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It’s not about having a monopoly on good information. It’s about a monopoly on attention. What use is it if the WHO is wrong and someone else is right, but ever

It’s not about having a monopoly on good information. It’s about a monopoly on attention. What use is it if the WHO is wrong and someone else is right, but everybody listens to the WHO?

whatshisface 5y ago
Who's going around listening to the WHO?
- christophilus 5y ago
  For a while, YouTube and friends were banning people who pointed out the WHO was wrong. So, probably quite a few people.
  - harikb 5y ago
    that was specifically about calling Covid a hoax. Those who were fighting against this censorship weren’t fighting for Covid being airborne or not
    - christophilus 5y ago
      My recollection was that they banned disagreeing with the WHO[0]. The examples given in that article are fair enough for banning, but they banned scientists who were not quite so crazy[1]. Anyway, that’s based on my memory (which is often faulty), but those links seem to corroborate it. [0] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-52388586 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-52388586 [1] https://support.google.com/youtube/thread/46573762/why-is-youtube-censoring-scientists-doctors-and-researchers-with-differing-views-on-covid-19?hl=en https://support.google.com/youtube/thread/46573762/why-is-yo...
      - benatkin 5y ago
        There is a lot of straw-manning going on, so if you say you disagree with the WHO on a minor point, you could be accused of calling COVID-19 a hoax.
      - tharkun__ 5y ago
        They are not the only ones at all. Same thing happened to a lot of other people. There was for example a lot of good information from the Italian National Institute of Health that simply listed the number and type of comorbidities in deceased Covid patients. Mentioning these numbers, even with proper citation was cause for being banned/not being approved by moderators. It didn't fit the official narrative. Like my sibling poster said, it probably triggered the "covid hoax" spidey senses. People are not rational in these times. They're emotional and won't even listen enough or think enough to understand the difference between looking at facts and discussing them vs. calling it a hoax. Covid is very real. I know from multiple close friends affected. I was also told via official channels that anyone obese would dare badly and die. Anecdotal data: Yet some very obese friends made it through without more than a few mild symptoms. Months later new research came out that said being sedentary is much worse than being obese. This friend while being obese is very active. No car, walks everywhere, physical labour job etc. Just telling this story would probably get me banned on certain sites.
        j4yav 5y ago
        There is this problem where: 1. A situation becomes political, and all kinds of claims are made by demagogues without evidence in order to score points, based on whatever they would like to be true. 2. There is lots of arguing, and subtle points like “we don’t know enough to know the truth yet but X seems practical/probable” get attacked by all sides or used by the people from 1 to show how much they are being silenced or to generate conspiracy theories. 3. Eventually the reality of the situation becomes mostly clear, and the people who happened to jump to the right conclusion without evidence use it to recruit more followers, and the people who were wrong don’t want to give an inch because it benefits the group who were right for the wrong reasons. In the end most people get more polarized and there is no clear way to short circuit the process.
        deorder 5y ago
        In my experience, those called "conspiracy theorists" (or any other name for that matter) turned out to be mostly right. The subreddit /r/wuhan_flu was quarantined last February for allegations that the virus may have escaped from a lab and that the virus may be airborne. They did not even claim it was definitely so, but it was just speculation based on multiple papers. That subreddit is still quarantined as of today. That's just one of the thousands of examples I've come across. The people who spread G5 and chip theories are a very small group compared to the rest of the skeptics, yet they are portrayed by the mass media etc. as one and the same. This is reflected in how many people deal with people who criticize the official story. We seem to have lost all logic and critical thinking. There is no room for healthy discussions anymore. Instead people are personally attacking each other.
    - perryizgr8 5y ago
