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Facebook will no longer remove claims that Covid-19 was man-made

tolbish 5y ago
"In light of ongoing investigations into Hussein's regime and in consultation with Department of Defense experts, we will no longer remove the claim that Iraq does not have weapons of mass destruction."
JPKab 5y ago
To highlight how easily this clumsy, "fact checker" based censorship regime can be manipulated, look at this article, which essentially lays out how the initial "debunking" was spearheaded by scientists with direct conflicts of interest: https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-people-or-nature-open-pandoras-box-at-wuhan/ https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-peop...
- kaesar14 5y ago
  I posted this same article on the post that came up about India censorship on a thread that discussed lab leaks. Fantastic article that lays out how much circumstantial evidence was in place for a lab leak hypothesis. Enough that we should've always been talking about it. I consider this one of big tech and big media's greatest failings of the last 20 years, censoring this discussion and mocking those who dared to speak about it, just because Trump said it.
  - uncoder0 5y ago
    I was talking about the circumstantial evidence of the lab leak back in February of 2020 however I decided it was not worth it to continue once it became a topic that would get you de-platformed. This is one of the few social media platforms I'll share some of my actual beliefs and even here I self censor. I don't so much in private but online there isn't much value in voicing opinions that don't go with the current mainstream views. It's all so sad. 11 - 12 years ago I would get into very spirited and often productive debates and felt I changed minds and had my mind changed many times.
    - JPKab 5y ago
      Yes this happened to me as well. It should be noted that the Chinese ambassador to the US was one of the first to equate the lab leak theory with bigotry and racism towards Chinese Americans. There always have been and always will be ignorant rubes looking to indulge their prejudices. But as a society we can't allow the existence of these people to prevent us from disgusting legitimate scientific inquiry. And that is essentially what was done. It should be noted that a Chinese virologist who first made claims of it coming from a lab who was granted asylum in the United States was removed from Twitter for making these statements. The vitriol and anger directed at her and the fact that she was a published researcher were ignored with media always adding the words "claims to be a virologist" in front of her credentials.
      - uncoder0 5y ago
        I feel like the 'trust the science' crowd neither understands how scientific theory is actually developed by a debate of ideas and a testing of hypothesis. It feels more like a religion replacement that is steeped in dogma.
        kaesar14 5y ago
        Trust the science essentially became hijacked by the anti-Trump crowd, and became a dogma of "trust the scientists the media tells us to" instead of supporting the spirit of free debate and free exchange of ideas.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
NikolaeVarius 5y ago
People knew that it would come to this, where corporations are the final arbiters of the truth value of information, driven by people who loudly demand to shut down anything that doesn't conform to their world view. People demanded we steer into the iceberg while staring at it.
- Grakel 5y ago
  "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." -C.S. Lewis
  - mardifoufs 5y ago
    That quote (and that chapter from C. S Lewis in general) has been stuck in my mind for essentially the past 14 months. It's crazy how insanely powerful "conscious/virtuous" authoritarianism is. It really makes any discussion or compromise impossible. Of course the concept can seem very obvious but going through it and seeing how the whole process unfolds is still just hard to believe . We've set the stage for justifying pretty much every excess of authority/control. We somehow managed to make having more freedom something that you should be not only be very afraid of but also something you shouldn't even expect to begin with (which is quite a feat). I can't wait to see what it where that will lead us to!
- dnautics 5y ago
  I'm pretty sure newspapers have been simultaneously Records of truth and corporations since at least the turn of the 19th century, to the include yellow journalism and red scare eras.
  - GenerocUsername 5y ago
    Indeed. But the world's changed. They gave every person a microphone but then started censoring what you could say into that mic. Now all you hear is what you are allowed to hear, but instead of it coming from 1 source, it falsely looks like thousands of sources.
dekhn 5y ago
It was a huge mistake for them to do this in the first place. Youtube similarly took down videos which were scientifically valid, but not mainstream. Yet, realistically, this was always a plausible hypothesis, there just wasn't evidence to decide one way or another.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
quyleanh 5y ago
What if Facebook decides to orient its user with these kind of bans and lift bans?
xhkkffbf 5y ago
