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Twitter Suspends Chinese Virologist Acc Who Claimed Coronavirus Was Made in Lab

12 points by imheretolearn 6y ago

kstenerud 6y ago
This is important because it marks the point where we cross the Rubicon into territory where social media companies become arbiters of truth. It's not so much a question of the actual content in this particular case. What's important is that we're no longer limiting ourselves to censoring harassment, incitement to violence, or posts that damage public health or the democratic process. This kind of censorship steps well into the domain of political speech, and regardless of the merits of this particular decision, the long term effects as this kind of censorship becomes normalized won't be good, especially when it's so easy to silence people with the flick of a switch.
- triyambakam 6y ago
  I definitely agree, though would you say this is the defining event across that line? It seems there has been so much censorship already in the past few months
  - e9 6y ago
    This person has real credentials, she co-authored paper on COVID-19 that was published in Nature magazine: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2342-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2342-5
    - zxcmx 6y ago
      Reposting comment from dup at: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24501195 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24501195 You don't have to go back far (author -> paper -> author affiliations -> sponsoring foundation ...) before you literally find Steve Bannon's face staring out of the page at you. I have no idea whether the arguments in the paper are credible or not (I'm not technically qualified to assess them) but the source seems to have a very clear political agenda. That doesn't invalidate their claims but I can't take them seriously without hearing from a more independent source. There are some fairly distinct signs of media engineering all over this story. Just little things like the paper downloads with the name "The_Yan_Report.pdf" - what scientist uploads their paper with that name to Zenodo? That sort of thing.
      - kstenerud 6y ago
        But it still begs the question: Why are they being censored? Regardless of how much BS this person is spouting or who is ultimately behind it all or what their intentions are, we generally hold that someone has a right to spout as much BS as they want so long as it doesn't put people or the democratic process in danger.
        zxcmx 6y ago
        If they are being censored it is clearly not working because the story is all over the news. It is possible they are being censored in some places because they look exactly like an influence operation, and COVID-19 misinformation is a huge problem for online platforms right now. We have people out in the real world right now protesting about Bill Gates' mind control vaccine - activated by 5G - because they have been "memetically compromised" via social media. I expect it might have gone a little differently if the claims in the paper had been peer reviewed.
  - kstenerud 6y ago
    There may have been other incursions across the line (I haven't been paying that much attention), but this one seems poignant because there's no direct danger to people or the democratic process in this person's conspiracy theories.
- op03 6y ago
  We haven't crossed that point, for the simple reason the resources and manpower to do it sustainably don't exist. When you are dealing with hundreds of millions of people do the math on how many "arbiters of truth" you need. And AI/ML models can't keep up with the speed at which things change day to day. Rumors for a while have been they are moving to a different model where they control reach and speed at which content moves. Anything going viral "too fast" is automatically slowed down. That reduces dependence on determining type of content. Things will prob settle on some hybrid model down the road.
- raxxorrax 6y ago
  True, although it is luckily restricted to Twitter. Yes, there are many Twitter users, but I think people underestimate the fact people use numerous other platforms too. It can be a indication that Twitter is not a good platform for politics. It isn't by design to be honest. Twitter began to lie when they removed popular hashtags that didn't fit to their corporate image of the platform they want to be. Ironically I believe they would have been more successful if they didn't manipulate results. The people asking for more moderation just don't care if their government lies to them and that includes a large part of the press that asks to be named "authoritative".

12 points by imheretolearn 6y ago

This is important because it marks the point where we cross the Rubicon into territory where social media companies become arbiters of truth. It's not so much a question of the actual content in this particular case. What's important is that we're no longer limiting ourselves to censoring harassment, incitement to violence, or posts that damage public health or the democratic process. This kind of censorship steps well into the domain of political speech, and regardless of the merits of this particular decision, the long term effects as this kind of censorship becomes normalized won't be good, especially when it's so easy to silence people with the flick of a switch.

triyambakam 6y ago
I definitely agree, though would you say this is the defining event across that line? It seems there has been so much censorship already in the past few months
- e9 6y ago
  This person has real credentials, she co-authored paper on COVID-19 that was published in Nature magazine: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2342-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2342-5
  - zxcmx 6y ago
    Reposting comment from dup at: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24501195 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24501195 You don't have to go back far (author -> paper -> author affiliations -> sponsoring foundation ...) before you literally find Steve Bannon's face staring out of the page at you. I have no idea whether the arguments in the paper are credible or not (I'm not technically qualified to assess them) but the source seems to have a very clear political agenda. That doesn't invalidate their claims but I can't take them seriously without hearing from a more independent source. There are some fairly distinct signs of media engineering all over this story. Just little things like the paper downloads with the name "The_Yan_Report.pdf" - what scientist uploads their paper with that name to Zenodo? That sort of thing.
    - kstenerud 6y ago
      But it still begs the question: Why are they being censored? Regardless of how much BS this person is spouting or who is ultimately behind it all or what their intentions are, we generally hold that someone has a right to spout as much BS as they want so long as it doesn't put people or the democratic process in danger.
      - zxcmx 6y ago
        If they are being censored it is clearly not working because the story is all over the news. It is possible they are being censored in some places because they look exactly like an influence operation, and COVID-19 misinformation is a huge problem for online platforms right now. We have people out in the real world right now protesting about Bill Gates' mind control vaccine - activated by 5G - because they have been "memetically compromised" via social media. I expect it might have gone a little differently if the claims in the paper had been peer reviewed.
- kstenerud 6y ago
  There may have been other incursions across the line (I haven't been paying that much attention), but this one seems poignant because there's no direct danger to people or the democratic process in this person's conspiracy theories.
op03 6y ago
We haven't crossed that point, for the simple reason the resources and manpower to do it sustainably don't exist. When you are dealing with hundreds of millions of people do the math on how many "arbiters of truth" you need. And AI/ML models can't keep up with the speed at which things change day to day. Rumors for a while have been they are moving to a different model where they control reach and speed at which content moves. Anything going viral "too fast" is automatically slowed down. That reduces dependence on determining type of content. Things will prob settle on some hybrid model down the road.
raxxorrax 6y ago
True, although it is luckily restricted to Twitter. Yes, there are many Twitter users, but I think people underestimate the fact people use numerous other platforms too. It can be a indication that Twitter is not a good platform for politics. It isn't by design to be honest. Twitter began to lie when they removed popular hashtags that didn't fit to their corporate image of the platform they want to be. Ironically I believe they would have been more successful if they didn't manipulate results. The people asking for more moderation just don't care if their government lies to them and that includes a large part of the press that asks to be named "authoritative".