      Well they were also censoring videos speculating about the lab leak theory. So they were definitely treating any discussion about covid that diverged from what who/cdc were saying as misinformation.
    - thu2111 5y ago
      No, pretty much anything was banned or throttled including professors sharing graphs of data, or people re-sharing articles critical of the WHO or the COVID response. And it's still happening, by the way. That's not in the past.
    - tinus_hn 5y ago
      That is not true, in the Netherlands a critic had one of his videos pulled by YouTube for claiming COVID-19 spreads through aerosols when this was not the consensus. Yet.
      - deorder 5y ago
        You are referring to Maurice de Hond I assume?
        scoopertrooper 5y ago
        I looked and couldn't find anything to suggest this person was banned from YouTube.
        deorder 5y ago
        I am not sure if the comment above me was referring to him, but I know back then they called what he was claiming (improving ventilation) misinformation.
        tinus_hn 5y ago
        He was not banned but he had a video pulled because it didn’t agree with the ‘scientific consensus’
    - swiley 5y ago
      No. They had some contentID-esque automation bumbling around silencing doctors who were trying to communicate their understanding of the situation as well as silencing the crackpots.
- throwaway879 5y ago
  Their Tommy album was pretty good.
SllX 5y ago
Fortunately they didn’t have an attention monopoly either, in part because they didn’t have an information monopoly. :)
- thu2111 5y ago
  Not for lack of trying however. Bear in mind the big tech companies all adopted an explicit policy of, "information that disagrees with the WHO is forbidden" and proceeded to ban lots of qualified commentators for trying to present non WHO approved information. They did this with the full approval and encouragement of the WHO itself. I'm slightly disturbed by the casualness of this thread actually. The WHO is not merely some random organisation, one of many providing information in an open environment. It commands the loyalty of many powerful people who just automatically assume it is correct, and as such has proven basically unkillable. Trump realised it was corrupted and tried to defund it, that lasted right up until Biden rolled everything back. Other countries have also been defunding it which is why the Gates Foundation is now such a large donor. How should society handle an organisation that is so clearly inadequate and even dangerous yet which commands blind adherence from the richest and most powerful people in the world, people who can and do seriously interfere with the flow of information?
  - mistermann 5y ago
    Historically you could maybe fight back with better speech, except now you're also up against internet platform moderation, and the powerful conspiracy theory heuristic that's been installed into hundreds of millions (billions?) of minds, that is frequently invoked in a (coincidentally) coordinated manner by independent journalism organizations (followed by responsible, scientific thinking citizens) when epistemic normalization is called for.
  - SllX 5y ago
    I read the narrative a bit differently than you: in the face of misinformation from an international health organization and friends, private society prevailed in figuring out WTF was actually going on, eventually, and WHO critics were able to get their message out. This is also one of the reasons I have argued vigorously against over-regulating tech companies and their moderation practices: they deserve the chance to shoot themselves in the foot with gusto, and lose or win credibility with their user base dependent upon how they react to societal changes. It is a slow painful process, but society is developing antibodies to their practices and there are no shortcuts, no regulatory equivalent of an mRNA vaccine that won’t just turn a privileged few into quasi-public entities. If we can avoid doing that, social networks will likely go through a cycle of fragmentation over time that will counteract any kind of centralized planning or coordination between a few big giants. So what do we do about the WHO? You’re asking the wrong question there. Do what you did to protect yourself and your loved ones this time and recognize, as was obvious since at least February 2020, that the WHO isn’t to be taken as the source of truth on anything. It’s an offshoot of a diplomatic forum and acts like it because that is its nature. Even if the rank and file are doing good work, the officers are from countries that don’t trust each other, and have interests other than what their official role is. That doesn’t render it completely useless, but it isn’t completely useful either. You can’t control what allegiances other people have, only account for them.

