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Turkey adopts media law jailing for spreading ‘disinformation’

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Re: Turkey adopts media law jailing for spreading ‘disinformation’

#211

Post by ccn0p »

lesuorac wrote: post #58
ccn0p wrote: post #38

I see a lot of people critical of Turkey... and I agree. But the US is not too far away. See AB-2098 in California just signed by governor / likely presidential nominee Gavin Newson [1] which basically gives the state the ability to revoke medical licenses for spreading "false information that is contradicted by contemporary scientific contrary to the standard of care" (in other words, go against the CDC or other sta…

If you don't want to be beholden to the state then don't get a state enforced license. > 270. (a) It shall constitute unprofessional conduct for a physician and surgeon to disseminate misinformation or disinformation related to COVID-19, including false or misleading information regarding the nature and risks of the virus, its prevention and treatment; and the development, safety, and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccin…

Do you really think the state knows the best possible treatment for you rather than your family doctor who has seen you for years, knows your family history, and can assess the situation right there holding your hand and hearing your voice? I fear a future for my children where people think it's the former and the "standard of care" is forced upon them.

Re: Turkey adopts media law jailing for spreading ‘disinformation’

#212

Post by ccn0p »

cr4nberry wrote: post #170
barbariangrunge wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question is how we can keep our own countries from going down similar routes? With tech being what it is, it will become harder and harder to resist the state over time, so we will need better and better ways of keeping our houses in order so that things will not “decay,” to use a slightly classical term With ai and surveillance / mass-manipulation tech, it will be extremely hard to come back from authoritarianis…

The authoritarianism won't come from the government, it will come from the people around you. It's honestly terrifying how fast the media whipped up the craziness a year or two ago. It makes me wonder how much harder they shilled to shame people into the military during wartime. I remember reading Céline's Journey to the End of the Night and getting disgusted at how the state and media managed to screw that many peop…

Ya 100%, but it's been pretty interesting to see how many people now seem to share this sentiment and are trying to look out for it. The fact that I see these types of responses on Hacker News is a testament to that. I think part of all this non-sense legislation is the Governments response to its lack of control.

The toothpaste is out of the bottle for the media, unfortunately, and I'm not sure it's going back in.

Re: Turkey adopts media law jailing for spreading ‘disinformation’

#213

Post by Izkata »

caeril wrote: post #153
BuyMyBitcoins wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole situation with Alex Jones has undermined the confidence I have with our court system and our government. Initially I thought there was some Mandela Effect going on because I could have sworn I remembered Alex Jones losing a Sandy Hook civil suit case multiple times before. Turns out, he’s being sued multiple times by different sets of parents and from what I understand, this latest case isn’t the last one.…

> The whole situation with Alex Jones has undermined the confidence I have with our court system If it makes you feel any better, Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family was fined SIX TIMES more than Alex Jones. 800k people dead for $6B versus a dozen families' feelings hurt for $1B. Our court system recognizes that the value of a human life is $7.5K, but the value of precious feelings is $83MM. This seems pretty fair t…

I suspect your post is sarcasm, but you didn't include any markers and I've seen this argument in earnest enough times that I can't just assume it is sarcasm.

Re: Turkey adopts media law jailing for spreading ‘disinformation’

#214

Post by Izkata »

bilvar wrote: post #74
standardUser wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would anyone laugh at that unless they themselves had a laughably simplistic concept of how the field of medicine works? As I recall, the details and limitations of the various vaccines were not hidden and no one was lied to.

What do you mean they were not lied to? Specifically by Pfizer or the US government? Because there are numerous instances where Biden and Fauci said that if you get the vaccine: - You won't get Covid. - You won't transmit Covid to anybody else. - Covid vaccine is / will be super effective against variants. None of those were true after-all. If you're talking about Pfizer fair enough, they didn't outright lie, they li…

> If you're talking about Pfizer fair enough, they didn't outright lie, they lied by omission - as I did not see them coming out to correct those misconceptions.

