Live data from Hacker News

How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

thefp.com

91–100 of 986 posts

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#91
post #73

I'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.

Ivermectin Saga? You distrusted the 'conspiracy theorists' who took a perfectly safe drug that had been taken in the billions of doses a year prior? It was known as a possible protease inhibitor and was very safe to take. Where was the misinformation in what I just posted?

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#93
post #32
post #3

Some seem to be okay with the government and intelligence agencies working hand-in-hand with Big Tech to make sure we only get to learn and discuss corporate sponsored healthcare advice now.

Who was enforcing corporate healthcare? You just made that part up. And also, Twitter is a corporation itself. Government is supposed to regulate. They exchanged information. They were told when laws were being broken. Deleting content was entirely Twitter's discretion. And they did what they deemed most beneficial to their operations and their shareholders.

"healthcare *advice" leaving that word out misrepresents the parent.

I understand why people hold the same position you do, but I still believe it's wrong and shortsighted. It will be inevitably abused in a way you disagree with in the future.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#94
post #66
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Ro Khanna, the Congressman representing S.V. has thoughts on using "nothingburger": > Here’s why I think the “nothingburger” argument is compounding the problem. https://www.thefp.com/p/ro-khanna-on-twitter-free-speech It's worth a read to at least consider his thoughts.

I have read his thoughts, and while he makes good points he ignores the clear facts:

- censoring Hunter Biden's nudes from the site was the right thing to do.

- The laptop hoax had all the hallmarks of Russian disinformation, and still seems likely to have been developed by the Russian government

- banning trump was the right thing to do, he had just attempted a coup against the US (I also think banning dictators/autocrats would be the moral thing to do)

The other thing people are ignoring is that trump's team requested things to be removed, and they were as well: https://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-granted-requests-fro...

Everyone is acting like Twitter favored progressive causes, they did not. In fact we know from the Twitter files nothingburgers that Twitter gave "LibsOfTikTok" _favorable_ handling, preventing them from being properly moderated without higher levels of approval than other accounts. Con accounts were treated with kid gloves to prevent the backlash that Twitter is receiving anyway.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#95
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Biden’s administration was ready to put people out of work if they didn’t get the shots. Red team vs blue team rhetoric is nauseating.

Indeed, I’m sure this would mean the current unemployment rate is far higher than it was in January 2021 no?

The courts blocked the insanity.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#96
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

[flagged]

[flagged]

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#97
post #70
post #23

Relevant context - this was written by a member of the team who released the Twitter files, alongside Matt Tabibi.

Edit: removed inflammatory comments

Not seeing how I did any discrediting, just thought it was interesting as I was reading through it. I intentionally wrote this in a neutral way - e.g. I could have just as easily mentioned John Carmack and Oculus.

Unless you believe that Matt Tabibi is not a reputable journalist or that the Twitter Files lack credibility, this feels like a very defensive gut response.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#99
post #23

Relevant context - this was written by a member of the team who released the Twitter files, alongside Matt Tabibi.

Also, readers should know that The Free Press is Bari Weiss¹. Vanity Fair described her as "a provocateur", which is the kindest-possible interpretation of her editorial philosophy. ¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bari_Weiss

And Vanity Fair is a pillar of concise and objective information?

Come on, at least be fair.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#100

This is what we get when we expect corporations to police speech, and when governments pressure them to do it. We really would be better off with no censorship. Even allowing obvious conspiracy theories and fake news is better than trying to police the truth and getting it wrong. When moderators get it wrong even one time they lose trust forever and give the conspiracy theorists even more ammo — in some cases by maki…

You are mistaking social media companies as platforms for speech. The are not. They are for profit companies that must police their content to attain maximum ad revenue. They will curate, filter and edit content solely for that purpose.

I don’t know why everyone is so up in arms about what Twitter does on their website. If it vanished tomorrow, I’d be fine. Most of us knew what was going in the 90’s just fine.

Post reply on HN