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How Twitter moderated the Covid debate
- SQueeeeeL 4y ago[flagged]
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- sfusato 4y agoSome seem to be okay with the government and intelligence agencies working hand-in-hand with Big Tech to make sure we only get to learn and discuss corporate sponsored healthcare advice now.
- nullish_signal 4y agoI dream of a United States with 0 Ads for Prescription Medicine, and the end of "Ask your Doctor about [Brand]"
- mc32 4y agoYeah so we took out alcohol advertising and replaced it with a different kind of evil.
- sfusato 4y agoIt used to be like that before the turn of the century. Then, shilling for Big Pharma became cool slowly and surely.
- jhgfjhgfjhfgjhg 4y ago[flagged]
- wsc981 4y agoDoctors have sometimes gotten kickbacks from Big Pharma for promoting some medicine. There’s been lawsuits in the USA over this and I am sure if the profits outweigh the costs Big Pharma will try it again. Here’s an example from Pfizer (2010): https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/insurer-sues-pfizer-paying-kickbacks-docs-flna1c9446653 https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/insurer-sues-pfiz...
- jacquesm 4y agoAnd rightly so, doctors that take kickbacks are acting against their oath and should be relieved of their license to practice.
- jacquesm 4y agoOh no, but what about free speech? /s
- bluescrn 4y ago"But it's not real censorship unless it's the government doing it! Corporations and institutions can ban/deplatform whoever they want!" (Well, at least until an 'evil conservative' controls a significant platform, it seems...)
- tootie 4y agoWho was enforcing corporate healthcare? You just made that part up. And also, Twitter is a corporation itself. Government is supposed to regulate. They exchanged information. They were told when laws were being broken. Deleting content was entirely Twitter's discretion. And they did what they deemed most beneficial to their operations and their shareholders.
- andrew_ 4y ago"healthcare *advice" leaving that word out misrepresents the parent. I understand why people hold the same position you do, but I still believe it's wrong and shortsighted. It will be inevitably abused in a way you disagree with in the future.
- lmm 4y ago[flagged]
- tootie 4y agoAt least HN doesn't filter COVID disinformation. Your first paragraph is all incorrect. Patent-free treatments were extensively tested and some (notably dexamethasone) were put into treatment regimens for a while but none proven effective. "Corporate" vaccines were very effective and I'm not sure what alternative you're thinking of (artisanal vaccines? Maybe Sinovac?) but either way it's irrelevant. Twitter is just a messaging platform. The people extolling and deriding vaccines were from all walks. Politicians, journalists, doctors, researchers or rank amateurs. Twitter was trying to reign in disinformation from all quarters because it was killing people. There is zero hint of political interference at any level, this was all at the level of bureaucrats attempting to provide a service to companion who wanted assistance. What if the executive starts censoring politically incompatible thoughts? Trump certainly tried or at least threatened to do so many times but it's nowhere near reality.
- EdwardDiego 4y ago"I developed this organic artisanal vaccine when my organic kombucha brewed entirely using my beard yeast took an unexpected turn..."
- steeve 4y agoDo you think saying "vaccines cause cancer" is fair game then? Where do you draw the line?
- poszlem 4y agoWhat do you mean by fair game? Is that true? Probably not. Should people be censored and prevented from talking about that? Absolutely fecking not. We have enough examples of medical misinformation coming from the most reputable sources to doubt their ability to impartially make decisions about what should and shouldn't be "fair game".
- steeve 4y agoSo we should not prevent people from talking about the fire in the crowded theater is what you’re saying?
- somenameforme 4y agoThere's a fun story related to that quote. It's a quote from Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, the same Supreme Court Justice also well known for his "two generations of imbeciles" quote in a ruling in defense of eugenics. The quote comes from the case Schenck v United States [1]. Holmes envisioned the quote as a reasonable metaphor for why Mr. Schenck must be imprisoned for spreading such dangerous, provocative, and utterly unacceptable speech. That speech? Scheck was handing out fliers encouraging people to refuse to comply with the military draft. So yes, I do think it's important we allow people to discuss this "fire in the crowded theater" because if the present somehow doesn't show you where the alternative leads, then merely look to the past - there are illustrations aplenty. Schenck lost and was convicted under the Espionage Act. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenck_v._United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenck_v._United_States
- evandale 4y agoYes, if people want to discuss fire in a crowded movie theatre they are free to do that. That doesn't mean they can jump out of their seat, scream "fire", and urge everyone to evacuate the theatre. I could see consequences for doing that, but calmly asking "does anyone smell smoke?" seems harmless.
- alexk307 4y agoMost of us just don’t get healthcare advice from the internet or social media.
- theCrowing 4y ago[flagged]
- refurb 4y agoGreat article to read if you want to know how the "sausage was made" at Twitter. I think most people knew it was an absolute dumpster fire, but it's even worse than that. As expected, the folks doing the policing of "disinformation" were entirely unqualified for the role (I love the banning of the Harvard School of Medicine epidemiologist who said "vaccines are for people at risk" - apparently the folks at Twitter know more about this than he does) and ended up making decisions that were "politically expedient" rather than focusing on the truth. Or the attempt by Jim Baker (Twitter general counsel, former FBI) to ban a tweet by Trump about his own Covid illness and Twitter's Roth saying "optimism isn't a ban-able offense". This article perfectly proves why campaigns against "disinformation" are bound to fail - inevitably factual and important information gets censored because it's inconvenient to the people in power. After reading this article I'm reminded of Rand Paul's quote "Do you know who the greatest propagator of disinformation in the history of the world is? The U.S. government." Amazingly this news goes over like a wet rag at HN. Which is shocking considering the "hacker ethos" about not bowing down to authority.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- est 4y ago> folks doing the policing of "disinformation" were entirely unqualified for the role Sounds like how Stackoverflow works. 5 people have no clue about the technical question decides to close it entirely.
