7 ms·

This isn't a case where people thought the wrong things and it made them vote wrong. It caused them to spread diseases to other people and kill them. I'm hones

by cowpig 3y ago

This isn't a case where people thought the wrong things and it made them vote wrong. It caused them to spread diseases to other people and kill them. I'm honestly shocked that people think this is a case where the government should not step in. I think they should have been much more aggressive. This judgment and the comments here just baffle me. The scientific consensus is that countries that took a much more proactive, aggressive approach were far more successful in preventing people from dying. And this isn't like a seatbelt issue where people just put themselves at risk. The fact that people are defending the spread of false information that contributed to people literally dying in favor of a hypothetical tyranny problem just leaves me feeling completely lost.

voidfunc 3y ago
It's not the governments job to decide what speech is "correct" in the US at least under the current judicial regimes interpretation of the laws. There are some very narrow exceptions but this is not one of those. That people honestly think this is a bad thing is depressing. The government simply cannot be trusted in the wider picture to make these decisions about good vs bad speech.
- cowpig 3y ago
  > It's not the governments job to decide what speech is "correct" in the US at least under the current judicial regimes interpretation of the laws. There are some very narrow exceptions but this is not one of those. I mean, the court seems to agree with this statement but it makes absolutely no sense to me. The classic example is yelling "fire!" in a movie theater because people might get hurt. This seems like the same kind of thing but much, much more harmful. EDIT: ok the "yelling fire" thing is not a great example, here are some others to jog your intuition that maybe your understanding of the concept of free speech needs to be fleshed out a bit: What about telling someone that a loaded gun is just an inert replica and giving it to them to use as a prop? What about telling someone that your company has a bunch of clients and tons of revenue when you are raising money as an investor? What about if you put the wrong ingredients on your food product and it kills someone with an allergy?
  - anon291 3y ago
    > The classic example is yelling "fire!" in a movie theater because people might get hurt. This commonly brought up example is a complete garbage. It was first brought into American jurisprudence during WWI In fact, this case illustrates exactly why we ought not to criminalize speech. The phrase first entered American jurisprudence in Eugene v Debs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_V._Debs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_V._Debs), in which the government tried to prosecute an anti-war protester. Do you think the anti-war guy was popular in his time? Do you understand now why the government has no business policing speech? In the United States, short of direct threats, you can always say whatever you want. It's a fundamental human right, and frankly, no government has a moral right to take that away. This idea is foundational to American democracy. FFS, civil rights group will defend your right to proclaim 'hate speech' in
    - akerl_ 3y ago
      > In the United States, short of direct threats, you can always say whatever you want. This isn't the case. There are many exceptions to the 1st Amendment's protection of speech, beyond just true threats.
  - prepend 3y ago
    > The classic example is yelling "fire!" in a movie theater because people might get hurt. This is legal [0], and is a misunderstanding. The case where this came up was overturned as yelling fire falsely is crime depending on the circumstances. And yelling fire truthfully is never a crime. If there’s a fire in a crowded theater, you definitely want people yelling fire. And trying to limit them will lead to more deaths, not less. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_theater https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_the...
  - qingcharles 3y ago
    This case almost seems more like there is an actual fire in the movie theater and the firemen run in, but now they are banned from telling the theater operator to shout "FIRE" over the public address system?
  - 3y ago
vorpalhex 3y ago
There's no carve out for "a really good reason". The Government may not "abridge the freedom of speech". It can make educational posters, it can distribute information, but it can't use it's authority to limit the speech of others. One of my videogame youtubers, the GameGrumps, couldn't say "We have covid" on youtube. Not fake health advice or anything, just explaining they got it and couldn't record for a few days.
- cowpig 3y ago
  The real world is not like physics, where you can describe things with an equation and they pretty much hold up absolutely. There is always an edge case, a grey area, a situation where you have to use your judgment. Also "There's no carve out for "a really good reason"" is simply incorrect. Fraud? Child pornography? What about if you put the wrong ingredients on your food product and it kills someone with an allergy?
  - vorpalhex 3y ago
    You're confusing a prohibiton on speech with behavior you can get in trouble for. Let's say you put out a fraudulant ad selling a bridge. You can be sued, the FTC can sue you, and there could (unlikely) be jail time for you. What the Government can't do is say you're prohibited to take out an ad until they approve it - which is exactly what happened with covid. The Whitehouse abused it's power to prohibit speech being made - it didn't sue someone for eg selling a false cure. Part of the problem is the process. When I sue you for fraud, we go in front of a judge. I have to prove you're engaged in fraud - the burden is on me. If we prevent any unapproved ad from being posted by Government power, there is no due process and the burden of proof shifts to you that you aren't breaking the law. That's not how our justice system works.
    - cowpig 3y ago
      Really? What was the mechanism by which this was enforced that was fundamentally different from, say, the police coming to someone's house and arresting them for the possession of child pornography?
ethanbond 3y ago
A society has to manage many, many interests and preventing early death is only one of them.
anon291 3y ago
