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Facebook says it has removed promotion of anti-quarantine events

280 points by nickysielicki 7y ago

boznz 7y ago
good
- dang 7y ago
  Please don't post unsubstantive comments here.
  - boznz 7y ago
    Do I seriously need to substantiate why anti-vax is bad?
    - dang 7y ago
      Please no.
- esturk 7y ago
  I highly doubt Facebook did this because it was the "good thing" to do. Instead, it has more to do with what's "good" for business, ie FB continues to sell fake political ads. As such, anything that prolongs the pandemic is bad for business and bad for Facebook. That includes fake coronavirus cures and anti-quarantine stands. This is also true for the Drug Cartels. We've seen them enforce social-distancing in Central America. Why? Because prolonging the pandemic is bad for business not because the Cartels suddenly grew a heart and decided they want to do something "good" for mankind.
chrisco255 7y ago
These are Americans exercising their constitutional rights to freedom of speech and assembly. Whether you agree with the protestors or not is irrelevant. Your rights are impacted, too, by this arbitrary platform bias. This cannot stand for long. We have to move away from centralized monopolies on the web.
- edgefield0 7y ago
  This is a bogus argument. The protestors are advocating for behavior that will literally kill people, including medical personnel. The protesters are no different than those who call for deadly riots or civil war. They deserve to be shut down for jeopardizing public health and safety.
  - octocop 7y ago
    Why not monitor the movements of the ones in the group and alert the local police of their whereabouts, maybe arrest a few of them and it would be an even bigger statement
  - devmunchies 7y ago
    any decision can kill people, whether its motor traffic laws, junk food laws, or smoking laws, or quarantine laws. its all open for debate and should not be deplatformed for mere protest. There is a point where quarantine does more damage than good, especially when thinking big picture and government control.
    - edgefield0 7y ago
      Yes, because all of those examples are equivalent to intentionally spreading a pandemic with no known vaccine or treatment with a 1-2% rate of death, where medical professionals and poor people will be disproportionately impacted.
      - AmericanChopper 7y ago
        Heart disease is responsible for a quarter of all deaths in the US. Facebook distributing adds for Coke is going to cause for more deaths than all the worlds quarantine protest groups combined. Deplatforming groups for petitioning the government is a tremendously alarming decision from Facebook. Regardless of what you think about FB being a corporate platform, the worlds civil liberties have been switched off along side the economy. Governments have a terrible track record of abdicating the powers they seize during crises, and are all talking about a “new normal”, as if we shouldn’t expect freedom of movement or privacy to return once this is over. These people have every right to petition their government (in the US at least), and FB deplatforming them is a serious cause for concern, especially under the guise of “misinformation”.
crankylinuxuser 7y ago
I'd argue that the other HN story about Krebs doing investigative journalism about who the players are behind the "reopen*.com" is a much more interesting discussion. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22928292 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22928292 This story is going to dig up the usual FB hatred, battles over "freedom of speech" vs "corporate platform", and tired discussion topics that have been re and rehashed again here.
downerending 7y ago
It's worth noting that there is a lot of discussion in serious circles (including here on HN) about the balance between too much and not enough with respect to quarantine, lockdown, etc., both in terms of where we are now and what we should do in the near future. I see little reason to doubt that all involved are trying to minimize general death and misery, even if they may disagree radically about how to do that. It'd be pretty wild if (say) Google decided that Chrome would no longer display pages that were "too far" in their discussion and advocacy of the options.
- oldsklgdfth 7y ago
  > I see little reason to doubt that all involved are trying to minimize general death and misery, even if they may disagree radically about how to do that. It's interesting that even with the best case scenario there are entities with enough power to control behavior like that. That fact is scary. If they have ulterior motives. That fact is scarier.
  - spunker540 7y ago
    They don’t have the power to control behavior arbitrarily though. If they tried to shut down business last year for no reason at all, you can bet there’d be push back, protests and eventually they’d be voted out of office and laws would be changed etc. However when there is a pandemic overwhelming hospital systems around the world, they do have the power to shut things down precisely because most people agree with that decision. Clearly right now there is a vocal minority who disagrees and has chosen to protest. And as far as I can tell they are suffering no consequences besides being ridiculed and called “stupid” by the folks who consent to staying in for the greater good. The us government only has the power to shut things down when most people agree that they should have that power.
- gdubs 7y ago
  I’m too tired at the moment to figure out where I stand on this [issue of free speech / assembly] but I have a general question: I thought the Supreme Court has already shown that there are limits to speech, such as yelling “Fire” in a crowded theater. I guess the distinction is how directly the speech leads to harm. Would that apply in this situation where most medical experts would agree that the quarantine is necessary for saving lives? Or is the thinking that this is too far removed — like telling people they can’t protest seat-belts. Edit: I’ll clarify by saying that (my personal opinion) is that the protests are at best ... misguided. My question is about precedent on free speech / assembly under circumstances where harm might occur or it violates something like a quarantine or shelter-in-place order. The Atlantic article linked below is fascinating because I definitely have always thought of the “fire in a crowded theater example.”
hnburnsy 7y ago
How does Facebook distinguish from those who are protesting because they want to plant seeds, from those who want full reopening today?
