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How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

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Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#601

Post by poszlem »

afpx wrote: post #390
hintymad wrote: post #133

I wonder why people believe that CDC must always be right, and therefore any doubt or challenge to CDC’s messages is misinformation that is worth banning. I thought every school in a modern society teaches student not to blindly trust the authority.

When there are literally millions of medical experts recommending taking vaccines, why would you expect most people to do otherwise? We're not all medical experts. And, we can't survive without trusting others.

The problem is not that people "don't trust others". The problem seems to be that some people "trust the wrong people" (according to some "experts").

The biggest problem with the so called "experts" is that they seem to think that they are automatically owned our trust. But there does not seem to be any penalty for getting things wrong (don't mask, mask with cloth mask, mask with n95).

It's also quite interesting that even the ancient people knew about different modes of persuasion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modes_of_persuasion

There was Ethos, Logos, and Pathos. The appeal to authority, to emotions, and to the logical truth of the claim. You need all of them to convince someone to something. Somehow modern experts think that the only thing they need is Ethos and enough legal might to enforce compliance.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#602

Post by 4bpp »

iamacyborg wrote: post #563
shaky-carrousel wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why fall into conspiracies when the pragmatic answer is the more logical one?

What is the pragmatic and non-conspiracy answer you are imagining? As I understand it, a group of people coordinating in secret to take actions that the public would not let them take if the secrecy were broken is pretty much the definition of a conspiracy.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#603

Post by ethbr0 »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #550
autoexec wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Again, a crap situation, but one that the CDC wasn't responsible for. They simply messed up. All they had to do was say nothing and reach out to the manufacturers making N95 masks and their retailers. Just going to Walmart and Amazon and getting them to pull their stock would have prevented the vast majority of people from getting their hands on them. A non-trivial number of Americans at the time had already been w…

The better question is: Knowing we've had a respiratory pandemic in the recent past, and knowing another would happen eventually, why were we so unprepared? And who - naming names - is responsible for that? Why isn't this being asked and discussed?

My understanding is that N95 masks have a shelf life (2-5 years?), so stock would need to be regularly repurchased.

The bigger issue is the sheer cost of preparation against an exponentially-reproducing threat.

All other disasters can be prepared for with state of the art gear because they are, by nature, limited. Ergo, a limit amount of gear can be rapidly transported to location and will suffice.

In contrast, a pandemic requires "multiple for every single person" levels of stock. Which is outside most capitalist supply bounds (i.e. no one can even produce that much stock).

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#604

Post by ModernMech »

finikytou wrote: post #545
zimpenfish wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that paper is specifically not about COVID-19 - "it is reasonable to suggest a human Coronavirus HCoV-OC43 as a surrogate for SARS-CoV-2" - and is only tested in-vitro - "For each irradiation experiment 50 μl of virus suspension [...] was placed in each well of a black 24-well plate". It might encourage people to give grant money for further research but it is 100% not evidence for the efficacy of "sticking a UV…

yes it is not evidence and I don't think trump's tone was 100% sure of it. he just asked if there might be a way. that doesn't totally sounds dumb to look at it according to prior research.

But according to Trump he wasn’t actually asking, he was being sarcastic.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#605

Post by [deleted] »

ethanbond wrote: post #600
kevinmrose wrote: post #599

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't it have just been easier to explain it than to lie to the public and then continue to deny and defend the lying after it's already been exposed?

What lying? CDC et al never said masks don’t work. I don’t know how many times I need to repeat this.

[deleted]

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#606

Post by sampo »

philjohn wrote: post #512
shaky-carrousel wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Because large groups of people have shown, time and again, they don't act rationally. Look at toilet paper - one rumour that it would run out, despite shops, the government, everyone, saying there is more than enough and the rabble went out and hoarded.

> Look at toilet paper

So you are saying, the authorities should have send out a public messaging: "Don't buy toilet paper, toilet paper doesn't work", and that would have solved the situation?

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#607

Post by notacoward »

chitowneats wrote: post #338
Zpalmtree wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you keep getting the facts wrong in hindsight, maybe you should be more open to considering other opinions instead of censoring them

At the very least, GP, consider that you are not an epidemiologist or an MD, and that Twitter should not have censored such qualified individuals with unreliable and inconsistent "AI". At Twitter, this technology was trained to parrot the U.S. CDC, over the legitimate objections and disagreements from their counterparts in the EU and WHO. As well as many others.

[flagged]

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#608

Post by bluescrn »

jacquesm wrote: post #439
nullish_signal wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dream of a United States with 0 Ads for Prescription Medicine, and the end of "Ask your Doctor about [Brand]"

Oh no, but what about free speech? /s

"But it's not real censorship unless it's the government doing it! Corporations and institutions can ban/deplatform whoever they want!"

(Well, at least until an 'evil conservative' controls a significant platform, it seems...)

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#609

Post by philliphaydon »

ethbr0 wrote: post #603
chiefalchemist wrote: post #550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The better question is: Knowing we've had a respiratory pandemic in the recent past, and knowing another would happen eventually, why were we so unprepared? And who - naming names - is responsible for that? Why isn't this being asked and discussed?

My understanding is that N95 masks have a shelf life (2-5 years?), so stock would need to be regularly repurchased. The bigger issue is the sheer cost of preparation against an exponentially-reproducing threat. All other disasters can be prepared for with state of the art gear because they are, by nature, limited. Ergo, a limit amount of gear can be rapidly transported to location and will suffice. In contrast, a pan…

Just do stock rotation. Bring stock in, release old stock to hospitals and such where it will be used right away.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#610

Post by concordDance »

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…

> not the times the US president did things like suggest to the public, on live national tv, that consuming bleach could cure Covid.

That's not what he did: https://eu.statesman.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/...

"A question that probably some of you are thinking of if you’re totally into that world, which I find to be very interesting. So, supposedly we hit the body with a tremendous, whether it’s ultraviolet or just very powerful light, and I think you said that hasn’t been checked, but you’re going to test it. And then I said supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way. (To Bryan) And I think you said you’re going to test that, too. Sounds interesting, right?"

He continued.

"And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning, because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it’d be interesting to check that, so that you’re going to have to use medical doctors with, but it sounds interesting to me. So, we’ll see, but the whole concept of the light, the way it kills it in one minute. That’s pretty powerful."

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