1950s and 60s during that time or the sort of March on Washington, you had to spend a lot of time just to march on Washington took, I think like six months just to do the logistics, right? You don't have Excel spreadsheets and things like that.”
2021-08-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Zeynep Tufekci on the Sociology of The Moment (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Beliefs as much as once again a strong, popular populist authoritarian leaning person getting elected and then sort of staying in power and making sure he stays in power for a very, very long time. So it is actually, if anything, I would say it's a very Western story. We have many examples of it around the world. It is not particularly a Middle Eastern version of the story, which there are many, but that's, I think, a different version. So I think that's largely misunderstood.”
2021-08-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Zeynep Tufekci on the Sociology of The Moment (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, yeah, it is insane. Everybody always asks me about them. And I'm like, what? So now that has been corrected. So Erdan is a complicated figure for sure. And one of the things I think is less understood is that for a long time he had, and he still has a genuine support base. And that's a very complicated long story why that is. And right now, after 20 years in power, Scott and Moro sort of a centralization of power story. So that's the first thing. And the second thing is when people want to understand Erdogan, sometimes they compare him to, say, I don't know, leaders of Iran. And I'm kind of like, you want to look at Putin. You want to look at Hungary. You want to look at Brazil. I mean, so on sort of the similarity there isn't necessarily, I think, which religion or the strength of the religion.”
2021-08-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Zeynep Tufekci on the Sociology of The Moment (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would like to first say now that I have this opportunity, we do not have camels. Everybody asked me about this. I know this has nothing to do with Erdogan. The camels only exist in tourist areas because everybody's convinced Turkey has camels. So I need to first correct that misunderstanding.”
2021-08-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Zeynep Tufekci on the Sociology of The Moment (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“George R. I mean, nothing, no, no movie with Jar Jar Binks makes sense to me. I refuse to have it make sense. But yes, it's kind of like the Star Wars sequels have the same sort of, the power corrupting is a very important sociological story, but you can tell it badly, right? It happening overnight or you just have something evil in you just kind of take over. That's the ridiculous version of it. What happens is every moment you're thinking, I'm doing the right thing. Like you don't, you almost never think, you know, let me go do evil things. You convince yourself. You're doing the right thing till you lose your mind in it and you have people around you who are just saying yes, yes, you're doing the right thing. And that's the classic story of power. And I love movies like that, but jar jarbings just, nope.”
2021-08-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Zeynep Tufekci on the Sociology of The Moment (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And in the end, they made the dragon lady snap just because she heard the church bells or something. Like, that's not a good sociological story.”
2021-08-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Zeynep Tufekci on the Sociology of The Moment (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Institution sociology very interesting, it's like the wire. People can die, but the story is still gripping because it's sociological. And here comes season, whichever the last season is, and all of a sudden, you know, Arya can walk through fiery dragons and nothing happens. It just misses her by an inch. And I'm like, all right, you lost the plots here because that's like plot armor essentially means you no longer have a solid sociological story. So I watched it with great interest until the end and in the end I'm like, what just happened? And I wasn't really very clear with the novel world and I learned that the novelists had run out of material and the Hollywood showrunners were now writing the script. I'm like ah, that's what happened. They switched to the good versus evil story. So they took a great story that was going to be how power corrupts, which clearly was the story.”
2021-08-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Zeynep Tufekci on the Sociology of The Moment (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So it interested me till the last season and a half because before that it was a very, very sociological thing. So here's the thing, here's the difference between a sociological story and a psychological story. In a sociological story, you can imagine yourself being almost anyone, right? Instead of like terrible evil characters and good people where you just identify with the good ones, which is the classic Hollywood sort of narrative, which is also most of human narrative, right? You have the good one, the bad one. It's more like a complicated mythology where you can imagine yourself being any one of those characters, even the ones that do the terrible things. You can kind of see yourself doing it. And the second sign of a sociological story for me is when nobody has plot armor because it's the setting that's carrying the story with lots of people, but it doesn't rely on one person dying or not dying. So for four six seasons, you have a very sort of”
2021-08-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Zeynep Tufekci on the Sociology of The Moment (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In 13 years that her teacher was able to prevail upon the family to let her go. I mean, to have a 13-year-old be sent off to Istanbul, you know, complete opposite side of the country to a boarding school for education, that kind of sort of flourishing of liberation. I'm not going to sort of deny it was an authoritarian period and minorities like Kurds during that period were brutally suppressed. So I can't like make it sound like there was nothing else going on. But in terms of creating a republic out of the ashes of a crumbling empire, I think it's one of the very striking stories of”
2021-08-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Zeynep Tufekci on the Sociology of The Moment (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Underrated Why? Because some of my grandmother, she was twelve or thirteen when she was in sort of Mediterranean region, Central Asia about Mediterranean region, very close to the Mediterranean. She was born the year the Turkish Republic had been founded. And so 1923, and she was like 13 or so, she would have just about to get be married off. But the republic was just a little over a decade, like same age as her. And they created national exam to pick talented girls like her and the ones that won the exam got taken to Istanbul to the sort of elite one of the very few boarding schools, high schools for girls. Now, the underrated part isn't just that such a mechanism existed. The underrated part is that the country changed so much.”
