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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

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.

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.