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How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

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Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#461

Post by Nursie »

jakear wrote: post #52
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 As told in my Middle Eastern history class, "it's reasonable to be a conspiracy theorist when you've been the subject of countless governments conspiring against you and/or your people -- in fact it would be unreasonable not to be one". Iranians who claimed the US Government had orchestrated their elections were dismissed as conspiracy theorists, then 47 years later the US said "oh yea…

I love how conspiracy-theorists self-congratulate on things that totally haven’t happened. There’s been no “oh yeah we totally did that” about vaccine safety, lockdowns, covid severity or much else, yet here you are claiming to have been right all along in some nebulous way.

It’s very funny to watch.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#463

Post by cscurmudgeon »

arcticbull wrote: post #429
bgro wrote: post #424

There’s apparently a lot of people upset about Twitter for trying to manage misinformation. I’d like to see equal information leaked from Fox for comparison, who should have journalistic integrity since they’re a news company. It seems weird to me that Twitter is the only one people seem to be up in arms about, and not the times the US president did things like suggest to the public, on live national tv, that consumi…

He also suggested UV lights applied from the inside of the human body could cure COVID. It remains unclear which orifice was recommended, but one was heavily implied. [1] What a weird time that was. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KG0ciGfJ1xY

You do know that this is a line of research right?

https://www.cedars-sinai.org/newsroom/reduced-viral-loads-se...

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2020-05-01/cedars-sin...

It is easy being smugly wrong.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#464

Post by [deleted] »

jacquesm wrote: post #437
arcticbull wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Thing is, there wasn't that much of it before the CDC spent over a month spewing bullshit telling people not to wear masks because masks don't stop the spread of COVID. They made it clear after the fact that this was done because there wasn't an adequate supply of masks for 330M people, and they needed to secure a supply for first responders. The job of the government is to make tough decisions like this in times o…

An important consideration that I have not seen mentioned yet is that masks have a 'best before date', this is because they are infused with a static charge that aims to attract particles to the mask material and this charge doesn't last forever. You can 'recharge' masks but that's a lot of work and usually not in the normal path for such supplies. So stockpiles that were present were not going to be effective agains…

[deleted]

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#465

Post by arcticbull »

cscurmudgeon wrote: post #456
arcticbull wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely different, sorry, and a wildly disingenuous comparison. There was no public health crisis at the time that required this, let alone to run it for 40 years. Let's keep to intellectually honest discourse and avoid hyperbole shall we? This is a contentious enough topic as is.

> wildly disingenuous comparison No, it is not. The parallels are there so strikingly.

The only similarity is an authority figure said something untrue. By that measure the NORAD Santa tracker is "like Tuskegee."

Shades of grey exist and context matters. The world is not black and white and that isn't comfortable. However the point of delegating authority is to make difficult decisions with imperfect information in challenging circumstances that don't make sense at an individual level.

Not to mention the commenter who even made that comparison seems to have no idea what Tuskegee was actually known for (as they make no mention of the racial animus inherent in the 'study' if you can even call it that). It's wild to me that someone would make that comparison with the benefit of Wikipedia in this the year of our lord 2022.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#466

Post by PartiallyTyped »

PartiallyTyped wrote: post #140
_-____-_ wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's such a hard tradeoff then maybe don't make the trade in the first place. Just don't censor speech. Problem solved. Insisting on censoring speech in this case is what's known as a Hegelian dialectic: there is a problem, we need to solve the problem, here's how we solve the problem.

[flagged]

To the people who downvote this, care to point what your issue is besides your fee-fees getting hurt by somebody on the internet who explained why your opinion of how social media should run is juvenile?

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#468

Post by causi »

arcticbull wrote: post #448
causi wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it was lying. Yes it was false information. No, that's not outside the scope of their role at times. Lying to people about their personal health for the greater good of society gets you the Tuskegee Experiment.

Completely different, sorry, and a wildly disingenuous comparison. There was no public health crisis at the time that required this, let alone to run it for 40 years. Let's keep to intellectually honest discourse and avoid hyperbole shall we? This is a contentious enough topic as is.

Both were public health officials lying to citizens about the effectiveness of particular actions in protecting their own health. The Tuskegee Experiment directly damaged the health of 458 people and killed 128 of them. The CDC lying about masks put the health of 330 million people at risk and killed...who knows? Maybe it saved more than it killed, but it did kill people.

And that's the thing. The CDC didn't come out and say "we lied to you but the ends justified the means; killing some of you was worth saving more of you". They just tried to pretend it never happened, or alternatively that nobody could possibly have any idea that face masks could help you not infect your neighbors.

Primum non nocere

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#469

Post by cudgy »

andreyk wrote: post #400
paganel wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it shows that the government leaned on Twitter to do what it wanted but not able to mandate it, Why does a government has to "lean" on a private media company in a "democrat" and "liberal" democracy? Not able to "mandate" is total bs, see the Pentagon-related leaks where there wasn't any need of any "mandating". If anything, this shows how hypocritical the whole industry has become, including many of its workers. H…

"Why does a government has to "lean" on a private media company in a "democrat" and "liberal" democracy?" There are people within the government whose job it was to respond to the covid pandemic. Part of that response involved educating the public about the disease and best practices related to it, which therefore included fighting misinformation. Misinformation is spread on platforms such as Twitter, so it made sens…

> … which therefore included fighting misinformation.

I fail to see how this conclusion is automatic or helpful in action. Educating people and providing best practices is harmed by taking direct action to shut down criticism and debate.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#470

Post by andy_ppp »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #450
andy_ppp wrote: post #441

That we’re still debating this stuff is ridiculous, everyone seems to be trying to create a narrative out of actions performed with good intentions and imperfect information. I think Twitter and the press had an almost impossible job attempting to manage public health messaging. There does not need to be a red vs blue debate on this as if it’s some religious war. The way it’s debated verges on conspiracy theory to me…

Right or wrong, you've completely missed the point. Some people felt it wasn't worth the slightest bit of sacrifice to save other's lives. Some people felt all human life was sacred and we should've done everything possible to save every last day of every person's life. The vast majority of people were in the messy middle, and the debate centered around how much we should give up to save lives - especially when it mi…

The debate of a toddler frustrated at having a seatbelt put on in a car.
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