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Not sure about this - I don’t think government leaders or anybody should be censored. Better to have public health messages as part of the platform than to cen

• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• m45t3r 6y ago
  There is a big difference between OMS and populist leaders like Maduro/Bolsonaro/Trump. What OMS said about masks and asymptomatic cases were the best we known about the pandemic at the current time (we still didn't have many studies on how the virus propagated). Once it became clear that masks helps and asymptomatic cases are super spreaders, OMS changed the tone quickly. Populist leaders say things about remedies that study after study shown that there is no efficacy and they never change their tone because it would mean they're wrong. Instead, they simple jump for the next "miracle" solution.
  • m45t3r 6y ago
    Also, context matters. OMS avoided recommending masks at the start of the pandemic since no study showed the efficacy of it, and there was no mass production of masks yet. So recommending it for general population would only generate shortage of masks for those who needed (frontline medics and nurses treating the cases). So this is why they're so against it.
    • briandear 6y ago
      > and there was no mass production of masks yet But that’s not what they said. Fauci said “healthy people do not need to wear masks.” So he either lied then or is lying now. The reason for the lie is irrelevant. If healthy people should wear masks, the lack of production capability doesn’t change the fact. If masks work and Fauci knew they worked, then his statement that healthy people don’t need masks was scientific fraud. His exact words: “There’s no reason to be walking around with a mask. When you’re in the middle of an outbreak, wearing a mask might make people feel a little bit better and it might even block a droplet, but it’s not providing the perfect protection that people think that it is. And, often, there are unintended consequences — people keep fiddling with the mask and they keep touching their face.” That statement was either patently false, or it was true and his current statements are patently false. Did he lie in order to protect mask supplies? Did some new groundbreaking study come out during the next few months? Of course not. So why would a rational person trust anything coming from Fauci given that we don’t know if it’s the truth, or just some manipulative statement based on whatever the political need happens to be at the time? To be even more cynical, ask oneself why certain older mask-related research papers have been censored? https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/04/data-do-not-back-cloth-masks-limit-covid-19-experts-say https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/04/data-do-...
      • bryan0 6y ago
        > That statement was either patently false, or it was true and his current statements are patently false. You’re actually missing the correct option which is that scientific consensus has shifted on this issue. Science is a process for the truth and conclusions can change with more evidence.
        • e2021 6y ago
          People keep saying this, but it doesn't make it true. The consensus of public health officials changed for sure, but I haven't seen any evidence that the science changed at all
          • bryan0 6y ago
            Science has been changing on this as the research becomes more nuanced for the current pandemic For example: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02801-8 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02801-8
      • Xylakant 6y ago
        > So he either lied then or is lying now. There’s also the option that he was wrong and learned/was educated. A lot of scientific progress works like that. “He lied” implies intention.
        • rsj_hn 6y ago
          So how many scientific studies about mask efficacy were completed to change the scientific consensus during those two months when we had a mask shortage and were being told that masks only protect doctors?
        • tomjen3 6y ago
          Sorry, but when you are the chief advisor in a national crisis you don't get to learn on the job.
          • 6y ago
  • tsimionescu 6y ago
    I'm guessing most people here will have no idea what you mean by OMS - the English name is WHO (World Health Organization).
    • m45t3r 6y ago
      Yeah, thanks for the correction.
• jamesgreenleaf 6y ago
  Another problem is that something like this can function as "evidence" for the claim. There are large groups of people who believe that censorship like this validates a worldview in which powerful interests are censoring true information in order to maintain control. It's similar to the Streisand Effect or "Banned in Boston" but for belief rather than attention. It seems like the better solution is to have an outpouring of discussion around how and why the claim is wrong. Let others ridicule the statements, rather than shutting down discussion. You'll never convince everyone, but at least you'd avoid the validation-by-censorship effect. I could be wrong on this though. I don't really have any evidence or data that would show doing it one way is better than the other. I suppose I simply prefer open discussion.
  • lupire 6y ago
    It's a hard problem. Liars can spam lies much faster than honest people can debunk it.
    • BaseS4 6y ago
      To counter this we should preemptively ban people just to make sure no one lies ever again.
  • hrktb 6y ago
    One issue is that it’s asymmetrical. Made up statements have more resonance and shocking value than well thought rebuffs or ridicule. If you accuse your opponent of eating babies at breakfast, other parties will have a hard time to find something as punchy, and some minority of people will swallow your statement. Throw around enough of these and you’ll have a large base covered, with your opponents left scrambling for boring or after the fact retorts that won’t have the same reach.
    • aetherson 6y ago
      And that is why you, yourself, believe lots of wrong things like this, right?
• concordDance 6y ago
  > It’s a fine line between hate and misinformation and dissent "Hate" is a pretty Orwellian[1] word in this context, with a meaning pretty far from its usage a couple of decades ago. Most usage I've seen has a distictively political bend. E.g. "X are stupid and science proves it!" is not hate when X is "conservatives" but is when X is "muslims". [1] see the section on meaningless words: https://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit/ https://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_poli... > Don’t know what the answer is, we don’t want echo chambers of misinformation, but we want to live in a democratic society too If we want less echo chambers we'd need to stop censoring and banning those who disagree with us, otherwise they go elsewhere, encountering those similarly ostracized and form a natural echo chamber.
  • sofixa 6y ago
    I don't think anyone claims that "X is stupid" is hate, regardless of how broad or nonsensical X is. X should die, or X are vile subhumans stealing our jobs, or we should rape X, or X are raping our dogs is hate.
    • pitay 6y ago
      Do remember that something like 'fossil fuels are destroying the environment' would be called 'hate speech' if power shifted a bit. 'Hate' is an emotive term used to bypass peoples thinking so that criticism of certain things can be disposed of by emotion rather than evidence. People bringing up evidence of malfeasance could be called 'hate filled' people, have what they say aggressively censored, so that other people only hear these are 'hate filled' people and what they say be buried so that inconvenient information doesn't come out.
