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How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

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Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#181

Post by ohCh6zos »

HDThoreaun wrote: post #87
matheusmoreira wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No need. All they have to do is remain neutral and avoid "moderating" at all. Just because the CDC said something does not automatically make it true. It's a valuable authority but it's not the Ministry of Truth. People are allowed to question and contradict it.

No one uses unmoderated platforms. Twitter has a fiduciary duty to make sure their platform has a good reputation with users and advertisers. That means moderation.

All of the really fun platforms are unmoderated, but they keep getting taken down due to pressure campaigns.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#182

Post by triceratops »

AustinDev wrote: post #91
cma wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The problem with ivermectin wasn't safety, but efficacy. If you have worms, ivermectin is great for you! Take it!

All the studies that showed ivermectin's effectiveness against Covid happened to be from countries with low levels of sanitation. The kinds of places where people are likely to suffer from worms without knowing it. If you have worms and Covid, and take deworming medicine, guess what? You're more likely to beat the 'rona. It doesn't mean the ivermectin cured you of Covid.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#183

Post by acdha »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #141
mhh__ wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I'm still waiting for everyone to drop dead from vaccine related injuries I didn't have to wait at all. There was a noticeable increase in thromboembolic events after COVID-19 vaccination started in my city. Plenty of people were saved by friends in the emergency room. The problem of course is not the vaccines, it's this insistence that they are risk-free. They are not. There is no such thing as zero risk in medici…

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Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#185

Post by twblalock »

SkipperCat wrote: post #174
twblalock wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

And yet the purpose of the NYT and WSJ is also profit. They also publish a lot of total dreck.

You are chasing after a distinction without a difference.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#186

Post by jakear »

tayo42 wrote: post #175
goatlover wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Like here, where someone posting a literal screenshot of the CDC's own data was deemed "misleading" and prohibited from being interacted with? https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_pr...

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#187

Post by idgaf4u »

laidoffamazon wrote: post #27
AustinDev wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Indeed, I’m lead to believe Trump forced us to lock down. It’s good that now under the current president we no longer have lockdowns or restrictions.

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Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#188

Post by VagueMag »

kodyo wrote: post #95
laidoffamazon wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And they only did that because too large a proportion of workers showed the backbone necessary to lose their jobs and livelihoods in order to not take the shots. If the opposition had been something closer to 10% instead of 30% I think it's a good bet that the courts would have punted on the question.

As someone who spent the fall and winter of 2021 checking my email each morning to see if my employer was initiating a mandate, I have a deep & abiding appreciation for all the brave resisters who paid a steep price to put these fascistic mandates on the ashheap of history where they always belonged.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#189

Post by fortran77 »

mhh__ wrote: post #59
RyanShook wrote: post #20

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 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…

Our government, and the moderators at Twitter, lumped reasonable skeptics in the same category as grifter-anti-vax types (i.e., people pushing zinc, or colloidal silver, or chiropractic as "cures" for covid).

People who had reasonable questions--like "why do some countries consider recovery from COVID as being equivalent to being vaccinated while the US doesn't" or people who were skeptical that loose-fitting cloth masks that most people wore below their nose did more good than harm--were de-platformed along with the true quacks. Experienced doctors with specific expertise in infectious disease were deplatformed for questioning if it was necessary for healthy young people to be vaccinted.

This, and the fact that social media sites bow to Government pressure for this sort of moderations, is what's alarming to many reasonable people.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#190

Post by etchalon »

andrew_ wrote: post #109
HDThoreaun wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one uses unmoderated platforms. Twitter has a fiduciary duty to make sure their platform has a good reputation with users and advertisers. That means moderation.

I suspect we could go around and around as to what constitutes moderation versus ideological censorship. I hope that we can agree that the feds putting pressure on the scales is wrong during any administration, and that transparency in moderation is a good thing.

"The Feds putting pressure on the scales" is a fairly broad term for something every level of the state does in multiple, almost incalculable ways.
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