12 ms·

Twitter is no longer enforcing the Covid-19 misleading information policy

102 points by sfusato 4y ago

Khaine 4y ago
Is this the policy that originally said that telling people to wear a mask to protect yourself from COVID was a mistruth, and then saying wearing a mask provides no additional benefit was a mistruth. Is this also the policy that said saying COVID vaccines increased the risk of mydiocarditis in young people was a mistruth, and yet its now known to be true? Because if so, good riddance to a piece of junk. All it did was fuel conspiracy and discredit government advice. Shame on anyone who thought that silencing decent was the best way to handle it.
- eesmith 4y ago
  > Is this the policy that originally said that telling people to wear a mask to protect yourself from COVID was a mistruth, and then saying wearing a mask provides no additional benefit was a mistruth. It doesn't seem so. From https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/covid-19 https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/covid-19 , one of the examples of a tweet to remove is: “now that it’s summertime, you don’t need a mask anymore, so don’t wear your mask!” I don't see a time where Twitter's policy said otherwise. > Is this also the policy that said saying COVID vaccines increased the risk of mydiocarditis in young people was a mistruth, and yet its now known to be true? As I understand the policy, not per se. There were three factors: 1. it must be an assertion of fact (not an opinion), expressed definitively, and intended to influence others’ behavior. 2. Is the claim demonstrably false or misleading? 3. Would belief in this information, as presented, lead to harm? Someone writing that there's a very rare (as in 0.0022% chance) of mydiocarditis in young people, then that appears to be within policy. If someone says young people shouldn't get the vaccine because of the increased chance of mydiocarditis, then that that likely falls under #1. My "0.0022% chance" comes from Myocarditis or Pericarditis Following the COVID-19 Vaccination in Adolescents: A Systematic Review, M Li, X Wang, J Feng, Z Feng, W Li, B Ya - Vaccines, 2022 ] Conclusions: Our study showed that myocarditis/pericarditis occurred after vaccination with the BNT162b2 or Comirnaty vaccine, especially after the second vaccination in male adolescents, but the incidence of myocarditis/pericarditis after vaccination with the above vaccines was very rare (0.0022%). Therefore, it is recommended that adolescents should be vaccinated with the COVID-19 universal vaccine as soon as possible and closely monitored for subsequent adverse reactions, which can be treated promptly. also, quoting Evaluating the relationship between myocarditis and mRNA vaccination, Charlotte Switzer & Mark Loeb (2022) - Expert Review of Vaccines, 21:1, 83-89, ] Myocarditis may be associated with vaccination, through several biological mechanisms. Studies have shown that live viral vaccinations can act as a trigger for hypersensitivity inflammatory reactions, but further work is required to examine how the mRNA formulation may induce these autoimmune responses. Given that the risk of these adverse events is low, and the benefit of protection against disease is so great, the receipt of mRNA vaccines is recommended. ... ] Consistently, all patients hospitalized with mRNA-associated myocarditis have been discharged in stable condition and responded well to clinical management, resolving the episode [15–27]. > All it did was fuel conspiracy and discredit government advice. Some of the other things covered on the policy were: “5G causes coronavirus — go destroy the cell towers in your neighborhood!". "Tweets offering the sale or facilitation of non-prescription treatments/cures for COVID-19, or those which advertise cures or treatments for COVID-19 that require a prescription or physician consultation." "Specific and unverified claims made by people impersonating a government or health official or organization such as a parody account of official public health advisors claiming that hydroxychloroquine will prevent COVID-19." "Claims that specific groups or nationalities are never susceptible to COVID-19, such as “people with dark skin are immune to COVID-19 due to melanin production” or are more susceptible, such as “avoid businesses owned by Chinese people as they are more likely to have COVID-19.”" “Coronavirus is vulnerable to UV radiation - walking outside in bright sunlight will prevent COVID-19.” “drinking bleach and ingesting colloidal silver will cure COVID-19.” “COVID-19 does not infect children because we haven’t seen any cases of children being sick.” “If you can hold your breath for 10 seconds, you don’t have coronavirus.”
  - tinalumfoil 4y ago
    Just because certain false statements were banned under the policy doesn’t mean true statements were not also banned. Twitter’s own examples are (obviously) self serving.
    - eesmith 4y ago
      Abstractly, you are correct. But as a matter of policy effectiveness, it would be useful to have examples of true statements which were banned, to see how effective the policy was, and see the types of misclassifications. Did Twitter "originally [say] that telling people to wear a mask to protect yourself from COVID was a mistruth"? If so, when did it change, and why? If not, then the answer to Khaine's question is "no". Aren't all corporate policies self-serving?
      - tinalumfoil 4y ago