So nice of the great and powerful Oz to let us speak our minds -- on this particular point.
olivierestsage 5y ago
An early, pre-emptive ban shapes a narrative; a late change in policy does little to undo the effects of that decision.
mc32 5y ago
FB (and YT and Twitter) should never have been arbiters of discussion. They became privatized Ministries of Truth. It’s necessary for people to be able to discuss topics even if wrong or uncomfortable in pursuit of truth. Yes, there will be bad faith actors, but they are better than a MoT setting truth. This was totally idiotic and ideologically driven. I hope a lesson was learned, but I fear it wasn’t and this will repeat itself because people can’t help but want to drive agendas.
- zackees 5y ago
  It gets worse from here. Facebook whistleblowers stepped forward a few days ago and warned that “vaccine hesitancy” scores are being assigned to posts via AI and those with high scores don’t go viral. It doesn’t matter if the information is true or false, if the content discourages one from taking a vaccine the AIs will censor it.
- LorenPechtel 5y ago
  Discuss, yes, but most of this isn't a discussion but a propaganda effort.
  - mc32 5y ago
    But they flagged proper researchers; how is that defensible? In addition whats the difference between foreign propaganda, domestic propaganda and corporate propaganda?
    - namelessoracle 5y ago
      Considering who/what countries actively invest in all forms of communication there is no meaningful line between the 3 anymore. Even domestic propaganda becomes suspect when you find out a government officials child has major business dealings with X or Y country. This happens in both parties.
  - weasel_words 5y ago
    But that is the whole point of the parent. Who is to say it is a "propaganda effort"? FB/TW/YT? Why? How would they know (unless they were part of that effort, ironically)?
calvinmorrison 5y ago
Thank u master zucc, now please take my data as an offering.
gamblor956 5y ago
Related WaPo article on the global shift in responses to the lab-leak theory: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/05/25/timeline-how-wuhan-lab-leak-theory-suddenly-became-credible/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/05/25/timeline-... In a nutshell, currently, most scientists (specifically, virologists) say that the lab leak theory is the most plausible, given that the Wuhan lab was studying two bat viruses that are (were?) genetically close to SARS2, and a number of lab workers reported symptoms similar to SARS2 in the fall of 2019, when the outbreak is now assumed to have begun. Virologists currently differ on whether the changes to the virus were natural evolution, man-made, or the result of contamination/poor safety procedures resulting in cross-species mutations. The argument against it being man-made is that currently as far as we know, we don't actually have the proper tools to get the changes that exist in SARS2; the changes are too efficient to have been man-made. The counter to this is that the released version of SARS2 may have been an evolved strain descending from a (less-efficient) man-made virus.
- manuelabeledo 5y ago
  Where exactly says in the article that “most scientists […] say that the lab leak theory is the most plausible”?
  - gamblor956 5y ago
    Exactly? Nowhere. The article itself is a summarized timeline of other articles in which a number of virologists with experience in SARS1, ebolavirus, etc., provide their experience-informed opinions. For example, in another article (summarized in the timeline article), the WaPo notes that the head of the WHO believes that the lab leak theory is currently the most plausible, given what is currently known (and not known) about the virus, and given his prior experience in tracking down ebola and marsburg virus outbreaks, I defer to him on this. Other virologists interviewed for other articles, including those who have worked directly with the lead researcher of the Wuhan virus lab, state that the lab leak theory is the most plausible, especially given the lead researcher's history of disregard for proper safety protocols. Indeed, what is most notable about the lab leak theory is that there are no virologists publicly willing to state that it is implausible, while there are a great many virologists willing to put their reputations on the line and say that the lab leak is the most plausible, and why they believe that to be the case.
egberts1 5y ago
Costed me 457 days of Facebook ban for citing numerous medical whitepapers on COVID Most were appealed.
ulucs 5y ago
Now to put warning signs on Facebook's fact checking warning signs: "The reported fact-checking is potentially false"
infamouscow 5y ago
I hope this leads to stripping Section 230 protections from social media companies.
- Clubber 5y ago
  So the wonderful thing about social media is we're back to having citizen reporters. News and information isn't just what CNN and Fox tells us what is news, it's now done the way it was originally envisioned: by citizens. This has given us insights into things like which companies are shady, the widespread practice police brutalization, and many other things. Removing section 230 will remove that platform and return us to the CNN and Fox being the gatekeepers of information I'm afraid. The better answer is to disallow social media companies to consolidate and monopolize. We already have the laws on the books.
