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How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

thefp.com

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Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#691

Post by mindslight »

twblalock wrote: post #62

This is what we get when we expect corporations to police speech, and when governments pressure them to do it. We really would be better off with no censorship. Even allowing obvious conspiracy theories and fake news is better than trying to police the truth and getting it wrong. When moderators get it wrong even one time they lose trust forever and give the conspiracy theorists even more ammo — in some cases by maki…

Free speech on centralized platforms is a pipe dream. Every company always has motivations to censor including legal, financial, personal, practical usability, etc.

Just because the ticket has finally come in for censorship that offends your sensibilities, does not change the fact that this dynamic has existed for the past two decades. The pot has been slowly boiling, and you are now realizing it. Good - jump out!

The only way out of this is decentralized platforms running on Free software, period.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#692

Post by gilbetron »

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 can see what you are saying, but personally the longest lasting legacy for me was a deepening of my distrust of about one third of humanity that will drag us kicking and screaming into the void if given power. The anti-vaxxers, the anti-maskers, the ivermectin cult, the toilet paper hoarders, and all the others that have no idea how science works in its stumbling manner.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#693

Post by brigandish »

acdha wrote: post #574
brigandish wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the complaints about moderation didn’t feature such sympathetic cases rather than the usual suspects Jay Battacharya[1][2] of the Great Barrington Declaration fame - is he a usual case? From [3]: > In October 2020, Collins criticized the Great Barrington Declaration's "focused protection" herd immunity strategy, calling it "a fringe component of epidemiology. This is not mainstream science. It's dangerous. It fits…

He’s a common one and it’s worth remembering that despite lying about the severity of the disease and pushing myths about herd immunity, he was never deplatformed. Twitter chose not to have their company amplify his voice but his followers and organic discovery were unaffected.

> He’s a common one

How did he get into the "usual suspects" box?

> it’s worth remembering that despite lying about the severity of the disease

He wasn't just wrong or mistaken (if he was) or providing a different view, he was lying. That must be how he got into that box. I presume you have some sort of evidence, given such a bold claim?

> pushing myths about herd immunity

Would you care to give an example of that too? As I understand it, he was pushing the conventional line, conventional up until this pandemic, at least.

> Twitter chose not to have their company amplify his voice but his followers and organic discovery were unaffected.

That isn't true. From [1]:

> Actually, it’s a set of tools that include locking users out of searches and preventing some users’ tweets from trending—which is how countless other users discover what’s popular or being talked about on Twitter.

> “We control visibility quite a bit. And we control the amplification of your content quite a bit. And normal people do not know how much we do,” one Twitter employee told us. Two additional Twitter employees confirmed this.

and from the Unherd interview I provided above:

> What I understand is that my Twitter messages can reach people who directly follow me. But they have no chance of being put on a broader visibility setting, so that people who don’t follow me would see my messages.

That means "organic discovery" is severely limited. I wonder if you would consider a hellban to be deplatforming or not.

[1] https://www.thefp.com/p/twitters-secret-blacklists

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#694

Post by gilbetron »

tantalor wrote: post #195
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.

big government + big pharma got us a vaccine fast

Some people see things very differently than I do, is what I realized - I thought science, tech, pharma, and government did brilliantly (after a slow start because of ... reasons), and I was amazed at the mind-numbingly massive delivery of the mRNA vaccines (and all the others).

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#695

Post by tristor »

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…

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

“Shelf-life” on non-perishable goods is highly conservative and often regulated by profit motive. Millions of N95 and P95 respirators were destroyed shortly before the pandemic due to “shelf life” and yet would have been a god send compared to having nothing or treating active COVID cases with a t-shirt or bandana over your face as happened in many US hospitals.

Proper planning could have rotated stock to maintain shelf life, slightly less proper planning could have realized the sheer stupidity of destroying working strategic materials due to an arbitrary and made up number.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#696

Post by [deleted] »

yehosef wrote: post #650
wonderwonder wrote: post #642

Main thing this article seems to illustrate is that the federal government was blatantly violating the 1st amendment to silence viewpoints counter to it's own. I really don't care what a private platform does, the actions of the government far outweigh anything Twitter did in this case.

but it was a "noble lie" for the interest of the public. I think those are allowed.

[deleted]

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#697

Post by indoclay »

yehosef wrote: post #650
wonderwonder wrote: post #642

Main thing this article seems to illustrate is that the federal government was blatantly violating the 1st amendment to silence viewpoints counter to it's own. I really don't care what a private platform does, the actions of the government far outweigh anything Twitter did in this case.

but it was a "noble lie" for the interest of the public. I think those are allowed.

What makes it noble and who gets to decide when the interest of the public good is sufficient to suspend the rights of the citizenry? If it is to be believed that most people lack the intelligence to behave in ways that are in their own and society’s best interest then what is the point of democracy? What other rights are we willing to suspend for the interest of the public? Even if it is justified in this instance, what else could the precedent be used for?

This subversion of rights and erosion of trust with government actors directly pushing for censorship, no matter what the intentions, will cast doubt on the system as a whole and any purpose it might have in the short term is far outweighed by the damage it causes in the long term.

I highly recommend reading the Constitution of the People's Republic of China, specifically articles 51 through 55.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#698

Post by wonderwonder »

samhuk wrote: post #684
yehosef wrote: post #650

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but it was a "noble lie" for the interest of the public. I think those are allowed.

Candidate for worst take in 2022? Could you elaborate into what is noble about censoring the discussion about the safety of covid-related mitigations by official, recognised scientists?

I think he is being sarcastic. I think...

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#699

Post by steeve »

poszlem wrote: post #597
steeve wrote: post #575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think saying "vaccines cause cancer" is fair game then? Where do you draw the line?

What do you mean by fair game? Is that true? Probably not. Should people be censored and prevented from talking about that? Absolutely fecking not. We have enough examples of medical misinformation coming from the most reputable sources to doubt their ability to impartially make decisions about what should and shouldn't be "fair game".

So we should not prevent people from talking about the fire in the crowded theater is what you’re saying?

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#700

Post by Klinky »

ajvs wrote: post #471
andreyk wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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"…

Com'on, someone linking to a poorly done study claiming it proves "drug x cures COVID" isn't misinformation? Someone posting about 5G or Bill Gates being the source of the infection isn't misinformation? Someone going on some racist tirade about Chinese people isn't misinformed hate speech? You think we should just allow every crackpot theory or idea until scientifically proven inaccurate? Plenty of people were trying to steer the conversation in specific directions with little regard for the scientific accuracy of what they were stating.
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