        Your reasoning is kind of like saying if Saudi really killed Khashoggi why didn’t they update their laws first to make dissident journalists executable without trial? You’re looking for evidence of wrongdoing in places where it’s obviously going to be absent. Changes in what information Twitter considers true does not require a public facing policy change.
        eesmith 4y ago
        Are you trying to heat up this already contentious topic by name-dropping a gruesome premeditated murder? Would no other example work? I'm not asking about a change in invisible internal policies that didn't affect Twitter users. I'm asking about examples fitting Khaine's claim that Twitter's policy was that "to wear a mask to protect yourself from COVID was a mistruth". That's an external observable. And it can change over time.
        troon-lover 4y ago
      - 4y ago
lzooz 4y ago
Good, now do away with other forms of censorship.
- Eisenstein 4y ago
  You mean spam blocking? That is literally censorship.
  - realgeniushere 4y ago
    In the government context, this problem is very aptly dealt with by distinguishing “content neutrality” from “viewpoint neutrality”. That’s why the government can punish spam emailers without violating the first amendment.
    - Eisenstein 4y ago
      Twitter is not the government.
      - realgeniushere 4y ago
        What a low effort and low thought reply. No one said it is. I’m saying there’s a principled way to have free speech and still take down spam.
        Eisenstein 4y ago
        I'm sorry, please clarify. What does the 'government aspect' have to do with 'twitter removing other forms of censorship'? What is 'content neutrality' and how is it different from 'viewpoint neutrality'? How does pointing out that 'censoring' in regards to removing objectionable content by a corporation relate to the first amendment at all, and what does being 'principled' have to do with it?
        realgeniushere 4y ago
        Maybe this is more productive: What point were you trying to make with your spam comment? And how isn’t it addressed by twitter abiding by viewpoint neutrality but not content neutrality?
phantomathkg 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago
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- ergvgdvgrd 4y ago
  - deleted 4y ago
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- ren_engineer 4y ago
  >horse medicine studies that used it properly as a prophylactic show around a 90% reduction in mortality and around 50% reduction in infection rate. All the studies claiming it didn't work used it post-infection which even the proponents of ivermectin claimed wouldn't work https://www.cureus.com/articles/111851-regular-use-of-ivermectin-as-prophylaxis-for-covid-19-led-up-to-a-92-reduction-in-covid-19-mortality-rate-in-a-dose-response-manner-results-of-a-prospective-observational-study-of-a-strictly-controlled-population-of-88012-subjects https://www.cureus.com/articles/111851-regular-use-of-iverme... here's the main study used to claim it doesn't work- note the participants are already confirmed to have covid so the study is already worthless and essentially done in bad faith https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2797483 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2797483 and here's another doing the same thing https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa2115869 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa2115869 not saying Ivermectin is some miracle drug like many, but simply downplaying it as "horse medicine" is just as bad
  - Eisenstein 4y ago
    That is great, and those studies are very promising, but I think you are being flippant when you say "which even the proponents of ivermectin claimed wouldn't work". In my understanding. the majority of 'proponents of ivermectin' were politicized and had no conception of prophylactic use -- the major harm caused by the ivermectin narrative was a large population refusing to vaccinated and then relying on ivermectin when they became infected. If you could could point to evidence that those pushing ivermectin during the height of the pandemic and the hospital crush were advocating low/moderate prophylactic use I would be grateful.
rdtwo 4y ago
It’s probably better to give up on covid “misinformation”. All sorts of official groups like the WHO and CDC themselves have been spreading it so it’s almost impossible to come to a consensus on what is and isn’t true. Some example statements that are controversial would include: - Covid is not airborne - cloth masks are ineffective - covid originated in a lab in wuhan - omicron is mild How do you deal with statements like that without pissing off a government group? It’s better to ignore it and some associated conspiracy stuff.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > Covid is not airborne Which public health authority objects to this statement?
  - leereeves 4y ago
    The WHO has a mixed record here. At first they said: > FACT: #COVID19 is NOT airborne. https://twitter.com/who/status/1243972193169616898 https://twitter.com/who/status/1243972193169616898 Now they say it is: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00925-7 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00925-7
    - LorenPechtel 4y ago
      Wuhan Covid was technically airborne but did not have meaningful airborne spread because it needed a fairly high dose to infect. Once again, it's not that the scientists got it wrong, it's that the disease changed!
      - leereeves 4y ago
