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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

#141

Post by bryan0 »

e2021 wrote: post #68
bryan0 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That statement was either patently false, or it was true and his current statements are patently false. You’re actually missing the correct option which is that scientific consensus has shifted on this issue. Science is a process for the truth and conclusions can change with more evidence.

People keep saying this, but it doesn't make it true. The consensus of public health officials changed for sure, but I haven't seen any evidence that the science changed at all

Science has been changing on this as the research becomes more nuanced for the current pandemic

For example: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02801-8

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

#142

Post by clairity »

briandear wrote: post #55
m45t3r wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, context matters. OMS avoided recommending masks at the start of the pandemic since no study showed the efficacy of it, and there was no mass production of masks yet. So recommending it for general population would only generate shortage of masks for those who needed (frontline medics and nurses treating the cases). So this is why they're so against it.

> and there was no mass production of masks yet But that’s not what they said. Fauci said “healthy people do not need to wear masks.” So he either lied then or is lying now. The reason for the lie is irrelevant. If healthy people should wear masks, the lack of production capability doesn’t change the fact. If masks work and Fauci knew they worked, then his statement that healthy people don’t need masks was scientific…

> "His exact words: ...."

what fauci said was true (given tolerance for the natural ambiguity inherent in speech). in most cases, masks have been, and continue to be, primarily a palliative and signaling device, not a mitigation. for healthcare workers, it's actually an augmentative mitigation used with other imperfect mitigations in controlled circumstances to get the best possible outcomes from their use. masks are poorer mitigations in most general circumstances in comparison to the easier alternative that is (context-specific) distancing.

at various points, he's buckled to the prevailing political winds to keep his job, but that particular statement was a moment of lucidity and frankness. it threatened the dominant mediopolitical narrative, so he eventually backed off.

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

#143

Post by varispeed »

A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #18
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.

Obviously they can and they do. We are discussing whether that is a good thing overall, which is further complicated by the political issues surrounding Venezuela and its current.. dual government.

My personal opinion is that after reaching a certain size of audience, the rules should be different - e.g. Facebook should be required to keep all points of views, even if they disagree with them, as long as they are legal. But until the rules are not changed it is what it is.

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

#144

Post by varispeed »

tsimionescu wrote: post #61
caseyscottmckay wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is a solution? Facebook is a private company, so they can do business as they please within the confines of applicable laws and regulations. Those laws and regulations say they can censor as they please on their platform. Should we enact laws forcing private platforms to give everyone a voice?

Perhaps. It's definitely a conversation worth having, given the advancements in public speech through social media. There is no reason to believe that 200-year-old laws should be the end of the conversation.

What if the law said that operator of a platform cannot delete user content, as long as it does not break the law and shouldn't artificially limit its exposure? In the event that the platform runs out of space they should be allowed to charge people reasonable amount for the space.

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

#145

Post by crakhamster01 »

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #30
iends wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Social media isn’t really the proper avenue for vetting science.

Social media companies aren't really the proper vetters of science.

They don't claim to be. All they're doing is applying existing scientific consensus to new, unverified claims. If after going through legitimate peer review, this treatment Maduro is touting proves to be effective, you can be sure it will be allowed into the discussion as well.

Social media companies take on immense legal liability when they allow high-profile figures to promote unproven medical treatments. The current approach obviously loses a lot of nuance, but the alternative is opening themselves up to litigation when, for example, users ingest fish tank cleaner after hearing from the President that there's a miracle drug which goes by the same name [1].

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/52012242

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

#146

Post by shpongled »

Izkata wrote: post #137

Carvativir is the same as (according to Wikipedia) or derived from (according to other sites) carvacrol. From this, it took me five minutes to find evidence that we should actually investigate this and can't just dismiss Maduro as wrong: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3768712/ > Carvacrol alone exhibited high antiviral activity against RV with a SI of 33, but it was less efficient than the oil for the o…

Killing viruses or bacteria in vitro is a vastly different thing than killing them in vivo. Also, if you want to cite some evidence, Braz J Microbiol might not be the best source.

https://xkcd.com/1217/

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

#147

Post by adolph »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #114
vixen99 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook has 2.7 billion users or 34% of world population. Out of interest, I'm curious to know if, given that they are in effect, judge and jury on their own private platform, there is any % level of penetration at which you might change your view? It appears you'd set no limit at all.

> given that they are in effect, judge and jury on their own private platform You say this like it's some weird, bizarre thing. Who else should be judge and jury by default on a private platform? Should there be some government committee any time a new social media company starts up? In any case, to answer your question: if the issue is that they've become too powerful, and there's a reasonable case to make there, th…

> private platform

From where does the idea of “private” come? Is it to distinguish its controllers from that which is government controlled?

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

#148

Post by mistermann »

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…

> 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.

Similarly, there are large groups of people that believe 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. The degree to which the respective beliefs of these two groups of people are actually correct, is unknown.

I suspect that the group of people that believe this is considerably smaller than the other two groups, at least in Western cultures.

I believe this phenomenon is (at least in part) what Hindus refer to as Maya.

https://www.hinduwebsite.com/hinduism/essays/maya.asp

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

#149

Post by Izkata »

shpongled wrote: post #146
Izkata wrote: post #137

Carvativir is the same as (according to Wikipedia) or derived from (according to other sites) carvacrol. From this, it took me five minutes to find evidence that we should actually investigate this and can't just dismiss Maduro as wrong: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3768712/ > Carvacrol alone exhibited high antiviral activity against RV with a SI of 33, but it was less efficient than the oil for the o…

Killing viruses or bacteria in vitro is a vastly different thing than killing them in vivo. Also, if you want to cite some evidence, Braz J Microbiol might not be the best source. https://xkcd.com/1217/

> Killing viruses or bacteria in vitro is a vastly different thing than killing them in vivo.

> https://xkcd.com/1217/

Carvacrol is a component of oregano oil, a common herbal supplement. This is one case where the XKCD strip is clearly wrong.

> Also, if you want to cite some evidence, Braz J Microbiol might not be the best source.

Is the Brazilian Journal of Microbiology not trusted or something?

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

#150

Post by alkonaut »

lucian1900 wrote: post #134
alkonaut wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

There are other sources too, like https://thegrayzone.com/category/venezuela/ or https://www.telesurtv.net/SubSecciones/en/country/venezuela/ or https://venezuelanalysis.com

Really? I post some recent academic papers and you respond with “yeah but what about Telesur?”. I have to stop wasting my time trying to discuss politics online.

> Telesur works as a propaganda network for the governments of Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro (Wikipedia)

I’m sure their coverage has the very best quality.

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