  - infamouscow 5y ago
    Do you seriously think if congress passed a law stripping Facebook and Twitter of Section 230 that somehow, overnight, they will just magically disappear from the world? I sure don't, especially since it costs money to moderate content.
    - Clubber 5y ago
      >that somehow, overnight, they will just magically disappear from the world? Those are your words not mine. It wouldn't happen overnight, but it wouldn't be recognizable within a year or less. They would remove almost all content to avoid liability, absolutely. 230 shields them from liability for the content they host (for the most part). It would turn into nothing but network shows and commercials, just like TV was 10-20 years ago. Here's what EFF describes it, and they support keeping it. https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230 https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230 Removing 230 would absolutely be an affront to citizens free speech and freedom to broadcast. I understand why people don't like it, but the alternative (removing it) is much, much worse. Think of it this way, say you hosted a blog on your own server and you had comments. Now once 230 gets repealed, you are open to lawsuits from anyone concerning any of the comments on your blog, including lawsuits with no merit that you still have to defend. Would you keep comments open? Probably not and even if you did, you probably wouldn't for long for one reason or the other (probably because you were sued). Hell, HN probably wouldn't even be the same. As soon as someone says x company sucks in a comment, HN is now open to a libel lawsuit, meritless or not. HN would have to decide if hiring full time moderators and a legal team for content would be worth the effort to keep the site up. It might be, but for many, if not most sites, it's not.
jdkee 5y ago
The social media companies need to be treated as common carriers.
supergirl 5y ago
so they still continue their "fact checking", even though now it's clear all the fact checkers were wrong on this one. just call it what it is then, censoring.
dporter 5y ago
Lets be real - the reason Facebook and other networks were banning these opinions wasn't because they were scientifically unviable, it was because they were right-wing talking points.
fallingfrog 5y ago
They were trying to tamp down on the QAnon stuff and this got caught in the net. But boy, censoring some opinion and then having it turn out to possibly be true looks BAD! Seriously though, my boomer parents believe literally every single thing they see passed around on Facebook, no matter how outrageously improbable. Is there any balanced, non-censorship way to curb the spread of stupid bullshit that doesn’t trample on people’s rights and occasionally flag a true fact as a lie? I’m seriously asking, because I don’t know the answer.
- krapp 5y ago
  >But boy, censoring some opinion and then having it turn out to possibly be true looks BAD! Yes, but also no. People were claiming Facebook and the rest of social media had such an absolute, Orwellian grip on free speech, information and human communication that if they censored it, it was in effect erased from existence, like Stalin erasing Trotsky. And yet the actual effect of that censorship on public debate and discovery, by the platforms people accuse of acting as "Ministries of Truth," turns out to have been practically inconsequential. If anything, it's proven that much of the fear mongering around social media, deplatforming and cancel culture is overblown.
  - fallingfrog 5y ago
    That’s true. Another thought: I’m pretty sure that many of the alternative facts that get passed around are not propagated despite being improbable, but because they are improbable. The bigger lie triggers the amygdala in a way that the little one doesn’t, so that one is paradoxically more likely to get passed on. Doesn’t help that every once in a while some conspiracy turns out to be true (cointelpro, Snowden documents).
    - krapp 5y ago
      > The bigger lie triggers the amygdala in a way that the little one doesn’t, so that one is paradoxically more likely to get passed on. That would explain how a conspiracy theory about a secret cabal of blood-drinking satanic pedophiles among the Democratic Party went from 4chan shitposts to a nationwide Christian apocalypse cult to a political platform that actually got someone elected to the House of Representatives. Galaxy amygdala.
ergot_vacation 5y ago
"It's not censorship! It's not a free-speech issue! It has nothing to do with the first amendment or freedom! They're a private company! If you don't like it just don't use Facebook (or Twitter, or Youtube, or Google, or Gmail, or...)" Do you get it now? Are you starting to understand? This was always going to be the end result. A world of information controlled by the powerful, where encyclopedias, dictionaries, and history books flex and bend with each new re-writing of reality that becomes necessary to protect their interests. Yesterday, we were never at war with Oceania, and claiming we were would get you banned. Today we have always been at war with Oceania, and saying so is perfectly fine. What new reality will we wake to tomorrow? And why is anyone who isn't obscenely wealthy still defending these people?

