7 ms·

Twitter removes two Bolsonaro tweets questioning virus quarantine

68 points by chki 7y ago

rbanffy 7y ago
I wonder how much it takes for him to get his account suspended.
jonathanstrange 7y ago
A positive aspect of the coronavirus is that it allows you to determine which politicians are sociopaths and which aren't.
- AnthonBerg 7y ago
  Or rather, confirm what you know in order to help publicise the understanding.
- thu2111 7y ago
  Because putting entire nations under forced house arrest based on the output of computer simulations isn't even slightly sociopathic? It's literally got "social" in the word. Argue that it's the right choice by all means. To argue that politicians caring about the economy - that thing that also keeps us alive - is "sociopathic", just shows a complete loss of perspective.
  - jonathanstrange 7y ago
    Ordering quarantine is quite obviously not sociopathic to anyone who understands exponential growth and can do basic calculations. > To argue that politicians caring about the economy - that thing that also keeps us alive - is "sociopathic", just shows a complete loss of perspective. It's hard to see how someone who directly weighs deaths against economic benefits in such a situation (before the pandemic has even peaked) could not be a sociopath, and by "sociopath" I really mean the personality disorder, not some subjective sentiment. It's a hypothesis, but one that would be easy to confirm empirically with standard personality tests. You have to bear in mind that politicians in those positions have good scientific advisors. They were attempting to delay measures in order for the economy of their country (or their personal stocks) to come out better in the end. They were willing to risk this gamble, even though they knew that this results in many more deaths, because no country's health care system can deal with so many patients at once. Except for Bolsonaro, all of these sociopaths have backed off by now, because most sociopaths are also narcissists and they realized the many deaths would make them look bad. That's the sad truth, whether you like it or not. The good news is that there are less sociopathic heads of states than one might think and the vast majority of all decision makers have reacted wisely. Let's not forget that.
    - thu2111 7y ago
      Ordering quarantine is quite obviously not sociopathic to anyone who understands exponential growth and can do basic calculations. Lots of people understand both yet are sounding the alarm as loudly as they can about over-reaction, the poor track record of epidemiology and the poor quality of the data. For instance it's not even clear COVID-19 is spreading exponentially. The percentage of positive results from tests done is not scaling exponentially, but only the raw numbers are being reported usually so an exponential increase in the number of tests can make it look like an exponential increase in spread. The world does have experience of bad policy initiated by governments who were following what they perceived as scientific advice (of the kind politically acceptable to themselves). The worst one being Lysenkoism. And of course abuse of psychiatric evaluations to declare anyone politically opposed to the government as mad or bad has a terrible history as well. You should really think a lot more carefully before declaring anyone who disagrees with you as having a personality disorder. Shutting down the world indefinitely will cause everyone to die: that is a fact. COVID-19 will not approach even a fraction of that, not even under the worst case projections. Obviously at some point the "sociopaths" as you put it have to win the argument or else we're all reverting back to stone age times. You have to bear in mind that politicians in those positions have good scientific advisors Having read the output of such scientists, I don't think that's at all obvious. You're assuming it, maybe hoping it, but scientism is a real problem in academia. They were willing to risk this gamble, even though they knew that this results in many more deaths, because no country's health care system can deal with so many patients at once. So far not a single countries healthcare system has come anywhere even close to collapse. All stresses have been highly regional and could have been handled by inter-region transfers, yes, even in Italy and China. In fact in Italy a politician wondered the other day why they are transferring patients to Germany when nearby Veneto the ICU is 2/3rds empty. https://www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/die-verlangsamung-ist-da-in-italien-zeichnet-sich-die-wende-in-der-coronakrise-ab/25698124.html https://www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/die-verlangsamung-ist-da... And a significant source of the pressure on healthcare systems is in fact the quarantine measures placed on staff, many of whom are self isolating without symptoms. The belief in totally collapsed healthcare systems comes entirely from simulations of questionable utility (because attempts to simulate prior epidemics have failed).
Traster 7y ago
Is it not a little bit patronising that American companies think they can regulate political speech in Brazil? It's quite clear they don't think they can regulate political speech in the US. What exactly is the difference?
- truculent 7y ago
  If you're shocked by this, just wait until you find out what the US government has been up to in Central and South America over the past 50 years
  - Traster 7y ago
