27 ms·

The potential costs of systemically removing correct but controversial/fringe content are extremely detrimental to scientific progress in general. Sure, we remo

by ve55 5y ago

The potential costs of systemically removing correct but controversial/fringe content are extremely detrimental to scientific progress in general. Sure, we remove thousands of obviously false and likely harmful posts, and there are cases to be made for why that may be good, but sometimes hidden within those thousands of posts was something that may have had a tremendously positive effect, but yet could not be separated from the noise. "The Crime of Curiosity" is a great way to put it, because we're already banned from questioning a lot of areas of science on most major tech platforms. This system seems to be helpful in some areas until it makes some mistakes, in which case the effects are catastrophic. Remember that within the first year of covid, "masks work" was considered misinformation along with "a vaccine is likely to happen within a year or two", along with "this may be related to a lab leak", along with... Reality is always changing and uncertain and our policies should reflect that we do not have it all figured out, nor will we (collectively) ever. (Edit: as one commenter expressed skepticism of the mask claim, read over a link like https://old.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/comments/fe2oqg/aita_for_sending_my_son_to_school_with_medical/ https://old.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/comments/fe2oqg/aita_... about how normal people felt about masks in the first few months of covid. It's pretty shocking and I feel like I'm living in an alternate reality just re-reading it and the top responses). Now that our infrastructure is being expanded and built out with censoring of 'incorrect' information as a top priority, I fear for how bad the mistakes we make in the future may be.

