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It also worked in China when scientists were trying to get word of the virus out in January. Fooled most of the western media.

ehsankia 6y ago
This analogy is so dishonest. These people are free to talk about all the conspiracies they want on their own websites, blogs and so on. They are not entitled to having their content hosted on other people's websites though. It's like if I complained that the NYT isn't talking about my coolest new invention and called that censorship. That's very different than the government (not a private company) trying to shut you down from speaking anywhere.
- generalizations 6y ago
  Except I wasn't talking about the entity involved, I was talking about the efficacy of shutting down the 'misinformation'. Entity A shutdown covid info successfully, and Entity B wants to shutdown election info. That's dishonest? What's dishonest is you misreading my comment and then blaming me for it.
vkou 6y ago
You are rewriting history. Western media was not 'fooled'. It's ironic that you are doing so in a thread about spreading misinformation on the internet. January 8th - China identifies new virus causing phenomnia-like illness [1] January 10th - China reports first death from new virus [2] January 21st - The outbreak, which began in December in a seafood and poultry market in Wuhan, a city of 11 million, is spreading: Patients have been identified in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, as well as Taiwan, Japan, Thailand and South Korea. [3] Don't blame our inability to react to the virus on China. The pandemic was raging for months, with news coverage of people being locked in their own apartments, doctors dying, makeshift hospitals getting set up in stadiums, before it exceeded more than a handful of cases in the West. Hell, even after hundreds of thousands dead, we still don't have the political will to do what would have been necessary to stamp it out back in March - massive testing, massive contact tracing, enforced quarantine. If we were to go back in time, and do it again, I think we would arrive at pretty much the same outcome. The 'China hid the facts' [4] narrative has little explanatory power, and its primary purpose is to shift the blame from our own failings. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/08/health/china-pneumonia-outbreak-virus.html?searchResultPosition=3 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/08/health/china-pneumonia-ou... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/10/world/asia/china-virus-wuhan-death.html?searchResultPosition=4 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/10/world/asia/china-virus-wu... [3] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/21/health/cdc-coronavirus.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/21/health/cdc-coronavirus.ht... [4] It[5] did hide the facts, but it hid them so poorly that everyone who was paying any attention, both inside, and outside China was aware of how serious this pandemic is at the start of the year. It's hard to hide the facts about something when you put an entire city under lockdown (But don't cut the telephone and internet lines into it.) [5] China isn't a monolith. To be exact, local government did its best to downplay the pandemic. National government was not very happy with how that went down, and purged their local and regional party branches for their mishandling of the outbreak.

ehsankia 6y ago

This analogy is so dishonest. These people are free to talk about all the conspiracies they want on their own websites, blogs and so on. They are not entitled to having their content hosted on other people's websites though. It's like if I complained that the NYT isn't talking about my coolest new invention and called that censorship. That's very different than the government (not a private company) trying to shut you down from speaking anywhere.

generalizations 6y ago
Except I wasn't talking about the entity involved, I was talking about the efficacy of shutting down the 'misinformation'. Entity A shutdown covid info successfully, and Entity B wants to shutdown election info. That's dishonest? What's dishonest is you misreading my comment and then blaming me for it.

vkou 6y ago

You are rewriting history. Western media was not 'fooled'. It's ironic that you are doing so in a thread about spreading misinformation on the internet. January 8th - China identifies new virus causing phenomnia-like illness [1] January 10th - China reports first death from new virus [2] January 21st - The outbreak, which began in December in a seafood and poultry market in Wuhan, a city of 11 million, is spreading: Patients have been identified in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, as well as Taiwan, Japan, Thailand and South Korea. [3] Don't blame our inability to react to the virus on China. The pandemic was raging for months, with news coverage of people being locked in their own apartments, doctors dying, makeshift hospitals getting set up in stadiums, before it exceeded more than a handful of cases in the West. Hell, even after hundreds of thousands dead, we still don't have the political will to do what would have been necessary to stamp it out back in March - massive testing, massive contact tracing, enforced quarantine. If we were to go back in time, and do it again, I think we would arrive at pretty much the same outcome. The 'China hid the facts' [4] narrative has little explanatory power, and its primary purpose is to shift the blame from our own failings. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/08/health/china-pneumonia-outbreak-virus.html?searchResultPosition=3 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/08/health/china-pneumonia-ou... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/10/world/asia/china-virus-wuhan-death.html?searchResultPosition=4 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/10/world/asia/china-virus-wu... [3] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/21/health/cdc-coronavirus.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/21/health/cdc-coronavirus.ht... [4] It[5] did hide the facts, but it hid them so poorly that everyone who was paying any attention, both inside, and outside China was aware of how serious this pandemic is at the start of the year. It's hard to hide the facts about something when you put an entire city under lockdown (But don't cut the telephone and internet lines into it.) [5] China isn't a monolith. To be exact, local government did its best to downplay the pandemic. National government was not very happy with how that went down, and purged their local and regional party branches for their mishandling of the outbreak.