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Facebook is now claiming official CDC.gov links are “False Information”

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Re: Facebook is now claiming official CDC.gov links are “False Information”

#441

Post by 13years »

briantakita wrote: post #436
13years wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excellent post! Yes, Facebook has found itself wielding power that it could have never imagined. Nobody is prepared or qualified for that kind of power. That's why it took 700 years from the Magna Carta until the US Constitution to formulate a reasonable contract to limit such power. Now you have the most dangerous combination of all. The two ingredients which when combined has resulted in horrific atrocities. The pa…

But Facebook is a private company & Facebook can do whatever it wants...And Facebook, being a Corporation, has the same rights as a person... A glib argument? Sure. But this was the same argument used to censor other political speech. What's good for the goose is good for the gander...

The private company defense might become a moot point. There are numerous lawsuits now alleging these companies as state actors and some with actual receipts showing direct government communication and result action.

And just last week we have the white house essentially openly confirming state involvement.

Re: Facebook is now claiming official CDC.gov links are “False Information”

#442

Post by parineum »

gunapologist99 wrote: post #210

Facebook seems to be censoring so much because Facebook believes that most people will actually believe whatever bits of misinformation are floating around out there. But is everyone that easily manipulated? More importantly, does everyone actually believe that they can be easily manipulated, or do they just think that everyone else is so easily manipulated, but somehow they're above the fray? And at what point does…

>at what point does the censorship to protect me from manipulation become manipulation itself?

Immediately. Everyone has biases.

Re: Facebook is now claiming official CDC.gov links are “False Information”

#443

Post by spicyramen »

Dove wrote: post #322
snowwrestler wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook is removing content because that is ground they want to stand on. Removing content feels like censorship, so it lends itself to political grandstanding in their favor. Millions of people get upset and demand that Facebook handle all content neutrally, which is exactly what Facebook wanted everyone to think in the first place. The real issue with Facebook is the editorial decisions they make about promoting s…

Facebook is removing content because they wanted to make money with a website, and the job of statecraft fell in their laps in the process. They didn't volunteer, they aren't qualified, nobody told them they were signing up to run a kingdom, let alone the world. So they don't produce lofty, philosophical, well-thought-out positions on free speech and human rights. They don't carefully manage the public square with th…

Genius

Re: Facebook is now claiming official CDC.gov links are “False Information”

#444

Post by Natsu »

crocodiletears wrote: post #235
jdavis703 wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are we sure government websites won’t contain misinformation? For example, senior government leadership was advising the consumption of bleach as a COVID-19 cure.

Iirc, he was asking a CDC official whether the application of a disinfectant to infected lungs had been investigated. A stupid idea on its face, but at no point did he recommend the consumption of bleach as a cure or a treatment for covid.

> Iirc, he was asking a CDC official whether the application of a disinfectant to infected lungs had been investigated.

IIRC it sounded like some badly mangled reference to this, which itself is a pretty wild idea:

https://aytubio.com/pipeline/healight-technology-platform/

Re: Facebook is now claiming official CDC.gov links are “False Information”

#446

Post by _-david-_ »

Nursie wrote: post #348
SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. So if you go off truthful websites like the CDC for example… oh wait, some of those links you won’t see because someone chose that for you.

I will, because I won’t be browsing there from a social media site. Facebook isn’t the internet. It’s not even very interesting.

Maybe you will see it, but many people get their news from social media. Seeing how Facebook is now censoring the CDC website (or at least a certain page) many people will not.

Re: Facebook is now claiming official CDC.gov links are “False Information”

#447

Post by logicchains »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #303
bitL wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is an increasing infantilization world-wide where some group thinks it needs to "protect the others", assuming they are the single source of truth and that it's obvious they are. It's a well known bias which for some reason aligns with the current zeitgeist. As everything before, it shall too pass at some point.

There have always been rules like this. Turn off your lights when the air raid siren is running, for example. What you're noticing now is a significant portion of the population simply throwing away common sense because obeying common sense somehow infringes on their rights.

>What you're noticing now is a significant portion of the population simply throwing away common sense because obeying common sense somehow infringes on their rights.