> I'm honestly shocked that people think this is a case where the government should not step in. I think they should have been much more aggressive. The United States government lacks the right to do this in essentially all cases because it's a right retained by the people. It's a pretty nice right and ought to be protected, which it -- usually -- eventually is. > The scientific consensus is that countries that took a much more proactive, aggressive approach were far more successful in preventing people from dying. And this isn't like a seatbelt issue where people just put themselves at risk. Human rights are not -- and should not be -- subject to scientific consensus.
- cowpig 3y ago
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  - tourmalinetaco 3y ago
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    - dang 3y ago
      You've broken the site guidelines egregiously here and elsewhere (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37446036 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37446036, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36696864 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36696864). We have to ban accounts that post like that, so please don't post like that again, no matter how wrong someone else is or you feel they are. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
  - anon291 3y ago
    > So does your understanding of the first amendment allow about passing a photo of a child being raped? No... You know it doesn't and you also know that this kind of speech is nothing like the speech that was directly prevented here by the government, so let's stop playing games.
prepend 3y ago
My issue is that I think while a Ministry of Truth may have good intentions, it will do more harm than good. Based on the principle that the counter to misinformation is better information, not less misinformation. > The scientific consensus The issue is that this isn’t a fixed thing and changes in real time. So it’s challenging to know what the “consensus” is now, especially if your goal is to filter out wrong or anti-consensus, what method do you use to decide what is allowed and what isn’t? Finally, while Covid is serious and millions of people died. Diabetes and drug overdoses kill as well. We would be better served by limiting the misinformation that is ads for pharmaceuticals and coca cola. I think people buying sugary drinks over the past 50 years killed more than many diseases. [0] So I feel like the harm caused by trying to filter social media messages by the government is greater than any potential benefit. [0] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/diabetes.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/diabetes.htm 100k diabetes deaths per year in the US alone
- cowpig 3y ago
  There is no such thing as absolutes in social policy. Every situation has an edge case, a grey area. Something will always come up where you will have to balance an interpretation of a rule. The US has the most extreme version of freedom of speech of any country in the world. There are quite a few versions that are perfectly reasonable and implemented successfully without sliding down a slippery slope into a "ministry of truth". So the slippery slope is a fallacy in this case. The issue of sugary drinks is a false dichotomy. Nobody gets sick and dies from drinking a coke. They get sick and die from drinking tons of it all the time. If you want to draw a line for what kind of speech puts people in imminent danger, sugary drinks are definitively not over that line, while spreading a potentially lethal disease is clearly over that line. > So I feel like the harm caused by trying to filter social media messages by the government is greater than any potential benefit. What evidence are you basing that on? In the past the government granted licenses to broadcast networks on TV, and had strict requirements on the kinds of things they could say on air. Did we fall into a tyrannical dystopia as a result? Did something worse than hundreds of thousands of people dying happen?
  - prepend 3y ago
cvoss 3y ago
"When is it OK to take a wrong/bad action in order to prevent some really wrong/bad event?" "How wrong was this action?" "How bad does the event have to be to justify the wrong action?" "Who is responsible for making the judgment call?" "If that party shirks, does it fall to anyone next?" "Who is morally accountable for the bad event given that it could be avoided via certain actions?" The scientific consensus you refer to gives important and helpful facts that inform this discussion by characterizing the bad event in detail. But the scientific facts cannot answer the foregoing questions, as you hope, because it provides no insight on any of the other facets. That's why there's debate and discussion rather than an open and shut case.
- cowpig 3y ago
  Yes! I totally agree. The conversation is really important. But in this case the costs (people dying, or in many cases losing months of their lives to extreme fatigue, other health problems, the overloading of medical infrastructure causing many other problems, etc) far, far outweigh the costs of a hypothetical tyranny situation.
  - JacobThreeThree 3y ago
    What causal evidence is there that people posting on social media caused deaths and "losing months of their lives to extreme fatigue"?
  - spookthesunset 3y ago
    > people dying, or in many cases losing months of their lives to extreme fatigue, other health problems, the overloading of medical infrastructure causing many other problems, etc Except none of these "experts" had any clue if their costly measures would work at all. And to this day you can't look at a chart and see a major difference between anywhere. Virus is gonna virus. You cannot control it. Simply put, you were lied to. Break out of your echo chamber and listen to people calling you out. They are right, you are not. There is more to life than a myopic focus on exactly one form of illness.
simple-thoughts 3y ago
A lot of countries did not have much restrictions and seemed to get through without a catastrophic population decline. Are there any countries that saw more than 10% of their country perish? Keeping in mind that the policies included human rights violations such as the right to travel, the right to food, the right to work, and the right to speech.
- JustLurking2022 3y ago
  Not that it happened but the fact that you consider up to 10% population loss acceptable is truly astounding.
  - simple-thoughts 3y ago
    Human rights are really important to me, and it was quite shocking to see what are supposed to be inalienable rights violated for something that’s much less than catastrophic.
  - deleted 3y ago
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lolinder 3y ago