- andrew_ 4y agoIt's what many of us thought was going on based on what we could see. It's nice to have it out in the open and verify/confirm what some of us were told was plain old paranoia.
- gsatic 4y agoHacker ethos is to solve problems not rant, rave and cry about them and hope grandma shows up with a solution.
- 4y ago
- jabthedang 4y ago[dead]
- CharlesW 4y ago> "Yet it was deemed “false information” by Twitter moderators merely because it differed from CDC guidelines." Obviously, Twitter should not have followed CDC guidelines. They should have created their own healthcare group in charge of evaluating which CDC guidelines coming out of the Trump and Biden administrations were correct and which were not, based on blue-check user surveys.
- AceJohnny2 4y agoI can't even tell if this is sarcasm anymore.
- birdymcbird 4y agoif you start with a fundamental premise that CDC and government are 100% unbiased sources of truth, then you’ll believe this story isn’t really a story. america is so polarized that if your party is doing something dirty it’s didnt happen or if it did it’s totally justified.
- ytpete 4y agoDidn't this happen primarily during the Trump administration though? At least the previous "Twitter Files" releases concerned a time period when Biden was still just a candidate. Yet I don't think the people supporting Twitter's behavior in this instance view Trump as "your party"...
- jakear 4y agoDownvoted because it completely misses the point, which is that a private company should not be told by the government to restrict speech, even if (especially if) that speech is in conflict with the "official policy" the government has decreed. > Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
- 4y ago
- tayo42 4y agoThere's no debate happening on Twitter. It's just for people to make a scene and try to get clout. Why are these random people not participating in actual research?or writers for real publications? Instead they're posting hot take one liners with no repercussion if they are incorrect. It's misleading to make it appear like there are two equal sides like this thing is trying to make it look like.
- bmarquez 4y ago> Why are these random people not participating in actual research?or writers for real publications? The author of the article wrote for the New York Times, the New Yorker, the Atlantic, and Wired. Are those not real publications?
- tayo42 4y agoI mean the people on Twitter the article is writing about > KelleyKga, a self-proclaimed public health fact checker > Andrew Bostom, a Rhode Island physician, This article is just trying to get people outraged by making it an us vs them trying to make this look like it wasn't a fringe view at the time. > American left, the political affiliation of nearly the entire staff at Twitter. Political outrage porn pretending random people are a persecuted
- dannyw 4y agoHow do you state it's a fringe view when the viewpoint was actively being suppressed by everyone? You've chosen a few examples where the posters didn't have strong credentials - how about the Harvard professor?
- tayo42 4y agoYou think the only reason it is a fringe view in the first place is because it was suppressed? The only thing holding back anti mrna research was tweets and pop Sci quality articles in news? The core issue isn't an political us vs them issue like this and other articles suggest. I didn't address the hardvard guy because idk how many other Harvard researchers or w/e the tittle is. Likely the guy is not holding a popular view. How many other people work at hardvard and Stanford and other top universities?
- batch12 4y agoA tangent: this domain seems to have an abnormal number of flagged articles. It made me wonder if there's something like shadowbans for domains here and if so, what are the criteria?
- imwillofficial 4y agoUnlikely, I feel the mods here take a personal touch. Would be interesting to see what, if any, automated tools they use.
- kodyo 4y agoHN readers lean toward the establishment narratives.
- jacquesm 4y agoI wonder for how long that will still be the case. The fringe is getting more and more grip on HN and we may well be fighting a losing battle.
- dgfitz 4y agoFunny thing about pendulums…
- kodyo 4y agoThere should be more mistrust of the institutions that lie without cessation.
- rootusrootus 4y agoThe answer to this seems to be deciding YouTube videos are authoritative. Or other completely random sources which don't offer any credible evidence that their narrative is any better than the mainstream sources.
- kodyo 4y ago
- RyanShook 4y agoI'm not a conspiracy theorist but I think the longest lasting legacy of covid will be the distrust it created for big government, big pharma, and big tech.
- mensetmanusman 4y agoThat started during Vietnam, we are still recovering.
- Fordec 4y agoCreated? Please, it was already there. Gestures vaguely at every Libertarian, (Neo-)Luddite, Jenny Mccarthy and basically the city of Portland.
- AustinDev 4y agoI am a conspiracy theorist[1], and this was all well known since before we even did '2 weeks to slow the spread'. I'm just glad some of the mainstream folks are figuring it out now. [1]: The term "conspiracy theory" is itself the subject of a conspiracy theory, which claims the term was popularized by the CIA in order to discredit conspiratorial believers, particularly critics of the Warren Commission, by making them a target of ridicule. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_theory#Etymology_and_usage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_theory#Etymology_an...)
- laidoffamazon 4y agoIndeed, I’m lead to believe Trump forced us to lock down. It’s good that now under the current president we no longer have lockdowns or restrictions.
- xqcgrek2 4y agoWhat is the realistic legal recourse for those who were censored from pressure by the US government? Sue the relevant agencies or executive branch? Will anyone even go to prison or lose their job?
- laidoffamazon 4y agoNone because there was no censorship or pressure.
- imwillofficial 4y agoThis is demonstrably false. As admitted by the government itself.
- laidoffamazon 4y agoCan you quote what explicit pressure was applied?
- mindslight 4y ago[flagged]
- imwillofficial 4y agoGo read the twitter files drops
- ModernMech 4y agoI did and I’m missing the pressure. No one can seem to point it out too; when asked they either say “read the files”, or “when the FBI asks you to do anything it’s automatically a threat.” Still waiting for maybe a link to one of the tweets at least that people find so problematic.
- imwillofficial 4y ago
- stevebmark 4y agoI don't really care about a private company making reasonable decisions and learning about their internal debate process. Up until Musk, I was impressed to see Twitter grow a backbone and not fall to the cowardly cries of "free speech." What I don't follow is the jump some people make from reasonable moderation like this, to fascism. They see internet platform moderation as a gateway drug to a physically oppressive government. I don't see how this jump is possible. Am I missing something?