    I think there's a vast difference between the US government doing something, and private companies doing something like this. I'm not saying the US is right in its interventions, but atleast they're a democratically elected government with some form of legitimacy.
    - m4r35n357 7y ago
      I think that line has been blurred out of existence.
    - hrktb 7y ago
      I think the parent is talking about the US sabotaging other governments for decades.
    - rbanffy 7y ago
      The difference is that we should be able to expect a government to act under higher ethical standards than a for-profit company.
      - gus_massa 7y ago
        Again: If you're shocked by this, just wait until you find out what the US government has been up to in Central and South America over the past 50 years
dntbnmpls 7y ago
Something so orwellian about a tech company censoring the speech of an elected president of a major country. Political speech should not be censored. Especially of elected officials. It should be regarded as part of the historical record at the very least.
- hrktb 7y ago
  Wouldn't it be Orwellian if it was the elected president censoring/redacting people's tweet ? I'd be on board with Twitter on this one, hoping they use it as a precedent for dealing with the other living policy infringements they have on their platform.
  - swebs 7y ago
    No, they're both Orwellian. Censorship doesn't magically become OK just because it's done by a global megacorp instead of a govermnent.
    - rbanffy 7y ago
      It's their platform. They own it. It's not a public space and he's not entitled to use it for free to further his political agenda.
    - Riverheart 7y ago
      A major part of 1984 was the Ministry of Truth spinning lies about reality. How do you square censorship against government spread of misinformation?
- krick 7y ago
  This is not really news. I think what's really notable about all this... situation — is that a lot of stuff that was not ok only a short while ago, is perceived quite calmly by people, because.. well, "it's different", right? This is a serious thing. It's dangerous. You don't want to be dead, right? It is 9/11 of sorts. Maybe even worse, since you are specifically "not allowed" to question this, because doubting is assumed to be spreading dangerous misinformation. And it's not hard to sell censoring something that supposedly puts lives of your relatives in danger.
osobo 7y ago
If they delete tweets like that, Twitter gets shit for censoring foreign officials. If they don't delete tweets like that, they get shit for not intervening when the public is obviously put in harm's way. I think they chose the lesser of the two evils. Now, on to censor that umpalumpa you call president.
- dntbnmpls 7y ago
  > If they don't delete tweets like that, they get shit for not intervening when the public is obviously put in harm's way. Nobody voted for twitter to be the protector of the public. That's the job of the elected official. That's why we have elections. If the public suffers, the fault lies with the official, not twitter. Why bother having elections, democracy, etc. Why not just let twitter and the tech elites rule over us? Zuckerburg, Wojcicki and Dorsey should form a triumvirate and rule over us. Tell us what to think, how to think, when to think, etc.
  - Legogris 7y ago
    I also think there's something to be said for not putting Twitter - or any other company - in that position in the first place. We need to put more concerted resources into building decentralized alternatives. https://scuttlebutt.nz/ https://scuttlebutt.nz/ is one such initiative. There are no unsolved theoretical fundamentals here - we "just" need to build product and make it scale.
  - rbanffy 7y ago
    > Nobody voted for twitter to be the protector of the public. And Twitter owns the platform he uses to spread dangerous disinformation to further his own political agenda. A car rental company has every right to ban you from their fleet if you repeatedly kill pedestrians with their cars.
    - mantas 7y ago
      Make Twitter (and Youtube while at it) a public utility. Can telephone company cut you off for spreading disinformation? Can a toll road refuse you if you're driving to "spread dangerous disinformation" at a rally?
enitihas 7y ago
Is there a world where twitter can remove any of the Trump tweets?
- rbanffy 7y ago
  This one. They just don't want to.
  - AnthonBerg 7y ago
    We must help them want to, as a matter of life and death.
    - rbanffy 7y ago
      I wholeheartedly agree. I just don't know how.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - AnthonBerg 7y ago
        One piece that may be useful for the puzzle: Approaching this from the perspective of psychology and familial trauma has helped me understand and discuss. Someone close to me had a clinically diagnosed narcissistic sociopath parent. Literature on working with trauma and how to work with the consequences of psychologically hostile parents helps to understand the model. The narcissist-sociopath model is very simple and there's kind of always the same underlying base behavioral script. This is fortunate, because it can be easily simulated by a normally working mind once we are trained to do it. It's very unintuitive if we are caught unaware.
bobcostas55 7y ago
Will they eventually come for the WHO/CDC/Surgeon General anti-mask tweets? That's the most interesting case for me, when the expert authorities disagree with the facts (and in a very dangerous way) how does twitter decide?
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

68 points by chki 7y ago

I wonder how much it takes for him to get his account suspended.

