5 ms·

Facebook, Merck and CDC Foundation, whose sponsor includes Pfizer, form alliance [pdf]

16 points by steelstraw 5y ago

henriquez 5y ago
TurkishPoptart 5y ago
What's the reasoning behind this? I'm skeptical of these "public-private partnerships". Just yesterday at the World Economic Forum, Tony Fauci (next to his colleague Xi Jinping) complained that more needs to be done to combat "disinformation" about vaccines. The big problem is that Facebook considers sharing pre-prints of research into vaccine side-effects and efficacy, which haven't received the CDC's "blessing" are considered misinformation or disinformation and are removed. It's quite troubling to me to see independent scholars silenced for examining connections between vaccine shilling, record pharma profits, and continuing lockdowns on highly vaccinated cities/countries. tl;dr: Weird shit is happening and these organizations want to limit debate about weird shit.
- aftbit 5y ago
  I generally agree that we've done too much to enable centralized control of communication. We're at the point where anything that isn't in-line with the approved narrative will be blocked as misleading or disinformation. Yet somehow we've not managed to achieve the desired public health outcomes. We've just fractured our society into two groups who each think the other is crazy and/or stupid. That said... I don't see how you can call Tony Fauci a colleague of Xi Jinping. One is a public health official, the other is the head of a state. They are both in the public eye but that's really the end of similarities. They're only colleagues in the same sense that say Mary Barra (CEO of GM) and the general manager of my local Ford dealership are colleagues, which is not what I'd call a typical reading.
- adamrezich 5y ago
  in the past few years (let's say, especially since 2015 or so), massive corporations that have control over the vast majority of online discourse have decided that they should be our intellectual, moral, and societal safeguards against the amorphous concept of "disinformation." you'd think people would've seen this happening and said, "well now hold on just a minute"—but, through nonstop media cycles spreading propaganda that evokes the primal emotion of fear in a first-world society where we generally don't experience it all that much compared to our ancestors, a large part of the population is fully in favor of these gigantic global corporations each becoming Ministries of Truth, that just so happen to act in lockstep. through conditioning, most people don't see a problem with these websites using their UI to assert supposedly factual truths about the world, with the general idea being, well, if we don't do this, then we're all going to drown in a sea of disinformation, or something. but really, I don't need YouTube asserting to me that the earth is not, in fact, flat, and such a model has in fact been roundly debunked, right there in the UI on the web page for some dumb video I clicked on from Twitter, and I don't need Twitter to do the same, either. I don't need to outsource my critical thinking skills to huge international for-profit corporations, and nobody else should, either. YouTube in particular used to have an amazing solution to this problem: video responses. I would much rather see a list of video responses to a flat-earth video breaking it down and explaining why each part of that video was incorrect (and then a list of flat-earther counter-responses to the responses, etc. etc.), than have YouTube just tell me "these are The Facts, this is Reality, this is The Truth... and yes, we are qualified to determine such things." this just comes naturally to me, and I'm pretty sure it came naturally to lots of people just a few short years ago, but, again, through nonstop media fear porn conditioning, plenty of people feel vulnerable, unsafe, worried, anxious, and they want something they can turn to to tell them what The Truth is. (we used to have it, but then nearly everyone stopped going to church (and then we had coming up on a couple of years of lockdowns, where nearly everyone else, believers included, stopped going to church as well).)
muaytimbo 5y ago
another "conspiracy theory" that merits no credibility.
- adamrezich 5y ago
  this is a very easy statement to make about anything—could you elaborate?
  - b0sk 5y ago
    Burden of the proof yadda yadda. What's the conspiracy? Facebook teams with CDC to tackle vaccine hesitancy? Is that it? This is a conspiracy if you are a keen Alex Jones fan.
    - adamrezich 5y ago
      what are you talking about? I have not mentioned anything like what you've written here.
- yehosef 5y ago
  What's the conspiracy?
sbeckeriv 5y ago
Gonna need a little more then a shady pdf without references. Where did the pdf come from and why was it redacted?
- aftbit 5y ago
  The redactions are tagged with 5 USC 552 b 6 which reads: >(6) personnel and medical files and similar files the disclosure of which would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy; https://www.justice.gov/oip/freedom-information-act-5-usc-552 https://www.justice.gov/oip/freedom-information-act-5-usc-55... So presumably it was redacted to hide those email addresses. What I don't understand is why they chose to redact the username part of the address for the fb.com emails, but chose to instead redact the host part of the address for the external recipients. Here's one of the recipients of this email: https://www.presidentialinnovationfellows.gov/fellows/georgeta-dragoiu/ https://www.presidentialinnovationfellows.gov/fellows/george...
  - yehosef 5y ago
    >What I don't understand is why they chose to redact the username part of the address for the fb.com emails, but chose to instead redact the host part of the address for the external recipients. I think they understood the others worked at facebook, what needed to be redacted to protect their privacy is the name. For the external people, we know what their names are (some are govt officials which is why this is being FOIA'd) but not the domains, it would seem.
  - sbeckeriv 5y ago
    Thanks for explaining the text bits. I would still like to know more about its source before trusting a randomly generated pdf. cnet reports pretty much the text of the pdf? https://www.cnet.com/health/medical/facebook-teams-up-with-health-groups-to-tackle-vaccine-hesitancy-and-equity/ https://www.cnet.com/health/medical/facebook-teams-up-with-h... should this be titled with 2021?
b0sk 5y ago
aftbit 5y ago
Here's a link to the Bay Area Global Health Alliance, referencing the Alliance. https://bayareaglobalhealth.org/alliance-for-advancing-health-online https://bayareaglobalhealth.org/alliance-for-advancing-healt...

