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How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

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Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#301

Post by jacquesm »

tjpnz wrote: post #237
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'm not a conspiracy theorist either but I do have considerably less respect for the WHO than I did before the pandemic. They seem more interested in playing politics and appeasing authoritarian regimes than putting out concrete policy on things which might actually help. Their back and forth on masking was an utter shambles, their stance on Taiwan a disgrace, their "fact finding" missions to China pointless and thei…

Large institution makes mistakes in face of unprecedented crisis, news at 11.

All those standing by the sidelines and criticizing those in the hot seat would no doubt have done a much better job at managing this.

I'm all for learning the lessons (such as the link you posted) but I'm categorically against assigning blame against those that worked their asses off to help mitigate this, as long as the lessons stay learned and we do much better next time.

Obviously not every move deserved the beauty prize but you have to take into account that the WHO does not have the power required to demand that parties follow up on their advice, which makes theirs a highwire act somewhere between medicine and politics. Which means there are bound to be compromises and degrees of supplication that are ultimately not perfect but that at least move the needle (pun intended) in the right direction.

Contrast that with the disinformation barrage that had only one purpose (to destabilize and undermine as much as possible the effort to contain COVID-19). It's pretty easy to criticize, very, very hard to do better.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#303

Post by jakear »

tayo42 wrote: post #278
jakear wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Encouraging people to not get a vaccine we decided is harmful speech. Who is "we"? I sure as hell haven't decided that. The supreme court hasn't either, unlike in the examples you mention. And my only discomfort with your example sprung from its severe lack of adroitness. My prior response could be roughly translated to "try harder".

Why do you think you get to decide what is harmful. What is your credential? Are you an elected policy maker, publish anything about vaccines or virus? Just another shit talker on a message board?

Why do you think you get to decide? Based on the content the Government has allowed you to see. My statement is in line with what a Harvard professor of epidemiology stated^, so that's something. Of course, you wouldn't know about that if you only looked at what the Government said you're allowed to.

^ https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_pr...

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#304

Post by tayo42 »

jakear wrote: post #274
tayo42 wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like you said to me, make a clear point. This is a screen shot without any context. How am I supposed to respond?

The context is in the article, which that image is pulled from. The image itself directly contradicts your claim: "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", as an example of a well thought out, sourced, discussion that was nonetheless prohibited for not aligning with Central Authority's directives. My argum…

Where was the government involved?

> Internal records showed that a bot had flagged the tweet,

Which then was reviewed by some support staff. This is actually all in the article

What you read is misinformation designed to muddy the water and get you riled up by making this look partisan. You and others are falling for it. This article is intentially being emotional like this.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#305

Post by denlekke »

wmf wrote: post #276
notacoward wrote: post #235

It sounds a lot less nefarious when you consider that the "suppressed" views were believed at the time - and not without reason - to be both incorrect and harmful. The passage of time and 20/20 hindsight has revealed that some of the mainstream views were themselves incorrect, but if we're counting the hits for alternatives then we have to count the misses as well. Many claims about methods of transmission, dangers o…

I agree with Twitter's decisions but... where did it get us? Covid denial still exists and now it has a bonus persecution complex due to Twitter's moderation. Clearly debating with crackpots doesn't work but shutting down the debate doesn't work either.

it is easy to point to specific negative outcomes but difficult to measure the harm that was potentially avoided and difficult to weigh a total cost/benefit to these actions. I don't think that I personally feel confident that the outcomes is net bad.

Hopefully some people had better healthcare outcomes because of what twitter showed them and decided not to show them. Hopefully some people stayed on the platform because they felt it was less spammy or full of disinformation (on whichever side/topic).

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#306

Post by groby_b »

a_bonobo wrote: post #280
rqtwteye wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I feel Germany is a slightly different beast as a large part of the anti-vax crowd in Germany seems to recruit itself from left-ish/Green corner of politics, the people who've been anti-Monsanto for decades. It's not a far jump from there to anti-vax (it's all big US companies etc.)

How's that different from the US? Nominally left-leaning yoga moms are a huge part of the antivax moxement. It's the same thing - a lack of understanding, an unwillingness to think critical, a naive belief that "nature good, human-made bad" without any nuance, and the willingness to deify their prophets of "natural healing".

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#307

Post by bobleeswagger »

Overtonwindow wrote: post #288
giardini wrote: post #285

Original title is "How Twitter Rigged the Covid Debate". Why the change from "Rigged" to "Moderated"?

HN moderation, perhaps?

Seems more like it was accounting for the knee-jerk reaction culture we have been building here. With a more aggressive title, the post may have been flagged or downvoted off of first impressions.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#308

Post by refurb »

rajin444 wrote: post #203
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…

> This is a worrisome development. Governments are working with private corporations to promote misinformation and silence real information and you’re worried about…anti vaxxers? I can maybe steel man a utilitarian stance for this position though I’m afraid it’s weak to “surely the lepers won’t eat my face”.

Exactly.

Want to reduce the impact of anti-vax messaging? The government could stop lying and trying to suppress truthful information to start with.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#309

Post by jacquesm »

wmf wrote: post #276
notacoward wrote: post #235

It sounds a lot less nefarious when you consider that the "suppressed" views were believed at the time - and not without reason - to be both incorrect and harmful. The passage of time and 20/20 hindsight has revealed that some of the mainstream views were themselves incorrect, but if we're counting the hits for alternatives then we have to count the misses as well. Many claims about methods of transmission, dangers o…

I agree with Twitter's decisions but... where did it get us? Covid denial still exists and now it has a bonus persecution complex due to Twitter's moderation. Clearly debating with crackpots doesn't work but shutting down the debate doesn't work either.

It's a real problem and there is no solution in sight I'm afraid. Typically it takes some kind of massive crisis to precipitate a change and then less than a century later all of that gain of insight will be lost again so we get to repeat history. 2019 was a re-run of (talk about being on-time) 1918.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#310

Post by fithisux »

rqtwteye wrote: post #217
a_bonobo wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Correct reasoning
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