- dannyw 4y agoThere are very real people who have been harmed by side effects from the vaccine. Whether the virus itself would've been more deadly is a question for another time, but if your loved ones were unlucky enough to get myocarditis from the vaccine, and you were silenced on social media, sometimes invisibly like you're being gaslit, and so were the doctors and researchers, it's easier to understand the strong emotional reactions to unnamed large entities colluding with other large consumer facing entities. This also creates a tendency to migrate to communities that share your point of view, creating an echo chamber.
- dboreham 4y ago> a question for another time Why? Surely this is the primary question to ask ahead of time?
- peter422 4y agoI’m sure you mean well, but one of the few things we know for sure is that the virus is way, way, way more deadly than vaccine. If you are going to overlook all those RCTs run all throughout the world with different types of vaccines and huge populations of people, then you really should reflect on your own analysis of the data. I'm not saying the vaccine is perfectly safe, as few things are, but it's obviously, provably, much better to get the vaccine before you get COVID if you care about reducing the overall risks to your health.
- transcriptase 4y ago
- jklm 4y agoRelevant context - this was written by a member of the team who released the Twitter files, alongside Matt Tabibi.
- myko 4y ago[flagged]
- flavius29663 4y ago> insane conspiracy bullshit If it's proven true, is it still conspiracy?
- HDThoreaun 4y ago[flagged]
- goatlover 4y agoDid you even read the article? It wasn't about Hunter's penis.
- xqcgrek2 4y agoIt's a true conspiracy, but not bullshit.
- jaxelr 4y agoThe problem is there’s a lot of conjecture concerning intentions and thats basically unprovable. Some parts feel sensationalized for the sake of theater.
- myko 4y agoThe biggest revelation from the previous dumps were that Joe Biden's team requested Twitter remove posts of Hunter Biden's nude body from the site, and they obliged. This is content moderation and completely reasonable. The latest revelation is that Twitter tried to keep antivax shit off the site. Everyone paying attention knew that was the case already, and was the right thing to do (Hacker News should do that, too).
- imwillofficial 4y agoConspiracy theory is just the news in 6 months. Hell at this rate I’d hear somebody out if they said the moon is made of cheese. What a time to be alive.
- insanitybit 4y ago> Hell at this rate I’d hear somebody out if they said the moon is made of cheese. Right. That's the problem.
- imwillofficial 4y agobecause it’s dangerous to listen to other peoples opinions?
- insanitybit 4y agoWhy would it not be dangerous?
- goatlover 4y agoShould we suppress other people's opinions, then?
- insanitybit 4y agoTo the extent that we should be allowed to moderate content within the domains that we have ownership over, absolutely.
- imwillofficial 4y agoThis point of view is dangerous in my eyes.
- cf141q5325 4y agoIt only starts to become a problem if you cant explain why its wrong. Having parts of your worldview that you told yourself are not up for verification is exactly how being wrong looks like from the perspective of somebody who is. And once you no longer have a means of verifying reality, you have no way to comprehend what you actually ignore and what the consequences are. You just blinded yourself because you felt smart enough to not need it. By deciding what people (not just you) should or shouldnt think about you identified the problem, that people could be too dumb for that consideration and make mistakes, while blatantly ignoring that the same might not just apply to your decision as well, but that you are removing the fundamental solution to said problem. Verification. Thats the problem. Not comprehending that the problem is more difficult that it seems and that the "easy" solution you propose has fundamental flaws that will result in catastrophic failure. Or worse, comprehending it but being overwhelmed and deciding to at least feel right regardless. And unfortunately, i dont see a third option outside of said incompetence or said malice. I truly hope i am wrong because unfortunately there seem to be a lot of people embracing this stuff. But it also wouldnt be too surprising because talking about this gets awfully close to violating the board rules. Which would explain why this catastrophic idea can so easily spread.
- twblalock 4y agoThis is what we get when we expect corporations to police speech, and when governments pressure them to do it. We really would be better off with no censorship. Even allowing obvious conspiracy theories and fake news is better than trying to police the truth and getting it wrong. When moderators get it wrong even one time they lose trust forever and give the conspiracy theorists even more ammo — in some cases by making the conspiracy theories about censorship become true! Besides, even if you wanted corporations to police speech and decide what is true, would Twitter and Facebook really be the ones you would want to do it? It’s been very sad to see Westerners, especially Americans, and especially American liberals be so fearful and weak that they discarded the single most important principle of freedom, liberty, and human rights: freedom of speech. That sacrifice got us nothing. Misinformation still spreads and it is more attractive than ever to the conspiracy-minded precisely because they can see the attempts to suppress it! Forbidden knowledge is always more attractive. It wasn’t worth it! The only way out of this is to stop asking corporations and governments to censor things. Just stop.
- SkipperCat 4y agoYou are mistaking social media companies as platforms for speech. The are not. They are for profit companies that must police their content to attain maximum ad revenue. They will curate, filter and edit content solely for that purpose. I don’t know why everyone is so up in arms about what Twitter does on their website. If it vanished tomorrow, I’d be fine. Most of us knew what was going in the 90’s just fine.
- twblalock 4y agoThey are absolutely platforms for speech and in many cases they are the main source of news for people. Facebook and Twitter matter more than CNN. By the way, all the newspapers and mainstream media that were displaced by social media are almost all ad-based, for-profit enterprises too.
- SkipperCat 4y agoThere is a lot of speech on Twitter and Facebook, but the purpose of those companies is profit. If they could curate and filter content to increase revenue, they will. Plus, telecom laws protect them from liable so they can get away with publishing outright lies. The fact that people use these poorly vetted sites as their primary source of news is unsettling. There is a lot of quality content, but it’s surrounded by a lot of garbage (from both the left and the right). The NYT and WSJ both operate by much higher standards than I’ve ever seen on FB or Twitter. The newspapers are far from perfect, but they do abide by ethical standards. And most importantly, they are liable for their content.
