Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

thefp.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

501–510 of 986 posts

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#501

Post by jdthedisciple »

insanitybit wrote: post #374
cf141q5325 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It only starts to become a problem if you cant explain why its wrong. Having parts of your worldview that you told yourself are not up for verification is exactly how being wrong looks like from the perspective of somebody who is. And once you no longer have a means of verifying reality, you have no way to comprehend what you actually ignore and what the consequences are. You just blinded yourself because you felt sm…

Or the moon isn't made out of cheese and if someone tries to tell you that it is you should walk away, not spend time trying to argue with them. No one owes explanations for the obvious.

Obviously you didn't understand parent comment.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#502

Post by shaky-carrousel »

arcticbull wrote: post #445
stormking wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. That's still lying. They gave you, the individual, false information, and not for your own good. Quite the contrary, that misinformation would actually harm you if you believed it. Do you really not see how destructive this was? Do you really…

> That's still lying. They gave you, the individual, false information, ... Yes it was lying. Yes it was false information. No, that's not outside the scope of their role at times. > ... and not for your own good. Quite the contrary, that misinformation would actually harm you if you believed it. No, it was for the individual good. Hoarding of masks by randos in the middle of nowhere leading to no supply for the firs…

What about telling people the truth, that there were no masks for everyone and they had to prioritize first responders? Treat people like adults and they will behave like adults. Treat them like kids and they'll behave like kids.

Also, once you know you have been lied to, the trust is shattered, whatever the excuses. How people is going to trust again the CDC, knowing that it lied before?

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#503

Post by chefkoch »

ilyt wrote: post #488
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…

> 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 of crisis. You can agree or disagree but this was neither malicious nor in my opinion outside the scope of the role. I feel like just outright telling people "hey, we don…

Sure, that would have worked.

People were fighting each other over toilet paper.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#504

Post by shaky-carrousel »

stormking wrote: post #444
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…

> 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. That's still lying. They gave you, the individual, false information, and not for your own good. Quite the contrary, that misinformation would actually harm you if you believed it. Do you really not see how destructive this was? Do you really…

They did the same in Spain. And it is very very hard not to fall for conspiracy theories when essentially all the west governments simultaneously lied about the face masks effectiveness.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#505

Post by finikytou »

jamiek88 wrote: post #485
thinking4real wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“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.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S101113442...

thats ok. you can lie and twist the reality but it won't work with people who can read or listen.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#506

Post by jakear »

Nursie wrote: post #461
jakear wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

[flagged]

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#507

Post by Nursie »

mns wrote: post #411
ryandrake wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Well, most of the measures in most of the European countries were ruled as unconstitutional: locked into our houses not being allowed to get out, curfews afterwards at night and so on (and of course all these rules were set in place by politicians that never respected any of them - and worse, a lot of them made money by importing and selling back to the state masks and other PPE equipment). Most of the people, even i…

“Unconstitutional” in which countries and by what constitution?

I learned that a lot of people think contrarianism makes them smart, and that even if everything everyone was saying about covid was true, they felt it necessary to ‘resist’ purely for the sake of it.

I never though that in a pandemic, so many people in so many places would both politicise public health measures and actively side with the virus. But here we are.

Trust has indeed been lost, but it might not be where you think.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#508

Post by tux2bsd »

harryf wrote: post #452
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…

> That we’re still debating this stuff is ridiculous That people are still using “move along nothing to see here” is ridiculous. The world just went through an event of a historical significance comparable to a World War. And there are still new books, movies and documentaries being made about World War 1 and 2… There are a lot more questions to be asked and lessons to be learned about how COVID was handled. For exam…

[flagged]

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#509

Post by int_19h »

RockyMcNuts wrote: post #37
refurb wrote: post #7

Great article to read if you want to know how the "sausage was made" at Twitter. I think most people knew it was an absolute dumpster fire, but it's even worse than that. As expected, the folks doing the policing of "disinformation" were entirely unqualified for the role (I love the banning of the Harvard School of Medicine epidemiologist who said "vaccines are for people at risk" - apparently the folks at Twitter kn…

it's a hard tradeoff between false positives and false negatives. it's like being a soccer referee or a judge, you can be almost perfect but the screwups are all anyone remembers. short of putting everyone away for life, some convict is going to get out and do something, and some tabloid is going to question why this person was on the street. You do the best you can subject to the Constitution, the laws, and common s…

Speaking of making everything worse...

I'm far left politically. I found COVID very concerning, I'm fully vaccinated, and I still wear a mask indoors.

And yet, after seeing some of the tweets that were labelled as "misleading", I believe that the way the govt and Twitter moderators handled this was a disaster that makes me extremely unlikely to trust anything that either will have to say on any contentious topics in the future.

And if I'm not the only one, what do you think this lack of trust will do to "civilized society and democracy"?

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#510

Post by finikytou »

zimpenfish wrote: post #476
cscurmudgeon wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't know why people did make fun of him suggesting using UV. CNNing of the mind works well in the distopia that has became the western world.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S101113442...

Post reply on HN