        So you're claiming that airborne transmission of early variants was possible but rare? Even if true, that's not what the WHO said.
      - deleted 4y ago
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  - 4y ago
egberts1 4y ago
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > CDC now adds Ivermectin to its treatment regime for COVID-19 Source? As of April the CDC “recommends against the use of ivermectin for the treatment of COVID-19, except in clinical trials” [1]. [1] https://www.covid19treatmentguidelines.nih.gov/therapies/antiviral-therapy/ivermectin/ https://www.covid19treatmentguidelines.nih.gov/therapies/ant...
- mc32 4y ago
  The whole ball of wax was a humongous fiasco. A farce supported by ideology. They couldn’t keep their story straight so they resorted to censorship even going so idiotically far as censoring their previous science (actually opinion). (The follow the science mantra wasn’t at all about following science but imposing belief)
  - electrondood 4y ago
    You act like the entire world wasn't trying to figure out a novel airborne virus. Understanding and evidence evolve. If people post incorrect information, it should be restricted. Recall that plenty of people went to the ER for ingesting horse dewormer? Yeah, that. Assigning malicious intent is disingenuous.
    - mc32 4y ago
      They may have meant "well" even if they passed along misinformation themselves. However that does not excuse them from their attempt to stifle discussion. People have a right to discuss things not only when they are right but also when they are wrong. "Horse Dewormer" is itself an epithet. It's meant to discredit something that is actually prescribed to people and also tested for efficacy in fighting Covid itself. But, if you wish, then do we suppress all non-intended uses of medications out there or only the ones you disagree with?
- ManuelKiessling 4y ago
Imnimo 4y ago
If they only removed a few hundred to a few thousand Tweets per month, it seems like it must not have been a particularly stringent policy. Surely that's a very small portion of the number of misleading tweets about covid.
- newaccount74 4y ago
  Maybe they only policed content from popular twitterers? It probably makes sense to focus on the most influential and mainstream figures.
pornel 4y ago
Amnesty for previously banned harassers, unbanning of Trump, and now this all seem like a way to stir even more controversy and ideological keyboard-warrioring on Twitter. Short term it is going to drive "engagement" and produce a few charts with lines going up. Combined with decimation of anti-spam and anti-bot teams, Twitter is going to boast record numbers of posts.
yrro 4y ago
stuckinhell 4y ago
I'm honestly still shocked Twitter didn't go down for good a couple weekends ago. There was so much hype it was going to crash and burn, I feel a bit foolish for believing it.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- _djo_ 4y ago
  None of the actual engineers involved in Twitter said it would crash and burn immediately. Nor have other SREs. The belief in an imminent complete collapse was mostly amongst non specialists. But SREs including former Twitter employees have said severe outages will become increasingly likely as the weeks go by, and that in the meantime we’d see an increasing number of unresolved glitches. So far that second part is proving quite true.
lesuorac 4y ago
Why keep the policy then? Like why "no longer enforce" the policy when you can just _remove_ the policy. Like at least with drugs ("decriminalization") its because "no longer enforcing" the policy means people immediately won't be arrested/etc while repealing the law can take a long time. Presumably twitter has the authority to remove their own policies at will. (unless of course there's nobody still there that knows how to do that ...)
impulser_ 4y ago
These policies did more harm then good. It just made more people distrust the government and create more aggression around the topic of COVID.
generj 4y ago
It’s been bizarre to see the increasing anti-vax sentiment on Hacker News the last few months.
- MrMan 4y ago
  just more super frightening symptoms of mass social media poisoning, I am sure its fine
anm89 4y ago
Good. They were censoring people like Dr. Jay Bhattacharya who were putting out valid scientific viewpoints (not anti vaxxer stuff) while putting out stuff like the nonsensical CDC early press release that you didn't need to wear a mask. So, a win for the free flow of scientific information, even if some idiots get to say things that aren't true also.
- LorenPechtel 4y ago
  He's part of the Great Barrington Declaration. That makes him a quack in my book.
  - anm89 4y ago
    Every person on there is a credentialed health professional as is Dr Bhattacharya I'm happy to have access to their opinions and for them to have the right to communicate. Sorry if you feel like your, (assumed) lay opinion, supersedes theirs. Even if you are a health professional, you have no monopoly on the right to express opinions. Wanting to silence other professionals in your field is a quack / scammer viewpoint in and of itself.
jimrandomh 4y ago
