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Reminder that Facebook and Twitter banned users for talking about the lab-leak theory. Youtube accounts also got demontized/banned.

andybak 5y ago
I'm generally in favour of the actions taken against misinformation but this situation surprises me. Lab leak always seemed plausible and non-crazy even if you think the odds are against it. I don't envy the task of making a call on any of this stuff.
- generalizations 5y ago
  If we accept that taking action against misinformation is good, then this sort of mistake will inevitably happen. If you're in favor of taking action against misinformation, then you should be willing to accept this situation as an acceptable failure. I'm not willing to accept that.
  - noofen 5y ago
    Who would've thought that letting billionaires with international business interests censor scientific inquiry would end badly...
    - ytpete 5y ago
      It's really hard to view this as suppressing scientific inquiry. Scientists don't use public Facebook posts to collaborate on their research, nor to share their final results with the rest of the scientific community. It's also very hard to picture social media giants ever blocking users from posting anything that comes from peer-reviewed published science.
  - chipotle_coyote 5y ago
    > If you're in favor of taking action against misinformation, then you should be willing to accept this situation as an acceptable failure. We can believe taking action against misinformation is a generally good principle while still believing that both our definition of "misinformation" and the kinds of actions we take may need to be improved.
    - noofen 5y ago
      I disagree. The market and political forces are too strong, the "misinformation" umbrella will always expand to fit the needs of the wealthy and powerful. When the stakes are high, exactly the time when you need radical honesty, the benefits of censoring information are also high. Some might say, "hasn't this always been the case?" And you'd be correct. The difference today is that it is now a fashionable political position to cheer for censorship of any controversial ideas. This prevailing attitude combined with centralization of the public square (social media) is a dangerous combination, and we will continue to pay the price of this well into the future. The trust in traditional institutions is plummeting, as it should for anyone who has witnessed their actions the past year. I still remember the "hug a Chinese person" campaign in Italy.
    - generalizations 5y ago
      You still have to be willing to accept that whatever actions you take against misinformation will occasionally be taken against things that are actually true. That also means that over time, the credibility of the entities that flag 'misinformation' will inevitably erode: as more people are exposed to things they know, perhaps first-hand, are true, but are flagged as 'misinformation'.
      - andromeduck 5y ago
        Yeah this is how I came to be more skeptical of MSM and Gov't authorities. I think by the time one hits ~30-40 most people have probably been through enough news cycles and been the subject of or close enough to some newsworthy event to have an inside look of the accuracy/fairness of the process and it's probably why older people tend to be more conservative cynical.
  - andybak 5y ago
    The perfect is the enemy of the good?
  - tomjen3 5y ago
    That assumes a binary situation, but it can be a sliding scale. A system that prevents only Holocaust denial and flat earth theories is unlikely to ban anything that is actually true.
    - generalizations 5y ago
      The current situation was justified with examples like yours. A year ago, most people in favor of banning misinformation would have classed the lab leak hypothesis in the same obviously-false bucket with your examples.
      - andybak 5y ago
        Slippery slope fallacy?
    - 55555 5y ago
      Even “Holocaust denial” exists on a spectrum.
  - caeril 5y ago
    Except it was never misinformation. It's always been not only plausible, but the null hypothesis given the location of the lab, the nature of research there, and the early cases along the train line. When Jack banned zerohedge for their article, there were other reasons than "misinformation". Only he and his masters know those reasons.
    - jkhdigital 5y ago
      Exactly, the misinformation argument is a red herring. The evidence for the lab leak theory was assembled and publicly available by February of last year. It has not changed in the intervening 15 months. The only explanation I can come up with is TDS—otherwise intelligent people (including some of my close friends) who simply could not consider an idea supported by Trump to be credible. Didn’t matter how clear and convincing the evidence was, they just assumed that it must be faulty and untrustworthy.
    - corndoge 5y ago
      > Except it was never misinformation This sort of illustrates the problem here. It was plausible to you but what you think doesn't matter if the powers that be decide it's misinformation. You can't just come by after the fact and say "it was always obviously not misinformation" to dismiss the fact that anti-misinformation controls failed here, in a way that ultimately suppressed reasonable speech. My opinion: in the grand scheme of things this comes down to just letting people express things online, even if they are outlandish or ridiculous or whatever. Letting people speak their mind without being censored even when I don't agree with them ensures that I get to speak my mind without getting censored when I'm in the minority, which is a right I value.
    - antonvs 5y ago
      That's not what "null hypothesis" means. The null hypothesis in this case is certainly animal origin. The idea of a null hypothesis is to identify what the data would look like if they are purely due to chance, if there's no intervening effect to be discovered. In fact this is part of what makes the lab leak hypothesis weak: it'll be difficult to rule out the null hypothesis without fairly direct evidence of a lab leak, and the lab leak has low probability for many reasons, not least of which is that it's a low probability occurrence in general. The whole idea is just an excuse for people to larp as CIA analysts.
  - enaaem 5y ago
    I believe that censorship is more harmful than misinformation. Censorship is a bottom down initiative. It requires a few bad actors or 'mistakes' to completely change the information landscape. Misinformation is bottom up. It still needs to compete with a whole bunch of other ideas and it requires far more effort to spread. You also don't create a pretence that all available information is correct. Censorship carries far larger risks, with small short term gains. It's like picking pennies in front of steamroller.
    - slg 5y ago
      Except this in an example of the exact opposite of what you describe. As the misinformation was coming from the top and the censorship requests were coming from the bottom. The reason this question became politicized and labelled as misinformation is that politicians started spreading this rumor for purely political purposes rather than based on scientific evidence. It is hard to imagine misinformation being more top down than senators, cabinet members, and even the President spreading it. The fact they may end up being right in the end doesn't mean they were acting in good faith at the time. The reason this was censored was because there was bottom up support for it to be censored. Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter have repeatedly shown that their preference is for less moderation rather than more. Moderation costs them money and they don't want to spend money. The reason they increase moderation is because their users demand it.
    - triceratops 5y ago
      > Misinformation is bottom up. It still needs to compete with a whole bunch of other ideas and it requires far more effort to spread Lmao no, the truth needs effort to spread. Because the truth is usually boring and lame. Lies, misinformation, conspiracy theories are juicy. They make the reader feel smart - either by confirming their biases, or giving them the feeling of being "in" on something that's not widely known. People love being the first to pass on some hot goss to their group.
  - planetree 5y ago
    Less misinformation than disinformation, if you look at Daszak's aggressive attempts to control the media narrative (see Lancet article for instance)
- ratsmack 5y ago
  >I'm generally in favour of the actions taken against misinformation... Who would be the one to determine what is misinformation and what is not?
  - dylan604 5y ago
