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Facebook freezes Venezuela president Maduro's page over Covid-19

reuters.com

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Re: Facebook freezes Venezuela president Maduro's page over Covid-19

#121

Post by sofixa »

pitay wrote: post #115
sofixa wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think anyone claims that "X is stupid" is hate, regardless of how broad or nonsensical X is. X should die, or X are vile subhumans stealing our jobs, or we should rape X, or X are raping our dogs is hate.

Do remember that something like 'fossil fuels are destroying the environment' would be called 'hate speech' if power shifted a bit. 'Hate' is an emotive term used to bypass peoples thinking so that criticism of certain things can be disposed of by emotion rather than evidence. People bringing up evidence of malfeasance could be called 'hate filled' people, have what they say aggressively censored, so that other peopl…

There's an expression in my native language which, directly translated, is something along these lines:

"If my grandma had a rotor, she'd be a helicopter". I think it perfectly encapsulates your "slippery slope" argument, that if today we accept that saying you want to rape someone on Twitter is hate that needs to be stopped, tomorrow saying that processed foods are bad will be hate as well. Do you even realise how stupid your argument sounds? We're not talking about criticism. Were Nazis "criticizing" Jews? Do racists "criticize" other "races"? No, they hate them, and there is a pretty heavy difference between the two.

Re: Facebook freezes Venezuela president Maduro's page over Covid-19

#122

Post by klyrs »

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #34
concordDance wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> recommending bleach injections This is a mischaracterization.

Trump spitballed about injecting disinfectants into people's lungs. He didn't say that individual people should do it, but he did say that doctors should test it out. > And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning. Because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lu…

> He didn't say that individual people should do it, but he did say that doctors should test it out.

Only, people regularly think that they're smarter than doctors, and will self-medicate based on suggestions of somebody they trust. We saw people die because Trump boosted hydroxychloroquine -- he should have known at that point in time that people would follow his suggestion. And guess what? Thousands of people followed his advice on disinfectant/bleach.

https://time.com/5835244/accidental-poisonings-trump/

Re: Facebook freezes Venezuela president Maduro's page over Covid-19

#123

Post by Klinky »

pumaontheprowl wrote: post #17

A lot of this is starting to remind me of the way Galileo and Darwin were treated for announcing their breakthroughs. I know nothing about this drug Maduro is touting, but I can't help worrying that one of these days somebody is going to find an actual cure and the world will never know about it because big social media companies exile them for wrongthink.

Social media already reminds me of an era where the town idiot's voice is amplified louder than the Darwins' or the Galileos'.

Re: Facebook freezes Venezuela president Maduro's page over Covid-19

#124

Post by auganov »

whymauri wrote: post #39
concordDance wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> recommending bleach injections This is a mischaracterization.

Sure, whatever you say. Here's the quote since apparently we've all forgotten: >"A question that probably some of you are thinking of if you’re totally into that world, which I find to be very interesting. So, supposedly we hit the body with a tremendous, whether it’s ultraviolet or just very powerful light, and I think you said that hasn’t been checked, but you’re going to test it. And then I said supposing you brou…

UV light is a disinfectant and experimental treatments have proposed inserting a UV light into the lungs via mouth, or yes, literally injecting it into veins. Whether that's a good idea is another question.

Re: Facebook freezes Venezuela president Maduro's page over Covid-19

#125

Post by tartoran »

llaolleh wrote: post #66

I worry about this kind of censorship. There is no guarantee that the WHO is right either. Remember that the entire group of doctors thought blood letting was a good idea. How can we be sure that modern science doesn't have significant gaps in understanding either? Remember how the majority thought the housing market was too big to crash? I'd much prefer no censorship and let people decide for themselves. What we sho…

Im not disagreeing or anything but is bloodletting a bad thing? Genuinely asking. I thought it was known regenerating ones bloodcells is a good thing. Is that erroneous? Last time I went to a blooddrive I was browsing a pamphlet that contained some benefits of giving blood aside from helping others in need.

