The media's lab leak fiasco • Hacker News Board

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#291

Post by lettergram » Fri, May 28, 2021, 12:02 AM UTC

deadalus wrote: post #5

Reminder that Facebook and Twitter banned users for talking about the lab-leak theory. Youtube accounts also got demontized/banned.

Wuhan discussing "synthetically derived viruses": https://web.archive.org/web/20200212011902/http://english.wh...

2017 conference at (Wuhan Institute of a virology) with gain of function research being top priority: http://english.whiov.cas.cn/Exchange2016/International_Confe...

Ecohealth Alliance partnership: https://web.archive.org/web/20210323171425/http://english.wh...

US Gov from state department: http://web.archive.org/web/20210116001621/https://www.state....

EcoHealth Alliance Peter Daszak discussing gene editing in coronaviruses in december 2019 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-Y843FFJvI

Note: The documentation isn’t even new... all those people banned and censored via Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc [1], have been saying this the entire time. Its kind of amazing to watch both realities (left wing media va alternative media) collide. Gives me hope to be honest.

[1] https://www.projectveritas.com/news/breaking-facebook-whistl...

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#292

Post by remarkEon » Fri, May 28, 2021, 12:03 AM UTC

asdff wrote: post #176

arduinomancer wrote: post #137

I hate how it feels like there's such a "collective narrative" for everything now days with the internet. Whenever I talk to people about recent news stories in real life it feels like everyone is just repeating talking points they read online. Its like we've been absorbed into the internet consciousness and talking to a person is like talking to "the internet brain".

People stopped reading the source material, and started just parroting the talking points. It's even gotten to the point where people are even convinced the talking points are the source material.

My shit test for "is this article likely a bunch of FUD or just outright BS" is if they actually link to the source material. If they don't, I usually continue reading it but make a mental note that they're likely pushing some specific version of the event or facts in question.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#293

Post by SilverRed » Fri, May 28, 2021, 12:04 AM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #170

scottrogowski wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This should be the top comment. Social media companies can either be monopolies or they can put limits on the speech of their platform... but they can't do both. While not against the law of freedom of speech, political moderation processes are certainly against the intent. Every once in a while we get a case like this where an unpopular fringe opinion becomes mainstream and underlines the point. But this isn't just…

Good thing they aren't monopolies, then. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Twitch, TikTok, and Reddit are are all very popular places for people to post their views. And that's not counting the myriad lesser places like the one we're using now. And of course anybody can drop a few bucks on a blog of their own. I also disagree that sites moderating is against the intent. Freedom of speech is one right, but so is freedom of…

>And of course anybody can drop a few bucks on a blog of their own.

And no one will read it unless you can post links on facebook, twitter and reddit. In the end, almost all communication online runs through a limited set of american megacorps who all act in the same ways, have the same rules and align to the same culture.

It's no surprise China and Russia ban American sites because those sites control the debate and culture of the places that use them.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#294

Post by musicale » Fri, May 28, 2021, 12:06 AM UTC

newaccount2021 wrote: post #57

npilk wrote: post #3

I thought this was a fascinating read. I’d love to see more analysis like this of what exactly people said, and how it was quoted and characterized in the media.

Its very simple - Trump promoted the lab hypothesis, so mainstream media immediately seized on the notion that it was a crank conspiracy

From the article:

"This is not to apologize for the bad coverage but, if anything, to underscore how egregious it was to lean so heavily into the Tom Cotton Is Wrong narrative"

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#295

Post by ikrenji » Fri, May 28, 2021, 12:06 AM UTC

wuwuno wrote: post #263

Another political article about how it's not possible that the Chinese were studying the virus and some underpaid lab tech screwed and and exposed himself and then did what humans always do, the tech tried to cover up the mistake. Nobody has still explained how the Chinese knew they had a problem in early December when they only had a handful of cases, like less than 100 cases. This is the question that needs to be a…

i think the story is that doctors noticed cases of unusual pneumonia and investigated further. not impossible, especially in a country with SARS experience

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#296

Post by jkhdigital » Fri, May 28, 2021, 12:07 AM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #275

temp8964 wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are making very very wrong suggestion now. Because some people can link Chinese government to all Asians, so we can't criticize the Chinese government? Because Chinese government = Chinese people = Chinese Americans = Asian Americans? I think this kind of automatic linking Chinese government to Chinese / Asian Americans is itself racist. What you are suggesting is implicitly accepting this racist idea. To stand a…

We can criticize the Chinese government. But if we do we should have facts, not wild speculations. I agree automatically linking Asian-looking people to the actions of China's government is racist. And there are a lot of racists out there. Given the ongoing spike in anti-Asian hate crimes [1] and online anti-Asian hate tied specifically to coronavirus [2] I think we should be unusually careful about excited speculati…

The first article you linked states that between 2019-2020 hate crimes against Asians increased dramatically in New York and Los Angeles: from 3 to 28 in the former and from 7 to 15 in the latter.