2021-08-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Zeynep Tufekci on the Sociology of The Moment (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Like before I knew anything about the virus because nobody knew they weren't telling us, but you could just use sociological concepts to put things together. And Max Weber is great at most of them and underrated.”
2021-08-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Zeynep Tufekci on the Sociology of The Moment (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Underrated underrated. I mean, the reason, part of the reason he's underrated is that because he writes in that very hard-to-read early 19th century writing. But if you read Max Weber, 90% of what you want to understand about the current public health crisis is there in his sociology, I mean, not just him, but sociology of organizations, sort of how that works. Good at that. Yeah, so I would say underrated, partly because it's very hard to read. And what we don't do is it's like Shakespeare. You need the modern English version conceptually for more people to read it. I would say almost all of sociology is underrated and how useful, how dramatically useful it is. Just ask me anytime, like early on, like I knew we were going to have a pandemic completely based on sociology of the moment in early January.”
2021-08-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Zeynep Tufekci on the Sociology of The Moment (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In which country? It's difficult. I mean, I know him. I would say he's just about right because he's kind of past his peak. So he's good. Sorry”
2021-08-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Zeynep Tufekci on the Sociology of The Moment (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In cafeterios, people eat different things. When you put stuffed in different places, people watch different things. And I think the papers that you cite, one of the problems here is it's a little bit like China in that we have no data. Like the YouTube stuff that we have tried to do, I mean, we're literally looking at very, very, very broad data because what we need is YouTube's internal data perhaps linked to a panel, you know, something like think like not the GSS, but something like a couple thousand people panel that is linked to sort of data. And I mean, it's like 20 years into the sort of internet explosion and we don't have a single good study. Most of the data is locked up in the companies and there's not a good research thing. So I'm agnostic in the sense that I don't really know exactly the extent to which the algorithm works, but that's similar to.”
2021-08-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Zeynep Tufekci on the Sociology of The Moment (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is very friendly to authoritarians for some reason, but the fact that it was more right in the United States is more about the United States political structure. And my criticism isn't that it's great for us to have these large platforms in some sense and greatly expanded speech. But the way they keep people on the site by keeping them interested is a bit like keeping people in a cafeteria by giving them constant chips and ice cream. I like chips. I like ice cream, but I wouldn't want a cafeteria whose business model is to keep me sitting in that table as long as possible. Because we know this. Like we know in cities where people, there's the infrastructure for walking people walk. When you sort of change the menu.”
2021-08-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Zeynep Tufekci on the Sociology of The Moment (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Why not apply the lab leak approach? Well, okay, so here's the thing though. I'm going to push back a little bit because my book is all about how great social media is in some sense for dissidents as well, but it's not an unalloyed good. It's complicated. I'm from Turkey. It would be kind of hard for me to deny that Facebook is now kind of the public sphere there and Twitter. That's where you break a lot of the censorship thing. So I'm acutely aware of a lot of those things. In terms of the algorithm pulling you to the edges, I do think it's still true. It doesn't really mean like it's pulling you to sort of only one side. That's the misunderstanding. It's like one of the few pages that does really great on Facebook. On the left is something called Occupy Democrats. And I mean, it's just nonstop outrage and barely tied to truth. So it's not just the right wing thing, but I mean, the fact that”
2021-08-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Zeynep Tufekci on the Sociology of The Moment (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A movie of functioning bureaucracies and institutions. But I mean, it would be great in a pandemic, but it wouldn't make a good movie. So if you want to watch something, what you watch is the thing that's kind of exciting. It's the 10 biggest sinkholes in Florida. And watch the alligator almost eat the baby. So what you're getting is pulled to the edge. And that's true for politics. That's true for anything you want.”