Are you based in the US? Freedom of speech is deeply ingrained in American culture as one of our founding principles. It's very common to believe that the threshold must be extraordinarily high before suppression is valid. Actually calling for specific individuals or groups of individuals to be lynched crosses a line with most people, but not all. Spreading sincerely held beliefs that are unintentionally harmful is below that line for many if not most. This is so thoroughly ingrained in our legal system and culture that only Alito (who is on the conservative wing) dissented in Snyder v. Phelps [0]—all four liberal justices concurred that hate speech against gay people outside of a funeral could not be punished (in the circumstances in the case). [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snyder_v._Phelps https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snyder_v._Phelps
tourmalinetaco 3y ago
Maybe you’re “completely lost” because you believed false information early on and cling to it. You are willfully pretending as though Covid-19 was anything more than a particularly contagious flu. Only 7 million died to Covid-19, compared to the 50-100 million of the 1918 Spanish Flu, a number exacerbated by government payouts for false reporting and willfully infecting those who are at-risk for all respiratory diseases. As someone who had knowledge of Covid-19 before the mainstream AND got sick from it before it was widely reported, (they were still denying it was in the US at this time), I knew that it wasn’t anything major for the majority of the population. Yet the government and corporations used this as an excuse to force us inside for no logical reason. Masks assist the spread, yet we were told the opposite[0]. Vaccines were first said to “prevent”[1], and then they moved the wording to being “less likely to spread”[2]. Social distancing only prolonged the pandemic and put more at risk, as the only way to reasonably mitigate a non-deadly and contagious disease for which we have no real vaccine against is to create herd immunity, just like we do with the flu every single year. Yet the government used social media to continue to spread the misinformation that you crave, creating propaganda and draconian rules in order to worsen the long-term impacts. [0] - https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/02/health/surgeon-general-coronavirus-masks-risk-trnd/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/02/health/surgeon-general-corona... [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfL2sespLnY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfL2sespLnY [2] - https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/11/covid-19-vaccination-spread/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/11/covid-19-vaccination-...
- cowpig 3y ago
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  - tourmalinetaco 3y ago
    > Do you think maybe every surgeon in the world, who spends 8+ years studying medicine, just wears masks because they're brainwashed? As is a pattern in your replies you continue being either horribly ignorant or just downright malicious, neither of which is surprising from someone who uses CSAM as a shield for censorship. If you think for even an iota of a second that properly worn surgical masks are comparable to the cheap slapped-on masks that were worn during the pandemic, then you’re genuinely not worth discussing this with. Not to mention you didn’t even actually interface with any of previous reply, namely the very first reference I used which already discredited this ignorance. Continue mindlessly spreading misinformation and lies, you’re a waste of my time.
GeekyBear 3y ago
> This isn't a case where people thought the wrong things and it made them vote wrong. It caused them to spread diseases to other people and kill them. The government was pushing an entirely incorrect assessment of how Covid spread. They shut down domain experts who correctly asserted that Covid was fully airborne. > The evidence that Covid-19 spreads through the air has been there since early in the pandemic - in a Seattle choir, a Chinese restaurant, an Arkansas prison. And “Covid is Airborne” scientists have from around the globe have been pleading with authorities to tell the world, holding symposiums and writing editorial after editorial. They wrote an open letter in June of 2020 signed by hundreds of fellow scientists appealing to “national and international bodies to recognize the potential for airborne spread” of COVID-19. They have shown that 85% of viral load is in the air. They have explicitly laid out how respiratory viruses hitchhike on aerosols to penetrate the lungs and infect people. And yet despite all this, and even as the Delta wave - as contagious as (the known-to-be-airborne) chickenpox - rages, there has been no clear guidance from the most prominent public health authorities that Covid is indeed airborne, in plain language that regular people and businesses can use to modify their own behavior and prevent airborne transmission. https://theair.substack.com/p/why-covid-is-airborne-history https://theair.substack.com/p/why-covid-is-airborne-history It took two years for those in charge to accept the truth about how Covid spreads. > Two years of COVID: The battle to accept airborne transmission https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2022/3/11/two-years-of-covid-the-battle-to-accept-airborne-transmission https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2022/3/11/two-years-of-co... > Early in the pandemic, the World Health Organization stated that SARS-CoV-2 was not transmitted through the air. That mistake and the prolonged process of correcting it sowed confusion and raises questions about what will happen in the next pandemic. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00925-7 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00925-7
logicchains 3y ago
>The scientific consensus is that countries that took a much more proactive, aggressive approach were far more successful in preventing people from dying This isn't the consensus at all; the data shows that overwhelmingly lockdowns etc. had no positive effect on overall mortality or even a slightly net negative one. That's why New York had a higher fatality rate than Florida even though Florida had an older (and hence more vulnerable) population. They also had a devastating effect on childhood education/development outcomes.
- cowpig 3y ago
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- safety1st 3y ago
