5 ms·

It 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 harmf

It 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 ago
I 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 ago
  it 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 ago
  It'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.
chitowneats 4y ago
> It 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 same thing was said about those who opposed the Iraq War. It's amazing how quickly the supposed "liberals" forgot this lesson and beclowned themselves.
Zpalmtree 4y ago
if you keep getting the facts wrong in hindsight, maybe you should be more open to considering other opinions instead of censoring them
- chitowneats 4y ago
  At the very least, GP, consider that you are not an epidemiologist or an MD, and that Twitter should not have censored such qualified individuals with unreliable and inconsistent "AI". At Twitter, this technology was trained to parrot the U.S. CDC, over the legitimate objections and disagreements from their counterparts in the EU and WHO. As well as many others.
  - notacoward 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - chitowneats 4y ago
      [flagged]
chitowneats 4y ago
> Is this a site for curious inquiry, or pure political piling-on? Good question. It seems that curious inquiry was not an important consideration during the height of a pandemic caused by a novel pathogen. We all paid the price for that, sadly. Some of us would like a word or two. I'm sorry if that's inconvenient for some people, particularly decision makers who were not only in power, but who abused that power to censor dissent.
twblalock 4y ago
> It 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. Actually that makes it worse. It means people overreacted because of short-term thinking. That kind of overreaction and general freaking out has done a lot of damage and it's going to be what our Covid policy is remembered for in the history books.

wmf 4y ago

I 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 ago
it 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 ago
It'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.

chitowneats 4y ago

> It 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 same thing was said about those who opposed the Iraq War. It's amazing how quickly the supposed "liberals" forgot this lesson and beclowned themselves.

Zpalmtree 4y ago

if you keep getting the facts wrong in hindsight, maybe you should be more open to considering other opinions instead of censoring them

chitowneats 4y ago
At the very least, GP, consider that you are not an epidemiologist or an MD, and that Twitter should not have censored such qualified individuals with unreliable and inconsistent "AI". At Twitter, this technology was trained to parrot the U.S. CDC, over the legitimate objections and disagreements from their counterparts in the EU and WHO. As well as many others.
- notacoward 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - chitowneats 4y ago
    [flagged]

chitowneats 4y ago

> Is this a site for curious inquiry, or pure political piling-on? Good question. It seems that curious inquiry was not an important consideration during the height of a pandemic caused by a novel pathogen. We all paid the price for that, sadly. Some of us would like a word or two. I'm sorry if that's inconvenient for some people, particularly decision makers who were not only in power, but who abused that power to censor dissent.

twblalock 4y ago

> It 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. Actually that makes it worse. It means people overreacted because of short-term thinking. That kind of overreaction and general freaking out has done a lot of damage and it's going to be what our Covid policy is remembered for in the history books.