    The evidence?
    - ratsmack 5y ago
      Speculation and conjecture is not always evident, but is many times useful in determining the evidence. But this type of discussion was axed from many forums as "misinformation".
    - generalizations 5y ago
      There were even videos of chinese scientists trying to get the word out about the virus and the lab leak liklihood. There was plenty of evidence, if you knew where to look. 'Evidence' is tangential to the decision making behind misinformation tags.
      - kristofferR 5y ago
        The problem is that "evidence" is pretty easy to find. Even the wildest conspiracy theories has pages and pages of links to their evidence. Who should evaluate the evidence for its credibility?
        generalizations 5y ago
        Is that a serious question? Here's a better one: Who has the right to tell others what they may, and may not, decide for themselves?
        deepnotderp 5y ago
        > Who should evaluate the evidence for its credibility? Why the Ministry of Truth of course
- xhkkffbf 5y ago
  This is a good example of why I don't say things like I'm "generally in favour of actions taking against misinformation." We shouldn't take any action, at least at a governmental level. And certainly not on the level of a big corporation like Facebook. It's very embarrassing that Facebook and YouTube banned this.
- imwillofficial 5y ago
  It’s misinformation until we tell you otherwise citizen!
- betwixthewires 5y ago
  This is a good example of why opponents to actions against misinformation oppose it. Nobody should make these calls because the wrong call will be made eventually, and the power to silently mediate and manipulate discourse is very tempting.
- wpietri 5y ago
  I'm not sure whether it's plausible to non-experts like you or me is a valuable way to categorize it. But the reason to be cautious about it is the potential for violence. Both at an individual level against people perceived as Asian and at a global level of a hot war. A good example here is after 9/11. The US had a rash of violence against people who people thought looked Muslim, like the Sikh gas station owner Balbir Singh Sodhi [1]. We ended up invading not just Afghanistan but Iraq and we still haven't brought all the troops home. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Balbir_Singh_Sodhi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Balbir_Singh_Sodhi
  - temp8964 5y ago
    You are making very very wrong suggestion now. Because some people can link Chinese government to all Asians, so we can't criticize the Chinese government? Because Chinese government = Chinese people = Chinese Americans = Asian Americans? I think this kind of automatic linking Chinese government to Chinese / Asian Americans is itself racist. What you are suggesting is implicitly accepting this racist idea. To stand against this kind of racist idea, what we should do is to explicitly separate the Chinese government from Chinese people, from Chinese Americans. We should directly call out Xi Jingping the dictator and CCP the dictatorial regime, instead of implying Xi Jingping and CCP own Chinese people and somehow also own Chinese / Asian Americans.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - wpietri 5y ago
      We can criticize the Chinese government. But if we do we should have facts, not wild speculations. I agree automatically linking Asian-looking people to the actions of China's government is racist. And there are a lot of racists out there. Given the ongoing spike in anti-Asian hate crimes [1] and online anti-Asian hate tied specifically to coronavirus [2] I think we should be unusually careful about excited speculation. [1] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/anti-asian-hate-crimes-increased-nearly-150-2020-mostly-n-n1260264 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/anti-asian-hate-c... [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/10/09/twitter-asian-americans-discrimination/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/10/09/twitter...
- asciimov 5y ago
  If your pursuing a misinformation campaign it does make since to occasionally publish some facts. That way people can wring their hands if they should ban you or not, and so your supporters have something to say that you were right about.
- wuwuno 5y ago
  Frankly the odds of a lab leak are much greater than a bat virus from a thousand miles away jumping across two species in a the Wuhan market.
kobieyc 5y ago
This makes me furious
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  What if deadalus’ claim is not true? https://about.fb.com/news/2020/04/covid-19-misinfo-update/ https://about.fb.com/news/2020/04/covid-19-misinfo-update/ I do not see where discussion lab leak is prohibited.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y ago
Facebook, Twitter, and much of the news media have been in the service of CCP as part of an influence operation and suppression of dissent. There needs to be an investigation. The people involved in these decisions need to be put under oath and testify how they came to the decision to ban users. Emails and messages should be subpoenaed to see if there was illegal coordination across services. There needs to be an complete investigation if any of the people involved were being influenced by or were agents of the CCP.
thundergolfer 5y ago
Have you got a link to examples? I’m wondering if they weren’t also saying that China deliberately leaked the virus. Saying “it is possible but very unlikely that the virus leaked from a Wuhan lab” is talking about the lab-leak theory. Saying “the virus was cooked up and leaked from a Wuhan lab to hurt Trump’s re-election chances” is also talking about the lab-leak theory.
- narrator 5y ago
  Zerohedge getting banned from Twitter for publishing an expose of the Wuhan Lab which is pretty close to what is acknowledged as a probable story these days is the most high profile example. https://www.zdnet.com/article/zerohedge-banned-from-twitter-over-coronavirus-bioweapon-claims/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/zerohedge-banned-from-twitter-...
  - seattle_spring 5y ago
    Is the majority of HN really fighting for Zerohedge to be recognized as a legitimate source of information?
    - swader999 5y ago
      "Recognized as a legitimate source of information" So default censor all non legitimate sources? Who gets to decide what is legitimate? I don't care for the comments on that site but many times they've had scoops and been proven correct after time has passed.
      - seattle_spring 5y ago
        > So default censor all non legitimate sources No? Censor sources that have proven time and time again to provide verifiably false information. Zerohedge and Infowars specifically fit into that bucket and it's completely reasonable to shine a light on their lack of trustworthiness. A lot of folks are saying, "let the people decide what is false!" Well, here's the thing: People are really mind-numbingly stupid. Spend some time using a roundabout in the USA and you'll learn real fast that the average person can't be trusted to be left to their own devices.
throwkeep 5y ago
Exactly what many were warning about with big tech censorship and getting vilified for it. But it's good if it fails quickly and conclusively, instead of taking years to get to that point.
- chasd00 5y ago
  That’s a good point. At least the censorship failed quickly and completely. It’s clear it was the wrong thing to do.
scottrogowski 5y ago
This should be the top comment. Social media companies can either be monopolies or they can put limits on the speech of their platform... but they can't do both. While not against the law of freedom of speech, political moderation processes are certainly against the intent. Every once in a while we get a case like this where an unpopular fringe opinion becomes mainstream and underlines the point. But this isn't just a matter of Facebook / Twitter / YouTube needing a better moderation process - this is more fundamental. No person or organization - no matter how benevolent or wise - should have the power to declare truth in a society. Fringe opinions need constitutional protection - regardless of the era or the technology.
- tonystubblebine 5y ago
  Not all opinions deserve equal airtime. Fringe opinions should have to work harder to get to the mainstream. Isn’t that exactly what happened here? This is the fringe opinion that had the most inherent value and it’s proved that by breaking through. IMO I wish the platforms had censored more bad info than this. It’s crazy to me that there isn’t more friction for bad ideas.
  - beaner 5y ago
    On the contrary, actors who are bad at judging what qualifies as a "good" idea should be removed from the filtering process.