Twitter censoring COVID-19-related information made the world worse, and it's good that they've stopped. A lot of people seem to be taking a very naive perspective, thinking that censoring something means fewer people will believe it. In the case of COVID-19 misinformation in particular, I believe this is wrong. At the start of the pandemic, all the major public health organizations told blatant lies about key facts: airborne transmission, surface transmission, whether it was present in US at all, the secondary attack rate, the effectiveness of masks, the infection-fatality rate, and whether it could have been a lab leak. This completely set fire to their credibility. Then they pivoted from attacking pro-maskers to attacking hydroxychloroquine advocates. These attacks consisted of highly ineffectual attempts at censorship: censored enough that everyone can see that censorship is being attempted, not censored enough to stop anyone from seeing it. People are neither geniuses nor idiots. When the public health establishment turned on a dime from attacking masks to attacking hydroxychloroquine, many people inferred from that fact alone that hydroxychloroquine must be effective. It isn't, but the alternate world in which hydroxychloroquine was effective would have looked the same, so the reasoning was valid. Given that history, and especially given how recent that history was, continuing to censor "COVID-19 misleading information" would be utterly insane.
- benlivengood 4y ago
  I can second the annoyance with the CDC throughout most of the pandemic. I had to read WHO publications and individual studies to get an inkling of what might be going on with covid risk where it mattered; to me and the people I care about (since I could personally do nothing about the rest of the public). I am not a virologist or public health expert, but I can see when a study has reasonable error bars and sample sizes for the inferences they are making from it. I'll also take an average educated guess of many virologists over a single small study, but there was nothing close to consensus on covid among experts for several months. During that time it was clear that isolation was the only provable way to combat covid and contact-tracing was virtually the only conceivable way to isolate without shutting down literally everything. So what did CDC do? No contact tracing, but 6-foot distancing, extreme hand washing, etc. I disagree slightly with your statement about the reasoning that hydroxychloroquine being effective was correct. The correct conclusion to draw from an authority with no-better-than-chance at being correct changing their recommendation is exactly the same no-better-than-chance at being correct. It wasn't quite that bad; hand washing is a general good practice and had a chance at being helpful given no other information. The health agencies issued recommendations with no error bars and wrote themselves into a corner where they couldn't update to more reliable information without continually contradicting themselves, so as a result I still see signs left in stores asking people to 6-foot distance (even though masks are optional). I also realize the underlying problem is that people are terrible at reasoning under uncertainty and also very unfamiliar with trying to do so, and so won't take announcements with error bars in a very useful way. Presented with uncertainty most people default to their status quo as if having less than perfect information is the same as no information. So the CDC's battle was to try to influence public behavior in ways that were ultimately beneficial, while probably knowing they had a limited number of tries before people noticed the uncertainty and reverted to status quo. A very unenviable position. Twitter censoring misinformation may have delayed the build-up to useless uncertainty, or it may have come too late to help much. I don't have evidence either way. One part of the status quo is buying quack medicine, so there was never any hope for preventing some of the population from doing that regardless of messaging or censorship.
tibbydudeza 4y ago
The only people left at twitter seems to be H1B1 visa holders or diehard Musk fans - actually amazing to see how it plays out on a weekly basis and how Elon is making the most stupid decisions possible. Money talks and advertisers don't want to have Parler/Social Truth unless they are into gold coins, MRE's or pillows.
jl2718 4y ago
Censorship is a strong indicator of an unpopular idea that is likely to be objectively true. This is not political; it is Bayes’ theorem.
- LorenPechtel 4y ago
  If there were no major disinformation campaigns this would generally be the case. However, these days it will lead you to believe in all disinformation campaigns.
  - jl2718 4y ago
    Circular logic: this is exactly the problem at hand. But we can go further: Disinformation campaigns are generally self-serving, so there is another conditional distribution on profit, or perhaps more measurably, resource expenditure. So if you see somebody spending money to censor a belief that profits nobody, and promote a belief that profits themselves, it warrants heavy suspicion.
joeman1000 4y ago
Great news. I think many peoples lives were disrupted because of the dogmatism on this topic. We should always be ready to trash our viewpoints when presented with new facts. It’s also our responsibility to verify facts we’re presented. Most people using the internet are not children and should not be coddled in this regard.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
egberts1 4y ago
Now, that Twitter ended 'Covid misinformation' policies, let's re-review the Federal™ own misinformation: 1. 15 days to slow the spread 2. Masks work 3. Lockdowns work 4. Natural immunity is a myth 5. mRNA shots are vaccines, not inoculants 6. Covid shots stop transmission 7. '100% safe & effective'