aaron695 7y ago
This religion of 'lockdown' is righteousness is pretty indicative of normal human behaviour now. If you actually read the 'lockdown' scriptures it does state the 'lockdown' will end, it also talks about how the devil of herd immunity will eventually live amongst us. The exact time of rapture of ending the 'lockdown' is not stated in the scriptures but it's not totally unreasonable to think it's now.
Press2forEN 7y ago
For those of you cheering this move, imagine it applied to the causes you care about and decide if you still think its a good idea.
- elicash 7y ago
  Never understood this argument. Let's take a cause I disagree with. I'm pro-equality, but still think Christian Mingle shouldn't be forced to match up same-sex couples. Because I disagree with their values, of course, I'd never use their website. OF COURSE conservative Christians should be allowed to have a website that aligns with their values. Not only don't I think this website should be outlawed -- I also don't think it's a "bad idea" that shouldn't exist. I simply disagree with the values, so I don't belong to it. Moving back to the current situation... I only want to belong to a social network that values science and public health. Why shouldn't I be allowed to be a user of a website that has those same values? You're going to tell me that the kind of website that I want to belong to should be outlawed and not allowed to exist? Or, let's not even go that far... that it's BAD that it exists? Keep in mind, you can have any view you want. This is whether or not Facebook wants to use their social network to help spread events that would endanger the general public. A "keep things closed" event would be treated the same way. (I agree FB is too big and should be cut into multiple pieces. And they shouldn't have been allowed to buy Instagram. But for very different reasons. Mostly I worry about their impact, as well as Google's, on publisher ad revenue.)
  - lone_haxx0r 7y ago
    > I only want to belong to a social network that values science and public health. Why shouldn't I be allowed to be a user of a website that has those same values? I think it's a problem of expectations. Some expect Facebook to just be a social network. Others, like you, expect it to be a safe space where unapproved opinions aren't allowed. Neither kind is bad per se, but I don't think most people expected Facebook to be of the latter kind.
    - elicash 7y ago
      I'm rolling my eyes at your "safe space" ridiculousness and bizarre claim that I think unapproved opinions shouldn't be allowed, but putting that aside.... We should both agree that the real problem is monopoly. That if Facebook (and Google btw) weren't so powerful, people would be perfectly cool with the idea that maybe different people can have different values from one another and that maybe different companies could accommodate those different values.
KorematsuFred 7y ago
Personally this ventures into the same area of "baker refuses cake for gay wedding". Facebook does not want to profit from what they see is a "bad event". But do they have a right to refuse service on such bases ? (Of course there are legal differences such as protected class vs unprotected class. But either ways the moral principle is the same.) I personally would side with Facebook on this one.
didibus 7y ago
I'm curious what would currently be the statistic for the level of death I cause as a consequence of choosing to socialize? Surely we should have some idea by now? I just think it be an interesting metric, if I decide to go get a hair cut, did I also just decide for 2 person to die?
dimal 7y ago
I disagree with all these reopen protests, but I wonder if suppressing them will have the desired effect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect This action will "prove" to some people that the tech industry has a liberal bias. I don't know that there's a good counter action to these protests, though.
- rm_-rf_slash 7y ago
  The propaganda* play for the American right these days is to be absolutely shameless, so any action to circumvent or suppress the protests will inevitably be blown up as the last straw obliterating America-as-we-know-it now and forevermore. In this light, the reaction to the reaction of the protests should be disregarded as a matter of government and corporate policy, because the organizers of the protests are acting in bad faith to simply discredit democratically elected Democratic governorships. *Propaganda is not meant to be used as a derogatory term in this context; it is a tool, like a gun that can shoot deer for food or humans for conquest.
tehjoker 7y ago
I think the anti-quarantine protests are motivated by the most idiotic non-goals and were started by the Proud Boys before they were boosted by Fox News and the administration which are desperate to reopen the economy at the cost of any level of blood sacrifice on the altar of the DOW. That said, allowing Zuckerberg to simply silence protest movements on a whim is insane and will bite all of us incredibly hard in the future. He should not have this kind of power.
sjg007 7y ago
Facebook should remove the groups promoting them too.
duchenne 7y ago
I guess it is easy to dismiss the message from ordinary people, since they do not express themselves as well as the professional speakers we are used to listen to. If instead of saying "I want a haircut.", they would say like Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." would they be taken more seriously? In the movie version of "I Robot", since the three laws of robotics prioritize saving life over following humans' wishes, the AI ends up locking down every humans in their own homes for their own safety. Could facebook sensor this movie since it pictures the lockdown as an evil action? For instance, in France, more than half of private sector employees have already been furloughed. This is unprecedented. So, who could predict what would be the consequences, including in terms of life? The food production in Southern Europe is down. Can we know for sure that their will be no starvation? Several countries have not decided to do a stay-at-home-lockdown including Sweden, most of Germany, Japan, South Korea, 95% of China. Praising the strategy of these countries should be authorized. Several eastern and northern Europeans countries are opening up as well, even though the disease is still there. People should be able to take a calculated risk. When people drive to their job, they consider the risk of having an accident, and the benefits of being able to reach their work place, then they take a decision. The most accurate data about the fatality rate of covid-19 may come from the Diamond Princess cruise boat where everyone has been tested. The 60-to-80 year old infected passengers had a fatality rate of ~2%. There was no fatality among the infected much younger crew. Now, the government should inform people with data, and let them take a decision. For now, it seems that the overwhelming majority of people in France, Italy, and Spain want the lockdown, so they should be able to get it. But people who want the opposite should be able to express their voice as well. Otherwise, the democracy cannot work. (Sorry for the bad English, it is not my native language.)