  To this day it seems most people are misinformed about the WHO's statements regarding lockdowns. The WHO's position was that the total closure of businesses and public areas was a tool that could be effective early on in a wave of infections, but governments should recognize that it came with a terrible cost in terms of increasing poverty and other social problems. They also repeatedly stated that the half-assed "lockdowns" implemented by most jurisdictions (hey guys let's close the pool but we'll reopen it on Wednesdays and Fridays, also restaurants are delivery only for nine months) were next to useless. Basically, they said you had to go all-in, do it early on, and make it brief or it wasn't worth it. Not once have I ever seen the nuance of their position accurately reflected in the media or in statements by politicians and governments. It was all 100% left vs right tribe wars / oh look libs are stealing our freedoms / here's another dunk on Trump / Americans of all stripes hating and blaming each other. Millions are poor or dead because we all failed.
- pfg 3y ago
  It's very common for discussions on this topic to only look at one particular factor and use it to fit some narrative one believes to be correct. Mentioning the difference in population age while ignoring things like population density or different climates is a good example of this.
dbsmith83 3y ago
Deciding what constitutes "misinformation" is highly subjective and can lead to censorship of diverse opinions. A government empowered to regulate speech based on content risks suppressing valid dissenting voices. While misinformation can be dangerous, attempting to police speech can lead to unintended consequences and threaten democratic principles. Instead, a better approach is to provide accurate information, promote critical thinking, and foster open debate. Maintaining individual freedom for everyone across the country is more important than the lives of a few people who choose to follow misinformation.
- jwells89 3y ago
  I think the concern is less about a small handful steeping themselves in misinformation and more about what to do when a large chunk of public discourse starts to veer in a tabloid-like direction because such ideas are more captivating and viral than reality, especially with narratives specifically designed to do that being spun ever more frequently by a growing array of parties. Hoping that people think for themselves and practice due diligence only goes so far, particularly when there’s a shocking number adhering to a culture of ignorance and taking pride in not critically thinking or scrutinizing sources. With that in mind, I can see why a government might want tools to help keep yellow-journalism-like discourse from dominating public forums, but as noted there’s dangers that come with that. It’s a thorny issue.
  - dbsmith83 3y ago
    Restricting speech can lead to censorship and the suppression of dissenting voices, potentially undermining democratic principles. Determining what content should be restricted is subjective and can be susceptible to abuse, causing bias and political manipulation. History shows that limitations will expand beyond their original intent, stifling legitimate criticism (examples include McCarthyism, Patriot Act, Great Firewall of China). Instead of relying solely on government intervention, promoting media literacy, fact-checking, and responsible journalism can be more effective in combating misinformation while preserving essential democratic values. The temptation for authority figures to abuse their authority is too great.
dmatech 3y ago
Americans are a peculiar people. You might save a few lives in the short term by censoring ideas that cause harm (which are usually legally protected even if they're false). The problem arises once people get wind of the fact that there is centralized government influence on what they're allowed to say or hear. Americans generally don't believe their governments to do this fairly or competently. So a lot of people fall into conspiratorial thinking about what they're not being allowed to hear. They also lose trust in a government that doesn't trust them in return (or allow them to make their own decisions). So there are very negative second-order effects to going down the route of paternalistic censorship here.
frankreyes 3y ago
That is not true. Face masks at the start of the pandemic we're Forbidden and only many months later became mandatory. The amount of misinformation that came from official sources is ridiculous. It was so funny to suddenly see the Surgeon General in the USA saying that face masks and coverings are useless, to creating a YouTube video showing how to make one yourself using a rubber band... https://youtu.be/PI1GxNjAjlw?feature=shared https://youtu.be/PI1GxNjAjlw?feature=shared We know Today that face masks are useless, because it's not the first time we have a large scale virus. Sars and Mers a decade ago gave valuable information which official sources ignored. One of many sources: https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD006207.pub6/full#pico https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD...
choko 3y ago
The problem isn't hypothetical. It's literally happening in front of your eyes and you cheer it on.
- 15457345234 3y ago
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helge9210 3y ago
> a case where the government should not step in There are limits to government mandate, it's not allowed to cross, no matter what. In addition to this case, there are several cases (in Germany, in Israel etc.) where the court pointed out the limits were crossed. There is a possibility to change the limits through democratic process for a following government.
JuanPosadas 3y ago
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Simulacra 3y ago
I think what you're feeling is a lack of control. Mask, lockdowns, for those who support them it was a way to control and force the population towards your goals. Your ideals cannot easily be attained without government force. The masks and lockdowns didn't work, they were just tools one political ideology used to oppress the others despite evidence to the contrary. That behavior has been found to be unconstitutional.
cvccvroomvroom 3y ago
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spookthesunset 3y ago
> The fact that people are defending the spread of false information that contributed to people literally dying in favor of a hypothetical tyranny problem just leaves me feeling completely lost. Except a lot of that "false information" turned out to be true. You don't get to decide what constitutes "misinformation". > It caused them to spread diseases to other people and kill them. This is absolutely not true at all.

