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How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

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Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#471

Post by ajvs »

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…

> Misinformation is spread on platforms such as Twitter, so it made sense for the government to communicate with Twitter and let them know what it considered to be a good course of action

This part I disagree with, because what is misinformation is unknownable before serious scientific study is done. It just makes the government look untrustworthy if they flip-flop from "masks are pointless" to "masks are essential" and back simply all because these policies were not based on any real science.

Similarly debate of other aspects like COVID origin, vaccine health effects etc was stifled when the real answers were unknown to science, and by steering the conversation in any particular direction before that it's done irreparable harm to the reputation of government, science and tech.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#472

Post by bagels »

cscurmudgeon wrote: post #460
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…

You do see the difference between Fox and Twitter right? One is an open platform that is supposedly neutral and “follows the Science” and the other is media company that doesn’t pretend to be neutral.

"fair and balanced"

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#473

Post by thinking4real »

twblalock wrote: post #405
andreyk wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nowhere in this piece is the FBI mentioned... And it's fine to make an argument against moderation in general. But that's not what this article is doing.

The FBI comes up in plenty of the other Twitter censorship stories. Covid is not a one-off, and this article exists in that broader context, or it would not be interesting. It was part of a sustained, illiberal, counterproductive, and overall pretty stupid pattern of behavior from both the government and Twitter.

[flagged]

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#474

Post by ravel-bar-foo »

creato wrote: post #361
matheusmoreira wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1 in 10^7 chance I'm not sure I believe that. > The public isn't educated well enough to ascertain the difference. The public may be uneducated but they're still equipped with brains capable of pattern recognition. In my country, the public saw young famous people "mysteriously" dying of heart attacks and strokes immediately after getting vaccinated, in some cases not long after tweeting some insults at skeptics. P…

You’re suffering from confirmation bias just as much as /r/HermanCainAward. There are 8 billion people in the world, there will be plenty of examples of any theory you can come up with.

In my country the vaccination was by prescription. People who wanted to be vaccinated would sit down for 3 minutes with a doctor who would tell them their probability of complications if they got Covid vs adverse events if they got the vaccine, given their sex and age bracket. (Well, not much was known for the first shot, but by the second shot side effects were well known.) Then if they consented they would be administered the vaccine. 80% of the population consented. This is how you do responsible public health communication.

As an aside, naming phenomena after priests / politicians like that can't possibly be productive. It's telling the outgroup (people who admire Cain) that they are worthy of contempt instead of addressing their object level concerns and misunderstandings.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#475

Post by sangnoir »

jacquesm wrote: post #416
WillPostForFood wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>which makes theirs a highwire act somewhere between medicine and politics. Welp, that's probably not what people thought about the WHO before Covid, and certainly justifies the decline in trust. Maybe they could rebrand as World Health And Politics Organization.

> Welp, that's probably not what people thought about the WHO before Covid That would be hopelessly naive then. We do not have a 'world government', every government has complete autonomy on how they deal with healthcare issues, something that I believed to be well known. That's why each government has their own ministry of health and their own way of dealing with health insurance, budgets and so on. The degree to wh…

It's ironic that people who are nominally against the existence of a world government were demanding that the WHO act as if it's part of one: the WHO doesn't have an army or a police force. Do folk think a hostile showdown between WHO and a Great Power host country will result in anything besides deportation or the arrest of WHO envoys at point of entry?

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#476

Post by zimpenfish »

cscurmudgeon wrote: post #463
arcticbull wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The first link says (my emphasis):

> The investigators emphasized the preliminary nature of their research, noting that they did not demonstrate a causal link between the improvement in patient conditions and the reduced viral loads.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#477

Post by thinking4real »

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…

“the times the US president did things like suggest to the public, on live national tv, that consuming bleach could cure Covid.”

This is a lie and you should not be propagating it in the current year. It’s honestly embarrassing you can’t do primary research at all and still talk with authority.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#478

Post by thinking4real »

type-r wrote: post #431
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…

Just to be absolutely clear -- you're claiming that nobody had any problem with Trump? Not sure what media you consume if so.

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Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#479

Post by EdwardDiego »

lamontcg wrote: post #389
EdwardDiego wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're also caused by Covid infection. Which makes sense, if the spike proteins produced by the vaccine cause these issues, then so do the spike proteins produced by the virus.

That logic is most likely simple, elegant and wrong.

Welp, I'm open to clarification.

Given both the vaccine and the virus can cause myocarditis or pericarditis, and given that the only thing they have in common is the spike protein, I'm curious as to where you think I went wrong.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#480

Post by zimpenfish »

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…

> the comparably more open UK.

To counter that, the UK is almost certainly much more governmentally corrupt and incompetent than Germany which lead to most of the issues dealing with the pandemic.

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