While true, it's even weirder than that: their press release in 2020 was pretty explicit about the effectiveness only being about illness, and news articles at the time regularly mentioned infection/transmission effectiveness was unknown. It took a few months before the mainstream decided it does work on infection/transmission, and they did so without any new studies or evidence.

Re: Turkey adopts media law jailing for spreading ‘disinformation’

#215

Post by Izkata »

Jayschwa wrote: post #118
Tarsul wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the idea of the vaccine was always to prevent bad effects of infection, not infection as such. However, it usually helps with the latter as well but whatever. However, what the big social media sites really need (instead of laws against disinformation) is downvotes. If the metric is only engagement then enragement is good, but actually it shouldnt (necessarily) be.

> the idea of the vaccine was always to prevent bad effects of infection, not infection as such. This is false historical revisionism. Biden[1], Fauci[2], and the media sold the public on the vaccine and justified mandates by saying it would stop the spread. Early skeptics were labeled as misinformed conspiracy theorists. It later became self-evident that the vaccine was less effective than originally thought (e.g. e…

They did, but you're not aware of the earliest parts of this timeline (and it seems like most people aren't, so it makes me really happy people are finally listening):

Pfizer's original press release [0] used both "SARS-CoV-2" and "COVID-19", distinguishing between the virus and the disease. The effectiveness they gave was about preventing illness, and they made no claims at all about infection/transmission.

This was fairly well known for a month or two, with many articles bringing up that infection/transmission was an unknown [1][2][3]. It was only a month or two into 2021 that the narrative shifted sharply and this original information was memory-holed remarkably hard. The politicians and media were the ones claiming it would stop infection/transmission, but they started that without any new data.

They could have had ulterior motives, they could have just been parroting others, or it could have just been plain stupidity - with how often the terms "SARS-CoV-2" and "COVID-19" are used interchangeably, it's hard to rule out that they just didn't understand the press release.

[0] https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-deta...

[1] https://www.washington.edu/news/2020/12/02/covid-19-vaccines...

[2] https://www.businessinsider.com/who-says-no-evidence-coronav...

[3] https://www.fredhutch.org/en/news/center-news/2020/12/covid-...

Re: Turkey adopts media law jailing for spreading ‘disinformation’

#216

Post by Izkata »

simonh wrote: post #36
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you but that’s not what I was referring to. I was referring to pressure on young people to get the vaccine to avoid harming the elderly. If we never tested transmission… what was that about? Why not just let the elderly get it and the young risk it if they wanted? What was behind “by getting the vaccine you are protecting others” when all we actually know is that it protects yourself? There’s probably a…

The expectation was that because they knew the vaccines reduce the chances of getting symptoms such as coughs associated with transmission, reduced the time people were sick for, and also reduce the viral load in people who got sick, that this would result in a reduced chance that people who caught the virus but were vaccinated would transmit the virus. It was an expectation, yes, not a proven fact but they thought i…

> The expectation was that because they knew the vaccines reduce the chances of getting symptoms such as coughs associated with transmission, reduced the time people were sick for, and also reduce the viral load in people who got sick

This assumption relies on it being solely droplet spread, which we already knew was wrong months (at least) before the vaccines were announced.

Re: Turkey adopts media law jailing for spreading ‘disinformation’

#217

Post by Nevermark »

swayvil wrote: post #143
Nevermark wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We could do the same with physical violence. Stop judging and let individuals make their own choices. The problem in both cases is obvious. When people can take actions that benefit themselves despite (and often because of) negative repercussions to others, many people are not going to “filter” themselves

I see two defects in your reasoning. First, our understanding of what constitutes physical violence is relatively reliable. Whereas our understanding of what constitutes misinformation is relatively unreliable. Therefore any comprehensive dictatorship of information would be relatively extremely more disastrous. Second, misinformation is self-limiting in its effects. If it is misinformation then those who consume and…

I appreciate your response.