reginold 5y ago
Yeah the whole "censoring" stuff ratcheted up really fast. Kinda crazy.
- Animats 5y ago
  It's scary. Imagine the US five years from now, with Team Trump in charge of the censoring.
  - reginold 5y ago
    Banning Trump from Twitter...the pendulum will indeed swing the other way. How long do we have. The clock is ticking on open source, decentralized solutions. Nothing else is relevant.
- hnisfullofshit 5y ago
  HackerNews is notorious for censoring anything that falls outside its groupthink or threatens a portfolio company. It's actually one of the more aggressive censors on the internet. Case in point from this very thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28558254 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28558254 There is no free speech here.
  - reginold 5y ago
    Curious to hear more about this. Is censorship "removal" or simply not getting votes? I've seen this concept generally addressed here before as "we don't censor, people just vote this way"
    - hnisfullofshit 5y ago
      It was flagged by a mod.
      - detaro 5y ago
        flagging is something normal users can do.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
        and no longer is.
        hncircus 5y ago
        Because the bare-face hypocrisy of censoring a comment like that on a thread about commenting pulled back a bit too much of the curtain. They'll be back to silently killing accounts and comments in no time.
  - Sebb767 5y ago
donmcronald 5y ago
> The potential costs of systemically removing correct but controversial/fringe content are extremely detrimental to scientific progress in general. I fall pretty strongly on the side of combatting misinformation, but I disagree with outright removal of content. I think it should be flagged as misinformation, but left available. Put another way, I'm a fan of labelling, not censoring. I want transparency. "Our misinformation bot rated this as a 90% chance of being misinformation because XYZ." I bet the only reason we can't have that is because the ML bots suck so much the tech industry is scared to implement any system that might be open to scrutiny or analysis. It's a bit ironic.
- nine_k 5y ago
  Marking is helpful. Removal is not. Very much like spam: filters are good but not 100% good, so there must be a way to look at what the filter has rejected, and allow the reader to judge.
  - lolc 5y ago
    The mails that make it to your spambox are a pithy few compared to the mass of dropped mail. You'd be very unhappy with your spambox if the filters weren't so judgmental.
    - dvdkon 5y ago
      I haven't actually set up my mail server to move mail flagged as spam to a separate folder, and I've gotten roughly 4 spam emails in the year or so I've had this address. My mail server also doesn't drop anything unless it fails DMARC. I've had to deal with Microsoft outright dropping everything from a domain (not on this server), so I do know it happens, I'm just not convinced it's necessary.
      - notriddle 5y ago
        Yeah, because there’s less email spam now than there used to be. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_spam#Statistics_and_estimates https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_spam#Statistics_and_esti...
tidalmcmuffin 5y ago
> Remember that within the first year of covid, "masks work" was considered misinformation No, because that never happened. Maybe don’t spread misinformation yourself if you want to make a point.
- wdevanny 5y ago
  Yes, he did. From [1]: > "The typical mask you buy in the drug store is not really effective in keeping out virus, which is small enough to pass through material. It might, however, provide some slight benefit in keep out gross droplets if someone coughs or sneezes on you." > He added: "I do not recommend that you wear a mask, particularly since you are going to a very low risk location." > Fauci has previously been criticized for changing his position on masks. Early on in the pandemic, he advised against wearing face coverings, but that advice evolved over time. [1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/fauci-said-masks-not-really-effective-in-keeping-out-virus-email-reveals/ar-AAKCZ0c https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/fauci-said-masks-not-reall...
  - bluejellybean 5y ago
    To the first point, isn't this still true? Unless I missed something, N-95s/respirators are the only way to protect yourself, wearing the cloth/surgical masks is a way to prevent yourself, who may be asymptomatic, from spreading the disease and NOT to protect yourself from someone who you are in contact with who has it. To the second point, if I am recalling correctly this was in part due to the fact that we were undergoing as massive supply shortage. I distinctly remember my roommates (healthcare workers) being told to keep their N-95s in a brown paper bag and to reuse it. To the third point, everyone is a critic and everyone is bound to make mistakes in a rapidly evolving situation. Given the fact that front-line folks had to re-use (Read: already contaminated and unsafe for use) masks given the supply issues, I'm not so sure he was wrong in advising the general public to hold off.
tidalmcmuffin 5y ago
Funny I replied to you saying that you’re false about the mask statement and HN censored me! Real free speech platform you guys have here. The irony considering what I was replying to!!
AussieWog93 5y ago
>"The Crime of Curiosity" is a great way to put it, because we're already banned from questioning a lot of areas of science on most major tech platforms. I think the keyword that, in my mind, justifies the censorship here is "on most major tech platforms". Nobody is banning the discussion of these ideas in academic journals or HN or other places where curious people can go to discuss things - it's just making sure unverified, potentially dangerous theories aren't spreading like wildfire amongst the general population who _aren't_ curious and will assume whatever they're reading is absolute truth.
- hnisfullofshit 5y ago
  You can't actually discuss anything on HN that goes against the moderator's petty ideologies (or yc's profit motive) without being censored. Turn on show dead and take a scroll through nearly any topic. The irony is that many of the people who claim to be free-speech see nothing wrong with this platform blacklisting people who don't share in the groupthink.
  - liamwire 5y ago
    I feel this is a dishonest take. I’ve seen the moderators leave up some pretty egregious violations of the site rules because it fostered good discussion, which seems to be at the heart of HN. However, good discussion ultimately requires respect for one another, and it seems maybe that thinking is not bilateral in your case. I’d encourage you to introspect on why you may be finding resistance wherever you look.
    - hncensors 5y ago
      So you're saying that you support censorship if it fits with what the mods claim is "good discussion"? Do you also think YouTube should have pulled down the author's video? What are the acceptable reasons to enact censorship in your mind?
      - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
jltsiren 5y ago
From what I remember, the Western expert opinion about wearing masks in public changed from "a weird East Asian habit" to "something that could be useful" around March 2020. The debate continued beyond that mostly because the issue had already been politicized. And because people who are used to prosperity are often unable to handle the uncertainty of living through a major change. Too many people prefer experts who don't change their minds over those who do. I also remember experts expecting effective vaccines by the end of 2020 already in January or February 2020. The key scientific challenge in vaccines was never about developing them but about collecting sufficient evidence that the vaccines are effective enough and safe enough in diverse populations. And beyond that, getting the vaccines approved and distributed to billions of people before the pandemic is over were even bigger challenges. One thing contrarians often miss is that science is fundamentally about building and changing the consensus. It's not about convincing yourself that you have discovered something new, but about trying to convince yourself that you are wrong. And failing to do that, trying to convince the relevant audience that you have in fact discovered something new. Believing in something is a matter of faith. Convincing a skeptical audience that is nonetheless open to new ideas is science.
marcosdumay 5y ago
> because we're already banned from questioning a lot of areas of science on most major tech platforms Or, in other words, those platforms have banned science. It doesn't matter what exactly their dogma is, science can not happen there. This may not be a problem, we don't need every single platform to support science. But it's not aligned with those platforms PR.
kongin 5y ago
https://web.archive.org/web/20200731213626/https://old.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/comments/fe2oqg/aita_for_sending_my_son_to_school_with_medical/ https://web.archive.org/web/20200731213626/https://old.reddi... Here's a version with a lot fewer deleted comments. If anyone wants to see what 1984s memory hole looks like this is it. You know what you remember but are told you're insane for remembering. Thank god for the internet archive, and other archival sites, the retroactive modification of articles on the 'papers of record' have been particularly egregious in the last 6 years.

