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Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

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Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#631

Post by spaniard89277 »

xondono wrote: post #605
danbolt wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can't take any editorial line for granted, because it's more tied to a group of people seeking power than any background ideology or anything similar. I don't mean to misrepresent the parent's argument, but I think they would demand the same solution of editorial transparency towards the groups of people seeking power you mention. That said, I might be coming from a place of ignorance here.

That would be a hard thing to achieve, given that we are talking about unnamed, unidentifiable groups. What GP meant about Spain being similar to GoT, is that there’s a lot of shifting alliances and moving pieces in the background. You might think channel A has ties to party B, and thus you can asume that they are softening the blow if they’re reporting bad news about B, but Spain has more than two parties (for now),…

It's even worse than that. Groups inside the National Police do conspire against each other (I think there may be at least three of them) + Center of National Intelligence.

The same happens in the IRS Equivalent, and other institutions, like autonomous comminites (~ US States).

I mean, I'm talking about real plots here, like managing media influence, trying to put people in jail, and all the ingredients for a Netflix series.

It's basically impossible to keep track of it, even for a politics nerd like me.

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#633

Post by webdoodle »

DarknessFalls wrote: post #199
webdoodle wrote: post #38

The 'elites' control the narrative through propaganda censors like Facebook, Twitter and Reddit. Anything that doesn't conform to their predetermined agenda gets discredited, the author smeared, then eventually banned from posting. These are legitimate 1st amendment issues that need to be defended or what little freedom we have left will be boiled away like baby frogs.

Facebook and Twitter have very specific policies against hate speech and inciting violence. This caused a lot of extremists on the American political right to be banned. That isn't elitism or censorship. It's enforcing their ToS, which as a private business, they have every right to do. I also think you're confused about what an 'elite' actually is. Spoonfed, entitled, whining, bitching opportunists like Trump fit th…

> That isn't elitism or censorship. It's enforcing their ToS, which as a private business, they have every right to do. I also think you're confused about what an 'elite' actually is. Spoonfed, entitled, whining, bitching opportunists like Trump fit that bill. And don't even pretend this isn't the side you're on.

Emotionally charged drivel. I didn't vote for either Biden or Trump, and definitely didn't support either. They are both agents of the 'elites'. Trump wouldn't have won the Republican primary if he wasn't part of the problem. Further, I tried to warn Trumps supporters he was planning a Night of the Long Knives, to rid his party of there extremist brown shirts (aka the January 6th insurrection).

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#634

Post by webdoodle »

dang wrote: post #266
webdoodle wrote: post #38

The 'elites' control the narrative through propaganda censors like Facebook, Twitter and Reddit. Anything that doesn't conform to their predetermined agenda gets discredited, the author smeared, then eventually banned from posting. These are legitimate 1st amendment issues that need to be defended or what little freedom we have left will be boiled away like baby frogs.

Please don't take HN threads further into generic ideological flamewar. It's much too predictable and tedious. I realize this is begging for an "aha! the elites are proving the point!" response—but really no, we just don't want threads to clog up with low-information, high-indignation rhetoric. If you want to be all non-elitey within those params, have at it. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.c…

Detaching a thread, that's new (to me). I guess it's better than all out censorship, but not much better than Reddit collapsing threads that get downvoted by bots.

I'm sorry if my meager comment became work for you, however you do realize you are modding a 'hacker' forum, where social engineering is the purest and earliest form of 'hacking'? Consider that most of the original 'hackers' are/were looking for social equality, now while social media has been infiltrated by big money 'elites' to squash the lamentations of the poor and impoverished. Lastly, John D Rockefeller only bought into newspapers after Ida Tarbell exposed the ills he was incurring on American society.

If one can't wail at the wall of propaganda on a hacker news forum, where can impoverished ideologists still have a voice? All the main social media sites have been bought by 'elites', or hacked by their cohorts into oblivion when they don't play ball.

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#635

Post by Natsu »

chrisseaton wrote: post #486
Natsu wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Babylon Bee is like the Onion and is at least as well known. While I agree that there are people who take ridiculous stuff seriously, they're beyond what a fact checker--or anyone else--can help.

> they're beyond what a fact checker--or anyone else--can help I'd disagree. I think a literal huge 'satire' flag on the post would help.

It'd help on your post, too, but ultimately we live in a world that contains vagueness. I feel more comfortable not marking a post about a giant washing machine being used to spin news with a blinking SATIRE sign than your post, though, because I can't take it seriously.

That said, they clearly label the site as satire on the 'about' page if there was somehow any doubt that articles about spinning news in a washing machine were not serious.