      • sofixa 6y ago
        There's an expression in my native language which, directly translated, is something along these lines: "If my grandma had a rotor, she'd be a helicopter". I think it perfectly encapsulates your "slippery slope" argument, that if today we accept that saying you want to rape someone on Twitter is hate that needs to be stopped, tomorrow saying that processed foods are bad will be hate as well. Do you even realise how stupid your argument sounds? We're not talking about criticism. Were Nazis "criticizing" Jews? Do racists "criticize" other "races"? No, they hate them, and there is a pretty heavy difference between the two.
• alkonaut 6y ago
  You don’t really need to worry about drawing the line between facts and lies just because you remove the 10% most blatant disinformation. It doesn’t make Facebook the final arbiter of truth. There are things that are controversial or debated and Facebook and others stay away from that. Advocating injecting bleach or eating albinos to cure Covid is one thing while arguing the amount of asymptotic transmission is another thing entirely.
  • bopbeepboop 6y ago
    Okay — but in practice, channels on YouTube and Facebook merely mentioning COVID have to resort to euphemisms due to the extreme censorship. So your claim they “stay away from” controversial or genuinely disputed topics is plain wrong: they censor those topics heavily on FB and YT to shape narratives — from COVID to Amber Heard beating her spouse. Your idealized “just a little” censorship has already been exceeded — showing why it’s impractical as a political idea: it’s inherently unstable.
  • wincy 6y ago
    Does Facebook ban controversial statements such as “children should be given hormone blocking therapy if they request it, regardless of the wishes of their parents, even if it sterilizes them” or “transgender women should be allowed to go to/volunteer at battered women’s shelters”. Espousing the opposing viewpoint is a fast track to getting banned from Twitter/Facebook or wherever else. Note I’m not making a judgement about these statements, merely using them as examples of things that absolutely won’t get you kicked off of Facebook for advocating.
    • mensetmanusman 6y ago
      That will not happen, it’s not about enforcing morality, it’s about strengthening an ideology by erasing competing messages.
    • watwut 6y ago
      This is first time I see someone worry about trans in battered women shelter. It just sounds like one of these made up issues that actual domestic violence activists dont seem to care about. Battered women shelters also dont always have exclusively female staff. They do lean more female afaik, but penis won't prevent you to work as lawyer, psychologist, security etc. What that worry shows mostly is that whoever is creating panic about this one was never interested in domestic violence - nor even curious about it.
• mc32 6y ago
  Obviously Maduro is a problematic despotic leader, but who are Facebook to be arbiters of thrush and falsehood? We’ve gone down the path of good intentions that leads to hell. Does this not interfere with self determination? Is there one true north now? Have Facebook found all truth? This is getting ridiculous.
  • TulliusCicero 6y ago
    For their own platform? Facebook is, obviously. How is this even a question? It's not like a head of state doesn't have plenty of power to send messages through other means. Since when are private actors obligated to let them speak on private platforms?
    • whydoyoucare 6y ago
      Facebook doing it of its own volition is one thing, and I'd argue they are within the right to do so. Government pressurizing Facebook to censor stuff is entirely other ballgame, which poses a bigger risk, and nobody seems to be paying attention to. (Most attention is given to the content being censored, not the actors behind the censorship).
      • TulliusCicero 6y ago
        I agree that this is an issue. The first amendment should protect private actors here from government influence over their own membership policies, other than certain narrow exceptions like protected classes. Don't like that they ban too many left-wingers/right-wingers? Feel free to get mad about it, just don't get thinking that this is somehow illegal, or should be.
        • peytn 6y ago
          I think people are mad about the perceived abuse of liability protections enjoyed by these private actors. In my opinion that is totally valid.
    • bordercases 6y ago
• darkwizard42 6y ago
  Then they can spout whatever they want through their official channels. Facebook doesn't need to and isn't obligated to host their content. In this case, Facebook can do what they please. Any uproar should be directed at the government which can go about using official channels as they please (press conferences, news releases, official government web pages)
• jayd16 6y ago
  You have it backwards. We should be worried about being forced to broadcast political messages we think are lies. The real problem is that Facebook is in a position of such power and market control that moderation feels like censorship.
  • postmeta 6y ago
    True! We need to demand accountability from platforms for amplifying messages without transparent traceability of information.
• gameswithgo 6y ago
  Well then you can pay for some servers for people to post text and leave up the text that you think is reasonable.
  • geoduck14 6y ago
    Like Parler?
• codabool 6y ago
  WHO statement on masks was misleading but I didn't see it as wrong (only wrong in the sense that they should focus on people's perception of their statements). They said that there was no evidence that masks help. Which was true at the time. They paired that statement with suggestions use a variety of prevention methods. The statement from Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove that symptomatic patients being "very rare" was definitely wrong. But she back tracked the next day and said it only possible they are rare and was aware of the 40% models which have now come out to be much closer to the truth.
  • ergocoder 6y ago
    This is like your wife coming home and shout "there is no evidence that I cheated on you today". It's the truth, but wtf? WHO has been extremely incompetent in communicating with public. Their tweets were shockingly bad and misleading.
• JumpCrisscross 6y ago
  We have a mechanism for this. It’s defining protected classes. I don’t see an argument for putting Maduro’s speech into a protected class.
• tomjen3 6y ago
  Strong disagree, at this point people have choosen sides and any attempt to influence people one way or the other will look either pathetic, at an absolute best, or hamfisted if you don't roll a natural 20. And you really don't want more hamfisted attempts to educate people to your way of seeing the world unless you also want to repeat january 6th.