by cowpig 3y ago

voidfunc 3y ago

It's not the governments job to decide what speech is "correct" in the US at least under the current judicial regimes interpretation of the laws. There are some very narrow exceptions but this is not one of those. That people honestly think this is a bad thing is depressing. The government simply cannot be trusted in the wider picture to make these decisions about good vs bad speech.

cowpig 3y ago
> It's not the governments job to decide what speech is "correct" in the US at least under the current judicial regimes interpretation of the laws. There are some very narrow exceptions but this is not one of those. I mean, the court seems to agree with this statement but it makes absolutely no sense to me. The classic example is yelling "fire!" in a movie theater because people might get hurt. This seems like the same kind of thing but much, much more harmful. EDIT: ok the "yelling fire" thing is not a great example, here are some others to jog your intuition that maybe your understanding of the concept of free speech needs to be fleshed out a bit: What about telling someone that a loaded gun is just an inert replica and giving it to them to use as a prop? What about telling someone that your company has a bunch of clients and tons of revenue when you are raising money as an investor? What about if you put the wrong ingredients on your food product and it kills someone with an allergy?
- anon291 3y ago
  > The classic example is yelling "fire!" in a movie theater because people might get hurt. This commonly brought up example is a complete garbage. It was first brought into American jurisprudence during WWI In fact, this case illustrates exactly why we ought not to criminalize speech. The phrase first entered American jurisprudence in Eugene v Debs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_V._Debs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_V._Debs), in which the government tried to prosecute an anti-war protester. Do you think the anti-war guy was popular in his time? Do you understand now why the government has no business policing speech? In the United States, short of direct threats, you can always say whatever you want. It's a fundamental human right, and frankly, no government has a moral right to take that away. This idea is foundational to American democracy. FFS, civil rights group will defend your right to proclaim 'hate speech' in
  - akerl_ 3y ago
    > In the United States, short of direct threats, you can always say whatever you want. This isn't the case. There are many exceptions to the 1st Amendment's protection of speech, beyond just true threats.
- prepend 3y ago
  > The classic example is yelling "fire!" in a movie theater because people might get hurt. This is legal [0], and is a misunderstanding. The case where this came up was overturned as yelling fire falsely is crime depending on the circumstances. And yelling fire truthfully is never a crime. If there’s a fire in a crowded theater, you definitely want people yelling fire. And trying to limit them will lead to more deaths, not less. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_theater https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_the...
- qingcharles 3y ago
  This case almost seems more like there is an actual fire in the movie theater and the firemen run in, but now they are banned from telling the theater operator to shout "FIRE" over the public address system?
- 3y ago

vorpalhex 3y ago

There's no carve out for "a really good reason". The Government may not "abridge the freedom of speech". It can make educational posters, it can distribute information, but it can't use it's authority to limit the speech of others. One of my videogame youtubers, the GameGrumps, couldn't say "We have covid" on youtube. Not fake health advice or anything, just explaining they got it and couldn't record for a few days.

cowpig 3y ago
The real world is not like physics, where you can describe things with an equation and they pretty much hold up absolutely. There is always an edge case, a grey area, a situation where you have to use your judgment. Also "There's no carve out for "a really good reason"" is simply incorrect. Fraud? Child pornography? What about if you put the wrong ingredients on your food product and it kills someone with an allergy?
- vorpalhex 3y ago
  You're confusing a prohibiton on speech with behavior you can get in trouble for. Let's say you put out a fraudulant ad selling a bridge. You can be sued, the FTC can sue you, and there could (unlikely) be jail time for you. What the Government can't do is say you're prohibited to take out an ad until they approve it - which is exactly what happened with covid. The Whitehouse abused it's power to prohibit speech being made - it didn't sue someone for eg selling a false cure. Part of the problem is the process. When I sue you for fraud, we go in front of a judge. I have to prove you're engaged in fraud - the burden is on me. If we prevent any unapproved ad from being posted by Government power, there is no due process and the burden of proof shifts to you that you aren't breaking the law. That's not how our justice system works.
  - cowpig 3y ago
    Really? What was the mechanism by which this was enforced that was fundamentally different from, say, the police coming to someone's house and arresting them for the possession of child pornography?

ethanbond 3y ago

A society has to manage many, many interests and preventing early death is only one of them.