It’s not about having a monopoly on good information. It’s about a monopoly on attention. What use is it if the WHO is wrong and someone else is right, but everybody listens to the WHO?

whatshisface 5y ago

Who's going around listening to the WHO?

christophilus 5y ago
For a while, YouTube and friends were banning people who pointed out the WHO was wrong. So, probably quite a few people.
- harikb 5y ago
  that was specifically about calling Covid a hoax. Those who were fighting against this censorship weren’t fighting for Covid being airborne or not
  - christophilus 5y ago
    My recollection was that they banned disagreeing with the WHO[0]. The examples given in that article are fair enough for banning, but they banned scientists who were not quite so crazy[1]. Anyway, that’s based on my memory (which is often faulty), but those links seem to corroborate it. [0] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-52388586 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-52388586 [1] https://support.google.com/youtube/thread/46573762/why-is-youtube-censoring-scientists-doctors-and-researchers-with-differing-views-on-covid-19?hl=en https://support.google.com/youtube/thread/46573762/why-is-yo...
    - benatkin 5y ago
      There is a lot of straw-manning going on, so if you say you disagree with the WHO on a minor point, you could be accused of calling COVID-19 a hoax.
    - tharkun__ 5y ago
      They are not the only ones at all. Same thing happened to a lot of other people. There was for example a lot of good information from the Italian National Institute of Health that simply listed the number and type of comorbidities in deceased Covid patients. Mentioning these numbers, even with proper citation was cause for being banned/not being approved by moderators. It didn't fit the official narrative. Like my sibling poster said, it probably triggered the "covid hoax" spidey senses. People are not rational in these times. They're emotional and won't even listen enough or think enough to understand the difference between looking at facts and discussing them vs. calling it a hoax. Covid is very real. I know from multiple close friends affected. I was also told via official channels that anyone obese would dare badly and die. Anecdotal data: Yet some very obese friends made it through without more than a few mild symptoms. Months later new research came out that said being sedentary is much worse than being obese. This friend while being obese is very active. No car, walks everywhere, physical labour job etc. Just telling this story would probably get me banned on certain sites.
      - j4yav 5y ago
        There is this problem where: 1. A situation becomes political, and all kinds of claims are made by demagogues without evidence in order to score points, based on whatever they would like to be true. 2. There is lots of arguing, and subtle points like “we don’t know enough to know the truth yet but X seems practical/probable” get attacked by all sides or used by the people from 1 to show how much they are being silenced or to generate conspiracy theories. 3. Eventually the reality of the situation becomes mostly clear, and the people who happened to jump to the right conclusion without evidence use it to recruit more followers, and the people who were wrong don’t want to give an inch because it benefits the group who were right for the wrong reasons. In the end most people get more polarized and there is no clear way to short circuit the process.
        deorder 5y ago
        In my experience, those called "conspiracy theorists" (or any other name for that matter) turned out to be mostly right. The subreddit /r/wuhan_flu was quarantined last February for allegations that the virus may have escaped from a lab and that the virus may be airborne. They did not even claim it was definitely so, but it was just speculation based on multiple papers. That subreddit is still quarantined as of today. That's just one of the thousands of examples I've come across. The people who spread G5 and chip theories are a very small group compared to the rest of the skeptics, yet they are portrayed by the mass media etc. as one and the same. This is reflected in how many people deal with people who criticize the official story. We seem to have lost all logic and critical thinking. There is no room for healthy discussions anymore. Instead people are personally attacking each other.
  - perryizgr8 5y ago
    Well they were also censoring videos speculating about the lab leak theory. So they were definitely treating any discussion about covid that diverged from what who/cdc were saying as misinformation.
  - thu2111 5y ago
    No, pretty much anything was banned or throttled including professors sharing graphs of data, or people re-sharing articles critical of the WHO or the COVID response. And it's still happening, by the way. That's not in the past.
  - tinus_hn 5y ago
    That is not true, in the Netherlands a critic had one of his videos pulled by YouTube for claiming COVID-19 spreads through aerosols when this was not the consensus. Yet.
    - deorder 5y ago
      You are referring to Maurice de Hond I assume?
      - scoopertrooper 5y ago
        I looked and couldn't find anything to suggest this person was banned from YouTube.
        deorder 5y ago
        I am not sure if the comment above me was referring to him, but I know back then they called what he was claiming (improving ventilation) misinformation.
        tinus_hn 5y ago
        He was not banned but he had a video pulled because it didn’t agree with the ‘scientific consensus’
  - swiley 5y ago
    No. They had some contentID-esque automation bumbling around silencing doctors who were trying to communicate their understanding of the situation as well as silencing the crackpots.
throwaway879 5y ago
Their Tommy album was pretty good.

SllX 5y ago

Fortunately they didn’t have an attention monopoly either, in part because they didn’t have an information monopoly. :)

thu2111 5y ago
Not for lack of trying however. Bear in mind the big tech companies all adopted an explicit policy of, "information that disagrees with the WHO is forbidden" and proceeded to ban lots of qualified commentators for trying to present non WHO approved information. They did this with the full approval and encouragement of the WHO itself. I'm slightly disturbed by the casualness of this thread actually. The WHO is not merely some random organisation, one of many providing information in an open environment. It commands the loyalty of many powerful people who just automatically assume it is correct, and as such has proven basically unkillable. Trump realised it was corrupted and tried to defund it, that lasted right up until Biden rolled everything back. Other countries have also been defunding it which is why the Gates Foundation is now such a large donor. How should society handle an organisation that is so clearly inadequate and even dangerous yet which commands blind adherence from the richest and most powerful people in the world, people who can and do seriously interfere with the flow of information?
- mistermann 5y ago
  Historically you could maybe fight back with better speech, except now you're also up against internet platform moderation, and the powerful conspiracy theory heuristic that's been installed into hundreds of millions (billions?) of minds, that is frequently invoked in a (coincidentally) coordinated manner by independent journalism organizations (followed by responsible, scientific thinking citizens) when epistemic normalization is called for.
- SllX 5y ago
  I read the narrative a bit differently than you: in the face of misinformation from an international health organization and friends, private society prevailed in figuring out WTF was actually going on, eventually, and WHO critics were able to get their message out. This is also one of the reasons I have argued vigorously against over-regulating tech companies and their moderation practices: they deserve the chance to shoot themselves in the foot with gusto, and lose or win credibility with their user base dependent upon how they react to societal changes. It is a slow painful process, but society is developing antibodies to their practices and there are no shortcuts, no regulatory equivalent of an mRNA vaccine that won’t just turn a privileged few into quasi-public entities. If we can avoid doing that, social networks will likely go through a cycle of fragmentation over time that will counteract any kind of centralized planning or coordination between a few big giants. So what do we do about the WHO? You’re asking the wrong question there. Do what you did to protect yourself and your loved ones this time and recognize, as was obvious since at least February 2020, that the WHO isn’t to be taken as the source of truth on anything. It’s an offshoot of a diplomatic forum and acts like it because that is its nature. Even if the rank and file are doing good work, the officers are from countries that don’t trust each other, and have interests other than what their official role is. That doesn’t render it completely useless, but it isn’t completely useful either. You can’t control what allegiances other people have, only account for them.