- DisjointedHunt 4y agoImagine if this was Trump. That for me puts the reaction in tech circles in perspective. We would see two impeachments, wall to wall news coverage, protests by employees at Facebook, Apple and Google, all asking for deplatforming everyone associated and so much more. Its ridiculous that we're unable as a society to separate actions from political affiliation.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- petmon 4y agoImagine if what were Trump? Per the article, the Trump administration sought "help from the tech companies to combat misinformation."
- DisjointedHunt 4y agoI should have been more specific so asinine comments like these who can't read the story before commenting don't show up: Imagine if the Trump Administration had people who donated predominantly to their cause making decisions at the highest level at Social Media companies and directly affecting policy of posts being taken down such as Jim Baker asking why "don't be afraid of COVID" isn't taken down. Imagine if employees at social media companies took the view that they knew better than abortion and lgbt activists and overruled coverage of their protests, flagged their tweets, locked their accounts from gaining any distribution. Imagine if the Trump administration established a department within the San Francisco field office of the FBI to EXCLUSIVELY check social media feeds of their political opponents to have them reported to twitter under government pressure to take them down. I thought all of this was implied and anyone reading this comment would at least acknowledge the severity of these revelations, but here we are.
- fells 4y agoThey live in this alternate universe where the COVID pandemic didn't involve Trump at all.
- kornhole 4y agoWhat might been useful to mention here is how much money was being paid by big pharma in advertising dollars to the platforms and in campaign contributions. It was and still is an enormous amount.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- barbazoo 4y agoSource?
- kornhole 4y agoI am proud that this comment earned me a -3, but I looked up information for you: 2020 spend on social media Pharma advertising was $152M. https://www.fiercepharma.com/special-report/top-10-ad-spenders-big-pharma-for-2020 https://www.fiercepharma.com/special-report/top-10-ad-spende... 2020 spend on dark money contributions was over $500M https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2020/12/pharma-lobby-poured-millions-into-darkmoney-groups/ https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2020/12/pharma-lobby-poured... Direct campaign contributions were less: https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.php?ind=h04 https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.php?ind=h04
- hintymad 4y agoI wonder why people believe that CDC must always be right, and therefore any doubt or challenge to CDC’s messages is misinformation that is worth banning. I thought every school in a modern society teaches student not to blindly trust the authority.
- goatlover 4y agoI wonder as well. That's just one government, as the article points out. Other governments had different responses, recommendations and policies. What made Sweden's approach for example, more wrong than the CDC?
- jmeister 4y agoRelated: there isn’t enough discussion on actual executive decision making. The experts are supposed to give their inputs, but the buck stops with the executives who are tasked with balancing various trade-offs(including the inherent uncertainty in faulty/noisy scientific models). https://www.slowboring.com/p/fda-cost-benefit https://www.slowboring.com/p/fda-cost-benefit There never is one single “right” decision, the balancing of trade-offs is inherently political. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient_frontier https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient_frontier The CDC is just one such expert. Then there are legal experts, economic experts, public opinion experts, foreign policy experts.. in the private sector a CEO(or wall st trader or tech PM) is expected to weigh all of these, decide, and live or die by the consequences of their decisions . Tough job, which is why they get paid so much. An executive has the authority to completely override the experts after consulting an astrologer, tossing a coin, or washing his hands. This fetishization of the Science or villainization of CDC/Fauci is completely misguided.
- hintymad 4y ago> This fetishization of the Science or villainization of CDC/Fauci are completely misguided Fair point. Doesn’t mean that people who pointed out inconsistencies in CDC’s data or referred papers of different opinions should be banned or villainfied, either
- 4y ago
- intended 4y agoAs pointed out - this is a hacker first forum. Go to reddit. Find an emotionally charged subreddit, become a member, and then offer to help moderate. There are FAR too many people discussing things, people with real experience making things, talking about moderation without doing their homework. Test your assumptions. See if it can work. Doing this while helping communities is not a bad way to go.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- notacoward 4y agoIt sounds a lot less nefarious when you consider that the "suppressed" views were believed at the time - and not without reason - to be both incorrect and harmful. The passage of time and 20/20 hindsight has revealed that some of the mainstream views were themselves incorrect, but if we're counting the hits for alternatives then we have to count the misses as well. Many claims about methods of transmission, dangers of vaccines, or efficacy of alternative treatments do not look any better in hindsight, and should not be forgotten. Being a "contrarian" or "devil's advocate" or whatever has still meant being wrong - and harmfully wrong - most of the time. I'm not at all excusing anything that happened at Twitter or elsewhere. There's plenty to criticize, but these breathless accusations of ultimate evil are not only silly but hypocritical. If we're going to be harsh judges, let's not be one-sided about it. Plenty of the "opposition" deserve some pretty strong condemnation too, having made their own contributions to the death toll. I see way too many people here refusing even to talk about those failures, because of their own political leanings. Is this a site for curious inquiry, or pure political piling-on?
- wmf 4y agoI agree with Twitter's decisions but... where did it get us? Covid denial still exists and now it has a bonus persecution complex due to Twitter's moderation. Clearly debating with crackpots doesn't work but shutting down the debate doesn't work either.
- denlekke 4y agoit is easy to point to specific negative outcomes but difficult to measure the harm that was potentially avoided and difficult to weigh a total cost/benefit to these actions. I don't think that I personally feel confident that the outcomes is net bad. Hopefully some people had better healthcare outcomes because of what twitter showed them and decided not to show them. Hopefully some people stayed on the platform because they felt it was less spammy or full of disinformation (on whichever side/topic).