16 points by steelstraw 5y ago

What's the reasoning behind this? I'm skeptical of these "public-private partnerships". Just yesterday at the World Economic Forum, Tony Fauci (next to his colleague Xi Jinping) complained that more needs to be done to combat "disinformation" about vaccines. The big problem is that Facebook considers sharing pre-prints of research into vaccine side-effects and efficacy, which haven't received the CDC's "blessing" are considered misinformation or disinformation and are removed. It's quite troubling to me to see independent scholars silenced for examining connections between vaccine shilling, record pharma profits, and continuing lockdowns on highly vaccinated cities/countries. tl;dr: Weird shit is happening and these organizations want to limit debate about weird shit.

aftbit 5y ago
I generally agree that we've done too much to enable centralized control of communication. We're at the point where anything that isn't in-line with the approved narrative will be blocked as misleading or disinformation. Yet somehow we've not managed to achieve the desired public health outcomes. We've just fractured our society into two groups who each think the other is crazy and/or stupid. That said... I don't see how you can call Tony Fauci a colleague of Xi Jinping. One is a public health official, the other is the head of a state. They are both in the public eye but that's really the end of similarities. They're only colleagues in the same sense that say Mary Barra (CEO of GM) and the general manager of my local Ford dealership are colleagues, which is not what I'd call a typical reading.
adamrezich 5y ago
in the past few years (let's say, especially since 2015 or so), massive corporations that have control over the vast majority of online discourse have decided that they should be our intellectual, moral, and societal safeguards against the amorphous concept of "disinformation." you'd think people would've seen this happening and said, "well now hold on just a minute"—but, through nonstop media cycles spreading propaganda that evokes the primal emotion of fear in a first-world society where we generally don't experience it all that much compared to our ancestors, a large part of the population is fully in favor of these gigantic global corporations each becoming Ministries of Truth, that just so happen to act in lockstep. through conditioning, most people don't see a problem with these websites using their UI to assert supposedly factual truths about the world, with the general idea being, well, if we don't do this, then we're all going to drown in a sea of disinformation, or something. but really, I don't need YouTube asserting to me that the earth is not, in fact, flat, and such a model has in fact been roundly debunked, right there in the UI on the web page for some dumb video I clicked on from Twitter, and I don't need Twitter to do the same, either. I don't need to outsource my critical thinking skills to huge international for-profit corporations, and nobody else should, either. YouTube in particular used to have an amazing solution to this problem: video responses. I would much rather see a list of video responses to a flat-earth video breaking it down and explaining why each part of that video was incorrect (and then a list of flat-earther counter-responses to the responses, etc. etc.), than have YouTube just tell me "these are The Facts, this is Reality, this is The Truth... and yes, we are qualified to determine such things." this just comes naturally to me, and I'm pretty sure it came naturally to lots of people just a few short years ago, but, again, through nonstop media fear porn conditioning, plenty of people feel vulnerable, unsafe, worried, anxious, and they want something they can turn to to tell them what The Truth is. (we used to have it, but then nearly everyone stopped going to church (and then we had coming up on a couple of years of lockdowns, where nearly everyone else, believers included, stopped going to church as well).)

muaytimbo 5y ago

another "conspiracy theory" that merits no credibility.

adamrezich 5y ago
this is a very easy statement to make about anything—could you elaborate?
- b0sk 5y ago
  Burden of the proof yadda yadda. What's the conspiracy? Facebook teams with CDC to tackle vaccine hesitancy? Is that it? This is a conspiracy if you are a keen Alex Jones fan.
  - adamrezich 5y ago
    what are you talking about? I have not mentioned anything like what you've written here.
yehosef 5y ago
What's the conspiracy?

sbeckeriv 5y ago

Gonna need a little more then a shady pdf without references. Where did the pdf come from and why was it redacted?

aftbit 5y ago
The redactions are tagged with 5 USC 552 b 6 which reads: >(6) personnel and medical files and similar files the disclosure of which would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy; https://www.justice.gov/oip/freedom-information-act-5-usc-552 https://www.justice.gov/oip/freedom-information-act-5-usc-55... So presumably it was redacted to hide those email addresses. What I don't understand is why they chose to redact the username part of the address for the fb.com emails, but chose to instead redact the host part of the address for the external recipients. Here's one of the recipients of this email: https://www.presidentialinnovationfellows.gov/fellows/georgeta-dragoiu/ https://www.presidentialinnovationfellows.gov/fellows/george...
- yehosef 5y ago
  >What I don't understand is why they chose to redact the username part of the address for the fb.com emails, but chose to instead redact the host part of the address for the external recipients. I think they understood the others worked at facebook, what needed to be redacted to protect their privacy is the name. For the external people, we know what their names are (some are govt officials which is why this is being FOIA'd) but not the domains, it would seem.
- sbeckeriv 5y ago
  Thanks for explaining the text bits. I would still like to know more about its source before trusting a randomly generated pdf. cnet reports pretty much the text of the pdf? https://www.cnet.com/health/medical/facebook-teams-up-with-health-groups-to-tackle-vaccine-hesitancy-and-equity/ https://www.cnet.com/health/medical/facebook-teams-up-with-h... should this be titled with 2021?

b0sk 5y ago

aftbit 5y ago

Here's a link to the Bay Area Global Health Alliance, referencing the Alliance. https://bayareaglobalhealth.org/alliance-for-advancing-health-online https://bayareaglobalhealth.org/alliance-for-advancing-healt...