Re: Facebook freezes Venezuela president Maduro's page over Covid-19

#126

Post by Klinky »

pumaontheprowl wrote: post #58
varispeed wrote: post #7

Facebook is a private platform, so they should be able to censor whatever they want as long as it is not discriminatory against protected characteristics.

Probably true in the US. But this is a global platform making decisions about foreign leaders. I highly doubt this same legal reasoning applies to every jurisdiction in which they do business. Regardless, the more interesting question here is not whether this is technically legal but whether it should be legal. Obviously, there is a lot of social good that can be done by allowing platforms to ban obvious scammers. Bu…

You want the US Government to legislate a law that mandates Twitter and Facebook cannot deactivate the accounts of foreign leaders/government officials?

Re: Facebook freezes Venezuela president Maduro's page over Covid-19

#127

Post by lucian1900 »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #117
lucian1900 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who convinced you Maduro is “authoritarian”? I find that more interesting to explore.

Maduro convinced me, that's who. Specifically, Maduro's behavior in office for the last N years, and even more specifically, his behavior toward opposition parties. (Imagine Trump having Biden arrested in April 2020 on some transparently fake charges, so that Biden can't conduct a campaign. Trump wins the 2020 election, though there were "irregularities" in the vote. Then he dissolves Congress. Then in 2023, Trump ar…

The same opposition that illegally declared itself the government after losing an election? The one that attempted to smuggle US weaponry into the country under the guise of humanitarian aid? The one that attacked and killed poor black people in the streets? The one that bribed military personnel to betray the country? The one that welcomed a (thankfully incompetent) US coup attempt? It’s not like Guaido was arrested on the spot. He was free to continue breaking the law as due process was being followed.

Also worth considering the constant sanctions and threat of invasion by the US that Venezuela is subjected to. Of course capitalist-owned media will smear a revolution of poor, black and indigenous workers against the former slave owning colonisers.

Re: Facebook freezes Venezuela president Maduro's page over Covid-19

#128

Post by anovikov »

jamesgreenleaf wrote: post #8
abhinav22 wrote: post #2

Not sure about this - I don’t think government leaders or anybody should be censored. Better to have public health messages as part of the platform than to censor It’s a fine line between hate and misinformation and dissent (Clearly the content in question is wrong; but in other cases, WHO and others been proven incorrect - eg on masks and asymptotic transmission) Don’t know what the answer is, we don’t want echo cha…

Another problem is that something like this can function as "evidence" for the claim. There are large groups of people who believe that censorship like this validates a worldview in which powerful interests are censoring true information in order to maintain control. It's similar to the Streisand Effect or "Banned in Boston" but for belief rather than attention. It seems like the better solution is to have an outpour…

Thing is, any substantiative discussion will be way too complex for most people who could fall to these conspiracy theories, to understand, and they will arrive to a conclusion like "these Jews are trying to look too smart and bullshit us".

Sadly, this asymmetrical warfare from authoritarian nations hits the right point: it forces us to either let misinformation flow and people become manipulated by it, or to revert to authoritarian measures by gradually chipping away freedom of speech.

Re: Facebook freezes Venezuela president Maduro's page over Covid-19

#129

Post by young_unixer »

cabirum wrote: post #12

People should start thinking twice before using US-controlled platforms/services/anything.

You say US-controlled, but I can't think of a country that would be better than the US in this regard. European countries are not the biggest fans of free speech. And then you have China, Russia, etc. which are even worse.

Re: Facebook freezes Venezuela president Maduro's page over Covid-19

#130

Post by alkonaut »

lucian1900 wrote: post #110
alkonaut wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Who convinced you Maduro is “authoritarian”? I find that more interesting to explore.

The people who study and report on Venezuela did.

If you find the topic interesting there is actually quite a lot of material

https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1387787/FULLTEXT...

https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5mj6j3t8

https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/authoritarian-su...

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