    - jjoonathan 5y ago
      How is that contrary? MSM got one wrong in the same time that alternative media has gotten hundreds wrong. MSM isn't just better at rejecting misinformation, it's a lot better.
      - beaner 5y ago
        Wrong. The things it does get wrong have more impact. Russiagate is just one prior example. It was patently false from the outset, but led to mass delusions, promotions of fake news propagandists to the point that they are now embedded within and celebrated by the MSM, the discrediting of the media and the intelligence community, breakdown of trust of those institutions by those who had been clear-headed, and fever-dream level hysteria by those who were misled, greatly fracturing Americans who were already divided. It may be true that they get fewer specific points wrong, but if the ones they do get wrong count for a lot more, that's not better. That's worse.
eddyg 5y ago
And today Facebook lifted that ban: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/may/27/facebook-lifts-ban-on-posts-claiming-covid-19-was-man-made https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/may/27/facebook-...
- tomjakubowski 5y ago
  The theory that "SARS-CoV-2 leaked from the Wuhan lab" overlaps some with the theory that "SARS-CoV-2 was man-made", but they're not the same thing. According to the article Facebook's policy change is towards posts saying "SARS-CoV-2 was man-made". Did Facebook's policy ban posts which supported the "lab leak" theory but didn't claim the virus was "man-made"? Facebook's April 2020 covid-19 policy notice only mentions "man-made". https://about.fb.com/news/2020/04/covid-19-misinfo-update/ https://about.fb.com/news/2020/04/covid-19-misinfo-update/
  - xbar 5y ago
    It's important to be clear: they don't overlap at all. They are objectively independent arguments. If they overlapped you couldn't say this: "SARS-CoV-2 leaked from the Wuhan lab" and "SARS-CoV2 was not man-made". But you can.
    - wearywanderer 5y ago
      It's not clear to me what you mean by "they don't overlap at all". If I create a truth table for the two binary possibilities of 'leaked?' and 'created?', I get something like this: Created, Leaked: It was created in a lab, and accidentally got out. Not Created, Leaked: It was being studied in a lab, and accidentally got out. Created, Not Leaked: It was created in a lab and deliberately released (the biowarfare hypothesis.) Not Created, Not Leaked: The lab had nothing to do with it at all (the wet market hypothesis.) Created/leaked are independent, but since both or either could be true or false, there seems to be 'overlap.'
caeril 5y ago
If it makes you feel better, it's now flagged here, too. The reputations of media outlets, social or otherwise, are to be protected at all costs.
bosswipe 5y ago
I thought they banned man-made claims not lab-leak claims.
RpFLCL 5y ago
It's one more example of how yesterday's "misinformation" can become tomorrow's "information", and how dangerous it is for sites to censor entire conversations because they (or their so-called 'fact checkers') believe in one side of a narrative. Will there be apologies given to the people banned, isolated from participating in socialization during a pandemic where online communication was a vital tool for human connection?
tomjakubowski 5y ago
Facebook's policy page only mentions censoring content suggesting that the virus was "man-made". Did Twitter actually ban users who suggested _only_ that the virus leaked from a lab? I'd be surprised because I follow some fairly big accounts there which have posted about the lab leak theory. https://about.fb.com/news/2020/04/covid-19-misinfo-update/ https://about.fb.com/news/2020/04/covid-19-misinfo-update/
- awb 5y ago
  There’s only a spec of difference. I don’t know anyone suggesting that the lab leak was of a natural origin. The theory is that the lab created the virus and it leaked.
  - TechBro8615 5y ago
    Well, I report the opposite. I guess the data is useless.
  - barrkel 5y ago
    I think there's a genuine spectrum between man-made bio-weapon (not very believable IMO), through gain of function research (I've read enough that - if true - the RNA evidence suggests that it probably wasn't this), through to leak from animal studies. Gain of function, if it isn't ruled out by RNA or other approaches, isn't quite man-made and is at least somewhat plausible. Gain of function research on the flu is (as I understand it) how the flu vaccine is created ahead of the season. https://jme.bmj.com/content/41/11/901 https://jme.bmj.com/content/41/11/901 Evans NG, Lipsitch M, Levinson M The ethics of biosafety considerations in gain-of-function research resulting in the creation of potential pandemic pathogens Journal of Medical Ethics 2015;41:901-908. This paper proposes an ethical framework for evaluating biosafety risks of gain-of-function (GOF) experiments that create novel strains of influenza expected to be virulent and transmissible in humans, so-called potential pandemic pathogens (PPPs). Such research raises ethical concerns because of the risk that accidental release from a laboratory could lead to extensive or even global spread of a virulent pathogen.
    - 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
zed88 5y ago
Apparently they did so in consultation with the WHO :)
throw0101a 5y ago
> Reminder that Facebook and Twitter banned users for talking about the lab-leak theory. Can we define/refine the concept of "lab-leak theory" a bit? Because some of the stuff floating around a year ago was a bit unhinged from reality: > You’ve probably heard the rumor: The new coronavirus is a bioweapon. Some malicious country—perhaps the United States, maybe China, depending on who’s talking or tweeting—purposefully unleashed the virus that causes Covid-19 on the world. * https://thebulletin.org/2020/03/why-do-politicians-keep-breathing-life-into-the-false-conspiracy-theory-that-the-coronavirus-is-a-bioweapon/ https://thebulletin.org/2020/03/why-do-politicians-keep-brea... > Ebright helped The Washington Post debunk a claim that the COVID-19 outbreak can somehow be tied to bioweapons activity, a conspiracy theory that’s been promoted or endorsed by the likes of US Sen. Tom Cotton, Iran’s supreme leader, and others. > But Ebright thinks that it is possible the COVID-19 pandemic started as an accidental release from a laboratory such as one of the two in Wuhan that are known to have been studying bat coronaviruses. * https://thebulletin.org/2020/03/experts-know-the-new-coronavirus-is-not-a-bioweapon-they-disagree-on-whether-it-could-have-leaked-from-a-research-lab/ https://thebulletin.org/2020/03/experts-know-the-new-coronav... "In the Shadow of Biological Warfare: Conspiracy Theories on the Origins of COVID-19 and Enhancing Global Governance of Biosafety as a Matter of Urgency": > Two theories on the origins of COVID-19 have been widely circulating in China and the West respectively, one blaming the United States and the other a highest-level biocontainment laboratory in Wuhan, the initial epicentre of the pandemic. Both theories make claims of biological warfare attempts. According to the available scientific evidence, these claims are groundless. * https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7445685/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7445685/
- jkhdigital 5y ago
  This is classic “nurse vs. feminist nurse” cognitive distortion. Whether the virus was developed as a bio weapon, or simply as a product of well-intentioned gain-of-function research, is irrelevant to the factual basis of whether or not it escaped from the lab. We don’t need to establish how and why it was created, only that it was, in order to assess the likelihood of lab release as a root cause of the pandemic.
  - 5y ago
trentnix 5y ago
It’s all about the narrative, comrade. That their enforcement is so incredibly in sync is where more scandal resides.
fsckboy 5y ago
and here on hacker news the pure science behind this topic was also buried many many times.
- jkhdigital 5y ago
  Yes, 90% of my downvotes received are from those comment threads... some serious griefing on this topic
hintymad 5y ago