- staticassertion 7y ago
  > If instead of saying "I want a haircut.", they would say like Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." would they be taken more seriously? Most people sound more like the latter than the former. If people were saying "We have a need for haircuts etc, this is serious", they'd get a lot more consideration than some appeal to "but our freedoms". Most people sensibly realize that a lock-down in the face of a pandemic is not a regression in our fundamental rights as US citizens, but just a temporary measure to save lives. If instead you argue that you're legitimately going to see more harm done due to closures, and you back that up sensibly, people will care a lot more. You'll probably be wrong, but people might listen and take that seriously. In fact, they very obviously already are listening to this feedback, and it's a huge part of the communications from govt officials right now - how we are balancing saving lives via lockin vs dealing with the fallout of that exact policy. They're hardly ignoring the issue! > Could facebook sensor this movie since it pictures the lockdown as a evil action? Sure they could take it down, it's their platform. Would they? No, probably not, that would be really silly? > Now, the government should inform people with data, and let them take a decision. The role of our government is not to provide data but then otherwise let people do whatever. You say "People should be able to take a calculated risk." - how would they calculate it? Most are not capable of making an informed decision like that, and likening this situation to driving is just ridiculous (and ironic, given that car safety was heavily regulated due to huge numbers of people dying while car manufacturers were left unaccountable. The government stepped in with license requirements, manufacturing requirements, etc.).
Gatsky 7y ago
I guess Facebook has done some calculation about the potential fines/time sitting in congressional hearings in the aftermath of this versus revenue. I think it is strange to criticise this move as suppressing free speech. If you value free speech you wouldn’t be using facebook, a for-profit venture controlled by a few people with their own agenda.
cambalache 7y ago
Maybe I am too dumb or naive but for me, all these cases of censorship/deplatforming etc come down to answering one simple question? Is this post/tweet legal? Yes? Carry on.
guscost 7y ago
Facebook is performing an editorial function on the information they distribute by removing content that is not illegal. They're a publisher, it's as clear as day. By stepping into this role they should forfeit any exemption from liability[0] for the content that they publish. I'm sure that they pay a bunch of lobbyists to distract lawmakers from this fact, but they won't be able to escape it forever. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communications_Decency_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communicati...
throwaway122378 7y ago
We need an internet bill of rights. Something. Corporations with 100M, 200M, 1B, 2B+ reach need to be governed
stanfordkid 7y ago
As we do serological testing, it is being revealed that the death rate was even lower than previously imagined -- potentially by a factor of 50x [1]. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01095-0 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01095-0 Most places (outside of super dense metros) actually don't need quarantine at all. Maybe for people working in eldercare. With these new statistics the risk of death for those <65 is about the same as the normal risk of random death through other circumstances over the course of 2 months.
- elgenie 7y ago
  That preprint [1] is a great example of how far ahead of the skis you can get with motivated reasoning, bad math, and no peer review. They recruited people over Facebook at a time that California's COVID tests were backlogged (with ads not presented in the paper, with links to signup that could, anecdotally, be shared out); in that situation, avoiding selection bias towards people that were sick with something previously and want to know about potential immunity would be rather tough. (Per WTO protocol, they asked about symptoms in their sample but poof for some reason that data isn't in the paper). They got a 1.5% positive rate in their sample with 50 individuals testing positive. They then immediately applied demographic weighing to move that raw number to around 3%. Only then did they contemplate the false positive rate, taking the data of the manufacturer and 30 samples as a point estimate to figure out a 95% CI of positives around that 3%. That's a no-no for correctly propagating uncertainty. The statistically legitimate way to do that would've been to generate the 95% confidence interval for belief about the test's false positive rate and carry that forward in the demographic reweighing. That basic math would've avoided the frankly laughable result that a randomly selected person in Santa Clara county could have a 5% chance of having had COVID-19 while in the same county people seeing a doctor and getting tests through their doctor are only around 10% positive for COVID-19 [2]. Another critique: [3] [1] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.14.20062463v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.14.20062463v... [2] https://www.sccgov.org/sites/covid19/Pages/dashboard.aspx#testing https://www.sccgov.org/sites/covid19/Pages/dashboard.aspx#te... [3] https://medium.com/@balajis/peer-review-of-covid-19-antibody-seroprevalence-in-santa-clara-county-california-1f6382258c25 https://medium.com/@balajis/peer-review-of-covid-19-antibody...
markbnj 7y ago