anon291 3y ago

> I'm honestly shocked that people think this is a case where the government should not step in. I think they should have been much more aggressive. The United States government lacks the right to do this in essentially all cases because it's a right retained by the people. It's a pretty nice right and ought to be protected, which it -- usually -- eventually is. > The scientific consensus is that countries that took a much more proactive, aggressive approach were far more successful in preventing people from dying. And this isn't like a seatbelt issue where people just put themselves at risk. Human rights are not -- and should not be -- subject to scientific consensus.

cowpig 3y ago
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- tourmalinetaco 3y ago
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  - dang 3y ago
    You've broken the site guidelines egregiously here and elsewhere (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37446036 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37446036, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36696864 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36696864). We have to ban accounts that post like that, so please don't post like that again, no matter how wrong someone else is or you feel they are. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
- anon291 3y ago
  > So does your understanding of the first amendment allow about passing a photo of a child being raped? No... You know it doesn't and you also know that this kind of speech is nothing like the speech that was directly prevented here by the government, so let's stop playing games.

prepend 3y ago

My issue is that I think while a Ministry of Truth may have good intentions, it will do more harm than good. Based on the principle that the counter to misinformation is better information, not less misinformation. > The scientific consensus The issue is that this isn’t a fixed thing and changes in real time. So it’s challenging to know what the “consensus” is now, especially if your goal is to filter out wrong or anti-consensus, what method do you use to decide what is allowed and what isn’t? Finally, while Covid is serious and millions of people died. Diabetes and drug overdoses kill as well. We would be better served by limiting the misinformation that is ads for pharmaceuticals and coca cola. I think people buying sugary drinks over the past 50 years killed more than many diseases. [0] So I feel like the harm caused by trying to filter social media messages by the government is greater than any potential benefit. [0] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/diabetes.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/diabetes.htm 100k diabetes deaths per year in the US alone

cowpig 3y ago
There is no such thing as absolutes in social policy. Every situation has an edge case, a grey area. Something will always come up where you will have to balance an interpretation of a rule. The US has the most extreme version of freedom of speech of any country in the world. There are quite a few versions that are perfectly reasonable and implemented successfully without sliding down a slippery slope into a "ministry of truth". So the slippery slope is a fallacy in this case. The issue of sugary drinks is a false dichotomy. Nobody gets sick and dies from drinking a coke. They get sick and die from drinking tons of it all the time. If you want to draw a line for what kind of speech puts people in imminent danger, sugary drinks are definitively not over that line, while spreading a potentially lethal disease is clearly over that line. > So I feel like the harm caused by trying to filter social media messages by the government is greater than any potential benefit. What evidence are you basing that on? In the past the government granted licenses to broadcast networks on TV, and had strict requirements on the kinds of things they could say on air. Did we fall into a tyrannical dystopia as a result? Did something worse than hundreds of thousands of people dying happen?
- prepend 3y ago

cvoss 3y ago

"When is it OK to take a wrong/bad action in order to prevent some really wrong/bad event?" "How wrong was this action?" "How bad does the event have to be to justify the wrong action?" "Who is responsible for making the judgment call?" "If that party shirks, does it fall to anyone next?" "Who is morally accountable for the bad event given that it could be avoided via certain actions?" The scientific consensus you refer to gives important and helpful facts that inform this discussion by characterizing the bad event in detail. But the scientific facts cannot answer the foregoing questions, as you hope, because it provides no insight on any of the other facets. That's why there's debate and discussion rather than an open and shut case.

cowpig 3y ago
Yes! I totally agree. The conversation is really important. But in this case the costs (people dying, or in many cases losing months of their lives to extreme fatigue, other health problems, the overloading of medical infrastructure causing many other problems, etc) far, far outweigh the costs of a hypothetical tyranny situation.
- JacobThreeThree 3y ago
  What causal evidence is there that people posting on social media caused deaths and "losing months of their lives to extreme fatigue"?
- spookthesunset 3y ago
  > people dying, or in many cases losing months of their lives to extreme fatigue, other health problems, the overloading of medical infrastructure causing many other problems, etc Except none of these "experts" had any clue if their costly measures would work at all. And to this day you can't look at a chart and see a major difference between anywhere. Virus is gonna virus. You cannot control it. Simply put, you were lied to. Break out of your echo chamber and listen to people calling you out. They are right, you are not. There is more to life than a myopic focus on exactly one form of illness.

simple-thoughts 3y ago

A lot of countries did not have much restrictions and seemed to get through without a catastrophic population decline. Are there any countries that saw more than 10% of their country perish? Keeping in mind that the policies included human rights violations such as the right to travel, the right to food, the right to work, and the right to speech.