Also a reminder that "right wing" is such a wonderful term. Mention it, and all the discussion that you don't like can be easily shrugged off, or better, attacked. Really, why is it so important that we need to pitch left against right? Why can we establish facts, carry out reasoning, and be explicit about interpretation vs conclusion? How many countries can thrive when all that matters is partisanship or moralizing everything? Maybe Americans should learn a little history about Ming dynasty: The Tung-lin-tang turned everything into evil vs. good, to the point that the government couldn't get anything done and the ruling class couldn't get any fact straight. A dynasty with hundreds of millions of people was conquered by a barbarous tribe, and the entire nation became the laugh stock of the world in merely 150 years (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macartney_Embassy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macartney_Embassy). By the way, Tung-lin-tang were experts of mind reading. Their most effective method of attacking their political opponent is to attack their motive. To them, narrative was all that matters.
lettergram 5y ago
Wuhan discussing "synthetically derived viruses": https://web.archive.org/web/20200212011902/http://english.whiov.cas.cn/News/Events/201512/t20151204_157114.html https://web.archive.org/web/20200212011902/http://english.wh... 2017 conference at (Wuhan Institute of a virology) with gain of function research being top priority: http://english.whiov.cas.cn/Exchange2016/International_Conferences2017/201712/t20171215_187977.html http://english.whiov.cas.cn/Exchange2016/International_Confe... Ecohealth Alliance partnership: https://web.archive.org/web/20210323171425/http://english.whiov.cas.cn/International_Cooperation2016/Partnerships/ https://web.archive.org/web/20210323171425/http://english.wh... US Gov from state department: http://web.archive.org/web/20210116001621/https://www.state.gov/fact-sheet-activity-at-the-wuhan-institute-of-virology/ http://web.archive.org/web/20210116001621/https://www.state.... EcoHealth Alliance Peter Daszak discussing gene editing in coronaviruses in december 2019 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-Y843FFJvI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-Y843FFJvI Note: The documentation isn’t even new... all those people banned and censored via Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc [1], have been saying this the entire time. Its kind of amazing to watch both realities (left wing media va alternative media) collide. Gives me hope to be honest. [1] https://www.projectveritas.com/news/breaking-facebook-whistleblowers-expose-leaked-internal-docs-detailing-new/ https://www.projectveritas.com/news/breaking-facebook-whistl...
nitwit005 5y ago
Because congress bullied them into removing covid misinformation (admittedly mostly relating to vaccines): https://observer.com/2021/03/covid-vaccine-misinformation-facebook-tech-companies-testify/ https://observer.com/2021/03/covid-vaccine-misinformation-fa... This is true of almost all the social media "censorship" by the way. They have multiple governments either directly passing laws requiring content removal, or pressuring them to remove more.
shaicoleman 5y ago
There's also systematic censorship and disinformation against prophylaxis and early treatment information, which could prevent millions of hospitalisations and deaths. [1] e.g. YouTube recently censored the Ivermectin Global Summit, in which doctors and scientists showed the overwhelming scientific evidence for Ivermectin from around the world. [2] 1. https://covid19criticalcare.com/videos-and-press/flccc-releases/flccc-alliance-statement-on-the-irregular-actions-of-public-health-agencies-and-the-widespread-disinformation-campaign-against-ivermectin/ https://covid19criticalcare.com/videos-and-press/flccc-relea... 2. https://www.reddit.com/r/ivermectin/comments/nj9713/ivermectin_global_summit_20210523/gz8drdq/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ivermectin/comments/nj9713/ivermect... (video with timestamps and my summary of the key points)
- briefcomment 5y ago
  Insane How can you be so gung-ho with relatively new vaccines, but bury relatively benign and longer standing interventions?
  - noofen 5y ago
    I've had COVID, and this is why I will not get vaccinated, despite CDC recommendations. It's very creepy how they've buried treatments and promoted experimental vaccines.
    - katbyte 5y ago
      Why won’t you get a vaccine?
      - ghoward 5y ago
        Not GP, but I am not until a vaccine is approved by the FDA for non-emergency use. And even then, I think I will wait for more data to come out about the long-term effects of the vaccines.
      - briefcomment 5y ago
        I think GPs point is that if you were optimizing for the best health outcomes, you wouldn't demonize promising, or at least benign, non-vaccine treatments. Doing so makes it seem like the vaccine push is optimizing for something else.
lenkite 5y ago
CNN and WP ran headlines on how Fauci shattered Trumps' lab leak lies in 2020. The scorn and derision was palpable. Fauci has now completely inverted his statement...
tacitusarc 5y ago
Google also pinned the first result for any query about the WIV to an article claiming that there was no way whatsoever the virus came from there.
- chasd00 5y ago
  That’s awful, I hope they are thoroughly embarrassed.
  - 0xy 5y ago
    Google have been manipulating search results for years, putting their fingers on the scale both in terms of censorship and boosting of results. When you control weights behind search results and news articles, you quite literally control the flow of information. Google is an actively malicious company, and this was not done with good intentions. Anti-science rhetoric by Dr Fauci, the WHO and the mainstream media establishment was never based on any evidence other than politicized opinion. Dr Fauci was vehemently against closing the border with China in January 2020. He was vehemently against masks. He was vehemently against lab leak theory (calling it "impossible"). He falsely claimed the Wuhan Institute of Virology was not doing gain-of-function research. These are malicious acts which have a real cost. The cost is human life. How many additional people died on the back of his anti-mask rhetoric in March?
jacob2484 5y ago
Remember - people were called fascists + racists for mentioning or discussing the lab leak theory.
- Godel_unicode 5y ago
  Remember, the discussion of the lab leak theory is strongly correlated with a rise in hate crimes against Asian-Americans. There were also lots of links made between the lab leak theory and needing to tighten immigration policies to keep out "undesirables".
  - NikolaeVarius 5y ago
    So?
  - tryonenow 5y ago
    No. There were links made between temporary immigration policies to limit influx from potential spreaders from ground zero. Now, there were politically expedient implications of limiting immigration by "undesirables", made by the same hostile media that ultimately colluded to censor the lab leak hypothesis by 1. Refusing to cover certain topics 2. Correlating lab leak (and border closure) with xenophobia 3. Labeling all media that did report on the lab leak as unreliable ("fact checking") This reversal of policy on lab leak reporting is an excellent opportunity for us all to take a step back and recognize how much of the socially acceptable anti-right wing hatred, and associations with racism, has been manufactured by so called "authoritative" or "reputable" sources that all coincidentally lean heavily in one direction.
  - ravel-bar-foo 5y ago
    Are we sure that was the lab leak theory, and not just the emergence of a novel pandemic disease in China? The kind of people who attack random Asians in the street don't need a lab leak to justify it: they just need the fact that the virus spread outward from Wuhan.
  - 55555 5y ago
    How many hate crimes have been committed? There have been 3.5 million COVID-19 deaths officially. Sorry but the truth is more important. Hate crimes are already illegal.
paganel 5y ago
Twitter users got banned in early February 2020 because they were sharing images and videos from locked-down Wuhan that were deemed as inappropriate. I know that my main information source on the virus back at the time was a Chinese lady expat living in the States who was writing for Epoch Times, not the most credible source generally speaking but on this she was ahead of the MSM by at least a day, that is when the MSM wasn’t ignoring what was happening in China completely.
goatinaboat 5y ago
Reminder that Facebook and Twitter banned users for talking about the lab-leak theory. Youtube accounts also got demontized/banned. Let's call it for what it is - employees of Facebook and Twitter and Google were complicit in a coverup of malfeasance that cost hundreds of thousands of lives if not more. Named individuals set these policies and put them into action - they need to be exposed and held accountable.
textgel 5y ago
And a reminder that the majority of HN supported them in doing that because we needed to "fight disinformation".
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