I usually stay out of the political/topical threads on HN but this is personal to me. From my point of view few if any of us commenting here are knowledgeable enough to connect all the disparate data points we keep snatching at and synthesize them into conclusions that are likely to be correct. The people who can do that are working on it, and generally too busy at the moment to post on forums or give interviews. The misinformation and unfounded conclusions that are flying around, and especially the atmosphere of political strife and mistrust are very frustrating to them (and all of us I'm sure). Most of us here have chafed at similar situations when people who don't really understand what we do express strong opinions about how we should do it. They understand how people are being impacted, but they can't give us certainty at the moment however badly we want it. The mortality rate in this place or that; the experience on a cruise ship, or in Sweden, or in North Dakota vs. that in New York or Italy; the percentage of people who are positive and asymptomatic vs. presymptomatic vs. symptomatic; whether this or that drug seems to have a good effect on outcomes; they absolutely don't know how all of this fits together yet. All of them, doctors, nurses, researchers, are going in every day, treating patients, participating in daily conference calls to share information on outcomes, trying different therapies. They're figuring this out and all they have asked us for is some time. All these studies and hypotheses and numbers from various places don't always reflect what's actually happening on the ground. Someone mentioned quarantining the "vulnerable" people and letting everyone else get back to work and develop our "herd immunity." Are researchers certain we gain long term immunity? Can they precisely define "vulnerable?" My wife is clinical care coordinator on a covid unit in northern New Jersey (that's the personal part). Her first patient was 51. I bet that's younger than most of you are thinking when you think "vulnerable." It looks like he's going to make it and drop into that large "didn't die" bucket I see referred to here over and over, but to get there he spent _five weeks_ in an ICU bed on a ventilator. My wife has treated lots of elderly people. She's also treated people in their 30's and 40's. People in those age groups have died. Children have died, too. How many of each type of person will be affected by this or that containment policy? We don't know. When this thing started my wife's hospital was running about 2:1 patients to nurses. They're now flirting with 4-6:1. They don't have proper PPE. At another hospital near us a nurse was suspended for bringing her own to work. The general opinion is that the system can't handle much additional strain, and I don't think any of us are in a position to argue the point with them. It's been a month. We can absolutely make it through a few months if we have to, while they do their work. I personally think that would be easier with strong and consistent federal leadership, but that's a separate discussion. At the very least we should be willing to heed the people we expect to save our lives if we get sick.
wiradikusuma 7y ago
I'm overly simplifying, but I don't understand the fuss. The incubation is ~14 days. So if _everyone_ can act together, stay at home for 2-3 weeks, then it'll all be over and we can get on with our lives, right? For those who don't want to follow (the deviants): force them to sign agreement, "If COVID-19 happens to me, that's solely my problem." and let them do whatever freedom they want, as long as they're not near non-deviants. This is similar with smokers. In many countries, smoking is still allowed in designated areas: closed room where all smokers smoke. You think smoking is okay? Fine, do it with the rest of you, but don't inflict damage to non-smokers. Sorry for the rant, but I'm perplexed by the selfishness. You want it your way? Go ahead, but don't risk others.
- baggy_trough 7y ago
  That’s not the case because households have an average size > 1.
- downerending 7y ago
  No, no group of ordinary humans can all act together at the same time, with discipline. Occasionally this works in the military or something, but they're heavily trained. Plus, the problem with "deviants" as you put it, is that if they don't "conform", they can infect a lot of other non-deviants. The problem is a complex one, for sure.
anonymouswacker 7y ago
Facebook will censor itself out of relevance as its usefulness for connection and building relationships is replaced by insistence on creating a safe space for pro-establishment propaganda. It was already selectively flagging certain news articles as true or not, countering certain misinformation while conveniently missing others. It's a questionable practice to become the gatekeepers of fact when the fourth estate itself is held to no such legal standard. The centralized web needs to stop this subtle censorship. We can't rely on the opinions of a few to censor the many in any fair or equitable way, look at Twitter/Reddit/YouTube...
mayim 7y ago
Would not believe I'd ever say that but, kudos to you, Facebook.
totetsu 7y ago
It's like this pandemic is giving a biological counter argument to concepts of ethics that assume a human being is an isolated unit.
kimsant 7y ago
money is just a tool. I'm a civil engineer. When we decide to buy, for example, protection side fences for a road, we calculate how many people will pass the road, how many will die with and without and how much cost the fence. If the price per life is bigger than target, lets say, we spend 5M$ to save 1 life, we Don't put the fence. What you should do is to put a price to lifes, and then put a price to goods, and then make simulation to see how much goods are produced and lifes are taken in 2years range scenarios. Take in to account soft and harder measures, risk of second waves, asymmetrical lockdown by regions and ages and genders, inmunology ID, Testing, night work options to reduce contact... Anything! Let the doctors do, let the engineers simulate, and let the best option execute as planned
chasd00 7y ago
Facebook censoring in favor of Trump. strange days
mrfusion 7y ago
First they came for the lockdown protesters ...
jart 7y ago
Fake news. Facebook communiqué actually reads "theories like physical distancing is ineffective" is now considered "misinformation". https://about.fb.com/news/2020/04/covid-19-misinfo-update/ https://about.fb.com/news/2020/04/covid-19-misinfo-update/ Facebook goes too far. Communications company should not be forming its own opinions on heartbreaking policies necessary during an emergency that academy is still working to fully understand. If economy is asking people who didn't have 19b cash on hand to make sacrifices then nouveau riche sysadmins should not be denying them voice to express feelings online to friends and family too.