by ve55 5y ago

reginold 5y ago

Yeah the whole "censoring" stuff ratcheted up really fast. Kinda crazy.

Animats 5y ago
It's scary. Imagine the US five years from now, with Team Trump in charge of the censoring.
- reginold 5y ago
  Banning Trump from Twitter...the pendulum will indeed swing the other way. How long do we have. The clock is ticking on open source, decentralized solutions. Nothing else is relevant.
hnisfullofshit 5y ago
HackerNews is notorious for censoring anything that falls outside its groupthink or threatens a portfolio company. It's actually one of the more aggressive censors on the internet. Case in point from this very thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28558254 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28558254 There is no free speech here.
- reginold 5y ago
  Curious to hear more about this. Is censorship "removal" or simply not getting votes? I've seen this concept generally addressed here before as "we don't censor, people just vote this way"
  - hnisfullofshit 5y ago
    It was flagged by a mod.
    - detaro 5y ago
      flagging is something normal users can do.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
      and no longer is.
      - hncircus 5y ago
        Because the bare-face hypocrisy of censoring a comment like that on a thread about commenting pulled back a bit too much of the curtain. They'll be back to silently killing accounts and comments in no time.
- Sebb767 5y ago

donmcronald 5y ago

> The potential costs of systemically removing correct but controversial/fringe content are extremely detrimental to scientific progress in general. I fall pretty strongly on the side of combatting misinformation, but I disagree with outright removal of content. I think it should be flagged as misinformation, but left available. Put another way, I'm a fan of labelling, not censoring. I want transparency. "Our misinformation bot rated this as a 90% chance of being misinformation because XYZ." I bet the only reason we can't have that is because the ML bots suck so much the tech industry is scared to implement any system that might be open to scrutiny or analysis. It's a bit ironic.

nine_k 5y ago
Marking is helpful. Removal is not. Very much like spam: filters are good but not 100% good, so there must be a way to look at what the filter has rejected, and allow the reader to judge.
- lolc 5y ago
  The mails that make it to your spambox are a pithy few compared to the mass of dropped mail. You'd be very unhappy with your spambox if the filters weren't so judgmental.
  - dvdkon 5y ago
    I haven't actually set up my mail server to move mail flagged as spam to a separate folder, and I've gotten roughly 4 spam emails in the year or so I've had this address. My mail server also doesn't drop anything unless it fails DMARC. I've had to deal with Microsoft outright dropping everything from a domain (not on this server), so I do know it happens, I'm just not convinced it's necessary.
    - notriddle 5y ago
      Yeah, because there’s less email spam now than there used to be. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_spam#Statistics_and_estimates https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_spam#Statistics_and_esti...

tidalmcmuffin 5y ago

> Remember that within the first year of covid, "masks work" was considered misinformation No, because that never happened. Maybe don’t spread misinformation yourself if you want to make a point.