2021-08-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Zeynep Tufekci on the Sociology of The Moment (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think so. And I don't think what I call the radicalization, there might be a bit of a misunderstanding in that it's not like about Trump. In fact, even my first article about it, it is, what's the right word for it has been a bit difficult because we sometimes say extremism, but that's not the right word either. It's pulling you to the edges because it goes back to my own reasoning, temptation. The edges are more exciting. So it's not necessarily pulling you to Trump. It's not necessarily pulling you to this or that. It's pulling you away from.”
2021-08-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Zeynep Tufekci on the Sociology of The Moment (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I have said that I honestly, I'm going to concede right away that I don't have a huge opinion on stock buybacks in general. That sentence was in the context of they get duce to stock buybacks with their extra cash and then they get bailed out with taxpayer money. And that's my criticism is that I don't think these companies should be whenever they get in trouble, they get bailed out. And I'm not against occasional bailouts, but I think it's extra problematic when you have the executive pay be that high. And then, you know, at this first sign of stress, they're like taxpayers bail us out. I don't think it's healthy for the economy or the competition either. And that's the extent of my opinion on stock buybacks before. I get in more trouble on this.”
2021-08-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Zeynep Tufekci on the Sociology of The Moment (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I might have said that. Okay. All right. What did I exactly say? Probably was something specific. Let me find out what I got wrong. I'm waiting to hear.”
2021-08-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Zeynep Tufekci on the Sociology of The Moment (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Outdoors is safer, you know, those kind of very simple things. If you're having super spreading events at a distance, it's probably airborne. So every time I do that, I do better.”
2021-08-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Zeynep Tufekci on the Sociology of The Moment (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Too clever, too smart, almost too contrarian sometimes. So I would say that is something that I fight in myself because like a lot of academics and a lot of intellectual people, I like the answers that surprise me. And I like sort of examples that appear counterintuitive. But in reality, they're almost never true. Like there are very few things in the world that I think that are big and important where the counterintuitive and the surprising things actually really revealing. So that's my like reasoning sort of not error as much as much as attraction that I believe I have gotten a better handle on. In fact, like what I've done throughout the pandemic and what sort of some of the people you've named is just say a lot of basic stuff. Just, you know, respiratory disease. You need masks, vaccination, you need wider coverage as soon as possible.”
2021-08-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Zeynep Tufekci on the Sociology of The Moment (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh my goodness, I made so many mistakes now I'm wondering what I should reveal given this is going to be a podcast because the list is quite long. So let me try to find a useful example that I can share. I don't know what I would call like a mistake, but I have learned a lot more over the years about that line where you kind of know enough about something to try to reason what you should be thinking about that I mean it's gotten better. I'm not saying at all done there, but I have the same academic disease that any academic will understand that I sort of try to get I get focused on the interesting because that's appealing to me and most of the time most answers are boring. You know, it's a respiratory disease wear a mask, right? That's kind of a boring example.”
2021-08-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Zeynep Tufekci on the Sociology of The Moment (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I know this is the job interview question where you say I work too hard and I'm a perfectionist. You know, it's just very, very hard. In the pandemic, or are you asking general questions? No,”
2021-08-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Zeynep Tufekci on the Sociology of The Moment (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Like, I don't have a medical degree, but I can read a good deal of the papers just at a basic level. And I know statistics and I can read some of the basics. And I have a lot of friends in the, you know, especially sort of junior people who are, some of them are aghast but cannot speak up. And because I don't have as much to lose, I can write things in a way that sometimes they can. And that's really made me think like we need a mechanism for that to be possible for the scientists in the field. Medical fields are very hierarchical and there's some positives to that. You don't want quackery there. But when they need to be challenged, there's no mechanism to challenge them.”
2021-08-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Zeynep Tufekci on the Sociology of The Moment (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Parts of the scientific establishment or the silencing, right? Saying thank you for writing it. And I like, I thought, you know, you're welcome, but a part of me was thinking why do you guys write this? Like, don't thank me. Like, I would like to have somebody with more credibility to have written this. And what I realized was they were just either silent or parts of them had convinced themselves of really illogical things like a mask might be harmful. I just can't like there's no logic to it. There's nothing. It's just group thing. So the sociology of the moment made me realize after that incident, I thought, you know what? Sometimes being an outsider and not having my grants or my feelings or my professional career or my friendships be affected by this gives me freedom to front things. Like I know what the scientific sort of underground is speaking about and I have”
2021-08-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Zeynep Tufekci on the Sociology of The Moment (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source