280 points by nickysielicki 7y ago

boznz 7y ago

good

dang 7y ago
Please don't post unsubstantive comments here.
- boznz 7y ago
  Do I seriously need to substantiate why anti-vax is bad?
  - dang 7y ago
    Please no.
esturk 7y ago
I highly doubt Facebook did this because it was the "good thing" to do. Instead, it has more to do with what's "good" for business, ie FB continues to sell fake political ads. As such, anything that prolongs the pandemic is bad for business and bad for Facebook. That includes fake coronavirus cures and anti-quarantine stands. This is also true for the Drug Cartels. We've seen them enforce social-distancing in Central America. Why? Because prolonging the pandemic is bad for business not because the Cartels suddenly grew a heart and decided they want to do something "good" for mankind.

chrisco255 7y ago

These are Americans exercising their constitutional rights to freedom of speech and assembly. Whether you agree with the protestors or not is irrelevant. Your rights are impacted, too, by this arbitrary platform bias. This cannot stand for long. We have to move away from centralized monopolies on the web.

edgefield0 7y ago
This is a bogus argument. The protestors are advocating for behavior that will literally kill people, including medical personnel. The protesters are no different than those who call for deadly riots or civil war. They deserve to be shut down for jeopardizing public health and safety.
- octocop 7y ago
  Why not monitor the movements of the ones in the group and alert the local police of their whereabouts, maybe arrest a few of them and it would be an even bigger statement
- devmunchies 7y ago
  any decision can kill people, whether its motor traffic laws, junk food laws, or smoking laws, or quarantine laws. its all open for debate and should not be deplatformed for mere protest. There is a point where quarantine does more damage than good, especially when thinking big picture and government control.
  - edgefield0 7y ago
    Yes, because all of those examples are equivalent to intentionally spreading a pandemic with no known vaccine or treatment with a 1-2% rate of death, where medical professionals and poor people will be disproportionately impacted.
    - AmericanChopper 7y ago
      Heart disease is responsible for a quarter of all deaths in the US. Facebook distributing adds for Coke is going to cause for more deaths than all the worlds quarantine protest groups combined. Deplatforming groups for petitioning the government is a tremendously alarming decision from Facebook. Regardless of what you think about FB being a corporate platform, the worlds civil liberties have been switched off along side the economy. Governments have a terrible track record of abdicating the powers they seize during crises, and are all talking about a “new normal”, as if we shouldn’t expect freedom of movement or privacy to return once this is over. These people have every right to petition their government (in the US at least), and FB deplatforming them is a serious cause for concern, especially under the guise of “misinformation”.

crankylinuxuser 7y ago

I'd argue that the other HN story about Krebs doing investigative journalism about who the players are behind the "reopen*.com" is a much more interesting discussion. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22928292 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22928292 This story is going to dig up the usual FB hatred, battles over "freedom of speech" vs "corporate platform", and tired discussion topics that have been re and rehashed again here.

downerending 7y ago

It's worth noting that there is a lot of discussion in serious circles (including here on HN) about the balance between too much and not enough with respect to quarantine, lockdown, etc., both in terms of where we are now and what we should do in the near future. I see little reason to doubt that all involved are trying to minimize general death and misery, even if they may disagree radically about how to do that. It'd be pretty wild if (say) Google decided that Chrome would no longer display pages that were "too far" in their discussion and advocacy of the options.

oldsklgdfth 7y ago
> I see little reason to doubt that all involved are trying to minimize general death and misery, even if they may disagree radically about how to do that. It's interesting that even with the best case scenario there are entities with enough power to control behavior like that. That fact is scary. If they have ulterior motives. That fact is scarier.
- spunker540 7y ago
  They don’t have the power to control behavior arbitrarily though. If they tried to shut down business last year for no reason at all, you can bet there’d be push back, protests and eventually they’d be voted out of office and laws would be changed etc. However when there is a pandemic overwhelming hospital systems around the world, they do have the power to shut things down precisely because most people agree with that decision. Clearly right now there is a vocal minority who disagrees and has chosen to protest. And as far as I can tell they are suffering no consequences besides being ridiculed and called “stupid” by the folks who consent to staying in for the greater good. The us government only has the power to shut things down when most people agree that they should have that power.
gdubs 7y ago
I’m too tired at the moment to figure out where I stand on this [issue of free speech / assembly] but I have a general question: I thought the Supreme Court has already shown that there are limits to speech, such as yelling “Fire” in a crowded theater. I guess the distinction is how directly the speech leads to harm. Would that apply in this situation where most medical experts would agree that the quarantine is necessary for saving lives? Or is the thinking that this is too far removed — like telling people they can’t protest seat-belts. Edit: I’ll clarify by saying that (my personal opinion) is that the protests are at best ... misguided. My question is about precedent on free speech / assembly under circumstances where harm might occur or it violates something like a quarantine or shelter-in-place order. The Atlantic article linked below is fascinating because I definitely have always thought of the “fire in a crowded theater example.”

hnburnsy 7y ago

How does Facebook distinguish from those who are protesting because they want to plant seeds, from those who want full reopening today?

aaron695 7y ago

This religion of 'lockdown' is righteousness is pretty indicative of normal human behaviour now. If you actually read the 'lockdown' scriptures it does state the 'lockdown' will end, it also talks about how the devil of herd immunity will eventually live amongst us. The exact time of rapture of ending the 'lockdown' is not stated in the scriptures but it's not totally unreasonable to think it's now.