JustLurking2022 3y ago
Not that it happened but the fact that you consider up to 10% population loss acceptable is truly astounding.
- simple-thoughts 3y ago
  Human rights are really important to me, and it was quite shocking to see what are supposed to be inalienable rights violated for something that’s much less than catastrophic.
- deleted 3y ago
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lolinder 3y ago

Are you based in the US? Freedom of speech is deeply ingrained in American culture as one of our founding principles. It's very common to believe that the threshold must be extraordinarily high before suppression is valid. Actually calling for specific individuals or groups of individuals to be lynched crosses a line with most people, but not all. Spreading sincerely held beliefs that are unintentionally harmful is below that line for many if not most. This is so thoroughly ingrained in our legal system and culture that only Alito (who is on the conservative wing) dissented in Snyder v. Phelps [0]—all four liberal justices concurred that hate speech against gay people outside of a funeral could not be punished (in the circumstances in the case). [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snyder_v._Phelps https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snyder_v._Phelps

tourmalinetaco 3y ago

Maybe you’re “completely lost” because you believed false information early on and cling to it. You are willfully pretending as though Covid-19 was anything more than a particularly contagious flu. Only 7 million died to Covid-19, compared to the 50-100 million of the 1918 Spanish Flu, a number exacerbated by government payouts for false reporting and willfully infecting those who are at-risk for all respiratory diseases. As someone who had knowledge of Covid-19 before the mainstream AND got sick from it before it was widely reported, (they were still denying it was in the US at this time), I knew that it wasn’t anything major for the majority of the population. Yet the government and corporations used this as an excuse to force us inside for no logical reason. Masks assist the spread, yet we were told the opposite[0]. Vaccines were first said to “prevent”[1], and then they moved the wording to being “less likely to spread”[2]. Social distancing only prolonged the pandemic and put more at risk, as the only way to reasonably mitigate a non-deadly and contagious disease for which we have no real vaccine against is to create herd immunity, just like we do with the flu every single year. Yet the government used social media to continue to spread the misinformation that you crave, creating propaganda and draconian rules in order to worsen the long-term impacts. [0] - https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/02/health/surgeon-general-coronavirus-masks-risk-trnd/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/02/health/surgeon-general-corona... [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfL2sespLnY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfL2sespLnY [2] - https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/11/covid-19-vaccination-spread/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/11/covid-19-vaccination-...

cowpig 3y ago
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- tourmalinetaco 3y ago
  > Do you think maybe every surgeon in the world, who spends 8+ years studying medicine, just wears masks because they're brainwashed? As is a pattern in your replies you continue being either horribly ignorant or just downright malicious, neither of which is surprising from someone who uses CSAM as a shield for censorship. If you think for even an iota of a second that properly worn surgical masks are comparable to the cheap slapped-on masks that were worn during the pandemic, then you’re genuinely not worth discussing this with. Not to mention you didn’t even actually interface with any of previous reply, namely the very first reference I used which already discredited this ignorance. Continue mindlessly spreading misinformation and lies, you’re a waste of my time.

GeekyBear 3y ago

> This isn't a case where people thought the wrong things and it made them vote wrong. It caused them to spread diseases to other people and kill them. The government was pushing an entirely incorrect assessment of how Covid spread. They shut down domain experts who correctly asserted that Covid was fully airborne. > The evidence that Covid-19 spreads through the air has been there since early in the pandemic - in a Seattle choir, a Chinese restaurant, an Arkansas prison. And “Covid is Airborne” scientists have from around the globe have been pleading with authorities to tell the world, holding symposiums and writing editorial after editorial. They wrote an open letter in June of 2020 signed by hundreds of fellow scientists appealing to “national and international bodies to recognize the potential for airborne spread” of COVID-19. They have shown that 85% of viral load is in the air. They have explicitly laid out how respiratory viruses hitchhike on aerosols to penetrate the lungs and infect people. And yet despite all this, and even as the Delta wave - as contagious as (the known-to-be-airborne) chickenpox - rages, there has been no clear guidance from the most prominent public health authorities that Covid is indeed airborne, in plain language that regular people and businesses can use to modify their own behavior and prevent airborne transmission. https://theair.substack.com/p/why-covid-is-airborne-history https://theair.substack.com/p/why-covid-is-airborne-history It took two years for those in charge to accept the truth about how Covid spreads. > Two years of COVID: The battle to accept airborne transmission https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2022/3/11/two-years-of-covid-the-battle-to-accept-airborne-transmission https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2022/3/11/two-years-of-co... > Early in the pandemic, the World Health Organization stated that SARS-CoV-2 was not transmitted through the air. That mistake and the prolonged process of correcting it sowed confusion and raises questions about what will happen in the next pandemic. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00925-7 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00925-7

logicchains 3y ago

>The scientific consensus is that countries that took a much more proactive, aggressive approach were far more successful in preventing people from dying This isn't the consensus at all; the data shows that overwhelmingly lockdowns etc. had no positive effect on overall mortality or even a slightly net negative one. That's why New York had a higher fatality rate than Florida even though Florida had an older (and hence more vulnerable) population. They also had a devastating effect on childhood education/development outcomes.