andybak 5y ago

I'm generally in favour of the actions taken against misinformation but this situation surprises me. Lab leak always seemed plausible and non-crazy even if you think the odds are against it. I don't envy the task of making a call on any of this stuff.

generalizations 5y ago
If we accept that taking action against misinformation is good, then this sort of mistake will inevitably happen. If you're in favor of taking action against misinformation, then you should be willing to accept this situation as an acceptable failure. I'm not willing to accept that.
- noofen 5y ago
  Who would've thought that letting billionaires with international business interests censor scientific inquiry would end badly...
  - ytpete 5y ago
    It's really hard to view this as suppressing scientific inquiry. Scientists don't use public Facebook posts to collaborate on their research, nor to share their final results with the rest of the scientific community. It's also very hard to picture social media giants ever blocking users from posting anything that comes from peer-reviewed published science.
- chipotle_coyote 5y ago
  > If you're in favor of taking action against misinformation, then you should be willing to accept this situation as an acceptable failure. We can believe taking action against misinformation is a generally good principle while still believing that both our definition of "misinformation" and the kinds of actions we take may need to be improved.
  - noofen 5y ago
    I disagree. The market and political forces are too strong, the "misinformation" umbrella will always expand to fit the needs of the wealthy and powerful. When the stakes are high, exactly the time when you need radical honesty, the benefits of censoring information are also high. Some might say, "hasn't this always been the case?" And you'd be correct. The difference today is that it is now a fashionable political position to cheer for censorship of any controversial ideas. This prevailing attitude combined with centralization of the public square (social media) is a dangerous combination, and we will continue to pay the price of this well into the future. The trust in traditional institutions is plummeting, as it should for anyone who has witnessed their actions the past year. I still remember the "hug a Chinese person" campaign in Italy.
  - generalizations 5y ago
    You still have to be willing to accept that whatever actions you take against misinformation will occasionally be taken against things that are actually true. That also means that over time, the credibility of the entities that flag 'misinformation' will inevitably erode: as more people are exposed to things they know, perhaps first-hand, are true, but are flagged as 'misinformation'.
    - andromeduck 5y ago
      Yeah this is how I came to be more skeptical of MSM and Gov't authorities. I think by the time one hits ~30-40 most people have probably been through enough news cycles and been the subject of or close enough to some newsworthy event to have an inside look of the accuracy/fairness of the process and it's probably why older people tend to be more conservative cynical.
- andybak 5y ago
  The perfect is the enemy of the good?
- tomjen3 5y ago
  That assumes a binary situation, but it can be a sliding scale. A system that prevents only Holocaust denial and flat earth theories is unlikely to ban anything that is actually true.
  - generalizations 5y ago
    The current situation was justified with examples like yours. A year ago, most people in favor of banning misinformation would have classed the lab leak hypothesis in the same obviously-false bucket with your examples.
    - andybak 5y ago
      Slippery slope fallacy?
  - 55555 5y ago
    Even “Holocaust denial” exists on a spectrum.
- caeril 5y ago
  Except it was never misinformation. It's always been not only plausible, but the null hypothesis given the location of the lab, the nature of research there, and the early cases along the train line. When Jack banned zerohedge for their article, there were other reasons than "misinformation". Only he and his masters know those reasons.
  - jkhdigital 5y ago
    Exactly, the misinformation argument is a red herring. The evidence for the lab leak theory was assembled and publicly available by February of last year. It has not changed in the intervening 15 months. The only explanation I can come up with is TDS—otherwise intelligent people (including some of my close friends) who simply could not consider an idea supported by Trump to be credible. Didn’t matter how clear and convincing the evidence was, they just assumed that it must be faulty and untrustworthy.
  - corndoge 5y ago
    > Except it was never misinformation This sort of illustrates the problem here. It was plausible to you but what you think doesn't matter if the powers that be decide it's misinformation. You can't just come by after the fact and say "it was always obviously not misinformation" to dismiss the fact that anti-misinformation controls failed here, in a way that ultimately suppressed reasonable speech. My opinion: in the grand scheme of things this comes down to just letting people express things online, even if they are outlandish or ridiculous or whatever. Letting people speak their mind without being censored even when I don't agree with them ensures that I get to speak my mind without getting censored when I'm in the minority, which is a right I value.
  - antonvs 5y ago
    That's not what "null hypothesis" means. The null hypothesis in this case is certainly animal origin. The idea of a null hypothesis is to identify what the data would look like if they are purely due to chance, if there's no intervening effect to be discovered. In fact this is part of what makes the lab leak hypothesis weak: it'll be difficult to rule out the null hypothesis without fairly direct evidence of a lab leak, and the lab leak has low probability for many reasons, not least of which is that it's a low probability occurrence in general. The whole idea is just an excuse for people to larp as CIA analysts.
- enaaem 5y ago
  I believe that censorship is more harmful than misinformation. Censorship is a bottom down initiative. It requires a few bad actors or 'mistakes' to completely change the information landscape. Misinformation is bottom up. It still needs to compete with a whole bunch of other ideas and it requires far more effort to spread. You also don't create a pretence that all available information is correct. Censorship carries far larger risks, with small short term gains. It's like picking pennies in front of steamroller.
  - slg 5y ago
    Except this in an example of the exact opposite of what you describe. As the misinformation was coming from the top and the censorship requests were coming from the bottom. The reason this question became politicized and labelled as misinformation is that politicians started spreading this rumor for purely political purposes rather than based on scientific evidence. It is hard to imagine misinformation being more top down than senators, cabinet members, and even the President spreading it. The fact they may end up being right in the end doesn't mean they were acting in good faith at the time. The reason this was censored was because there was bottom up support for it to be censored. Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter have repeatedly shown that their preference is for less moderation rather than more. Moderation costs them money and they don't want to spend money. The reason they increase moderation is because their users demand it.
  - triceratops 5y ago
    > Misinformation is bottom up. It still needs to compete with a whole bunch of other ideas and it requires far more effort to spread Lmao no, the truth needs effort to spread. Because the truth is usually boring and lame. Lies, misinformation, conspiracy theories are juicy. They make the reader feel smart - either by confirming their biases, or giving them the feeling of being "in" on something that's not widely known. People love being the first to pass on some hot goss to their group.
- planetree 5y ago
  Less misinformation than disinformation, if you look at Daszak's aggressive attempts to control the media narrative (see Lancet article for instance)
ratsmack 5y ago
>I'm generally in favour of the actions taken against misinformation... Who would be the one to determine what is misinformation and what is not?
- dylan604 5y ago
  The evidence?
  - ratsmack 5y ago
    Speculation and conjecture is not always evident, but is many times useful in determining the evidence. But this type of discussion was axed from many forums as "misinformation".
  - generalizations 5y ago
    There were even videos of chinese scientists trying to get the word out about the virus and the lab leak liklihood. There was plenty of evidence, if you knew where to look. 'Evidence' is tangential to the decision making behind misinformation tags.
    - kristofferR 5y ago
      The problem is that "evidence" is pretty easy to find. Even the wildest conspiracy theories has pages and pages of links to their evidence. Who should evaluate the evidence for its credibility?
      - generalizations 5y ago
        Is that a serious question? Here's a better one: Who has the right to tell others what they may, and may not, decide for themselves?
      - deepnotderp 5y ago
        > Who should evaluate the evidence for its credibility? Why the Ministry of Truth of course
xhkkffbf 5y ago
This is a good example of why I don't say things like I'm "generally in favour of actions taking against misinformation." We shouldn't take any action, at least at a governmental level. And certainly not on the level of a big corporation like Facebook. It's very embarrassing that Facebook and YouTube banned this.
imwillofficial 5y ago
It’s misinformation until we tell you otherwise citizen!
betwixthewires 5y ago
This is a good example of why opponents to actions against misinformation oppose it. Nobody should make these calls because the wrong call will be made eventually, and the power to silently mediate and manipulate discourse is very tempting.
wpietri 5y ago
I'm not sure whether it's plausible to non-experts like you or me is a valuable way to categorize it. But the reason to be cautious about it is the potential for violence. Both at an individual level against people perceived as Asian and at a global level of a hot war. A good example here is after 9/11. The US had a rash of violence against people who people thought looked Muslim, like the Sikh gas station owner Balbir Singh Sodhi [1]. We ended up invading not just Afghanistan but Iraq and we still haven't brought all the troops home. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Balbir_Singh_Sodhi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Balbir_Singh_Sodhi
- temp8964 5y ago
  You are making very very wrong suggestion now. Because some people can link Chinese government to all Asians, so we can't criticize the Chinese government? Because Chinese government = Chinese people = Chinese Americans = Asian Americans? I think this kind of automatic linking Chinese government to Chinese / Asian Americans is itself racist. What you are suggesting is implicitly accepting this racist idea. To stand against this kind of racist idea, what we should do is to explicitly separate the Chinese government from Chinese people, from Chinese Americans. We should directly call out Xi Jingping the dictator and CCP the dictatorial regime, instead of implying Xi Jingping and CCP own Chinese people and somehow also own Chinese / Asian Americans.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - wpietri 5y ago
    We can criticize the Chinese government. But if we do we should have facts, not wild speculations. I agree automatically linking Asian-looking people to the actions of China's government is racist. And there are a lot of racists out there. Given the ongoing spike in anti-Asian hate crimes [1] and online anti-Asian hate tied specifically to coronavirus [2] I think we should be unusually careful about excited speculation. [1] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/anti-asian-hate-crimes-increased-nearly-150-2020-mostly-n-n1260264 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/anti-asian-hate-c... [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/10/09/twitter-asian-americans-discrimination/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/10/09/twitter...
asciimov 5y ago
If your pursuing a misinformation campaign it does make since to occasionally publish some facts. That way people can wring their hands if they should ban you or not, and so your supporters have something to say that you were right about.
wuwuno 5y ago
Frankly the odds of a lab leak are much greater than a bat virus from a thousand miles away jumping across two species in a the Wuhan market.