102 points by sfusato 4y ago

Is this the policy that originally said that telling people to wear a mask to protect yourself from COVID was a mistruth, and then saying wearing a mask provides no additional benefit was a mistruth. Is this also the policy that said saying COVID vaccines increased the risk of mydiocarditis in young people was a mistruth, and yet its now known to be true? Because if so, good riddance to a piece of junk. All it did was fuel conspiracy and discredit government advice. Shame on anyone who thought that silencing decent was the best way to handle it.

eesmith 4y ago
> Is this the policy that originally said that telling people to wear a mask to protect yourself from COVID was a mistruth, and then saying wearing a mask provides no additional benefit was a mistruth. It doesn't seem so. From https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/covid-19 https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/covid-19 , one of the examples of a tweet to remove is: “now that it’s summertime, you don’t need a mask anymore, so don’t wear your mask!” I don't see a time where Twitter's policy said otherwise. > Is this also the policy that said saying COVID vaccines increased the risk of mydiocarditis in young people was a mistruth, and yet its now known to be true? As I understand the policy, not per se. There were three factors: 1. it must be an assertion of fact (not an opinion), expressed definitively, and intended to influence others’ behavior. 2. Is the claim demonstrably false or misleading? 3. Would belief in this information, as presented, lead to harm? Someone writing that there's a very rare (as in 0.0022% chance) of mydiocarditis in young people, then that appears to be within policy. If someone says young people shouldn't get the vaccine because of the increased chance of mydiocarditis, then that that likely falls under #1. My "0.0022% chance" comes from Myocarditis or Pericarditis Following the COVID-19 Vaccination in Adolescents: A Systematic Review, M Li, X Wang, J Feng, Z Feng, W Li, B Ya - Vaccines, 2022 ] Conclusions: Our study showed that myocarditis/pericarditis occurred after vaccination with the BNT162b2 or Comirnaty vaccine, especially after the second vaccination in male adolescents, but the incidence of myocarditis/pericarditis after vaccination with the above vaccines was very rare (0.0022%). Therefore, it is recommended that adolescents should be vaccinated with the COVID-19 universal vaccine as soon as possible and closely monitored for subsequent adverse reactions, which can be treated promptly. also, quoting Evaluating the relationship between myocarditis and mRNA vaccination, Charlotte Switzer & Mark Loeb (2022) - Expert Review of Vaccines, 21:1, 83-89, ] Myocarditis may be associated with vaccination, through several biological mechanisms. Studies have shown that live viral vaccinations can act as a trigger for hypersensitivity inflammatory reactions, but further work is required to examine how the mRNA formulation may induce these autoimmune responses. Given that the risk of these adverse events is low, and the benefit of protection against disease is so great, the receipt of mRNA vaccines is recommended. ... ] Consistently, all patients hospitalized with mRNA-associated myocarditis have been discharged in stable condition and responded well to clinical management, resolving the episode [15–27]. > All it did was fuel conspiracy and discredit government advice. Some of the other things covered on the policy were: “5G causes coronavirus — go destroy the cell towers in your neighborhood!". "Tweets offering the sale or facilitation of non-prescription treatments/cures for COVID-19, or those which advertise cures or treatments for COVID-19 that require a prescription or physician consultation." "Specific and unverified claims made by people impersonating a government or health official or organization such as a parody account of official public health advisors claiming that hydroxychloroquine will prevent COVID-19." "Claims that specific groups or nationalities are never susceptible to COVID-19, such as “people with dark skin are immune to COVID-19 due to melanin production” or are more susceptible, such as “avoid businesses owned by Chinese people as they are more likely to have COVID-19.”" “Coronavirus is vulnerable to UV radiation - walking outside in bright sunlight will prevent COVID-19.” “drinking bleach and ingesting colloidal silver will cure COVID-19.” “COVID-19 does not infect children because we haven’t seen any cases of children being sick.” “If you can hold your breath for 10 seconds, you don’t have coronavirus.”
- tinalumfoil 4y ago
  Just because certain false statements were banned under the policy doesn’t mean true statements were not also banned. Twitter’s own examples are (obviously) self serving.
  - eesmith 4y ago
    Abstractly, you are correct. But as a matter of policy effectiveness, it would be useful to have examples of true statements which were banned, to see how effective the policy was, and see the types of misclassifications. Did Twitter "originally [say] that telling people to wear a mask to protect yourself from COVID was a mistruth"? If so, when did it change, and why? If not, then the answer to Khaine's question is "no". Aren't all corporate policies self-serving?
    - tinalumfoil 4y ago
      Your reasoning is kind of like saying if Saudi really killed Khashoggi why didn’t they update their laws first to make dissident journalists executable without trial? You’re looking for evidence of wrongdoing in places where it’s obviously going to be absent. Changes in what information Twitter considers true does not require a public facing policy change.
      - eesmith 4y ago
        Are you trying to heat up this already contentious topic by name-dropping a gruesome premeditated murder? Would no other example work? I'm not asking about a change in invisible internal policies that didn't affect Twitter users. I'm asking about examples fitting Khaine's claim that Twitter's policy was that "to wear a mask to protect yourself from COVID was a mistruth". That's an external observable. And it can change over time.
      - troon-lover 4y ago
    - 4y ago