"In light of ongoing investigations into Hussein's regime and in consultation with Department of Defense experts, we will no longer remove the claim that Iraq does not have weapons of mass destruction."

JPKab 5y ago

To highlight how easily this clumsy, "fact checker" based censorship regime can be manipulated, look at this article, which essentially lays out how the initial "debunking" was spearheaded by scientists with direct conflicts of interest: https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-people-or-nature-open-pandoras-box-at-wuhan/ https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-peop...

kaesar14 5y ago
I posted this same article on the post that came up about India censorship on a thread that discussed lab leaks. Fantastic article that lays out how much circumstantial evidence was in place for a lab leak hypothesis. Enough that we should've always been talking about it. I consider this one of big tech and big media's greatest failings of the last 20 years, censoring this discussion and mocking those who dared to speak about it, just because Trump said it.
- uncoder0 5y ago
  I was talking about the circumstantial evidence of the lab leak back in February of 2020 however I decided it was not worth it to continue once it became a topic that would get you de-platformed. This is one of the few social media platforms I'll share some of my actual beliefs and even here I self censor. I don't so much in private but online there isn't much value in voicing opinions that don't go with the current mainstream views. It's all so sad. 11 - 12 years ago I would get into very spirited and often productive debates and felt I changed minds and had my mind changed many times.
  - JPKab 5y ago
    Yes this happened to me as well. It should be noted that the Chinese ambassador to the US was one of the first to equate the lab leak theory with bigotry and racism towards Chinese Americans. There always have been and always will be ignorant rubes looking to indulge their prejudices. But as a society we can't allow the existence of these people to prevent us from disgusting legitimate scientific inquiry. And that is essentially what was done. It should be noted that a Chinese virologist who first made claims of it coming from a lab who was granted asylum in the United States was removed from Twitter for making these statements. The vitriol and anger directed at her and the fact that she was a published researcher were ignored with media always adding the words "claims to be a virologist" in front of her credentials.
    - uncoder0 5y ago
      I feel like the 'trust the science' crowd neither understands how scientific theory is actually developed by a debate of ideas and a testing of hypothesis. It feels more like a religion replacement that is steeped in dogma.
      - kaesar14 5y ago
        Trust the science essentially became hijacked by the anti-Trump crowd, and became a dogma of "trust the scientists the media tells us to" instead of supporting the spirit of free debate and free exchange of ideas.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]

NikolaeVarius 5y ago

People knew that it would come to this, where corporations are the final arbiters of the truth value of information, driven by people who loudly demand to shut down anything that doesn't conform to their world view. People demanded we steer into the iceberg while staring at it.

Grakel 5y ago
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." -C.S. Lewis
- mardifoufs 5y ago
  That quote (and that chapter from C. S Lewis in general) has been stuck in my mind for essentially the past 14 months. It's crazy how insanely powerful "conscious/virtuous" authoritarianism is. It really makes any discussion or compromise impossible. Of course the concept can seem very obvious but going through it and seeing how the whole process unfolds is still just hard to believe . We've set the stage for justifying pretty much every excess of authority/control. We somehow managed to make having more freedom something that you should be not only be very afraid of but also something you shouldn't even expect to begin with (which is quite a feat). I can't wait to see what it where that will lead us to!
dnautics 5y ago
I'm pretty sure newspapers have been simultaneously Records of truth and corporations since at least the turn of the 19th century, to the include yellow journalism and red scare eras.
- GenerocUsername 5y ago
  Indeed. But the world's changed. They gave every person a microphone but then started censoring what you could say into that mic. Now all you hear is what you are allowed to hear, but instead of it coming from 1 source, it falsely looks like thousands of sources.

dekhn 5y ago

It was a huge mistake for them to do this in the first place. Youtube similarly took down videos which were scientifically valid, but not mainstream. Yet, realistically, this was always a plausible hypothesis, there just wasn't evidence to decide one way or another.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

quyleanh 5y ago

What if Facebook decides to orient its user with these kind of bans and lift bans?

xhkkffbf 5y ago

So nice of the great and powerful Oz to let us speak our minds -- on this particular point.

olivierestsage 5y ago

An early, pre-emptive ban shapes a narrative; a late change in policy does little to undo the effects of that decision.

