Facebook is now claiming official CDC.gov links are “False Information” • Hacker News Board

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

#561

Post by cmurf » Fri, Jul 30, 2021, 4:30 PM UTC

morpheos137 wrote: post #526

majewsky wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The purpose of a nature preserve, unsurprisingly, is to preserve nature as it exists within this space. Any human interference with nature inside the preserve runs the risk of tipping the scales of the natural lifecycle's balance. If someone were to bring their dog into the preserve and hunt and kill some rabbits, it would probably be quite obvious that they would be disturbing the natural balance that the nature pre…

Are humans not part of nature? What evidence do we have that nature is ever at any time "in balance?" This is a common trope that is deeply rooted in the western mind. Perhaps it is connected to old ideas like geocentrism. Here is another way of looking at things: the world is constantly changing. Do I advocate pooping on a crowded beach? No. Is the ocassional defacation of a back country backpacker a problem? No. It…

>Are humans not part of nature?

No. Humans are supranatural when it comes to our influence on the planet. While this power is not absolute, it's significant enough to make humans an edge case in nature.

>Is the ocassional defacation of a back country backpacker a problem? No.

In the example given, it's not occasional, but occurs a significant minority of the time that nature can't cope with the volume of human feces.

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

#562

Post by cududa » Fri, Jul 30, 2021, 4:45 PM UTC

p1necone wrote: post #309

tasogare wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> my profession is vaccine hesitancy and persuasion researcher Can't get if this is sarcasm or not. If true, it's scary how fast micro-fields are created and funded once there is a political purpose behind it, so that policies can be rubber-stamped as science. If false, nice troll.

There's a global pandemic killing thousands of people and there's a sizeable portion of the American population spreading misinformation that's causing a significant number of people to not get the vaccine, in turn endangering both themselves and others. It seems obvious to me that there would be people researching how to either stop this misinformation being spread, or educate people enough to stop believing it. Thi…

It’s not like I wanted to do this, more a moral obligation. When a former EBOLA colleague texted me last February and said he was putting the team back together I had a small panic attack knowing this bullshit cycle of unmitigated spread and disinformation was about to be my life again for 2+ years. On our first Zoom one guy just banged his head on his desk for a solid 2 minutes to give us a bit of comic relief.

Doesn’t even pay well - like at all. Dunno why you got downvoted so much.

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

#563

Post by ALittleLight » Fri, Jul 30, 2021, 4:45 PM UTC

l33t2328 wrote: post #558

ALittleLight wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The example regex would fail on that url. More generally I was trying to suggest with an example that filtering credible information with a regex is error prone.

Yes, and the example was naive. It’s trivial to make regex identify TLDs.

Yeah, but that doesn't work either. There are gov sites that have incorrect information, out of date information, partisan ideas and rhetoric, or there may exist, now or in the future, a .gov website where people could upload and share content.

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

#564

Post by cududa » Fri, Jul 30, 2021, 4:48 PM UTC

cat_plus_plus wrote: post #375

cududa wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m sorry but my profession is vaccine hesitancy and persuasion researcher and OP is just wrong. I have n=20,000 polls showing people get disinformation from Facebook that informs their decision to not get vaccinated and hours of focus group recordings also showing this.

How do you distinguish correlation and causation? People who are concerned about something are naturally going to search online and engage with content that confirms their biases. Do you have a robust evidence that vaccine hesitant go on Facebook and change their minds based on pro-vaccine content that is heavily promoted these days?

No, most of the pro-vaccine content doesn’t persuade people because it’s not crafted right. There are some interesting efforts in the field now with promising effects.

But being on the fence/ skeptical and seeing disinformation that aligns with your fears does move someone from the hesitant to resident category

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

#565

Post by cududa » Fri, Jul 30, 2021, 4:51 PM UTC

zdragnar wrote: post #415

cat_plus_plus wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you distinguish correlation and causation? People who are concerned about something are naturally going to search online and engage with content that confirms their biases. Do you have a robust evidence that vaccine hesitant go on Facebook and change their minds based on pro-vaccine content that is heavily promoted these days?

You give people too much credit. Tuskegee experiment cast a very long shadow and contributes a significant reason for the racial divide in vaccination rates for covid. No research needed, the bias is built into cultural memory.

No idea why you got downvoted so much. This is very much so a reason people are untrusting.

One method a Black pastor and I came up with for our county and surrounding ones was to bring the parishioners to a county vax clinic with white folks also present, and let them point in the pan of pre-drawn needles for which one they wanted, so they didn’t have to fear they were getting a “Black” vaccine

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

#566

Post by Dylan16807 » Fri, Jul 30, 2021, 4:53 PM UTC

tekknik wrote: post #548

majewsky wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdata: I've seen several people in my circle who have never identified as anti-vax in the past, who reject SARS-CoV-2 vaccines on the grounds of "they were made too quick, we didn't have enough time for testing". Of course this argument completely falls apart when you know how vaccine development works, but it's an argument that genuinely only applies to this specific group of vaccines.