kobieyc 5y ago

This makes me furious

lotsofpulp 5y ago
What if deadalus’ claim is not true? https://about.fb.com/news/2020/04/covid-19-misinfo-update/ https://about.fb.com/news/2020/04/covid-19-misinfo-update/ I do not see where discussion lab leak is prohibited.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y ago

Facebook, Twitter, and much of the news media have been in the service of CCP as part of an influence operation and suppression of dissent. There needs to be an investigation. The people involved in these decisions need to be put under oath and testify how they came to the decision to ban users. Emails and messages should be subpoenaed to see if there was illegal coordination across services. There needs to be an complete investigation if any of the people involved were being influenced by or were agents of the CCP.

thundergolfer 5y ago

Have you got a link to examples? I’m wondering if they weren’t also saying that China deliberately leaked the virus. Saying “it is possible but very unlikely that the virus leaked from a Wuhan lab” is talking about the lab-leak theory. Saying “the virus was cooked up and leaked from a Wuhan lab to hurt Trump’s re-election chances” is also talking about the lab-leak theory.

narrator 5y ago
Zerohedge getting banned from Twitter for publishing an expose of the Wuhan Lab which is pretty close to what is acknowledged as a probable story these days is the most high profile example. https://www.zdnet.com/article/zerohedge-banned-from-twitter-over-coronavirus-bioweapon-claims/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/zerohedge-banned-from-twitter-...
- seattle_spring 5y ago
  Is the majority of HN really fighting for Zerohedge to be recognized as a legitimate source of information?
  - swader999 5y ago
    "Recognized as a legitimate source of information" So default censor all non legitimate sources? Who gets to decide what is legitimate? I don't care for the comments on that site but many times they've had scoops and been proven correct after time has passed.
    - seattle_spring 5y ago
      > So default censor all non legitimate sources No? Censor sources that have proven time and time again to provide verifiably false information. Zerohedge and Infowars specifically fit into that bucket and it's completely reasonable to shine a light on their lack of trustworthiness. A lot of folks are saying, "let the people decide what is false!" Well, here's the thing: People are really mind-numbingly stupid. Spend some time using a roundabout in the USA and you'll learn real fast that the average person can't be trusted to be left to their own devices.

throwkeep 5y ago

Exactly what many were warning about with big tech censorship and getting vilified for it. But it's good if it fails quickly and conclusively, instead of taking years to get to that point.

chasd00 5y ago
That’s a good point. At least the censorship failed quickly and completely. It’s clear it was the wrong thing to do.

scottrogowski 5y ago

This should be the top comment. Social media companies can either be monopolies or they can put limits on the speech of their platform... but they can't do both. While not against the law of freedom of speech, political moderation processes are certainly against the intent. Every once in a while we get a case like this where an unpopular fringe opinion becomes mainstream and underlines the point. But this isn't just a matter of Facebook / Twitter / YouTube needing a better moderation process - this is more fundamental. No person or organization - no matter how benevolent or wise - should have the power to declare truth in a society. Fringe opinions need constitutional protection - regardless of the era or the technology.

tonystubblebine 5y ago
Not all opinions deserve equal airtime. Fringe opinions should have to work harder to get to the mainstream. Isn’t that exactly what happened here? This is the fringe opinion that had the most inherent value and it’s proved that by breaking through. IMO I wish the platforms had censored more bad info than this. It’s crazy to me that there isn’t more friction for bad ideas.
- beaner 5y ago
  On the contrary, actors who are bad at judging what qualifies as a "good" idea should be removed from the filtering process.
  - jjoonathan 5y ago
    How is that contrary? MSM got one wrong in the same time that alternative media has gotten hundreds wrong. MSM isn't just better at rejecting misinformation, it's a lot better.
    - beaner 5y ago
      Wrong. The things it does get wrong have more impact. Russiagate is just one prior example. It was patently false from the outset, but led to mass delusions, promotions of fake news propagandists to the point that they are now embedded within and celebrated by the MSM, the discrediting of the media and the intelligence community, breakdown of trust of those institutions by those who had been clear-headed, and fever-dream level hysteria by those who were misled, greatly fracturing Americans who were already divided. It may be true that they get fewer specific points wrong, but if the ones they do get wrong count for a lot more, that's not better. That's worse.