mc32 5y ago

FB (and YT and Twitter) should never have been arbiters of discussion. They became privatized Ministries of Truth. It’s necessary for people to be able to discuss topics even if wrong or uncomfortable in pursuit of truth. Yes, there will be bad faith actors, but they are better than a MoT setting truth. This was totally idiotic and ideologically driven. I hope a lesson was learned, but I fear it wasn’t and this will repeat itself because people can’t help but want to drive agendas.

zackees 5y ago
It gets worse from here. Facebook whistleblowers stepped forward a few days ago and warned that “vaccine hesitancy” scores are being assigned to posts via AI and those with high scores don’t go viral. It doesn’t matter if the information is true or false, if the content discourages one from taking a vaccine the AIs will censor it.
LorenPechtel 5y ago
Discuss, yes, but most of this isn't a discussion but a propaganda effort.
- mc32 5y ago
  But they flagged proper researchers; how is that defensible? In addition whats the difference between foreign propaganda, domestic propaganda and corporate propaganda?
  - namelessoracle 5y ago
    Considering who/what countries actively invest in all forms of communication there is no meaningful line between the 3 anymore. Even domestic propaganda becomes suspect when you find out a government officials child has major business dealings with X or Y country. This happens in both parties.
- weasel_words 5y ago
  But that is the whole point of the parent. Who is to say it is a "propaganda effort"? FB/TW/YT? Why? How would they know (unless they were part of that effort, ironically)?

calvinmorrison 5y ago

Thank u master zucc, now please take my data as an offering.

gamblor956 5y ago

Related WaPo article on the global shift in responses to the lab-leak theory: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/05/25/timeline-how-wuhan-lab-leak-theory-suddenly-became-credible/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/05/25/timeline-... In a nutshell, currently, most scientists (specifically, virologists) say that the lab leak theory is the most plausible, given that the Wuhan lab was studying two bat viruses that are (were?) genetically close to SARS2, and a number of lab workers reported symptoms similar to SARS2 in the fall of 2019, when the outbreak is now assumed to have begun. Virologists currently differ on whether the changes to the virus were natural evolution, man-made, or the result of contamination/poor safety procedures resulting in cross-species mutations. The argument against it being man-made is that currently as far as we know, we don't actually have the proper tools to get the changes that exist in SARS2; the changes are too efficient to have been man-made. The counter to this is that the released version of SARS2 may have been an evolved strain descending from a (less-efficient) man-made virus.

manuelabeledo 5y ago
Where exactly says in the article that “most scientists […] say that the lab leak theory is the most plausible”?
- gamblor956 5y ago
  Exactly? Nowhere. The article itself is a summarized timeline of other articles in which a number of virologists with experience in SARS1, ebolavirus, etc., provide their experience-informed opinions. For example, in another article (summarized in the timeline article), the WaPo notes that the head of the WHO believes that the lab leak theory is currently the most plausible, given what is currently known (and not known) about the virus, and given his prior experience in tracking down ebola and marsburg virus outbreaks, I defer to him on this. Other virologists interviewed for other articles, including those who have worked directly with the lead researcher of the Wuhan virus lab, state that the lab leak theory is the most plausible, especially given the lead researcher's history of disregard for proper safety protocols. Indeed, what is most notable about the lab leak theory is that there are no virologists publicly willing to state that it is implausible, while there are a great many virologists willing to put their reputations on the line and say that the lab leak is the most plausible, and why they believe that to be the case.

egberts1 5y ago

Costed me 457 days of Facebook ban for citing numerous medical whitepapers on COVID Most were appealed.

ulucs 5y ago

Now to put warning signs on Facebook's fact checking warning signs: "The reported fact-checking is potentially false"

infamouscow 5y ago

I hope this leads to stripping Section 230 protections from social media companies.