> Of course this argument completely falls apart when you know how vaccine development works, but it's an argument that genuinely only applies to this specific group of vaccines. So if this is true then there should be no testing period right? We should know out the gate if a vaccine is safe or not right? Clearly this is incorrect. If you like testing vaccines, join the military. Then let’s see after you’re injected…

We're already past the testing period. The phase 3 trials of multiple vaccines are concluded and analyzed.

The issue isn't people that didn't want early untested vaccines, it's people that ignore the test results to continue to not want them.

Hopefully full FDA approval helps, as the process gets through the bureaucracy.

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

#567

Post by cududa » Fri, Jul 30, 2021, 5:08 PM UTC

tekknik wrote: post #545

cududa wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m sorry but my profession is vaccine hesitancy and persuasion researcher and OP is just wrong. I have n=20,000 polls showing people get disinformation from Facebook that informs their decision to not get vaccinated and hours of focus group recordings also showing this.

What about those who have never stepped foot on the platform yet are still hesitant? Not everybody is on Facebook. Also while we're here, if you are what you say you are, add the military forcing vaccinations, people witnessing side effects while being forced to continue duty, and the network effects this has on them and their friends / family after leaving the service. Look at how many people try to go the route of…

You can generally trace it back to someone they know on Facebook or Tucker Carlson.

I’d say the side effects are real and they should be given adequate rest to recover.

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

#568

Post by Dove » Fri, Jul 30, 2021, 5:10 PM UTC

rtpg wrote: post #463

Dove wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

They chose to do algorithmic timelines. They could do a chronological timeline. They could choose to not do any editorializing. They chose instead to get into the content promotion business. Their active choices lead to this result

It's a much bigger problem than than merely content promotion and aggregation.

There are countries where Facebook is the entire internet. Maybe they tried to make it happen and maybe they didn't - but however it happened, they are effectively the Ministry of Information now for that country. They probably shouldn't be. Everyone agrees on this, even them. But like the child-kings of history, it is still the situation. Avoiding the job is simply doing it badly.

Google, Twitter, others, are in a similar boat. They find themselves effectively running branches of government now, not of countries but of the world. Nobody has ever done that before. Nobody knows how to do it correctly, least of all people that mainly want to make money on a website.

The censorship is not because they're evil. It's because one of their subjects approached them saying their stuff is getting people killed and they were like, "Aaugh, I'm just a web site! I don't deal in such matters! Get it off me!" Because they think they're a web site. A political philosopher or an expert statesman would weigh philosophically how to maximize freedom and minimize harm while understanding that freedom gets some people killed, with an eye towards avoiding atrocities. Facebook isn't thinking about the historical risks associated with censorship because they still think they're a web site.

They don't know how to drive this thing - nobody does - and they are going to drive it straight into wars and catastrophes and atrocities. At least, that's the risk. There are countries whose actual ministry of information communicates matters of public safety primarily through Facebook. Or hosted on Amazon. Or whatever. And that company is going to make some minor change intended to protect transgender people in Wisconsin or something, and accidentally massively empower an oppressive government in Africa. That's the problem space. You think you're miserable because people in California are currently effectively setting policy in Arizona? Imagine you live in India. Heavy hangs the head that wears the crown, and this might be one of the biggest crowns ever made. It would be nice if we could find a way to destroy the ring. I definitely don't see another serious answer. In the mean time, the situation is what it is. The rest of us are idiots if we sit around criticizing them for not being perfect. We should be figuring out how to help!

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

#569

Post by nradov » Fri, Jul 30, 2021, 5:30 PM UTC

rtpg wrote: post #463

Dove wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

They chose to do algorithmic timelines. They could do a chronological timeline. They could choose to not do any editorializing. They chose instead to get into the content promotion business. Their active choices lead to this result

A chronological timeline is still based on an editorial algorithm. A simple algorithm, but an algorithm nonetheless. It's no less editorial than any other algorithm, like (hypothetically) putting posts in alphabetical order or whatever.

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

#570

Post by blindmute » Fri, Jul 30, 2021, 5:32 PM UTC

lern_too_spel wrote: post #556

blindmute wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll be sure to tell all the thousands of small business owners who were forced to permanently shutter their business that it was just a simple mask mandate after all.

You're attacking a strawman here. Nothing that was marked as misinformation was about the economic effects of lockdowns. If those effects concern you, you should be concerned with vaccine misinformation prolonging lockdowns, whether those lockdowns are government-enforced or due to individuals concerned about risk.

>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.

>Calling getting vaccines and wearing masks indoors "locking the whole country down indefinitely" is definitely hyperbolic.

You can say that not everything is still locked down (some stuff still is), but don't pretend like 6 months ago you would have been against the lockdowns that actually happened.