lzooz 4y ago

Good, now do away with other forms of censorship.

Eisenstein 4y ago
You mean spam blocking? That is literally censorship.
- realgeniushere 4y ago
  In the government context, this problem is very aptly dealt with by distinguishing “content neutrality” from “viewpoint neutrality”. That’s why the government can punish spam emailers without violating the first amendment.
  - Eisenstein 4y ago
    Twitter is not the government.
    - realgeniushere 4y ago
      What a low effort and low thought reply. No one said it is. I’m saying there’s a principled way to have free speech and still take down spam.
      - Eisenstein 4y ago
        I'm sorry, please clarify. What does the 'government aspect' have to do with 'twitter removing other forms of censorship'? What is 'content neutrality' and how is it different from 'viewpoint neutrality'? How does pointing out that 'censoring' in regards to removing objectionable content by a corporation relate to the first amendment at all, and what does being 'principled' have to do with it?
        realgeniushere 4y ago
        Maybe this is more productive: What point were you trying to make with your spam comment? And how isn’t it addressed by twitter abiding by viewpoint neutrality but not content neutrality?

phantomathkg 4y ago

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
ergvgdvgrd 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago
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ren_engineer 4y ago
>horse medicine studies that used it properly as a prophylactic show around a 90% reduction in mortality and around 50% reduction in infection rate. All the studies claiming it didn't work used it post-infection which even the proponents of ivermectin claimed wouldn't work https://www.cureus.com/articles/111851-regular-use-of-ivermectin-as-prophylaxis-for-covid-19-led-up-to-a-92-reduction-in-covid-19-mortality-rate-in-a-dose-response-manner-results-of-a-prospective-observational-study-of-a-strictly-controlled-population-of-88012-subjects https://www.cureus.com/articles/111851-regular-use-of-iverme... here's the main study used to claim it doesn't work- note the participants are already confirmed to have covid so the study is already worthless and essentially done in bad faith https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2797483 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2797483 and here's another doing the same thing https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa2115869 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa2115869 not saying Ivermectin is some miracle drug like many, but simply downplaying it as "horse medicine" is just as bad
- Eisenstein 4y ago
  That is great, and those studies are very promising, but I think you are being flippant when you say "which even the proponents of ivermectin claimed wouldn't work". In my understanding. the majority of 'proponents of ivermectin' were politicized and had no conception of prophylactic use -- the major harm caused by the ivermectin narrative was a large population refusing to vaccinated and then relying on ivermectin when they became infected. If you could could point to evidence that those pushing ivermectin during the height of the pandemic and the hospital crush were advocating low/moderate prophylactic use I would be grateful.

rdtwo 4y ago

It’s probably better to give up on covid “misinformation”. All sorts of official groups like the WHO and CDC themselves have been spreading it so it’s almost impossible to come to a consensus on what is and isn’t true. Some example statements that are controversial would include: - Covid is not airborne - cloth masks are ineffective - covid originated in a lab in wuhan - omicron is mild How do you deal with statements like that without pissing off a government group? It’s better to ignore it and some associated conspiracy stuff.

JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> Covid is not airborne Which public health authority objects to this statement?
- leereeves 4y ago
  The WHO has a mixed record here. At first they said: > FACT: #COVID19 is NOT airborne. https://twitter.com/who/status/1243972193169616898 https://twitter.com/who/status/1243972193169616898 Now they say it is: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00925-7 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00925-7
  - LorenPechtel 4y ago
    Wuhan Covid was technically airborne but did not have meaningful airborne spread because it needed a fairly high dose to infect. Once again, it's not that the scientists got it wrong, it's that the disease changed!
    - leereeves 4y ago
      So you're claiming that airborne transmission of early variants was possible but rare? Even if true, that's not what the WHO said.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
- 4y ago

egberts1 4y ago

JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> CDC now adds Ivermectin to its treatment regime for COVID-19 Source? As of April the CDC “recommends against the use of ivermectin for the treatment of COVID-19, except in clinical trials” [1]. [1] https://www.covid19treatmentguidelines.nih.gov/therapies/antiviral-therapy/ivermectin/ https://www.covid19treatmentguidelines.nih.gov/therapies/ant...
mc32 4y ago
The whole ball of wax was a humongous fiasco. A farce supported by ideology. They couldn’t keep their story straight so they resorted to censorship even going so idiotically far as censoring their previous science (actually opinion). (The follow the science mantra wasn’t at all about following science but imposing belief)
- electrondood 4y ago
  You act like the entire world wasn't trying to figure out a novel airborne virus. Understanding and evidence evolve. If people post incorrect information, it should be restricted. Recall that plenty of people went to the ER for ingesting horse dewormer? Yeah, that. Assigning malicious intent is disingenuous.
  - mc32 4y ago
    They may have meant "well" even if they passed along misinformation themselves. However that does not excuse them from their attempt to stifle discussion. People have a right to discuss things not only when they are right but also when they are wrong. "Horse Dewormer" is itself an epithet. It's meant to discredit something that is actually prescribed to people and also tested for efficacy in fighting Covid itself. But, if you wish, then do we suppress all non-intended uses of medications out there or only the ones you disagree with?
ManuelKiessling 4y ago

Imnimo 4y ago

If they only removed a few hundred to a few thousand Tweets per month, it seems like it must not have been a particularly stringent policy. Surely that's a very small portion of the number of misleading tweets about covid.

newaccount74 4y ago
Maybe they only policed content from popular twitterers? It probably makes sense to focus on the most influential and mainstream figures.

pornel 4y ago

Amnesty for previously banned harassers, unbanning of Trump, and now this all seem like a way to stir even more controversy and ideological keyboard-warrioring on Twitter. Short term it is going to drive "engagement" and produce a few charts with lines going up. Combined with decimation of anti-spam and anti-bot teams, Twitter is going to boast record numbers of posts.

yrro 4y ago

stuckinhell 4y ago

I'm honestly still shocked Twitter didn't go down for good a couple weekends ago. There was so much hype it was going to crash and burn, I feel a bit foolish for believing it.

deleted 4y ago
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_djo_ 4y ago
None of the actual engineers involved in Twitter said it would crash and burn immediately. Nor have other SREs. The belief in an imminent complete collapse was mostly amongst non specialists. But SREs including former Twitter employees have said severe outages will become increasingly likely as the weeks go by, and that in the meantime we’d see an increasing number of unresolved glitches. So far that second part is proving quite true.

lesuorac 4y ago

Why keep the policy then? Like why "no longer enforce" the policy when you can just _remove_ the policy. Like at least with drugs ("decriminalization") its because "no longer enforcing" the policy means people immediately won't be arrested/etc while repealing the law can take a long time. Presumably twitter has the authority to remove their own policies at will. (unless of course there's nobody still there that knows how to do that ...)

impulser_ 4y ago

These policies did more harm then good. It just made more people distrust the government and create more aggression around the topic of COVID.

generj 4y ago

It’s been bizarre to see the increasing anti-vax sentiment on Hacker News the last few months.

MrMan 4y ago
just more super frightening symptoms of mass social media poisoning, I am sure its fine

anm89 4y ago

Good. They were censoring people like Dr. Jay Bhattacharya who were putting out valid scientific viewpoints (not anti vaxxer stuff) while putting out stuff like the nonsensical CDC early press release that you didn't need to wear a mask. So, a win for the free flow of scientific information, even if some idiots get to say things that aren't true also.