wdevanny 5y ago
Yes, he did. From [1]: > "The typical mask you buy in the drug store is not really effective in keeping out virus, which is small enough to pass through material. It might, however, provide some slight benefit in keep out gross droplets if someone coughs or sneezes on you." > He added: "I do not recommend that you wear a mask, particularly since you are going to a very low risk location." > Fauci has previously been criticized for changing his position on masks. Early on in the pandemic, he advised against wearing face coverings, but that advice evolved over time. [1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/fauci-said-masks-not-really-effective-in-keeping-out-virus-email-reveals/ar-AAKCZ0c https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/fauci-said-masks-not-reall...
- bluejellybean 5y ago
  To the first point, isn't this still true? Unless I missed something, N-95s/respirators are the only way to protect yourself, wearing the cloth/surgical masks is a way to prevent yourself, who may be asymptomatic, from spreading the disease and NOT to protect yourself from someone who you are in contact with who has it. To the second point, if I am recalling correctly this was in part due to the fact that we were undergoing as massive supply shortage. I distinctly remember my roommates (healthcare workers) being told to keep their N-95s in a brown paper bag and to reuse it. To the third point, everyone is a critic and everyone is bound to make mistakes in a rapidly evolving situation. Given the fact that front-line folks had to re-use (Read: already contaminated and unsafe for use) masks given the supply issues, I'm not so sure he was wrong in advising the general public to hold off.

tidalmcmuffin 5y ago

Funny I replied to you saying that you’re false about the mask statement and HN censored me! Real free speech platform you guys have here. The irony considering what I was replying to!!

AussieWog93 5y ago

>"The Crime of Curiosity" is a great way to put it, because we're already banned from questioning a lot of areas of science on most major tech platforms. I think the keyword that, in my mind, justifies the censorship here is "on most major tech platforms". Nobody is banning the discussion of these ideas in academic journals or HN or other places where curious people can go to discuss things - it's just making sure unverified, potentially dangerous theories aren't spreading like wildfire amongst the general population who _aren't_ curious and will assume whatever they're reading is absolute truth.

hnisfullofshit 5y ago
You can't actually discuss anything on HN that goes against the moderator's petty ideologies (or yc's profit motive) without being censored. Turn on show dead and take a scroll through nearly any topic. The irony is that many of the people who claim to be free-speech see nothing wrong with this platform blacklisting people who don't share in the groupthink.
- liamwire 5y ago
  I feel this is a dishonest take. I’ve seen the moderators leave up some pretty egregious violations of the site rules because it fostered good discussion, which seems to be at the heart of HN. However, good discussion ultimately requires respect for one another, and it seems maybe that thinking is not bilateral in your case. I’d encourage you to introspect on why you may be finding resistance wherever you look.
  - hncensors 5y ago
    So you're saying that you support censorship if it fits with what the mods claim is "good discussion"? Do you also think YouTube should have pulled down the author's video? What are the acceptable reasons to enact censorship in your mind?
    - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

jltsiren 5y ago

From what I remember, the Western expert opinion about wearing masks in public changed from "a weird East Asian habit" to "something that could be useful" around March 2020. The debate continued beyond that mostly because the issue had already been politicized. And because people who are used to prosperity are often unable to handle the uncertainty of living through a major change. Too many people prefer experts who don't change their minds over those who do. I also remember experts expecting effective vaccines by the end of 2020 already in January or February 2020. The key scientific challenge in vaccines was never about developing them but about collecting sufficient evidence that the vaccines are effective enough and safe enough in diverse populations. And beyond that, getting the vaccines approved and distributed to billions of people before the pandemic is over were even bigger challenges. One thing contrarians often miss is that science is fundamentally about building and changing the consensus. It's not about convincing yourself that you have discovered something new, but about trying to convince yourself that you are wrong. And failing to do that, trying to convince the relevant audience that you have in fact discovered something new. Believing in something is a matter of faith. Convincing a skeptical audience that is nonetheless open to new ideas is science.

marcosdumay 5y ago

> because we're already banned from questioning a lot of areas of science on most major tech platforms Or, in other words, those platforms have banned science. It doesn't matter what exactly their dogma is, science can not happen there. This may not be a problem, we don't need every single platform to support science. But it's not aligned with those platforms PR.

kongin 5y ago

https://web.archive.org/web/20200731213626/https://old.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/comments/fe2oqg/aita_for_sending_my_son_to_school_with_medical/ https://web.archive.org/web/20200731213626/https://old.reddi... Here's a version with a lot fewer deleted comments. If anyone wants to see what 1984s memory hole looks like this is it. You know what you remember but are told you're insane for remembering. Thank god for the internet archive, and other archival sites, the retroactive modification of articles on the 'papers of record' have been particularly egregious in the last 6 years.