But while there are more gray areas in misinformation or harmful coordination or reinforcement of bad behavior (bullying, racism, fraud, libel, etc), relative to violence, that is far from a case where large quantities of harmful speech can’t be identified with openly discussed principles.

Wisdom is never perfect, but it can be openly discussed and codified. That is a huge improvement over simply throwing up hands and watching people be crushed by underserved social persecution and manipulation.

Also, any behavior that extracts value can expend resources for its own self-preservation. So fraud and rabble rousing, etc do not weed themselves out. Parasitical strategies work.

Finally, I agree that organization of corporations and other close knit groups trumps the disorganized. Removing a judicial component would only make those powerful organizations more effective at bending society to their will.

The answer is an organized government with publically created and adapted laws, with norms that reduce opportunities for corruption

It’s far from perfect. Our systems could be “easily” improved by simple anti-corruption improvements - if entrenched interests could be overcome.

But despite obvious flaws, they are vastly better than the mafia power structures that a vacuum of open legal systems reining in harmful dishonest or malevolent communication would ensure

Re: Turkey adopts media law jailing for spreading ‘disinformation’

#218

Post by lesuorac »

CodeSgt wrote: post #194
Rapzid wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be nice if people didn't barf their uninformed opinions all over HN with the excuse of, basically, "idk what I'm talking, come at me bro(with citations pls)". Then expect people to drip-feed them basic legal education. I guess doing some basic research on libel, defamation, punitive damages, and IDK.., the case at hand?, isn't contentious enough. Hard to get into an argument with Wikipedia.

Yeah sure, anyone who isn't an expert at the topic at hand should be barred from participating in any discussion about it.

No you've missed the point.

Parent was not claiming you need to be an expert on something to talk about it. parent is claiming you should do at least a bare minimum of research (i.e. read the lawsuit) before making claims about what the lawsuit contains.

You also initially made the claim "[Alex Jones] was just fined approximately $1 billion USD for no more than speaking" which is also (as far as the courts are now concerned) demonstrably false. He was fined $1 billion for encouraging and paying for the harassment of multiple individuals in addition to speaking and other offenses assumed to be true as he did not defend himself through the courts. I mean what information lead you to make this point? This is the problem that the Parent is talking about, any sort of cursory reading of the case would show you why Alex Jones is in trouble.

Re: Turkey adopts media law jailing for spreading ‘disinformation’

#219

Post by lesuorac »

skissane wrote: post #181
8ytecoder wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s what the jury evaluated and decided. Looks like you have an issue with the jury system itself.

The US is an outlier in letting juries hand down such massive damages awards. In most other common law countries, the jury only decides which side wins, and damages are up to the judge-and judges generally show a preference for more reasonable amounts.

tl:dr; The amount a Jury awards in damages is not actually what the loser pays.

Juries can award w/e they want but the judge still has discretion in reducing the damages (ex. one of McDonalds hot coffee incidents [1]).

Not a foreman, but I believe juries don't get instructed as to what the maximum amount they can legally award is and so the judge to then reduce it. (ex. Depp vs Heard [2])

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald%27s_Restau... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depp_v._Heard

Re: Turkey adopts media law jailing for spreading ‘disinformation’

#220

Post by skissane »

lesuorac wrote: post #219
skissane wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US is an outlier in letting juries hand down such massive damages awards. In most other common law countries, the jury only decides which side wins, and damages are up to the judge-and judges generally show a preference for more reasonable amounts.

tl:dr; The amount a Jury awards in damages is not actually what the loser pays. Juries can award w/e they want but the judge still has discretion in reducing the damages (ex. one of McDonalds hot coffee incidents [1]). Not a foreman, but I believe juries don't get instructed as to what the maximum amount they can legally award is and so the judge to then reduce it. (ex. Depp vs Heard [2]) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.or…

Such a system likely still results in higher damages payouts - even after the judge has reduced the jury’s amount - than leaving the issue of damages entirely up to the judge would; which may go some way to explaining why average damages awards (even if we only consider the final amounts after all appeals are finalised) are significantly higher in the US than in other common law countries.
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