cowpig 3y ago
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safety1st 3y ago
To this day it seems most people are misinformed about the WHO's statements regarding lockdowns. The WHO's position was that the total closure of businesses and public areas was a tool that could be effective early on in a wave of infections, but governments should recognize that it came with a terrible cost in terms of increasing poverty and other social problems. They also repeatedly stated that the half-assed "lockdowns" implemented by most jurisdictions (hey guys let's close the pool but we'll reopen it on Wednesdays and Fridays, also restaurants are delivery only for nine months) were next to useless. Basically, they said you had to go all-in, do it early on, and make it brief or it wasn't worth it. Not once have I ever seen the nuance of their position accurately reflected in the media or in statements by politicians and governments. It was all 100% left vs right tribe wars / oh look libs are stealing our freedoms / here's another dunk on Trump / Americans of all stripes hating and blaming each other. Millions are poor or dead because we all failed.
pfg 3y ago
It's very common for discussions on this topic to only look at one particular factor and use it to fit some narrative one believes to be correct. Mentioning the difference in population age while ignoring things like population density or different climates is a good example of this.

dbsmith83 3y ago

Deciding what constitutes "misinformation" is highly subjective and can lead to censorship of diverse opinions. A government empowered to regulate speech based on content risks suppressing valid dissenting voices. While misinformation can be dangerous, attempting to police speech can lead to unintended consequences and threaten democratic principles. Instead, a better approach is to provide accurate information, promote critical thinking, and foster open debate. Maintaining individual freedom for everyone across the country is more important than the lives of a few people who choose to follow misinformation.

jwells89 3y ago
I think the concern is less about a small handful steeping themselves in misinformation and more about what to do when a large chunk of public discourse starts to veer in a tabloid-like direction because such ideas are more captivating and viral than reality, especially with narratives specifically designed to do that being spun ever more frequently by a growing array of parties. Hoping that people think for themselves and practice due diligence only goes so far, particularly when there’s a shocking number adhering to a culture of ignorance and taking pride in not critically thinking or scrutinizing sources. With that in mind, I can see why a government might want tools to help keep yellow-journalism-like discourse from dominating public forums, but as noted there’s dangers that come with that. It’s a thorny issue.
- dbsmith83 3y ago
  Restricting speech can lead to censorship and the suppression of dissenting voices, potentially undermining democratic principles. Determining what content should be restricted is subjective and can be susceptible to abuse, causing bias and political manipulation. History shows that limitations will expand beyond their original intent, stifling legitimate criticism (examples include McCarthyism, Patriot Act, Great Firewall of China). Instead of relying solely on government intervention, promoting media literacy, fact-checking, and responsible journalism can be more effective in combating misinformation while preserving essential democratic values. The temptation for authority figures to abuse their authority is too great.

dmatech 3y ago

Americans are a peculiar people. You might save a few lives in the short term by censoring ideas that cause harm (which are usually legally protected even if they're false). The problem arises once people get wind of the fact that there is centralized government influence on what they're allowed to say or hear. Americans generally don't believe their governments to do this fairly or competently. So a lot of people fall into conspiratorial thinking about what they're not being allowed to hear. They also lose trust in a government that doesn't trust them in return (or allow them to make their own decisions). So there are very negative second-order effects to going down the route of paternalistic censorship here.

frankreyes 3y ago

That is not true. Face masks at the start of the pandemic we're Forbidden and only many months later became mandatory. The amount of misinformation that came from official sources is ridiculous. It was so funny to suddenly see the Surgeon General in the USA saying that face masks and coverings are useless, to creating a YouTube video showing how to make one yourself using a rubber band... https://youtu.be/PI1GxNjAjlw?feature=shared https://youtu.be/PI1GxNjAjlw?feature=shared We know Today that face masks are useless, because it's not the first time we have a large scale virus. Sars and Mers a decade ago gave valuable information which official sources ignored. One of many sources: https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD006207.pub6/full#pico https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD...

choko 3y ago

The problem isn't hypothetical. It's literally happening in front of your eyes and you cheer it on.

15457345234 3y ago
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helge9210 3y ago

> a case where the government should not step in There are limits to government mandate, it's not allowed to cross, no matter what. In addition to this case, there are several cases (in Germany, in Israel etc.) where the court pointed out the limits were crossed. There is a possibility to change the limits through democratic process for a following government.

JuanPosadas 3y ago

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Simulacra 3y ago

I think what you're feeling is a lack of control. Mask, lockdowns, for those who support them it was a way to control and force the population towards your goals. Your ideals cannot easily be attained without government force. The masks and lockdowns didn't work, they were just tools one political ideology used to oppress the others despite evidence to the contrary. That behavior has been found to be unconstitutional.

cvccvroomvroom 3y ago

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spookthesunset 3y ago

> The fact that people are defending the spread of false information that contributed to people literally dying in favor of a hypothetical tyranny problem just leaves me feeling completely lost. Except a lot of that "false information" turned out to be true. You don't get to decide what constitutes "misinformation". > It caused them to spread diseases to other people and kill them. This is absolutely not true at all.