A tangent: this domain seems to have an abnormal number of flagged articles. It made me wonder if there's something like shadowbans for domains here and if so, what are the criteria?
HN readers lean toward the establishment narratives.
How Twitter moderated the Covid debate
71–80 of 986 posts
Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate
#72Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate
#73I'm not a conspiracy theorist but I think the longest lasting legacy of covid will be the distrust it created for big government, big pharma, and big tech.
For me it gave a big distrust of conspiracy theorists and reflexive contrarians, due to things like the ivermectin saga.
Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
Downvoted because it completely misses the point, which is that a private company should not be told by the government to restrict speech, even if ( especially if) that speech is in conflict with the "official policy" the government has decreed. > Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the ri…
Shouldn’t it be up to the company? Congress made no law, no on forced Twitter from what I’m reading, they made a choice. That is their right. Demanding that people hold an antagonistic or untrusting view of government speech is no different than any other sort of speech code demand.
I'm not demanding an antagonistic view, I'm requesting for antagonistic views to be vocalizable without the White House demanding you to be deplatformed.
Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate
#75What is the realistic legal recourse for those who were censored from pressure by the US government? Sue the relevant agencies or executive branch? Will anyone even go to prison or lose their job?
> Will anyone even go to prison or lose their job? Why would they? This is another nothingburger, Musk is just seeking attention for the sake of attention. If that means echoing antivax bullshit, or trying to make sure Hunter Biden's penis is available for all to see on the internet, that's what he will do.
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Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate
#76Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate
#77I'm not a conspiracy theorist but I think the longest lasting legacy of covid will be the distrust it created for big government, big pharma, and big tech.
I am a conspiracy theorist[1], and this was all well known since before we even did '2 weeks to slow the spread'. I'm just glad some of the mainstream folks are figuring it out now. [1]: The term "conspiracy theory" is itself the subject of a conspiracy theory, which claims the term was popularized by the CIA in order to discredit conspiratorial believers, particularly critics of the Warren Commission, by making them…
When secretive governments and corporations give stories that don't pass basic tests, our lives depend on finding the most likely truth. This is theorizing. If you don't think they are telling the full truth, you are a conspiracy theorist. I am proud to be one too.
Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate
#78I'm not a conspiracy theorist but I think the longest lasting legacy of covid will be the distrust it created for big government, big pharma, and big tech.
I don't know. It should (and I think has) increase distrust in social media and big tech/gov but distrust in pharma? I don't know. I'm still waiting for everyone to drop dead from vaccine related injuries (I've paid this more earnest attention than most people this glib at least) — most people, I think correctly for the most part, regard the nu-antivax thing that came about during covid to basically be the realm of i…
And they haven't stopped agitating. And probably won't stop.
Which makes me wonder: with the degree of weaponization of the internet on the side of the anti-vaxxers will the next pandemic be 'the big one'? Enough people that refuse vaccination and you are looking at an entirely different probable outcome.
Here in NL a small army of foaming-at-the-mouth conspiracy theorists did their utmost to undermine the vaccination campaign with the most outrageous claims and I'm pretty sure that we can chalk up a number of unnecessary deaths to their efforts. They wouldn't be able to tell a virus from a bacterium but that didn't stop them from spouting one nonsense theory after another and organizing (sometimes violent) protests against health care workers and their equipment.
This is a worrisome development.
Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate
#79What is the realistic legal recourse for those who were censored from pressure by the US government? Sue the relevant agencies or executive branch? Will anyone even go to prison or lose their job?
There isn’t a legal recourse. Nobody will go to jail. Nobody will lose their jobs.
Trust will continue to deteriorate.
Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate
#80A tangent: this domain seems to have an abnormal number of flagged articles. It made me wonder if there's something like shadowbans for domains here and if so, what are the criteria?
HN readers lean toward the establishment narratives.
I wonder for how long that will still be the case. The fringe is getting more and more grip on HN and we may well be fighting a losing battle.