Could We Do a Free Speech Circuit Breaker?

 The stock exchanges have "circuit breakers"--on a day when there's panic selling and the indices drop through the floor, they can suspend trading to allow nerves to calm down.

Kindergarteners have "time out".

Is it possible we could do something similar with social media?  Rather than the drastic remedy of prohibitions, simply slow the twitter storm or whatever. Suppose X has 20 million followers, and he sends out a tweet. Instead of all 20 million receiving it in milliseconds, spread the impact over hours or days. 

Social Media and the Virus

I often see references to "viral" social media--used to be a blog post, now it's tweets or memes (call them "events")  The metaphor works because there are parallels between social media events and viral infections.  Each event or infection can end with the person, or it can trigger an event or infection in another person.  When the average odds of replication (R)is equal to 1 or greater, you get exponential growth.

The difference is in the nature of the effect.  Social media events can be positive or negative, an infection can be slightly or very negative in effect. 

Shame on (Some) USDA Employees

Turns out the OIG found some USDA employees were using government computers to access inappropriate material on some websites (i.e., porn).  This week USDA is blocking access to some 400 sites, including Facebook and Twitter.  (I assume those employees authorized to post on the USDA Twitter and Facebook sites will still be able to.)