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How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

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351–360 of 986 posts

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#351

What is the realistic legal recourse for those who were censored from pressure by the US government? Sue the relevant agencies or executive branch? Will anyone even go to prison or lose their job?

probably best to consult a lawyer to determine which laws, if any, were broken and if you have standing to sue

i, a non-lawyer, think you probably have no recourse

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#352

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…

exploiting fears that were constructed by a cutthroat for-profit health system

...have we so soon forgotten the risks and consequences of viral mutation? 2020 and part of 2021 was the world trying to prevent COVID from mutating and following the same trajectory as the 1918 Spanish Flu outbreak.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#353
post #303
post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

I haven't decided anything. Idk where you got that idea from. Why did you pick that specific guy from Harvard and not others? Because its inline with your own bias? How come you aren't listening to others? How come you aren't listening to all of them?

Idk why you all have this idea that policy is being made on twitter. How many local politicians did you talk to?

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#354

The craziness surrounding covid was somewhat predictable Here in the US (and likely other places), you have a pharma industry shoving amphetamines and antidepressants in people's faces. You have a complacent government that's too lazy, corrupt, and incompetent to address this obvious wrong (among many others) So because of this, people already don't trust the pharma industry or govt. Can I blame them? Not really. At…

ADHD meds and antidepressants are one thing, but the opioid epidemic is a scandal responsible for the hollowing out of entire communities. It’s outrageous. In any sane society the Sackler family would be in prison if not worse.

I’m vaccinated and boosted but I don’t know how I’d feel about people asking me to trust the Big Pharma if the life of my sibling or parent was pharmaceutically destroyed.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#355

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.

Twitter as a public platform has a duty to uphold freedom of speech and not censor viewpoints it doesn't like. Amazing that people in a country founded on free speech are trying to defend censorship.

I agree with your second point, but your first one is simply not true.

My hope is that Mastodon, because it is not for-profit, will take up the role of public platform upholding free speech.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#356

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.

Parent wasn't making a legal argument. A bunch of the comments in this thread are about trust. Do you think it's good for trust to have "for profit companies policing their content to attain maximum ad revenue"?

Is maximizing profit the only thing that social networks should care about? Or are there other obligations also?

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#357

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.)

[dead]

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't even tell if this is sarcasm anymore.

if you start with a fundamental premise that CDC and government are 100% unbiased sources of truth, then you’ll believe this story isn’t really a story. america is so polarized that if your party is doing something dirty it’s didnt happen or if it did it’s totally justified.

Didn't this happen primarily during the Trump administration though? At least the previous "Twitter Files" releases concerned a time period when Biden was still just a candidate. Yet I don't think the people supporting Twitter's behavior in this instance view Trump as "your party"...

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe in the US, but not worldwide. When you compare, countries where citizens trusted the government and generally followed the government's plans fared better than countries where individuals fought for their rights to choose what they think was best for them. IMHO Covid demonstrated the importance of trust in the system. When people trust the system, and think of the society as something they need to work together…

If people don't trust a system that raised them, there are inherent flaws with the system that it is either unable or unwilling to address

Just because X is bad doesn’t imply Y isn’t worse
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