- jacquesm 4y agoIt's a real problem and there is no solution in sight I'm afraid. Typically it takes some kind of massive crisis to precipitate a change and then less than a century later all of that gain of insight will be lost again so we get to repeat history. 2019 was a re-run of (talk about being on-time) 1918.
- giardini 4y agoOriginal title is "How Twitter Rigged the Covid Debate". Why the change from "Rigged" to "Moderated"?
- ckvjdonee 4y agometa
- Overtonwindow 4y agoHN moderation, perhaps?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- bobleeswagger 4y agoSeems more like it was accounting for the knee-jerk reaction culture we have been building here. With a more aggressive title, the post may have been flagged or downvoted off of first impressions.
- chitowneats 4y ago[flagged]
- simple-thoughts 4y ago[flagged]
- SanjayMehta 4y agoManipulated would be more accurate.
- th3byrdm4n 4y agoLess aggressive language.
- joshuaheard 4y agoI think they meant "censored".
- spritefs 4y agoThe craziness surrounding covid was somewhat predictable Here in the US (and likely other places), you have a pharma industry shoving amphetamines and antidepressants in people's faces. You have a complacent government that's too lazy, corrupt, and incompetent to address this obvious wrong (among many others) So because of this, people already don't trust the pharma industry or govt. Can I blame them? Not really. At the same time, you have elderly refusing vaccination and dying because of this lack of trust. You have parents refusing to vaccinate children for things like measles So tl;dr you have a system that has systematically eroded trust over the years and has been unable to self correct, and people on some level know that they're getting screwed. And you have an incompetent government that refuses to take responsibility for this lack of trust and only knows how to redirect blame elsewhere. What could possibly go wrong here? edit: I'm not saying that the government is irredeemably bad, I'm saying that as of right now the current generation of politicians have failed to do their due diligence regarding pharma screwing people over (e.g. price of insulin)
- janalsncm 4y agoADHD meds and antidepressants are one thing, but the opioid epidemic is a scandal responsible for the hollowing out of entire communities. It’s outrageous. In any sane society the Sackler family would be in prison if not worse. I’m vaccinated and boosted but I don’t know how I’d feel about people asking me to trust the Big Pharma if the life of my sibling or parent was pharmaceutically destroyed.
- andreyk 4y agoOK, so here's the key bit: "Twitter executives did not fully capitulate to the Biden team’s wishes. An extensive review of internal communications at the company revealed that employees often debated moderation cases in great detail, and with more care for free speech than was shown by the government. ... But Twitter did suppress views—and not just those of journalists like Berenson. Many medical and public health professionals who expressed perspectives or even cited findings from accredited academic journals that conflicted with official positions were also targeted. ... There were three serious problems with Twitter’s process [bots, contractors, and biased decision making by top level execs]". This seems to be more a story on the complexities of content moderation than anything. There WAS a LOT of misinformation about covid, and a lot of it could cause real harm. At the scale Twitter operates at, false positives (incorrectly labeling things as misinformation) are impossible to avoid. How do you moderate at this scale without bots and contractors? Well, you can moderate less. But then, should Twitter have opted for more false negatives than false positives? I don't think so. That is not to say this is article does not share useful information, but the headline is rather misleading. As before with the Twitter files, it shows that the government leaned on Twitter to do what it wanted but not able to mandate it, and that Twitter had internal debates regarding how to moderate these sorts of things. That seems reasonable?
- afpx 4y ago[flagged]
- ofcoursenate 4y ago[flagged]
- imrane 4y agoSounds like you’re trying to spin it to make this seem like innocent moderation when it was internal employees and the government forcing their views via moderation rather than letting the discourse happen
- paganel 4y ago> it shows that the government leaned on Twitter to do what it wanted but not able to mandate it, Why does a government has to "lean" on a private media company in a "democrat" and "liberal" democracy? Not able to "mandate" is total bs, see the Pentagon-related leaks where there wasn't any need of any "mandating". If anything, this shows how hypocritical the whole industry has become, including many of its workers. Hopefully this will scare away all potential future Aaron Swartz-es from this industry, or from the main parts of it at least, and hence bring it all down a peg or too.
- muttantt 4y agoLOL. And now HN is "moderating" the debate on this. Why change from "Rigged" to "Moderated"? Maybe Elon should buy HN next.
- bgro 4y agoThere’s apparently a lot of people upset about Twitter for trying to manage misinformation. I’d like to see equal information leaked from Fox for comparison, who should have journalistic integrity since they’re a news company. It seems weird to me that Twitter is the only one people seem to be up in arms about, and not the times the US president did things like suggest to the public, on live national tv, that consuming bleach could cure Covid. Given that extreme level of ridiculous harmful misinformation being presented, it seems obvious to me that any reasonably ethical link in the communication chain should attempt to speak up. Twitter didn’t even really block most things, they just added a small banner alongside some statements that amount to being a reminder to check your sources.
- arcticbull 4y agoHe also suggested UV lights applied from the inside of the human body could cure COVID. It remains unclear which orifice was recommended, but one was heavily implied. [1] What a weird time that was. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KG0ciGfJ1xY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KG0ciGfJ1xY
- cscurmudgeon 4y agoYou do know that this is a line of research right? https://www.cedars-sinai.org/newsroom/reduced-viral-loads-seen-in-covid-19-patients-treated-with-uva-light/ https://www.cedars-sinai.org/newsroom/reduced-viral-loads-se... https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2020-05-01/cedars-sinai-trump-covid-cure https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2020-05-01/cedars-sin... It is easy being smugly wrong.
- zimpenfish 4y agoThe first link says (my emphasis): > The investigators emphasized the preliminary nature of their research, noting that they did not demonstrate a causal link between the improvement in patient conditions and the reduced viral loads.
- 4y ago
- robot 4y agowhat's wrong with suppressing anti-vaxer views on twitter? elon's guy says twitter rigged the debate. yes so what. why should they have to provide a leveled platform for vaccine supporters vs anti-vaxers? If you look at china now there is a tragedy due to no vaccinations being available.
