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Facebook doesn't plan to take strong action against anti-vaccination posts

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Re: Facebook doesn't plan to take strong action against anti-vaccination posts

#41

Post by undergrowth54 »

ForHackernews wrote: post #16
tarr11 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The front page of the NYT today is about AstraZeneca halting their trials because of a patient’s adverse reaction to the vaccine. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/09/world/covid-19-coronaviru...

You are misrepresenting that story (deliberately, to make a point?). One person on a vaccine trial has reported adverse symptoms -- it is not yet known whether the patient's symptoms are a reaction to the vaccine or not. They could be sick with some completely unrelated issue. The trial has been paused in order to investigate the cause of this person's symptoms. > “At this stage, we don’t know if the events that trig…

> this should make you more confident, not less, in the safety of a well-tested vaccine.

Indeed it should! The fact that people are about to communicate messages such as "I am worried that this vaccine caused harm" means that it is more likely that this risk of harm is being appropriately managed.

A broken fire alarm is a risk to fire safety.

Re: Facebook doesn't plan to take strong action against anti-vaccination posts

#43

Post by jakear »

ceejayoz wrote: post #35
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is he the sole person responsible for policy on Facebook or is it by commission / shareholders? I often feel like Zucc is getting scapegoated and bears the responsibility for all of Facebook, but I'm not in the loop whether he still holds the majority of shares and policy of FB, etc.

Zuck controls 60% of the voting rights. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/20/shareholders-wont-force-zuck...

Is there even a point of voting rights if one person hold the majority?

Re: Facebook doesn't plan to take strong action against anti-vaccination posts

#44

Post by Cthulhu_ »

zpeti wrote: post #15

As with almost everything these days, this topic is NOT black and white despite what initial comments say. Take a look at the vaccine for the 1976 swine flu outbreak. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1976_swine_flu_outbreak A comment here already says that expressing concern over a vaccine is basically misinformation. I'm sorry but expressing concern about a vaccine that is developed in about 1 year, which is a record 1…

See that is a fact check; if someone were to state "The 1976 swine flu vaccine was unsafe", that's a fact. If someone has the belief "The Covid-19 vaccine has not been tested adequately", that too is a fact - and the manufacturers have issued a joint statement saying they would not risk releasing an unsafe vaccine either.

But the fearmongering? The "Vaccines cause autism" claim (which is massively insulting, for one because it implies that people would rather have their kids be dead than autistic)? The misinformation about the contents and risks of vaccines? That needs to be tackled. Those are non-factual or disproportionate claims that are putting millions at risk.

My girlfriend initially made the conscious decision not to have her son vaccinated (for various reasons not related to the current anti-vax trend) but had to have it done later on because so many others refused to vaccinate their kids. She wanted to rely on herd immunity but the anti-vaxxers made that unlikely.

Re: Facebook doesn't plan to take strong action against anti-vaccination posts

#45

Post by ashtonkem »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #36
bmh100 wrote: post #12

This is the problem with "fact checking". It positions the platform as an authority. Now, any claim that isn't "debunked" by this "fact checking" gains a certain amount of credibility by comparison. The moral hazards are enormous, multiplied by the opaque behavior of Facebook's algorithm and again multiplied by its unprecedented reach in society.

Facebook's fact checking is uniquely bad in that they hire 3rd party fact verifying companies which are also publishers. So if you post something, they can flag it with a "clarification" which links to their own content and drives traffic/revenue to themselves.

Plus it lowers the quality of the fact checking. How useful is it to have a political post fact checked by an ideological fellow traveler?

Re: Facebook doesn't plan to take strong action against anti-vaccination posts

#46

Post by ceejayoz »

undergrowth54 wrote: post #41
ForHackernews wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are misrepresenting that story (deliberately, to make a point?). One person on a vaccine trial has reported adverse symptoms -- it is not yet known whether the patient's symptoms are a reaction to the vaccine or not. They could be sick with some completely unrelated issue. The trial has been paused in order to investigate the cause of this person's symptoms. > “At this stage, we don’t know if the events that trig…

> this should make you more confident, not less, in the safety of a well-tested vaccine. Indeed it should! The fact that people are about to communicate messages such as "I am worried that this vaccine caused harm" means that it is more likely that this risk of harm is being appropriately managed. A broken fire alarm is a risk to fire safety.

> A broken fire alarm is a risk to fire safety.

So is one that issues false alarms every 5 minutes, which is generally a better analogy for anti-vaxxers.

Re: Facebook doesn't plan to take strong action against anti-vaccination posts

#47

Post by afarrell »

ceejayoz wrote: post #38
sunseb wrote: post #14

“Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.” Marcus Aurelius We need to stop trying to enforce "the truth" to other people. Just let people talk and have different opinions. That includes letting people having conservative values, because lately this thought police is getting out of control.

As The Daily Show once put it, "you are entitled to your opinion; you are not entitled to your own set of facts".

Epistemology is harder than that.

If a government body declares that there is no risk of human->human transmission of COVID-19, am I not entitled to evaluate other evidence and conclude that this statement of fact is incorrect?

> Based on the preliminary information from the Chinese investigation team, no evidence of significant human-to-human transmission and no health care worker infections have been reported.

https://www.who.int/csr/don/05-january-2020-pneumonia-of-unk...

Re: Facebook doesn't plan to take strong action against anti-vaccination posts

#48

Post by bhupy »

deminature wrote: post #40
hackinthebochs wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>would have a greater sense of obligation to the social responsibility that comes with it Maybe that's why he is largely hands-off when it comes to policing or shaping content? Not everyone agrees that the best way to manage an important communications platform is to shape the speech allowed on it.

Allowing anti-vaccination sentiment to proliferate on the platform is fairly unambiguously harmful to society, especially during a pandemic that may rely on a vaccine to escape. It appears to be choosing engagement, which drives clicks, page views and ad impressions over being a force for good and then dressing it up as free speech, when moderators selectively remove millions of other posts per day. Social networks h…

I mean, by that logic, the US government allowing anti-vaccination sentiment to proliferate without legal/policy action (read: the First Amendment), is also "unambiguously harmful to society".

Except, the issue is way more nuanced than that. The reason this expression is enshrined as a protection in US jurisdiction is because we decide that free expression trumps every other social need — with the narrow exceptions as laid out in Brandenburg v Ohio (imminent lawless action).

To the extent that this is undesirable, if the political will to amend the Constitution is absent, then you'd also have a hard time convincing people that Facebook should not exercise the same principle.

Re: Facebook doesn't plan to take strong action against anti-vaccination posts

#49

Post by iamdbtoo »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #17
deminature wrote: post #10

You would hope that the custodian of the world's most popular communication platform would have a greater sense of obligation to the social responsibility that comes with it. Unfortunately we don't live in that world, and Zuckerberg continues choose dollars over lasting damage to the standards of discourse. He is the Murdoch of the 21st century, tearing at the social fabric in pursuit of profits and facilitating the…

>would have a greater sense of obligation to the social responsibility that comes with it Maybe that's why he is largely hands-off when it comes to policing or shaping content? Not everyone agrees that the best way to manage an important communications platform is to shape the speech allowed on it.

This thread is about Mark Zuckerberg specifically saying how they will police certain content. How is that hands off?

Re: Facebook doesn't plan to take strong action against anti-vaccination posts

#50

Post by pwinnski »

jakear wrote: post #43
ceejayoz wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zuck controls 60% of the voting rights. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/20/shareholders-wont-force-zuck...

Is there even a point of voting rights if one person hold the majority?

Only in the sense that one day he might not.
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