It's not common sense, it's mass brainwashing. If you'd asked people two years ago what they thought about the idea of locking the whole country down indefinitely for a virus with a 99% survival rate (and over 99.9% for people under 50), the vast majority would have said it's a crazy idea.

Re: Facebook is now claiming official CDC.gov links are “False Information”

#448

Post by kjrose »

gunapologist99 wrote: post #210

Facebook seems to be censoring so much because Facebook believes that most people will actually believe whatever bits of misinformation are floating around out there. But is everyone that easily manipulated? More importantly, does everyone actually believe that they can be easily manipulated, or do they just think that everyone else is so easily manipulated, but somehow they're above the fray? And at what point does…

The question is how quickly can google and facebook lose their advertising monopoly by playing this game.

Re: Facebook is now claiming official CDC.gov links are “False Information”

#449

Post by coss »

gunapologist99 wrote: post #210

Facebook seems to be censoring so much because Facebook believes that most people will actually believe whatever bits of misinformation are floating around out there. But is everyone that easily manipulated? More importantly, does everyone actually believe that they can be easily manipulated, or do they just think that everyone else is so easily manipulated, but somehow they're above the fray? And at what point does…

Most people have their minds made up and just look for articles supporting it. I can't help but feel we are doomed in this respect. Only teaching critical reasoning can help combat this and I fear most countries aren't up for the challenge.

Re: Facebook is now claiming official CDC.gov links are “False Information”

#450

Post by gpm »

saurik wrote: post #409
gpm wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's how facebook works, no? There are two (or more) feeds of information on facebook: - The main one, which only shows posts sent to the "recommend this to people queue" based on facebooks recommendation algorithms. - Messenger, which directly sends messages to people in a FIFO fashion, which I assume facebook doesn't censor as heavily (though I can't say I've tested). The fact that the recommendation based stream…

I assert that content I post to my timeline and which you see on your feed as my friend shouldn't be subject to Facebook's commentary or opinions. I take strong issue with the claim that to obtain that I have to use Messenger--which is an entirely different content paradigm--and I think it is outright dishonest to try to claim that people posting to timelines means that "the recommendation based stream is more popula…

Point of fact first, twitter does filter tweets via a recommendation algorithm [1]. If you troll through HN you should be able to find threads with people complaining about that too... I assume instagram does too but don't use it and haven't verified [edit: It does https://later.com/blog/how-instagram-algorithm-works/].

> Facebook also shows me content from my "friends"... I opted in to the content from my friends: if I don't like my friends, I can and should unfriend them

This is not the service Facebook offers, nor has it ever been. Facebook has forever been about friending everyone you are actually friends with (and then some), and you (or at least the vast vast majority of people) do not want to swallow the entire firehose of content that their facebook friends post. Facebook doesn't want people unfriending people to avoid seeing their content, that's not how the model works - doing so would break all of other facebooks services like acting as a birthday reminder, event planner, and so on and so forth. Even the language is indicative of this, "unfriend" (I don't like you anymore) not "stop showing me these posts" (I don't like what you post).

> the entire mechanism of social media to followers is primarily direct communication!

On the contrary, the entire mechanism of the majority of successful social media companies is curated communication. As it turns out 99% of everything (e.g. posts) is crap, and people go to the sites where less than 99% of what they see is crap.

Types of curation vary, but the existence of it is very consistence. To create some categories: algorithms (facebook, tiktok, youtube, twitter), community upvotes + community moderation (reddit, HN, slashdot), just straight up heavy moderation (many forums, forum.nasaspaceflight.com comes to mind as one that is still going strong). Also worth pointing out that most of these platforms actually mix it up, e.g. youtube, twitter, and facebook all have forms of upvotes, and facebook has forms of community moderation.

But if you want direct communication, that exists. I.e. the previously mentioned facebook messenger (which admittedly doesn't do followers) and substack (which is a competitor of sorts that does).

Direct communication is not what facebook is offering as their main product (but is what they are offering with messenger), it's never been, and I don't see that you have any right to demand that it becomes what their main product does.

[1] (Turn of js to avoid the paywall, this can be done with ublock origin for just this domain by clicking the "" button) https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/08/01/twitters...

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