Press2forEN 7y ago

For those of you cheering this move, imagine it applied to the causes you care about and decide if you still think its a good idea.

elicash 7y ago
Never understood this argument. Let's take a cause I disagree with. I'm pro-equality, but still think Christian Mingle shouldn't be forced to match up same-sex couples. Because I disagree with their values, of course, I'd never use their website. OF COURSE conservative Christians should be allowed to have a website that aligns with their values. Not only don't I think this website should be outlawed -- I also don't think it's a "bad idea" that shouldn't exist. I simply disagree with the values, so I don't belong to it. Moving back to the current situation... I only want to belong to a social network that values science and public health. Why shouldn't I be allowed to be a user of a website that has those same values? You're going to tell me that the kind of website that I want to belong to should be outlawed and not allowed to exist? Or, let's not even go that far... that it's BAD that it exists? Keep in mind, you can have any view you want. This is whether or not Facebook wants to use their social network to help spread events that would endanger the general public. A "keep things closed" event would be treated the same way. (I agree FB is too big and should be cut into multiple pieces. And they shouldn't have been allowed to buy Instagram. But for very different reasons. Mostly I worry about their impact, as well as Google's, on publisher ad revenue.)
- lone_haxx0r 7y ago
  > I only want to belong to a social network that values science and public health. Why shouldn't I be allowed to be a user of a website that has those same values? I think it's a problem of expectations. Some expect Facebook to just be a social network. Others, like you, expect it to be a safe space where unapproved opinions aren't allowed. Neither kind is bad per se, but I don't think most people expected Facebook to be of the latter kind.
  - elicash 7y ago
    I'm rolling my eyes at your "safe space" ridiculousness and bizarre claim that I think unapproved opinions shouldn't be allowed, but putting that aside.... We should both agree that the real problem is monopoly. That if Facebook (and Google btw) weren't so powerful, people would be perfectly cool with the idea that maybe different people can have different values from one another and that maybe different companies could accommodate those different values.

KorematsuFred 7y ago

Personally this ventures into the same area of "baker refuses cake for gay wedding". Facebook does not want to profit from what they see is a "bad event". But do they have a right to refuse service on such bases ? (Of course there are legal differences such as protected class vs unprotected class. But either ways the moral principle is the same.) I personally would side with Facebook on this one.

didibus 7y ago

I'm curious what would currently be the statistic for the level of death I cause as a consequence of choosing to socialize? Surely we should have some idea by now? I just think it be an interesting metric, if I decide to go get a hair cut, did I also just decide for 2 person to die?

dimal 7y ago

I disagree with all these reopen protests, but I wonder if suppressing them will have the desired effect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect This action will "prove" to some people that the tech industry has a liberal bias. I don't know that there's a good counter action to these protests, though.

rm_-rf_slash 7y ago
The propaganda* play for the American right these days is to be absolutely shameless, so any action to circumvent or suppress the protests will inevitably be blown up as the last straw obliterating America-as-we-know-it now and forevermore. In this light, the reaction to the reaction of the protests should be disregarded as a matter of government and corporate policy, because the organizers of the protests are acting in bad faith to simply discredit democratically elected Democratic governorships. *Propaganda is not meant to be used as a derogatory term in this context; it is a tool, like a gun that can shoot deer for food or humans for conquest.

tehjoker 7y ago

I think the anti-quarantine protests are motivated by the most idiotic non-goals and were started by the Proud Boys before they were boosted by Fox News and the administration which are desperate to reopen the economy at the cost of any level of blood sacrifice on the altar of the DOW. That said, allowing Zuckerberg to simply silence protest movements on a whim is insane and will bite all of us incredibly hard in the future. He should not have this kind of power.

sjg007 7y ago

Facebook should remove the groups promoting them too.

duchenne 7y ago

I guess it is easy to dismiss the message from ordinary people, since they do not express themselves as well as the professional speakers we are used to listen to. If instead of saying "I want a haircut.", they would say like Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." would they be taken more seriously? In the movie version of "I Robot", since the three laws of robotics prioritize saving life over following humans' wishes, the AI ends up locking down every humans in their own homes for their own safety. Could facebook sensor this movie since it pictures the lockdown as an evil action? For instance, in France, more than half of private sector employees have already been furloughed. This is unprecedented. So, who could predict what would be the consequences, including in terms of life? The food production in Southern Europe is down. Can we know for sure that their will be no starvation? Several countries have not decided to do a stay-at-home-lockdown including Sweden, most of Germany, Japan, South Korea, 95% of China. Praising the strategy of these countries should be authorized. Several eastern and northern Europeans countries are opening up as well, even though the disease is still there. People should be able to take a calculated risk. When people drive to their job, they consider the risk of having an accident, and the benefits of being able to reach their work place, then they take a decision. The most accurate data about the fatality rate of covid-19 may come from the Diamond Princess cruise boat where everyone has been tested. The 60-to-80 year old infected passengers had a fatality rate of ~2%. There was no fatality among the infected much younger crew. Now, the government should inform people with data, and let them take a decision. For now, it seems that the overwhelming majority of people in France, Italy, and Spain want the lockdown, so they should be able to get it. But people who want the opposite should be able to express their voice as well. Otherwise, the democracy cannot work. (Sorry for the bad English, it is not my native language.)