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#636

Post by WindyCityClient »

Kiro wrote: post #477
yesco wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think them being the same people is exceptionally unlikely

Seems to me that everyone agreed that Facebook had to do something about misinformation and that everyone is now outraged that they did. Where are the people defending the fact-checking they helped make reality? No, I think everyone just loves to hate on Facebook.

I mean yes, when asking someone to clean a mess they did make, and they do it as spreading the mess around, to make it worse, then you still allowed to be mad at them about that mess.

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#637

Post by freebuju »

philovivero wrote: post #623
freebuju wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am sure you can find plenty when you go down this rabbit hole but you can start here: https://twitter.com/us_fda/status/1429050070243192839

Thanks for trying to help out, but that's the FDA, not CDC. And this is a much murkier situation. Ivermectin does seem to help Covid, but it looks like that's correlation, not causation. Astral Codex Ten has a great writeup on this, and a big controversial debate with the ivermectin crowd. It's pretty glorious, and I do recommend reading it in its entirety. If you do want to call this a lie, I suppose I could see it.…

You are right. Had a brain fart moment there. Still a good place to check as some of these official statements from the two leading public health bodies communicate the agreed-upon response to the disease.

On Astral Codex Ten's piece, I assume you are talking about this one [0] The whole piece is such a doosie. Am almost sure 90%+ of the non-core audiences that landed on the page never scrolled to the end. If you are going to debunk a controversial subject, KISS. Not to say he didn't do a good job at poring through the numerous inconsistent data and studies carried out on the possibility of use of ivermectin for treatment. But am sure I came across some of his material on the interwebs.

Back to the source material of this post, FDA were completely malicious by tweeting that. Their linked post even goes to mention that taking ivermectin could be lethal for you.

What happens when the body whose sole job is to be the arbiter of truth and science regarding safety of drugs knowingly makes obviously dubious false verifiable claims? They are either knowingly participating in a lie or they are incompetent.

[0] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/ivermectin-much-more-t...

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#638

Post by Uhhrrr »

annadane wrote: post #535
Uhhrrr wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMAO, they shouldn't try. They should say, "Facebook connects you to your friends and family, and you should expect the degree of validity of information shared by your friends and family to be similar to that of the information they share with you in real life. If you want good information in your feed, hold your friends and family accountable for what they say."

To the extent they stay out of "editing" the newsfeed, sure. When they algorithmically (and silently) promote or demote certain things, all bets are off

Yes, doing that is also a terrible idea.

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#639

Post by CSSer »

xondono wrote: post #602
CSSer wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> most of them are journalists, AKA experts in nothing that pretend to become experts with a few calls and some google-fu. Isn’t this a bit much? This seems very baited and/or flame-war inducing. It’s denigrating towards an entire profession/discipline. I’d almost go so far as to say that this misunderstanding about journalism is at the root of a lot of problems in modern media for both practicing journalists (which…

> Isn’t this a bit much? This seems very baited and/or flame-war inducing. And yet I think it’s pretty obvious journalism is not about truth anymore. Gawker might be dead, but the Gawker style of “journalism” is well alive. You don’t even need to dig that deep to see something is rotten, the two biggest news channels in the US spend the day saying the opposite of one another.

I don’t disagree with this. I even like the way you put journalism in quotation marks. I (and apparently their legal representatives in many cases) consider those news stations you mentioned to be more entertainment than journalism. Put another way, the point of my original comment was that good journalists make mistakes too, but that shouldn’t mean anyone can be a journalist or there is no expertise required to do so. It should mean the opposite. What I’m beginning to take away from this and some of my other replies is that it’s become practically impossible to tell the good, bad, and poser journalists apart. I just don’t want that to mean that we devalue journalism as a whole.

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#640

Post by CSSer »

tbrownaw wrote: post #538
CSSer wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> most of them are journalists, AKA experts in nothing that pretend to become experts with a few calls and some google-fu. Isn’t this a bit much? This seems very baited and/or flame-war inducing. It’s denigrating towards an entire profession/discipline. I’d almost go so far as to say that this misunderstanding about journalism is at the root of a lot of problems in modern media for both practicing journalists (which…

> This seems very baited and/or flame-war inducing. It’s denigrating towards an entire profession/discipline. I’d almost go so far as to say that this misunderstanding about journalism It's right in line with the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect[1]. > Journalism should be about creating an objective conduit for civic impetus. This is a jump from objecting to "is" statements to making an "ought" statement. It also seems to mo…

> It also seems to most likely be promoting what I've heard called "advocacy journalism"

I’m sorry this is the impression you were given because my intention was the exact opposite.

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