- jacquesm 4y agoI wished Elon Musk would fuck off to Mars already, he's done enough damage. But trust him to see how far he can milk this and it gets lapped up and amplified like it is the biggest scandal since Watergate, whereas the most you can take away from it is that there were a lot of people doing their utmost best to ensure the platform functioned with minimum damage potential.
- drexlspivey 4y ago“I see nothing wrong with banning people who disagree with me”
- Operative0198 4y ago> what's wrong with suppressing anti-vaxer views on twitter? there's no such thing as anti-vax views. there's only science/facts and lies. > twitter rigged the debate. yes so what... (the views that I supported carried the day) most bizarre argument i've come across on the internet today. > why should they have to provide a leveled platform for vaccine supporters vs anti-vaxers? sounds to me here like you want to live in 'La-La land'. > If you look at china now there is a tragedy due to no vaccinations being available. covid is such a tragedy that china is loosening [0] some of its zero-covid restrictions. also, there's no shortage of vaccines anywhere as of today. you might want to cross-check that piece of misinformation. [0] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/27/china-to-end-quarantine-for-international-travelers.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/27/china-to-end-quarantine-for-...
- robot 4y agoI think you are crazy. we have the exact same opinion on this.
- 4y ago
- andy_ppp 4y agoThat we’re still debating this stuff is ridiculous, everyone seems to be trying to create a narrative out of actions performed with good intentions and imperfect information. I think Twitter and the press had an almost impossible job attempting to manage public health messaging. There does not need to be a red vs blue debate on this as if it’s some religious war. The way it’s debated verges on conspiracy theory to me. I can’t believe how well Germany did with masking, testing and vaccination mandates to be able to take part in society again and consequently they have 1/3 fewer deaths than the comparably more open UK. A lot of people’s parents would still be with us if the UK and US weren’t divided and arguing about pointless stuff when we have loads of evidence the societies with more locking down and more extreme interventions saved more lives.
- jacquesm 4y agoElon is doing his level best to create more controversy and hence more eyeballs. He also doesn't give a care about the damage to society that may cause as long as it increases the chances of his finances remaining solid.
- onlyrealcuzzo 4y agoRight or wrong, you've completely missed the point. Some people felt it wasn't worth the slightest bit of sacrifice to save other's lives. Some people felt all human life was sacred and we should've done everything possible to save every last day of every person's life. The vast majority of people were in the messy middle, and the debate centered around how much we should give up to save lives - especially when it might have long-term negative consequences. A lot of people were willing to isolate and wear masks - and the debate centered around whether the government has the right (or should) force people to do those things. A lot of people thought if you can't force everyone - it's a suckers game. Why should I isolate when other people aren't, and the effects are minimized - etc. It's not as simple as "mask and isolation good", even if there is good evidence it worked for the initial strains of Covid.
- andy_ppp 4y agoThe debate of a toddler frustrated at having a seatbelt put on in a car.
- Rastonbury 4y agoAn older person I know created twitter just to follow pandemic news and is now in the antivax and homeopathy echo chamber through replies and suggested tweets under the 2 people he follows
- isthisthingon99 4y agoI'm sorry I found this hilarious
- poszlem 4y agoOne interesting aspect of these arguments is that people often attribute the spread of anti-vaccine views to social media platforms like Twitter, rather than acknowledging the role of government and media in promoting false narratives that have contributed to widespread mistrust in mainstream institutions. While I personally believe that homeopathy is completely baseless, I can understand why someone who has witnessed the mishandling of the pandemic might lose faith in the objectivity of science and medicine. I used to work at major scientific publisher and was as "pro science" as could be, and I am also extremely disillusioned by the last 2 years.
- Rastonbury 4y agoDo you think the authorities actions are a result of intentional malice/dishonesty or incompetence? Be careful because this the playbook of how these influencers draw people into the echo chamber. Slowly breed mistrust in anything and everything mainstream, encouraging you to think critically. Once there is a level of mistrust in everything, they feed you sources they want you to believe, "don't believe these guys, I've shown you the light, now believe me" It also serves to alienate the person from friends/family/casual discussion, driving them further towards the chat groups and sites
- poszlem 4y agoThe actions of "the authorities" (or rather - many people working in "the authorities") were both malicious/dishonest and incompetent at different times (and for different people). I can try and attribute the "masks don't work" narrative to incompetence (they were trying to save the masks, and that backfired), but it isn't hard to argue that that was also dishonest. The same applies to the "you MUSTstay indoors" messages followed a few days later by "you should go and take part in a protest with hundreds of other people" because, suddenly, racism is a health emergency bigger than covid (https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/jun/12/racism-public-health-black-brown-coronavirus https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/jun/12/racism-publi...). I am not in the "ivermectin cures Covid" camp. I don't think it does based on the available research. But the campaign to paint it as a "horse dewormer" was as far from honest as possible and I very much doubt that it was organic (Ivermectin is a drug that is prescribed to 150 000 people in the US every year, it's also commonly used to deworm dogs, and cats, and yet somehow each news outlet focused on horses). I could go on, but the fact of the matter is that I simply don't trust the mainstream media anymore and totally understand why many people do not either. I don't care what you think about that, from my perspective "don't believe these guys, I've shown you the light, now believe me" has been employed time and time again to smear people who had heterodox opinions during the pandemic (and way before it) too.
- thinking4real 4y agoIt was pretty amazing to witness the final erosion of public trust that was the covid/Trump era. From hereon out we have two factions of humanity - those who will believe anything said by authority and those who know knowledge can only be ascertained through deduction and reason. I’d never have thought that once information became ubiquitous that we would lose any ability to rely on it, but the worlds more complicated than I assumed.