A positive aspect of the coronavirus is that it allows you to determine which politicians are sociopaths and which aren't.

AnthonBerg 7y ago
Or rather, confirm what you know in order to help publicise the understanding.
thu2111 7y ago
Because putting entire nations under forced house arrest based on the output of computer simulations isn't even slightly sociopathic? It's literally got "social" in the word. Argue that it's the right choice by all means. To argue that politicians caring about the economy - that thing that also keeps us alive - is "sociopathic", just shows a complete loss of perspective.
- jonathanstrange 7y ago
  Ordering quarantine is quite obviously not sociopathic to anyone who understands exponential growth and can do basic calculations. > To argue that politicians caring about the economy - that thing that also keeps us alive - is "sociopathic", just shows a complete loss of perspective. It's hard to see how someone who directly weighs deaths against economic benefits in such a situation (before the pandemic has even peaked) could not be a sociopath, and by "sociopath" I really mean the personality disorder, not some subjective sentiment. It's a hypothesis, but one that would be easy to confirm empirically with standard personality tests. You have to bear in mind that politicians in those positions have good scientific advisors. They were attempting to delay measures in order for the economy of their country (or their personal stocks) to come out better in the end. They were willing to risk this gamble, even though they knew that this results in many more deaths, because no country's health care system can deal with so many patients at once. Except for Bolsonaro, all of these sociopaths have backed off by now, because most sociopaths are also narcissists and they realized the many deaths would make them look bad. That's the sad truth, whether you like it or not. The good news is that there are less sociopathic heads of states than one might think and the vast majority of all decision makers have reacted wisely. Let's not forget that.
  - thu2111 7y ago
    Ordering quarantine is quite obviously not sociopathic to anyone who understands exponential growth and can do basic calculations. Lots of people understand both yet are sounding the alarm as loudly as they can about over-reaction, the poor track record of epidemiology and the poor quality of the data. For instance it's not even clear COVID-19 is spreading exponentially. The percentage of positive results from tests done is not scaling exponentially, but only the raw numbers are being reported usually so an exponential increase in the number of tests can make it look like an exponential increase in spread. The world does have experience of bad policy initiated by governments who were following what they perceived as scientific advice (of the kind politically acceptable to themselves). The worst one being Lysenkoism. And of course abuse of psychiatric evaluations to declare anyone politically opposed to the government as mad or bad has a terrible history as well. You should really think a lot more carefully before declaring anyone who disagrees with you as having a personality disorder. Shutting down the world indefinitely will cause everyone to die: that is a fact. COVID-19 will not approach even a fraction of that, not even under the worst case projections. Obviously at some point the "sociopaths" as you put it have to win the argument or else we're all reverting back to stone age times. You have to bear in mind that politicians in those positions have good scientific advisors Having read the output of such scientists, I don't think that's at all obvious. You're assuming it, maybe hoping it, but scientism is a real problem in academia. They were willing to risk this gamble, even though they knew that this results in many more deaths, because no country's health care system can deal with so many patients at once. So far not a single countries healthcare system has come anywhere even close to collapse. All stresses have been highly regional and could have been handled by inter-region transfers, yes, even in Italy and China. In fact in Italy a politician wondered the other day why they are transferring patients to Germany when nearby Veneto the ICU is 2/3rds empty. https://www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/die-verlangsamung-ist-da-in-italien-zeichnet-sich-die-wende-in-der-coronakrise-ab/25698124.html https://www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/die-verlangsamung-ist-da... And a significant source of the pressure on healthcare systems is in fact the quarantine measures placed on staff, many of whom are self isolating without symptoms. The belief in totally collapsed healthcare systems comes entirely from simulations of questionable utility (because attempts to simulate prior epidemics have failed).