Clubber 5y ago
So the wonderful thing about social media is we're back to having citizen reporters. News and information isn't just what CNN and Fox tells us what is news, it's now done the way it was originally envisioned: by citizens. This has given us insights into things like which companies are shady, the widespread practice police brutalization, and many other things. Removing section 230 will remove that platform and return us to the CNN and Fox being the gatekeepers of information I'm afraid. The better answer is to disallow social media companies to consolidate and monopolize. We already have the laws on the books.
- infamouscow 5y ago
  Do you seriously think if congress passed a law stripping Facebook and Twitter of Section 230 that somehow, overnight, they will just magically disappear from the world? I sure don't, especially since it costs money to moderate content.
  - Clubber 5y ago
    >that somehow, overnight, they will just magically disappear from the world? Those are your words not mine. It wouldn't happen overnight, but it wouldn't be recognizable within a year or less. They would remove almost all content to avoid liability, absolutely. 230 shields them from liability for the content they host (for the most part). It would turn into nothing but network shows and commercials, just like TV was 10-20 years ago. Here's what EFF describes it, and they support keeping it. https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230 https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230 Removing 230 would absolutely be an affront to citizens free speech and freedom to broadcast. I understand why people don't like it, but the alternative (removing it) is much, much worse. Think of it this way, say you hosted a blog on your own server and you had comments. Now once 230 gets repealed, you are open to lawsuits from anyone concerning any of the comments on your blog, including lawsuits with no merit that you still have to defend. Would you keep comments open? Probably not and even if you did, you probably wouldn't for long for one reason or the other (probably because you were sued). Hell, HN probably wouldn't even be the same. As soon as someone says x company sucks in a comment, HN is now open to a libel lawsuit, meritless or not. HN would have to decide if hiring full time moderators and a legal team for content would be worth the effort to keep the site up. It might be, but for many, if not most sites, it's not.

jdkee 5y ago

The social media companies need to be treated as common carriers.

supergirl 5y ago

so they still continue their "fact checking", even though now it's clear all the fact checkers were wrong on this one. just call it what it is then, censoring.

dporter 5y ago

Lets be real - the reason Facebook and other networks were banning these opinions wasn't because they were scientifically unviable, it was because they were right-wing talking points.

fallingfrog 5y ago

They were trying to tamp down on the QAnon stuff and this got caught in the net. But boy, censoring some opinion and then having it turn out to possibly be true looks BAD! Seriously though, my boomer parents believe literally every single thing they see passed around on Facebook, no matter how outrageously improbable. Is there any balanced, non-censorship way to curb the spread of stupid bullshit that doesn’t trample on people’s rights and occasionally flag a true fact as a lie? I’m seriously asking, because I don’t know the answer.

krapp 5y ago
>But boy, censoring some opinion and then having it turn out to possibly be true looks BAD! Yes, but also no. People were claiming Facebook and the rest of social media had such an absolute, Orwellian grip on free speech, information and human communication that if they censored it, it was in effect erased from existence, like Stalin erasing Trotsky. And yet the actual effect of that censorship on public debate and discovery, by the platforms people accuse of acting as "Ministries of Truth," turns out to have been practically inconsequential. If anything, it's proven that much of the fear mongering around social media, deplatforming and cancel culture is overblown.
- fallingfrog 5y ago
  That’s true. Another thought: I’m pretty sure that many of the alternative facts that get passed around are not propagated despite being improbable, but because they are improbable. The bigger lie triggers the amygdala in a way that the little one doesn’t, so that one is paradoxically more likely to get passed on. Doesn’t help that every once in a while some conspiracy turns out to be true (cointelpro, Snowden documents).
  - krapp 5y ago
    > The bigger lie triggers the amygdala in a way that the little one doesn’t, so that one is paradoxically more likely to get passed on. That would explain how a conspiracy theory about a secret cabal of blood-drinking satanic pedophiles among the Democratic Party went from 4chan shitposts to a nationwide Christian apocalypse cult to a political platform that actually got someone elected to the House of Representatives. Galaxy amygdala.

ergot_vacation 5y ago

"It's not censorship! It's not a free-speech issue! It has nothing to do with the first amendment or freedom! They're a private company! If you don't like it just don't use Facebook (or Twitter, or Youtube, or Google, or Gmail, or...)" Do you get it now? Are you starting to understand? This was always going to be the end result. A world of information controlled by the powerful, where encyclopedias, dictionaries, and history books flex and bend with each new re-writing of reality that becomes necessary to protect their interests. Yesterday, we were never at war with Oceania, and claiming we were would get you banned. Today we have always been at war with Oceania, and saying so is perfectly fine. What new reality will we wake to tomorrow? And why is anyone who isn't obscenely wealthy still defending these people?