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How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

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Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#621

Post by lettergram »

causi wrote: post #423
andreyk wrote: post #377

OK, so here's the key bit: "Twitter executives did not fully capitulate to the Biden team’s wishes. An extensive review of internal communications at the company revealed that employees often debated moderation cases in great detail, and with more care for free speech than was shown by the government. ... But Twitter did suppress views—and not just those of journalists like Berenson. Many medical and public health pr…

There WAS a LOT of misinformation about covid, and a lot of it could cause real harm. Quite true. 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. It was obvious to everyone and their dog that masks help stop the spread of respiratory infections. That irrevocably shattered a whole lot of people's fa…

> It was obvious to everyone and their dog that masks help stop the spread of respiratory infections.

All studies done at scale, in peer reviewed journals before and since the pandemic have shown that not to be the case. N95s work, if used properly, that’s it.

If you work / have worked with people in biosafety labs they’ll tell you. What we did during the pandemic was effectively role play. Cloth masks, surgical masks, kN95s, all do approximately nothing. Only thing you could maybe argue is people avoided each other a bit more and spit didn’t travel… but the virus was airborne and that was considered highly likely even in Jan 2020.

Fauci’s FOIA requested private emails cover a lot of this; as does many many of the top epidemiologist (who were censored).

*Addendum*: It’s the same with the companies, CDC and FDA who suppressed ivermectin research

https://twitter.com/rwmalonemd/status/1607710183022628864

IMO the real reason they claimed “masks didn’t work”, “alternative drugs don’t work”, etc is because they needed the EUA. The companies producing the vaccines lobbied to get everything else suppressed so they could role out mRNA tech. That tech will allow them to offer pretty much any genetic therapy. Government had every incentive as well, more centralization and no liability. Pushing alternatives would pose more risks, with no upside.

Imo this was inevitable. It was only preventable with an open market of ideas, which Twitter, Facebook and others suppressed.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#622

Post by sampo »

kevinmrose wrote: post #587
ethanbond wrote: post #573

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah see people say all this but the actual example they use is a thing that didn’t happen. The nuanced, correct message was that we don’t know if masks work. That’s what they said. What you heard was “masks don’t work.” So what we actually learned is that people are not capable of receiving nuanced messages, at least among the people who are pissed off about not having received a nuanced message (which they did).

So they still don't know if masks work? Can we get a concrete answer on this at some point? It seems like this type of back and forth messaging is the problem. Maybe we should all apologize to people who questioned the need to wear masks if we still don't know whether or not they're effective.

> So they still don't know if masks work?

It took decades to get medical doctors to start washing their hands [1]. It took decades to get people to use seat belts in cars [2]. It took decades to accept that tobacco smoking causes lung cancer [3].

Masks work [4], but it will take decades before this is accepted through the chain of command in the medical profession, and not only by front line science.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis#Conflict_with...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seat_belt#History

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_effects_of_tobacco#Hist...

[4] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/masks-are-a-prove...

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#623

Post by denton-scratch »

autoexec wrote: post #529
philjohn wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The solution to the toilet paper problem wasn't lying to everyone by telling them that toilet paper was ineffective at removing shit from our asses. It was ultimately handled at the retail end where stores limited the number that people could buy and/or held back inventory. Masks could have been handled in the same way: from the manufacturer/retailer end. Masks could have been pulled off shelves and diverted to healt…

> removing shit from our asses.

Get a bidet, and buy a newspaper (no need to read it; it's already covered in shit).

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#624

Post by SkipperCat »

maskil wrote: post #583
SkipperCat wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Twitter is by far and away the #1 place to exchange and debate ideas. It is critical that speech on it remains free.

I'd flip that around and say that it is critical that we ensure Twitter is not the #1 place to exchange and debate ideas.

There should not be a single, privately owned town square. There should be thousands of town squares where people can go and engage. Some should be public and some should be private. Placing all our free speech eggs in the Twitter basket will not end up well.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#625

Post by denton-scratch »

sampo wrote: post #606
philjohn wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Toilet paper doesn't work. It just moves the shit around. Wash your sphincter with water.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#626

Post by darkerside »

arcticbull wrote: post #432
causi wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There WAS a LOT of misinformation about covid, and a lot of it could cause real harm. Quite true. 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. It was obvious to everyone and their dog that masks help stop the spread of respiratory infections. That irrevocably shattered a whole lot of people's fa…

> 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.

I hear this a lot. Do you have a citation?

My impression is that nobody knew what was going on, underprepared officials jumped the gun with premature statements, and after the fact some people tried to rationalize the incompetence.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#627

Post by ethanbond »

phpisthebest wrote: post #612
ethanbond wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This whole part of the narrative is, unfortunately, a story about how people cannot be delivered nuanced messages even while screaming that they deserve nuance. The CDC did not say that makes do not work. They said we do not know if masks work, which was (and mostly still remains) true. Only person who said we have positive knowledge that masks don’t work was USSG Jerome Adams, and that was pretty late in the ordeal.

Nice revisionist history, but the CDC and other government actors where absolutely telling people not to use masks, buy masks and were in fact confiscating privately owned masks from people early in the pandemic.

Correct, they were telling people not to buy masks due to a shortage which is a different claim from “masks don’t work.”

Could it possibly be the case that these statements are all true?:

1) We don’t know if masks donned by untrained people in normal public settings impacts transmission

2) We do know that masks donned by medical professionals in a medical context impacts transmission

3) We know there are not enough masks available for both the general population and medical professionals

And if those three statements are all true, couldn’t it make sense to arrive at the position: the public should not get masks until medical professionals are equipped with what they need?

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#628

Post by philliphaydon »

ethbr0 wrote: post #614
philliphaydon wrote: post #609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Think in quantities. Hospitals in normal times don't consume the number of masks you'd need to stockpile for a pandemic situation.

Possibly. But either stockpile or product them locally so production can be ramped up for local populous in the time of a pandemic. And make sending masks overseas illegal.

Too many people were buying up shops of marks and sending them back to China. That hurts us even more.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#629

Post by Scoundreller »

ethbr0 wrote: post #614
philliphaydon wrote: post #609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Think in quantities. Hospitals in normal times don't consume the number of masks you'd need to stockpile for a pandemic situation.

At least where I am (Canada) hospitals all buy through a couple of “buying groups”, so it’s not a bad way to get rid of lots of stock quickly.

N95s are used in many industries, and it’s a liquid market. Not hard to call up a big industrial distributor and say “hey, we have these masks that expire in 1yr, want to have a sale?”

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#630

Post by sampo »

ethanbond wrote: post #591
kevinmrose wrote: post #587

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So they still don't know if masks work? Can we get a concrete answer on this at some point? It seems like this type of back and forth messaging is the problem. Maybe we should all apologize to people who questioned the need to wear masks if we still don't know whether or not they're effective.

Correct, we still do not really know whether masks at a population level tend to reduce transmission. A big, big part of the problem is that it’s very hard to know how many people are wearing masks, how consistently, whether they change their behavior when they do, etc etc. What we probably know is that if 100% of the population wore masks 100% correctly 100% of the time and kept 100% of their prior behavior, it woul…

> we still do not really know whether masks at a population level tend to reduce transmission

We don't know this about condoms, either.

https://jech.bmj.com/content/65/2/100

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