Traster 7y ago

Is it not a little bit patronising that American companies think they can regulate political speech in Brazil? It's quite clear they don't think they can regulate political speech in the US. What exactly is the difference?

truculent 7y ago
If you're shocked by this, just wait until you find out what the US government has been up to in Central and South America over the past 50 years
- Traster 7y ago
  I think there's a vast difference between the US government doing something, and private companies doing something like this. I'm not saying the US is right in its interventions, but atleast they're a democratically elected government with some form of legitimacy.
  - m4r35n357 7y ago
    I think that line has been blurred out of existence.
  - hrktb 7y ago
    I think the parent is talking about the US sabotaging other governments for decades.
  - rbanffy 7y ago
    The difference is that we should be able to expect a government to act under higher ethical standards than a for-profit company.
    - gus_massa 7y ago
      Again: If you're shocked by this, just wait until you find out what the US government has been up to in Central and South America over the past 50 years

dntbnmpls 7y ago

Something so orwellian about a tech company censoring the speech of an elected president of a major country. Political speech should not be censored. Especially of elected officials. It should be regarded as part of the historical record at the very least.

hrktb 7y ago
Wouldn't it be Orwellian if it was the elected president censoring/redacting people's tweet ? I'd be on board with Twitter on this one, hoping they use it as a precedent for dealing with the other living policy infringements they have on their platform.
- swebs 7y ago
  No, they're both Orwellian. Censorship doesn't magically become OK just because it's done by a global megacorp instead of a govermnent.
  - rbanffy 7y ago
    It's their platform. They own it. It's not a public space and he's not entitled to use it for free to further his political agenda.
  - Riverheart 7y ago
    A major part of 1984 was the Ministry of Truth spinning lies about reality. How do you square censorship against government spread of misinformation?
krick 7y ago
This is not really news. I think what's really notable about all this... situation — is that a lot of stuff that was not ok only a short while ago, is perceived quite calmly by people, because.. well, "it's different", right? This is a serious thing. It's dangerous. You don't want to be dead, right? It is 9/11 of sorts. Maybe even worse, since you are specifically "not allowed" to question this, because doubting is assumed to be spreading dangerous misinformation. And it's not hard to sell censoring something that supposedly puts lives of your relatives in danger.

osobo 7y ago

If they delete tweets like that, Twitter gets shit for censoring foreign officials. If they don't delete tweets like that, they get shit for not intervening when the public is obviously put in harm's way. I think they chose the lesser of the two evils. Now, on to censor that umpalumpa you call president.

dntbnmpls 7y ago
> If they don't delete tweets like that, they get shit for not intervening when the public is obviously put in harm's way. Nobody voted for twitter to be the protector of the public. That's the job of the elected official. That's why we have elections. If the public suffers, the fault lies with the official, not twitter. Why bother having elections, democracy, etc. Why not just let twitter and the tech elites rule over us? Zuckerburg, Wojcicki and Dorsey should form a triumvirate and rule over us. Tell us what to think, how to think, when to think, etc.
- Legogris 7y ago
  I also think there's something to be said for not putting Twitter - or any other company - in that position in the first place. We need to put more concerted resources into building decentralized alternatives. https://scuttlebutt.nz/ https://scuttlebutt.nz/ is one such initiative. There are no unsolved theoretical fundamentals here - we "just" need to build product and make it scale.
- rbanffy 7y ago
  > Nobody voted for twitter to be the protector of the public. And Twitter owns the platform he uses to spread dangerous disinformation to further his own political agenda. A car rental company has every right to ban you from their fleet if you repeatedly kill pedestrians with their cars.
  - mantas 7y ago
    Make Twitter (and Youtube while at it) a public utility. Can telephone company cut you off for spreading disinformation? Can a toll road refuse you if you're driving to "spread dangerous disinformation" at a rally?

enitihas 7y ago

Is there a world where twitter can remove any of the Trump tweets?

rbanffy 7y ago
This one. They just don't want to.
- AnthonBerg 7y ago
  We must help them want to, as a matter of life and death.
  - rbanffy 7y ago
    I wholeheartedly agree. I just don't know how.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - AnthonBerg 7y ago
      One piece that may be useful for the puzzle: Approaching this from the perspective of psychology and familial trauma has helped me understand and discuss. Someone close to me had a clinically diagnosed narcissistic sociopath parent. Literature on working with trauma and how to work with the consequences of psychologically hostile parents helps to understand the model. The narcissist-sociopath model is very simple and there's kind of always the same underlying base behavioral script. This is fortunate, because it can be easily simulated by a normally working mind once we are trained to do it. It's very unintuitive if we are caught unaware.

bobcostas55 7y ago

Will they eventually come for the WHO/CDC/Surgeon General anti-mask tweets? That's the most interesting case for me, when the expert authorities disagree with the facts (and in a very dangerous way) how does twitter decide?

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]