How Twitter moderated the Covid debate • Hacker News Board

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#211

Post by nkurz » Tue, Dec 27, 2022, 4:03 AM UTC

andrew_ wrote: post #66

myko wrote: 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.

Wow, Khanna comes off really good here as a rational patriotic centrist. It makes me wonder about his future political ambitions. People should read the interview if unfamiliar with him.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#212

Post by jacquesm » Tue, Dec 27, 2022, 4:03 AM UTC

rtpg wrote: post #103

jacquesm wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There’s a revival of kids not being given other vaccines as well. The knock on effects from the absolute bad faith mess from discourse around vaccines is going to fuck up so much in public health for decades. I am sympathetic to skepticism when public health officials spent a lot of time lying to avoid having to explain complicated truths. But so many bad faith voices and outright scammers with nonsense vitamins to s…

> There’s a revival of kids not being given other vaccines as well.

Yes, the anti-vaxx (and anti-government) sentiment has received an enormous boost from this, time will tell what the damage is but a resurgence of things like Polio is not out of the question.

> I am sympathetic to skepticism when public health officials spent a lot of time lying to avoid having to explain complicated truths.

I'm partially ok with that. They really should give out a double helping of advice: one that is dumbed down for those that lack the necessary background, one that is more on the level for those interested or that do have the necessary background. As it is the dumbed down version is all we've got and the result is that it is too easy to poke holes in it.

At the same time, some of the under-preparedness would have been much harder to deal with without the occasional white lie, it stopped a lot of profiteering and kept some items in supply when otherwise there would have been a run on them.

> But so many bad faith voices and outright scammers with nonsense vitamins to sell are going to get what they want.

Yes, and fwiw I think those people should have gone to jail. We're working on a couple of those cases here NL at the moment and I'm really curious what the outcome will be.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#213

Post by PartiallyTyped » Tue, Dec 27, 2022, 4:03 AM UTC

ryanSrich wrote: post #170

PartiallyTyped wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> If you are running a social media platform for the masses, you have to censor certain things, and you have to abide by all regulations. You can’t just X. Legally speaking yes. You absolutely have to censor a decent amount of content. Outside of what is legally required (at least in the US), I’d be in favor of allowing the community to block and mute to curate their own experience. It seems a losing battle to rely o…

[flagged]

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#214

Post by kodyo » Tue, Dec 27, 2022, 4:04 AM UTC

rootusrootus wrote: post #157

kodyo wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There should be more mistrust of the institutions that lie without cessation.

The answer to this seems to be deciding YouTube videos are authoritative. Or other completely random sources which don't offer any credible evidence that their narrative is any better than the mainstream sources.

Most people are going to believe what they see on their screens. Therefore, it’s important to the regime to influence what gets amplified or suppressed.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#215

Post by tootie » Tue, Dec 27, 2022, 4:04 AM UTC

lmm wrote: post #102

tootie wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[flagged]

At least HN doesn't filter COVID disinformation. Your first paragraph is all incorrect. Patent-free treatments were extensively tested and some (notably dexamethasone) were put into treatment regimens for a while but none proven effective. "Corporate" vaccines were very effective and I'm not sure what alternative you're thinking of (artisanal vaccines? Maybe Sinovac?) but either way it's irrelevant. Twitter is just a messaging platform. The people extolling and deriding vaccines were from all walks. Politicians, journalists, doctors, researchers or rank amateurs. Twitter was trying to reign in disinformation from all quarters because it was killing people. There is zero hint of political interference at any level, this was all at the level of bureaucrats attempting to provide a service to companion who wanted assistance.

What if the executive starts censoring politically incompatible thoughts? Trump certainly tried or at least threatened to do so many times but it's nowhere near reality.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#216

Post by losteric » Tue, Dec 27, 2022, 4:04 AM UTC

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…

> 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.

Thromboembolic events are a common side effect of COVID-19, and vaccine roll out often led to infection surges as the sense of normality returned before full immunity.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#217

Post by rqtwteye » Tue, Dec 27, 2022, 4:04 AM UTC

a_bonobo wrote: post #34

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 think Covid (and all the anti-vax grift around it) was the last straw, exploiting fears that were constructed by a cutthroat for-profit health system. It reminds me of this recent quote from Cory Doctorow: >We’ve had massive institutional failures that make people not believe anything. We focus a lot on the technical mechanics of why people don’t believe anything. Ten years ago, my pain specialist wanted me to go o…

The for profit health system has a ton of problems and should be abandoned but it’s not the reason why people lost their minds over Covid. Germany has a better health system (for normal earners. The US system is great for wealthy people) but still has a ton of anti vaxxers and Covid deniers.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#218

Post by etchalon » Tue, Dec 27, 2022, 4:05 AM UTC

belltaco wrote: post #201

imwillofficial wrote: post #48

Conspiracy theory is just the news in 6 months. Hell at this rate I’d hear somebody out if they said the moon is made of cheese. What a time to be alive.

Sounds like extreme confirmation bias. Just a couple of counterpoints: Everyone taking the vaccine was supposed to be long dead. Women taking it were supposed to be sterile, and men too. There are billions of people who took and still... barely anything.

Exactly.

Contrarians have this utterly weird propensity to demand the "official" or "mainstream" opinion be perfectly accurate, while holding absolutely no standards for the other side of the debate.

"Just asking questions", etc.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#219

Post by DanHulton » Tue, Dec 27, 2022, 4:06 AM UTC

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?

Or, put another way, people who self-medicated instead of getting the vaccine, putting those around them at risk, who used trickery to order the medication when it became restricted due to an unprecentedly and unplanned-for low supply, who resorted to using animal versions and mis-dosing themselves, risking needing a spot in the hospital that was already desperately needed for COVID patients. Yes, we distrusted those people, and for good reason, I should say.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#220

Post by VagueMag » Tue, Dec 27, 2022, 4:07 AM UTC

belltaco wrote: post #206

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…

So what would you call things like the QAnon theories? If you didn't believe them that is.

Disinformation. In the case of QAnon I'd go one further and call it a psyop. The idea that it's all just a big laugh carried out by Jim Watkins or some 8chan randos is risible.