staticassertion 7y ago
> If instead of saying "I want a haircut.", they would say like Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." would they be taken more seriously? Most people sound more like the latter than the former. If people were saying "We have a need for haircuts etc, this is serious", they'd get a lot more consideration than some appeal to "but our freedoms". Most people sensibly realize that a lock-down in the face of a pandemic is not a regression in our fundamental rights as US citizens, but just a temporary measure to save lives. If instead you argue that you're legitimately going to see more harm done due to closures, and you back that up sensibly, people will care a lot more. You'll probably be wrong, but people might listen and take that seriously. In fact, they very obviously already are listening to this feedback, and it's a huge part of the communications from govt officials right now - how we are balancing saving lives via lockin vs dealing with the fallout of that exact policy. They're hardly ignoring the issue! > Could facebook sensor this movie since it pictures the lockdown as a evil action? Sure they could take it down, it's their platform. Would they? No, probably not, that would be really silly? > Now, the government should inform people with data, and let them take a decision. The role of our government is not to provide data but then otherwise let people do whatever. You say "People should be able to take a calculated risk." - how would they calculate it? Most are not capable of making an informed decision like that, and likening this situation to driving is just ridiculous (and ironic, given that car safety was heavily regulated due to huge numbers of people dying while car manufacturers were left unaccountable. The government stepped in with license requirements, manufacturing requirements, etc.).

Gatsky 7y ago

I guess Facebook has done some calculation about the potential fines/time sitting in congressional hearings in the aftermath of this versus revenue. I think it is strange to criticise this move as suppressing free speech. If you value free speech you wouldn’t be using facebook, a for-profit venture controlled by a few people with their own agenda.

cambalache 7y ago

Maybe I am too dumb or naive but for me, all these cases of censorship/deplatforming etc come down to answering one simple question? Is this post/tweet legal? Yes? Carry on.

guscost 7y ago

Facebook is performing an editorial function on the information they distribute by removing content that is not illegal. They're a publisher, it's as clear as day. By stepping into this role they should forfeit any exemption from liability[0] for the content that they publish. I'm sure that they pay a bunch of lobbyists to distract lawmakers from this fact, but they won't be able to escape it forever. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communications_Decency_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communicati...

throwaway122378 7y ago

We need an internet bill of rights. Something. Corporations with 100M, 200M, 1B, 2B+ reach need to be governed

stanfordkid 7y ago

As we do serological testing, it is being revealed that the death rate was even lower than previously imagined -- potentially by a factor of 50x [1]. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01095-0 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01095-0 Most places (outside of super dense metros) actually don't need quarantine at all. Maybe for people working in eldercare. With these new statistics the risk of death for those <65 is about the same as the normal risk of random death through other circumstances over the course of 2 months.

elgenie 7y ago
That preprint [1] is a great example of how far ahead of the skis you can get with motivated reasoning, bad math, and no peer review. They recruited people over Facebook at a time that California's COVID tests were backlogged (with ads not presented in the paper, with links to signup that could, anecdotally, be shared out); in that situation, avoiding selection bias towards people that were sick with something previously and want to know about potential immunity would be rather tough. (Per WTO protocol, they asked about symptoms in their sample but poof for some reason that data isn't in the paper). They got a 1.5% positive rate in their sample with 50 individuals testing positive. They then immediately applied demographic weighing to move that raw number to around 3%. Only then did they contemplate the false positive rate, taking the data of the manufacturer and 30 samples as a point estimate to figure out a 95% CI of positives around that 3%. That's a no-no for correctly propagating uncertainty. The statistically legitimate way to do that would've been to generate the 95% confidence interval for belief about the test's false positive rate and carry that forward in the demographic reweighing. That basic math would've avoided the frankly laughable result that a randomly selected person in Santa Clara county could have a 5% chance of having had COVID-19 while in the same county people seeing a doctor and getting tests through their doctor are only around 10% positive for COVID-19 [2]. Another critique: [3] [1] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.14.20062463v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.14.20062463v... [2] https://www.sccgov.org/sites/covid19/Pages/dashboard.aspx#testing https://www.sccgov.org/sites/covid19/Pages/dashboard.aspx#te... [3] https://medium.com/@balajis/peer-review-of-covid-19-antibody-seroprevalence-in-santa-clara-county-california-1f6382258c25 https://medium.com/@balajis/peer-review-of-covid-19-antibody...