eddyg 5y ago

And today Facebook lifted that ban: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/may/27/facebook-lifts-ban-on-posts-claiming-covid-19-was-man-made https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/may/27/facebook-...

tomjakubowski 5y ago
The theory that "SARS-CoV-2 leaked from the Wuhan lab" overlaps some with the theory that "SARS-CoV-2 was man-made", but they're not the same thing. According to the article Facebook's policy change is towards posts saying "SARS-CoV-2 was man-made". Did Facebook's policy ban posts which supported the "lab leak" theory but didn't claim the virus was "man-made"? Facebook's April 2020 covid-19 policy notice only mentions "man-made". https://about.fb.com/news/2020/04/covid-19-misinfo-update/ https://about.fb.com/news/2020/04/covid-19-misinfo-update/
- xbar 5y ago
  It's important to be clear: they don't overlap at all. They are objectively independent arguments. If they overlapped you couldn't say this: "SARS-CoV-2 leaked from the Wuhan lab" and "SARS-CoV2 was not man-made". But you can.
  - wearywanderer 5y ago
    It's not clear to me what you mean by "they don't overlap at all". If I create a truth table for the two binary possibilities of 'leaked?' and 'created?', I get something like this: Created, Leaked: It was created in a lab, and accidentally got out. Not Created, Leaked: It was being studied in a lab, and accidentally got out. Created, Not Leaked: It was created in a lab and deliberately released (the biowarfare hypothesis.) Not Created, Not Leaked: The lab had nothing to do with it at all (the wet market hypothesis.) Created/leaked are independent, but since both or either could be true or false, there seems to be 'overlap.'

caeril 5y ago

If it makes you feel better, it's now flagged here, too. The reputations of media outlets, social or otherwise, are to be protected at all costs.

bosswipe 5y ago

I thought they banned man-made claims not lab-leak claims.

RpFLCL 5y ago

It's one more example of how yesterday's "misinformation" can become tomorrow's "information", and how dangerous it is for sites to censor entire conversations because they (or their so-called 'fact checkers') believe in one side of a narrative. Will there be apologies given to the people banned, isolated from participating in socialization during a pandemic where online communication was a vital tool for human connection?

tomjakubowski 5y ago

Facebook's policy page only mentions censoring content suggesting that the virus was "man-made". Did Twitter actually ban users who suggested _only_ that the virus leaked from a lab? I'd be surprised because I follow some fairly big accounts there which have posted about the lab leak theory. https://about.fb.com/news/2020/04/covid-19-misinfo-update/ https://about.fb.com/news/2020/04/covid-19-misinfo-update/

awb 5y ago
There’s only a spec of difference. I don’t know anyone suggesting that the lab leak was of a natural origin. The theory is that the lab created the virus and it leaked.
- TechBro8615 5y ago
  Well, I report the opposite. I guess the data is useless.
- barrkel 5y ago
  I think there's a genuine spectrum between man-made bio-weapon (not very believable IMO), through gain of function research (I've read enough that - if true - the RNA evidence suggests that it probably wasn't this), through to leak from animal studies. Gain of function, if it isn't ruled out by RNA or other approaches, isn't quite man-made and is at least somewhat plausible. Gain of function research on the flu is (as I understand it) how the flu vaccine is created ahead of the season. https://jme.bmj.com/content/41/11/901 https://jme.bmj.com/content/41/11/901 Evans NG, Lipsitch M, Levinson M The ethics of biosafety considerations in gain-of-function research resulting in the creation of potential pandemic pathogens Journal of Medical Ethics 2015;41:901-908. This paper proposes an ethical framework for evaluating biosafety risks of gain-of-function (GOF) experiments that create novel strains of influenza expected to be virulent and transmissible in humans, so-called potential pandemic pathogens (PPPs). Such research raises ethical concerns because of the risk that accidental release from a laboratory could lead to extensive or even global spread of a virulent pathogen.
  - 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

zed88 5y ago

Apparently they did so in consultation with the WHO :)

throw0101a 5y ago

> Reminder that Facebook and Twitter banned users for talking about the lab-leak theory. Can we define/refine the concept of "lab-leak theory" a bit? Because some of the stuff floating around a year ago was a bit unhinged from reality: > You’ve probably heard the rumor: The new coronavirus is a bioweapon. Some malicious country—perhaps the United States, maybe China, depending on who’s talking or tweeting—purposefully unleashed the virus that causes Covid-19 on the world. * https://thebulletin.org/2020/03/why-do-politicians-keep-breathing-life-into-the-false-conspiracy-theory-that-the-coronavirus-is-a-bioweapon/ https://thebulletin.org/2020/03/why-do-politicians-keep-brea... > Ebright helped The Washington Post debunk a claim that the COVID-19 outbreak can somehow be tied to bioweapons activity, a conspiracy theory that’s been promoted or endorsed by the likes of US Sen. Tom Cotton, Iran’s supreme leader, and others. > But Ebright thinks that it is possible the COVID-19 pandemic started as an accidental release from a laboratory such as one of the two in Wuhan that are known to have been studying bat coronaviruses. * https://thebulletin.org/2020/03/experts-know-the-new-coronavirus-is-not-a-bioweapon-they-disagree-on-whether-it-could-have-leaked-from-a-research-lab/ https://thebulletin.org/2020/03/experts-know-the-new-coronav... "In the Shadow of Biological Warfare: Conspiracy Theories on the Origins of COVID-19 and Enhancing Global Governance of Biosafety as a Matter of Urgency": > Two theories on the origins of COVID-19 have been widely circulating in China and the West respectively, one blaming the United States and the other a highest-level biocontainment laboratory in Wuhan, the initial epicentre of the pandemic. Both theories make claims of biological warfare attempts. According to the available scientific evidence, these claims are groundless. * https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7445685/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7445685/

jkhdigital 5y ago
This is classic “nurse vs. feminist nurse” cognitive distortion. Whether the virus was developed as a bio weapon, or simply as a product of well-intentioned gain-of-function research, is irrelevant to the factual basis of whether or not it escaped from the lab. We don’t need to establish how and why it was created, only that it was, in order to assess the likelihood of lab release as a root cause of the pandemic.
- 5y ago

trentnix 5y ago

It’s all about the narrative, comrade. That their enforcement is so incredibly in sync is where more scandal resides.

fsckboy 5y ago

and here on hacker news the pure science behind this topic was also buried many many times.

jkhdigital 5y ago
Yes, 90% of my downvotes received are from those comment threads... some serious griefing on this topic

hintymad 5y ago

Also a reminder that "right wing" is such a wonderful term. Mention it, and all the discussion that you don't like can be easily shrugged off, or better, attacked. Really, why is it so important that we need to pitch left against right? Why can we establish facts, carry out reasoning, and be explicit about interpretation vs conclusion? How many countries can thrive when all that matters is partisanship or moralizing everything? Maybe Americans should learn a little history about Ming dynasty: The Tung-lin-tang turned everything into evil vs. good, to the point that the government couldn't get anything done and the ruling class couldn't get any fact straight. A dynasty with hundreds of millions of people was conquered by a barbarous tribe, and the entire nation became the laugh stock of the world in merely 150 years (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macartney_Embassy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macartney_Embassy). By the way, Tung-lin-tang were experts of mind reading. Their most effective method of attacking their political opponent is to attack their motive. To them, narrative was all that matters.