- chadcmulligan 4y agoMy Dad used to say "Believe only half of what you see and nothing that you hear.", which is from Poe "Believe nothing you hear, and only one half that you see." [1]. Nothing much has changed. [1] https://poemuseum.org/did-poe-really-say-that/ https://poemuseum.org/did-poe-really-say-that/
- yehosef 4y agoAny discussion of this that ignores the role of vaccine manufacturers in this process are simply lacking. The government had no real incentive to push a policy against science except financial interests (and the influence of people with financial influence.) Case it point - the demonization of ivermectin - one of the safest drugs ever created that saved so many people's lives (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34466270/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34466270/). It's also inexpensive. The entire case was that people are promoting something that has not validated as being effective. Not, that its dangerous or that it's stealing people's money - it's not been proven to be an effective treatment. And doctors lost their licenses (many more threatened) over this.
- the_why_of_y 4y agoYou mean doctors like this Dr. Karas here one lost their license? As early as November 2020, Dr. Robert Karas, the jail’s doctor, told inmates who had contracted COVID that he was giving them a cocktail of vitamins, antibiotics, and steroids when in fact he was administering dangerously high doses of the dewormer. “At no point were Plaintiffs informed that the medications they were consuming included Ivermectin,” the lawsuit says. “Further, Plaintiffs were not informed of the side effects of the drug administered to them or that any results would be used for research purposes.” As a result, these men experienced diarrhea, bloody stools, stomach cramps, and vision problems, the lawsuit says, all of which suggest ivermectin poisoning. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/01/inmates-sue-arkansas-doc-jail-after-unknowingly-taking-dangerous-doses-of-ivermectin/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/01/inmates-sue-arka...
- pnf 4y agoYes, definitely citing an arstechnica piece citing a lawsuit's claims by very credible inmates is the winning argument.
- the_why_of_y 4y agoNotably, the article doesn't say that he did lose his license, or that that is even a possible outcome. Also, I would like to point out that prisoners in the land of the free are still humans.
- t0bia_s 4y agoHow can anybody be surprised that so many people belive in so called "conspiracy theories" when many of them looks like true. The rising tribalism in times of digital information is truly interesting phenomenon. When most people realise how easily we are manipulated just by words and images in media, trust in any information will not exist. We are really go to post-truth times.
- somenameforme 4y agoIt seems to me that many of the current changes in society are not really changes, but just the ending of what was an abnormal little, extremely pleasant, bubble in time. And it's in that bubble that "we" (Westerner, over the age of ~30) all grew up in. "Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knowledge with the lies of the day. .... I will add, that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods & errors. He who reads nothing will still learn the great facts, and the details are all false." - Thomas Jefferson, 1807 [1] That sort of condemnation of the news would have been, at the minimum, quite hyperbolic during the time we grew up in. But now? It seems like a scathing, yet completely reasonable, criticism of the current state of media. And this goes on endlessly far back. Read the classics (Plato's "The Republic" feels effectively prophetic at this point) and it goes from sounding alien, during our bubble, to sounding like something oddly familiar. It's quite comforting in a way. We're not stepping into some great new unknown, but merely returning to the endless cycling of history. [1] - https://www.loc.gov/resource/mtj1.038_0592_0594/?sp=2&st=text https://www.loc.gov/resource/mtj1.038_0592_0594/?sp=2&st=tex...
- t0bia_s 4y agoBack then, news, or even ability to read anything was not available as it is today. So it is a little bit different in a scale. "The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt." - Bertrand Russell
- papito 4y ago"This one health professional was off once so here are the opinions of random handles created a few days ago with two followers that you should take medical advice from".
- ChicagoDave 4y agoHindsight is 20/20. We didn’t know anything about Covid in the early months and the CDC was following plans designed to counter something closer to the 1917 Spanish Flu. We should all be grateful they scared the crap out of us. What if a variant started killing kids? What if a variant started killing 25-35 year olds? Read history. That’s what happened when the Spanish Flu came around for a second swing. It wasn’t about being accurate. It was intentionally about over-reacting because we just didn’t know enough.
- bigtex 4y agoWe knew in March 26, 2020 it was not the Spanish flu because the data from the cruise ship diamond princess came back and the cfr was 1.1%. This was a shipped filled with the most vulnerable, obese people over 65. We should have never closed schools or lockdown in the USA. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00885-w https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00885-w
- cbsmith 4y agoI think you're missing the aspect of Spanish flu that presents the threat. CFR doesn't define the threat.
- ralusek 4y agoI'm sorry but this is nonsense. No clarity of hindsight is required to realize that the conversations regarding COVID were not good faith explorations of the facts or the risks. Decisions were made very crudely in order to determine the proper course of action, and virtually all necessary mechanisms for continuously evaluating what we knew or were doing were forcefully marginalized. If you were somebody genuinely interested in understanding the pandemic, you immediately found that virtually all the sane conversations you were looking for were taking place in the same fringes as the places where lunatic conspiracy theorists were, because they were the only places that tolerated any discussion whatsoever.
- maskil 4y agoThat may have been the case in the very beginning, but it certainly evolved into let's scare the crap out of people to achieve whatever outcome we want.
- wonderwonder 4y agoMain thing this article seems to illustrate is that the federal government was blatantly violating the 1st amendment to silence viewpoints counter to it's own. I really don't care what a private platform does, the actions of the government far outweigh anything Twitter did in this case.
- yehosef 4y agobut it was a "noble lie" for the interest of the public. I think those are allowed.
- samhuk 4y agoCandidate for worst take in 2022? Could you elaborate into what is noble about censoring the discussion about the safety of covid-related mitigations by official, recognised scientists?
- wonderwonder 4y agoI think he is being sarcastic. I think...
- yehosef 4y agoyes - search "noble lie" covid and you'll understand the reference.
- indoclay 4y agoLooking at the results disparity for "noble lie" and +covid both in the news and search tabs in Google is really eye opening given everything that has been released with twitter's moderation tooling with regards to deboosting and view filtering. It seems only conservative and libertarian sources are covering the recent deposition in which he confessed that he knowingly made false public health statements in the early days of the pandemic. Both moderation and policy decisions were based on these statements.