markbnj 7y ago

I usually stay out of the political/topical threads on HN but this is personal to me. From my point of view few if any of us commenting here are knowledgeable enough to connect all the disparate data points we keep snatching at and synthesize them into conclusions that are likely to be correct. The people who can do that are working on it, and generally too busy at the moment to post on forums or give interviews. The misinformation and unfounded conclusions that are flying around, and especially the atmosphere of political strife and mistrust are very frustrating to them (and all of us I'm sure). Most of us here have chafed at similar situations when people who don't really understand what we do express strong opinions about how we should do it. They understand how people are being impacted, but they can't give us certainty at the moment however badly we want it. The mortality rate in this place or that; the experience on a cruise ship, or in Sweden, or in North Dakota vs. that in New York or Italy; the percentage of people who are positive and asymptomatic vs. presymptomatic vs. symptomatic; whether this or that drug seems to have a good effect on outcomes; they absolutely don't know how all of this fits together yet. All of them, doctors, nurses, researchers, are going in every day, treating patients, participating in daily conference calls to share information on outcomes, trying different therapies. They're figuring this out and all they have asked us for is some time. All these studies and hypotheses and numbers from various places don't always reflect what's actually happening on the ground. Someone mentioned quarantining the "vulnerable" people and letting everyone else get back to work and develop our "herd immunity." Are researchers certain we gain long term immunity? Can they precisely define "vulnerable?" My wife is clinical care coordinator on a covid unit in northern New Jersey (that's the personal part). Her first patient was 51. I bet that's younger than most of you are thinking when you think "vulnerable." It looks like he's going to make it and drop into that large "didn't die" bucket I see referred to here over and over, but to get there he spent _five weeks_ in an ICU bed on a ventilator. My wife has treated lots of elderly people. She's also treated people in their 30's and 40's. People in those age groups have died. Children have died, too. How many of each type of person will be affected by this or that containment policy? We don't know. When this thing started my wife's hospital was running about 2:1 patients to nurses. They're now flirting with 4-6:1. They don't have proper PPE. At another hospital near us a nurse was suspended for bringing her own to work. The general opinion is that the system can't handle much additional strain, and I don't think any of us are in a position to argue the point with them. It's been a month. We can absolutely make it through a few months if we have to, while they do their work. I personally think that would be easier with strong and consistent federal leadership, but that's a separate discussion. At the very least we should be willing to heed the people we expect to save our lives if we get sick.

wiradikusuma 7y ago

I'm overly simplifying, but I don't understand the fuss. The incubation is ~14 days. So if _everyone_ can act together, stay at home for 2-3 weeks, then it'll all be over and we can get on with our lives, right? For those who don't want to follow (the deviants): force them to sign agreement, "If COVID-19 happens to me, that's solely my problem." and let them do whatever freedom they want, as long as they're not near non-deviants. This is similar with smokers. In many countries, smoking is still allowed in designated areas: closed room where all smokers smoke. You think smoking is okay? Fine, do it with the rest of you, but don't inflict damage to non-smokers. Sorry for the rant, but I'm perplexed by the selfishness. You want it your way? Go ahead, but don't risk others.

baggy_trough 7y ago
That’s not the case because households have an average size > 1.
downerending 7y ago
No, no group of ordinary humans can all act together at the same time, with discipline. Occasionally this works in the military or something, but they're heavily trained. Plus, the problem with "deviants" as you put it, is that if they don't "conform", they can infect a lot of other non-deviants. The problem is a complex one, for sure.

anonymouswacker 7y ago

Facebook will censor itself out of relevance as its usefulness for connection and building relationships is replaced by insistence on creating a safe space for pro-establishment propaganda. It was already selectively flagging certain news articles as true or not, countering certain misinformation while conveniently missing others. It's a questionable practice to become the gatekeepers of fact when the fourth estate itself is held to no such legal standard. The centralized web needs to stop this subtle censorship. We can't rely on the opinions of a few to censor the many in any fair or equitable way, look at Twitter/Reddit/YouTube...

mayim 7y ago

Would not believe I'd ever say that but, kudos to you, Facebook.

totetsu 7y ago

It's like this pandemic is giving a biological counter argument to concepts of ethics that assume a human being is an isolated unit.

kimsant 7y ago

money is just a tool. I'm a civil engineer. When we decide to buy, for example, protection side fences for a road, we calculate how many people will pass the road, how many will die with and without and how much cost the fence. If the price per life is bigger than target, lets say, we spend 5M$ to save 1 life, we Don't put the fence. What you should do is to put a price to lifes, and then put a price to goods, and then make simulation to see how much goods are produced and lifes are taken in 2years range scenarios. Take in to account soft and harder measures, risk of second waves, asymmetrical lockdown by regions and ages and genders, inmunology ID, Testing, night work options to reduce contact... Anything! Let the doctors do, let the engineers simulate, and let the best option execute as planned

chasd00 7y ago

Facebook censoring in favor of Trump. strange days

mrfusion 7y ago

First they came for the lockdown protesters ...

jart 7y ago

Fake news. Facebook communiqué actually reads "theories like physical distancing is ineffective" is now considered "misinformation". https://about.fb.com/news/2020/04/covid-19-misinfo-update/ https://about.fb.com/news/2020/04/covid-19-misinfo-update/ Facebook goes too far. Communications company should not be forming its own opinions on heartbreaking policies necessary during an emergency that academy is still working to fully understand. If economy is asking people who didn't have 19b cash on hand to make sacrifices then nouveau riche sysadmins should not be denying them voice to express feelings online to friends and family too.