lettergram 5y ago

Wuhan discussing "synthetically derived viruses": https://web.archive.org/web/20200212011902/http://english.whiov.cas.cn/News/Events/201512/t20151204_157114.html https://web.archive.org/web/20200212011902/http://english.wh... 2017 conference at (Wuhan Institute of a virology) with gain of function research being top priority: http://english.whiov.cas.cn/Exchange2016/International_Conferences2017/201712/t20171215_187977.html http://english.whiov.cas.cn/Exchange2016/International_Confe... Ecohealth Alliance partnership: https://web.archive.org/web/20210323171425/http://english.whiov.cas.cn/International_Cooperation2016/Partnerships/ https://web.archive.org/web/20210323171425/http://english.wh... US Gov from state department: http://web.archive.org/web/20210116001621/https://www.state.gov/fact-sheet-activity-at-the-wuhan-institute-of-virology/ http://web.archive.org/web/20210116001621/https://www.state.... EcoHealth Alliance Peter Daszak discussing gene editing in coronaviruses in december 2019 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-Y843FFJvI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-Y843FFJvI Note: The documentation isn’t even new... all those people banned and censored via Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc [1], have been saying this the entire time. Its kind of amazing to watch both realities (left wing media va alternative media) collide. Gives me hope to be honest. [1] https://www.projectveritas.com/news/breaking-facebook-whistleblowers-expose-leaked-internal-docs-detailing-new/ https://www.projectveritas.com/news/breaking-facebook-whistl...

nitwit005 5y ago

Because congress bullied them into removing covid misinformation (admittedly mostly relating to vaccines): https://observer.com/2021/03/covid-vaccine-misinformation-facebook-tech-companies-testify/ https://observer.com/2021/03/covid-vaccine-misinformation-fa... This is true of almost all the social media "censorship" by the way. They have multiple governments either directly passing laws requiring content removal, or pressuring them to remove more.

shaicoleman 5y ago

There's also systematic censorship and disinformation against prophylaxis and early treatment information, which could prevent millions of hospitalisations and deaths. [1] e.g. YouTube recently censored the Ivermectin Global Summit, in which doctors and scientists showed the overwhelming scientific evidence for Ivermectin from around the world. [2] 1. https://covid19criticalcare.com/videos-and-press/flccc-releases/flccc-alliance-statement-on-the-irregular-actions-of-public-health-agencies-and-the-widespread-disinformation-campaign-against-ivermectin/ https://covid19criticalcare.com/videos-and-press/flccc-relea... 2. https://www.reddit.com/r/ivermectin/comments/nj9713/ivermectin_global_summit_20210523/gz8drdq/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ivermectin/comments/nj9713/ivermect... (video with timestamps and my summary of the key points)

briefcomment 5y ago
Insane How can you be so gung-ho with relatively new vaccines, but bury relatively benign and longer standing interventions?
- noofen 5y ago
  I've had COVID, and this is why I will not get vaccinated, despite CDC recommendations. It's very creepy how they've buried treatments and promoted experimental vaccines.
  - katbyte 5y ago
    Why won’t you get a vaccine?
    - ghoward 5y ago
      Not GP, but I am not until a vaccine is approved by the FDA for non-emergency use. And even then, I think I will wait for more data to come out about the long-term effects of the vaccines.
    - briefcomment 5y ago
      I think GPs point is that if you were optimizing for the best health outcomes, you wouldn't demonize promising, or at least benign, non-vaccine treatments. Doing so makes it seem like the vaccine push is optimizing for something else.

lenkite 5y ago

CNN and WP ran headlines on how Fauci shattered Trumps' lab leak lies in 2020. The scorn and derision was palpable. Fauci has now completely inverted his statement...

tacitusarc 5y ago

Google also pinned the first result for any query about the WIV to an article claiming that there was no way whatsoever the virus came from there.

chasd00 5y ago
That’s awful, I hope they are thoroughly embarrassed.
- 0xy 5y ago
  Google have been manipulating search results for years, putting their fingers on the scale both in terms of censorship and boosting of results. When you control weights behind search results and news articles, you quite literally control the flow of information. Google is an actively malicious company, and this was not done with good intentions. Anti-science rhetoric by Dr Fauci, the WHO and the mainstream media establishment was never based on any evidence other than politicized opinion. Dr Fauci was vehemently against closing the border with China in January 2020. He was vehemently against masks. He was vehemently against lab leak theory (calling it "impossible"). He falsely claimed the Wuhan Institute of Virology was not doing gain-of-function research. These are malicious acts which have a real cost. The cost is human life. How many additional people died on the back of his anti-mask rhetoric in March?

jacob2484 5y ago

Remember - people were called fascists + racists for mentioning or discussing the lab leak theory.

Godel_unicode 5y ago
Remember, the discussion of the lab leak theory is strongly correlated with a rise in hate crimes against Asian-Americans. There were also lots of links made between the lab leak theory and needing to tighten immigration policies to keep out "undesirables".
- NikolaeVarius 5y ago
  So?
- tryonenow 5y ago
  No. There were links made between temporary immigration policies to limit influx from potential spreaders from ground zero. Now, there were politically expedient implications of limiting immigration by "undesirables", made by the same hostile media that ultimately colluded to censor the lab leak hypothesis by 1. Refusing to cover certain topics 2. Correlating lab leak (and border closure) with xenophobia 3. Labeling all media that did report on the lab leak as unreliable ("fact checking") This reversal of policy on lab leak reporting is an excellent opportunity for us all to take a step back and recognize how much of the socially acceptable anti-right wing hatred, and associations with racism, has been manufactured by so called "authoritative" or "reputable" sources that all coincidentally lean heavily in one direction.
- ravel-bar-foo 5y ago
  Are we sure that was the lab leak theory, and not just the emergence of a novel pandemic disease in China? The kind of people who attack random Asians in the street don't need a lab leak to justify it: they just need the fact that the virus spread outward from Wuhan.
- 55555 5y ago
  How many hate crimes have been committed? There have been 3.5 million COVID-19 deaths officially. Sorry but the truth is more important. Hate crimes are already illegal.

paganel 5y ago

Twitter users got banned in early February 2020 because they were sharing images and videos from locked-down Wuhan that were deemed as inappropriate. I know that my main information source on the virus back at the time was a Chinese lady expat living in the States who was writing for Epoch Times, not the most credible source generally speaking but on this she was ahead of the MSM by at least a day, that is when the MSM wasn’t ignoring what was happening in China completely.

goatinaboat 5y ago

Reminder that Facebook and Twitter banned users for talking about the lab-leak theory. Youtube accounts also got demontized/banned. Let's call it for what it is - employees of Facebook and Twitter and Google were complicit in a coverup of malfeasance that cost hundreds of thousands of lives if not more. Named individuals set these policies and put them into action - they need to be exposed and held accountable.

textgel 5y ago

And a reminder that the majority of HN supported them in doing that because we needed to "fight disinformation".

deleted 5y ago

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