- daxfohl 4y agoWhat _should_ Twitter have done? I see plenty of "nothing", so that's not interesting. But if there was a Blue, and surveys where you could see the opinions aggregated by, say, doctors with ivy league degrees, would that be useful? It would allow for dissenting voices but (maybe?) less likelihood of those voices overwhelming the majority? Any other opinions?
- worksonmine 4y agoHow about letting people discuss, even retarded arguments. If they are in fact retarded disproving them shouldn't be so hard right? The Streisand effect should teach us something, and when so many of the so called conspiracy theories proved to be likely and even true (lab leak theory for example) who are people going to look to for information? The best example I can remember was a fact-check by Reuters on the claim that clinical trials were not completed. Their debunk started by rephrasing the claim to a straw-man that "trials had another year to finish", to debunking with: "No according to Pfizer source X it will be done by Y". I did the math, and from article publication to date Y it was 10 months, so sure, technically correct, not a year. But does the straw-man of a specific date debunk the claim that the "trials are not completed"? Tragic but that was the state of the discourse and it's ridiculous, what did they expect? This is going to take a long time to repair and how global it was makes me draw the most sinister conclusions. I don't want to but it's the only explanation I see.
- daxfohl 4y ago> If they are in fact retarded disproving them shouldn't be so hard right? Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize that half of them are stupider than that. --George Carlin (I think)
- wonderwonder 4y agoI wonder how many of the "my kids and I are masking forever" crowd is due to the Twitter echo chamber. If anything contradicting the most dire of COVID effects is stifled then it's no surprise that some of the population became extreme. Their beliefs are even now reinforced by the Twitter/ social media echo chamber of the people they follow. It's sad and I feel for these people and especially for their kids
- the_erd 4y agoAnd how does this number compare to the number of people who refused to take precautionary measures such as masking and vaccines due to Twitter echo chamber, and then died of COVID? Very sad, and I feel so bad for those people and their kids.
- wonderwonder 4y agoIt doesn't there are different outcomes. Twitter hid the anti-vax messaging and promoted the pro-vaccine and pro-masking messaging. ~1600 people under the age of 18 have died of covid since it began ~3 years ago. Since it began though its a very different virus, Omicron is far less deadly. Kids that are constantly masked will have long term social and learning issues. I think we have reached the point in the pandemic where the harm from constant masking out weighs the benefits. The vast majority of people agree with that. Even the 80+ year old president is rarely masked these days. I'm not telling you what to do, I'm just saying from a risk / reward perspective, masking kids likely does not deliver unless those children are ill to begin with. Regarding vaccination, I agree social media led to many people that should have been vaccinated (overweight, lung conditions, etc.) not getting vaccinated and they died where they likely did not have to. I knew 2 of them. I'm not an anti-vaxxer and was vaccinated and received a booster shot. I am not getting anymore of them as I had covid and it was not a big deal so I know longer think the risk is worth the reward. My kids are not vaccinated and unless there is a major mutation in the virus will not be. They have all had covid without issue.
- 2devnull 4y agoSome ideas are good. Other ideas are bad. If people are able to share ideas, some people will share bad ideas. This problem goes back to Gutenberg. Some will argue that the powers that be owe it to the less intelligent and less powerful masses to make sure to remove bad ideas, and/or to promote good ideas. Others will point to history and note that banning books, or forcing people to read the “good ideas” has rarely been a successful long term strategy. I side with those who reference history. History tends to be cyclical. Most thoughts have been thought before. Students of history have learned that manipulating what people think by engineering the free flow of ideas may work great in the short term, but longer term it’s doomed to failure.
- samhuk 4y agoThe number of comments in this thread that so casually defend what I think is honestly somewhat comparable to an Edward Snowden-level infringement on freedom is honestly depressing. It deeply confuses me how some people, some who are obviously very smart, value censorship and government-enforced-truth over freedom of speech and expression. Where did it go wrong? How did we get here? IMHO this isn't about "culture war" or "left v right" anymore, but instead about how did a large number of people so casually abandon fundamental human rights.
- aglasgow000 4y agoIt's sad even the right wing delusion has crept in here of all places.
- Khaine 4y agoIt's not just the CDC who failed, it's also the WHO. Truest in the WHO plummeted after they appeared to 'cover up' for China. From https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7992121/pdf/40656_2021_Article_403.pdf https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7992121/pdf/406... The World Health Organisation (WHO) initially declined to endorse wearing of ‘medical masks’ as a non-pharmaceutical intervention to prevent or reduce the spread of the SARS-Cov-2 virus and strongly opposed using other forms of masks. In the second version of the WHO’s advice in March 2020 (WHO, 2020a) it stated that: A medical mask is not required for people who are not sick as there is no evidence of its usefulness in protecting them. Cloth (e.g. cotton or gauze) masks are not recommended under any circum- stances. However, by December 2020, the WHO recommended wearing of non-medical masks of various kind in certain community settings—subject to recommendations on how this is done. It did so, “Despite the limited evidence of protective efficacy of mask wearing in community settings” (WHO, 2020b). Various public health experts and epidemiologists have gone further, asserting that community use of non-medical masks is crucial for slowing transmission and attributing better outcomes in some countries to early adoption of widespread mask usage. Some countries that were initially reticent to even recommend mask use have made a comparable about-turn, making mask wearing mandatory and failure to do so subject to criminal penalty. Under the currently-dominant hierarchy in evidence-based medicine, credible evidence on mask usage must come from randomized control trials; it was the absence of significant positive effects from RCTs prior to the pandemic that informed the WHO’s initial stance.
- greendestiny_re 4y agoThe Covid pandemic has taught me that facts don't matter — context is key. Being able to frame global discussions in any way you desire is true power.