HN readers lean toward the establishment narratives.
Meh, HN seems very reasonable, but it seems there is small and very active group that flags posts like this. An organized group of 10-50 accounts can quickly censor anything, unless the mods intervene. Imo, flagging a post must be accompanied by an explanation, and the mods should review these explanations from time to time to catch such censorship teams.
Do you really think it's coordinated, or do you think it's more likely they just are like minded?
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 vaccinatio…
I worry, but also remember that much of the pandemic was just a replay of the Spanish Flu. Distrust in masking, distrust in vaccines, a complaint about the "media" keeping "the truth" from the public.
Imagine if this was Trump. That for me puts the reaction in tech circles in perspective. We would see two impeachments, wall to wall news coverage, protests by employees at Facebook, Apple and Google, all asking for deplatforming everyone associated and so much more. Its ridiculous that we're unable as a society to separate actions from political affiliation.
Imagine if what were Trump? Per the article, the Trump administration sought "help from the tech companies to combat misinformation."
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.
They are absolutely platforms for speech and in many cases they are the main source of news for people. Facebook and Twitter matter more than CNN. By the way, all the newspapers and mainstream media that were displaced by social media are almost all ad-based, for-profit enterprises too.
There is a lot of speech on Twitter and Facebook, but the purpose of those companies is profit. If they could curate and filter content to increase revenue, they will. Plus, telecom laws protect them from liable so they can get away with publishing outright lies.
The fact that people use these poorly vetted sites as their primary source of news is unsettling. There is a lot of quality content, but it’s surrounded by a lot of garbage (from both the left and the right).
The NYT and WSJ both operate by much higher standards than I’ve ever seen on FB or Twitter. The newspapers are far from perfect, but they do abide by ethical standards. And most importantly, they are liable for their content.
We've decided that speech that is harmful is not allowed. Encouraging people to not get a vaccine we decided is harmful speech. Like telling you to kill your self, or the yelling fire in a theater. Are you not OK with that example of speech though? Dangerous speech seems to make you uncomfortable no?
Wouldn't it depend on the demographic? Covid was not equally deadly among all ages and groups. Is it wrong to point out that the risk is significantly lower for the young and healthy? And what if it's experts questioning policies such as keeping lower income students home? Or the effectiveness of masking mandates beyond a certain point or situations of low risk like being outdoors?
Your missing the point. The people posting on Twitter are just riling up, a virtual riot. You want to discuss it, do it calmy and write soemthing well thought out with sources.
People (on HN) are acting like the misinformation being targeted was innocent stuff on 51:49 judgement calls — complete retconning of the abject lunacy profiteers were out there saying. Talk to anyone in health care, people were nebulizing bleach and hydrogen peroxide, convincing their vets to give them literal animal medicine when the supplies of human ivermectin were cut off, taking fish antiparasite drugs, and on…
People were censored early in the pandemic for saying that wearing masks was a good idea, and a number of other things that are now widely accepted as true.
Another excellent example of retconning. Who specifically was censored for saying that?
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.
Long time poster here. It was shocking to witness the last few years here. We have an absolutely remarkable and effective moderation system here and tireless, under-thanked mods doing the work. Looking at showdead, they are so good at moderating away the spam, nazis, trolls, and other various off topic troublemakers. I’m so grateful for having them here. They walk the line making difficult judgment calls, and have consistently struck the right balance… until the COVID madness. I don’t know what it was, but we got absolutely flooded with crap, and I guess the sheer volume was just too much for the manual, human moderating system. It got to the point where I had to just keep myself out of COVID threads because there was no longer any thread of nonsense that wasn’t already posted hundreds of times before. Karma-voting in those threads was always a roller coaster, too. Such an odd departure from an otherwise amazing site.
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.
I dream of a United States with 0 Ads for Prescription Medicine, and the end of "Ask your Doctor about [Brand]"
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.
I disagree.
Anti-vax movements have been around for as long as there have been vaccines. The only thing that "solves" this problem is a new disease and vaccines that completely displaces the old.
Think about it: when was the last time, since the pandemic began, that you heard about autism and the MMR vaccine? that began in the late 90s (with no scientific basis I might add) and persisted for decades. Now no one talks about, thinks about or cares about it anymore. It's completely off the radar.
Covid anti-vax movements will meet the exact same fate come the next major vaccine.