I think that characterizing this fact as an “ongoing spike in anti-Asian hate crimes” is a breathtakingly broad generalization.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#297

Post by DanielBMarkham » Fri, May 28, 2021, 12:07 AM UTC

Over the last several years, it's become clear to me what the large social media companies want to be: de facto world governments.

They won't admit that, and you'll hear a lot of gab about algorithms and cooperation with various governments, but at heart it appears to me that this is cooperation with various governments as a government themselves. It's a negotiation among equals.

We can provincially argue about who can say what in the US on which platforms, or what the rules _might_ be to demonetize and/or kick people off platforms, but at the end of the day, the platforms themselves, through means mostly opaque to us, are negotiating as if they were our local tyrannical government with complete control over the public square and public places.

I understand that for many this is completely far-fetched and I'm making a mountain out of a molehill. This is a difficult thing to freely admit and grasp. It's also very difficult for those that are currently happy with whatever the most recent decisions are.

Yes, the net is still (mostly) free and open, and competitors _might_ come along and take the place of the current major social networks, but at heart this is a problem based on generalizing and universally abstracting social interactions. You could split up and/or dismantle every major player today and be in the exact same spot five or ten years from now when the next ones come along.

I am happy that more and more people are finally waking up to the danger here. If we are allowed to adequately describe the nature of this problem, we might have a shot at fixing it.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#298

Post by nitwit005 » Fri, May 28, 2021, 12:08 AM UTC

deadalus wrote: post #5

Reminder that Facebook and Twitter banned users for talking about the lab-leak theory. Youtube accounts also got demontized/banned.

Because congress bullied them into removing covid misinformation (admittedly mostly relating to vaccines): https://observer.com/2021/03/covid-vaccine-misinformation-fa...

This is true of almost all the social media "censorship" by the way. They have multiple governments either directly passing laws requiring content removal, or pressuring them to remove more.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#299

Post by kyrra » Fri, May 28, 2021, 12:09 AM UTC

pedalpete wrote: post #222

Am I the only one who feels like this is mostly a non-issue. I feel like the case of if this came from a lab for from a market is mostly taking a political side against China - if it came from a lab, or for China - if it was naturally developed. If it came from a Chinese lab as part of a conscious effort of weaponizing a virus, sure, that's important, but I don't think anyone is saying that. If it came from a lab acc…

It matters if it was caused due to gain of function research. These virologists purposely try to make viruses stronger so that they can research how to counteract or fight one if a stronger similar version of them appears from the wild. If this came from making a SARS virus more potent, we should ask the question if the gain of function research that these people do is actually worth the potential costs of that potent variant leaking out.

As well, that kind of research can be repaired with weaponization of viruses. So we need to ask if the research they were doing had a military angle to it at all.

The hard part with authoritarian governments is that they will cover up things even if they are not in the wrong. They don't make mistakes. So they may cover up things that don't actually need to be covered up.

It is very possible that this was just a person being infected with a sample they got from the field. But it seems the Chinese government Doesn't actually want to tell us the truth.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#300

Post by jkhdigital » Fri, May 28, 2021, 12:12 AM UTC

tomjakubowski wrote: post #173

deadalus wrote: post #5

Reminder that Facebook and Twitter banned users for talking about the lab-leak theory. Youtube accounts also got demontized/banned.

Facebook's policy page only mentions censoring content suggesting that the virus was "man-made". Did Twitter actually ban users who suggested _only_ that the virus leaked from a lab? I'd be surprised because I follow some fairly big accounts there which have posted about the lab leak theory. https://about.fb.com/news/2020/04/covid-19-misinfo-update/

What’s the difference? I suppose it is possible that the Wuhan bat hunters found this virus occurring naturally and just, you know, kept it around without telling anyone...