LorenPechtel 4y ago
He's part of the Great Barrington Declaration. That makes him a quack in my book.
- anm89 4y ago
  Every person on there is a credentialed health professional as is Dr Bhattacharya I'm happy to have access to their opinions and for them to have the right to communicate. Sorry if you feel like your, (assumed) lay opinion, supersedes theirs. Even if you are a health professional, you have no monopoly on the right to express opinions. Wanting to silence other professionals in your field is a quack / scammer viewpoint in and of itself.

jimrandomh 4y ago

Twitter censoring COVID-19-related information made the world worse, and it's good that they've stopped. A lot of people seem to be taking a very naive perspective, thinking that censoring something means fewer people will believe it. In the case of COVID-19 misinformation in particular, I believe this is wrong. At the start of the pandemic, all the major public health organizations told blatant lies about key facts: airborne transmission, surface transmission, whether it was present in US at all, the secondary attack rate, the effectiveness of masks, the infection-fatality rate, and whether it could have been a lab leak. This completely set fire to their credibility. Then they pivoted from attacking pro-maskers to attacking hydroxychloroquine advocates. These attacks consisted of highly ineffectual attempts at censorship: censored enough that everyone can see that censorship is being attempted, not censored enough to stop anyone from seeing it. People are neither geniuses nor idiots. When the public health establishment turned on a dime from attacking masks to attacking hydroxychloroquine, many people inferred from that fact alone that hydroxychloroquine must be effective. It isn't, but the alternate world in which hydroxychloroquine was effective would have looked the same, so the reasoning was valid. Given that history, and especially given how recent that history was, continuing to censor "COVID-19 misleading information" would be utterly insane.

benlivengood 4y ago
I can second the annoyance with the CDC throughout most of the pandemic. I had to read WHO publications and individual studies to get an inkling of what might be going on with covid risk where it mattered; to me and the people I care about (since I could personally do nothing about the rest of the public). I am not a virologist or public health expert, but I can see when a study has reasonable error bars and sample sizes for the inferences they are making from it. I'll also take an average educated guess of many virologists over a single small study, but there was nothing close to consensus on covid among experts for several months. During that time it was clear that isolation was the only provable way to combat covid and contact-tracing was virtually the only conceivable way to isolate without shutting down literally everything. So what did CDC do? No contact tracing, but 6-foot distancing, extreme hand washing, etc. I disagree slightly with your statement about the reasoning that hydroxychloroquine being effective was correct. The correct conclusion to draw from an authority with no-better-than-chance at being correct changing their recommendation is exactly the same no-better-than-chance at being correct. It wasn't quite that bad; hand washing is a general good practice and had a chance at being helpful given no other information. The health agencies issued recommendations with no error bars and wrote themselves into a corner where they couldn't update to more reliable information without continually contradicting themselves, so as a result I still see signs left in stores asking people to 6-foot distance (even though masks are optional). I also realize the underlying problem is that people are terrible at reasoning under uncertainty and also very unfamiliar with trying to do so, and so won't take announcements with error bars in a very useful way. Presented with uncertainty most people default to their status quo as if having less than perfect information is the same as no information. So the CDC's battle was to try to influence public behavior in ways that were ultimately beneficial, while probably knowing they had a limited number of tries before people noticed the uncertainty and reverted to status quo. A very unenviable position. Twitter censoring misinformation may have delayed the build-up to useless uncertainty, or it may have come too late to help much. I don't have evidence either way. One part of the status quo is buying quack medicine, so there was never any hope for preventing some of the population from doing that regardless of messaging or censorship.

tibbydudeza 4y ago

The only people left at twitter seems to be H1B1 visa holders or diehard Musk fans - actually amazing to see how it plays out on a weekly basis and how Elon is making the most stupid decisions possible. Money talks and advertisers don't want to have Parler/Social Truth unless they are into gold coins, MRE's or pillows.

jl2718 4y ago

Censorship is a strong indicator of an unpopular idea that is likely to be objectively true. This is not political; it is Bayes’ theorem.

LorenPechtel 4y ago
If there were no major disinformation campaigns this would generally be the case. However, these days it will lead you to believe in all disinformation campaigns.
- jl2718 4y ago
  Circular logic: this is exactly the problem at hand. But we can go further: Disinformation campaigns are generally self-serving, so there is another conditional distribution on profit, or perhaps more measurably, resource expenditure. So if you see somebody spending money to censor a belief that profits nobody, and promote a belief that profits themselves, it warrants heavy suspicion.

joeman1000 4y ago

Great news. I think many peoples lives were disrupted because of the dogmatism on this topic. We should always be ready to trash our viewpoints when presented with new facts. It’s also our responsibility to verify facts we’re presented. Most people using the internet are not children and should not be coddled in this regard.

deleted 4y ago

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egberts1 4y ago

Now, that Twitter ended 'Covid misinformation' policies, let's re-review the Federal™ own misinformation: 1. 15 days to slow the spread 2. Masks work 3. Lockdowns work 4. Natural immunity is a myth 5. mRNA shots are vaccines, not inoculants 6. Covid shots stop transmission 7. '100% safe & effective'