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.
Social media companies try to portray themselves legally as platforms in order to eliminate legal liability for the content that users post on their platform.
How Twitter moderated the Covid debate
751–760 of 986 posts
Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate
#752OK, 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…
> But Twitter did suppress views—and not just those of journalists like Berenson. Many medical and public health professionals who expressed perspectives or even cited findings from accredited academic journals that conflicted with official positions were also targeted. ... There were three serious problems with Twitter’s process [bots, contractors, and biased decision making by top level execs]". ---- These debates…
>>strong legal team that helps respond to these requests. So naturally Elon gutted that team too
Seems like a large percentage of that team was former employees of the government, former FBI agents, former DOJ, etc. or have close familial ties to active government agents
If that is who you hire to "push" back against the government then you are not going to get much push back, it seems to me (and many others) Twitter was not forming teams to resist government influence but to deepen it.
I think gutting the teams was the correct move
Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate
#753Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yep, already mentioned that USSG said that. Note that he never comes up in these discussions as someone who lied though. No one I know seemed to even note what he said. Everyone seems (correctly) more fixated on CDC/NIH which were dominating the public messaging.
It's hard to read the nuance in official messaging when the unofficial messaging has none. Welcome to the Mandela effect.
"The officials are bad/idiots/corrupt/evil because I didn't get nuanced messaging"
You did get nuanced messaging
"Yeah well... Mandela effect!"
Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate
#754Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, definitely citing an arstechnica piece citing a lawsuit's claims by very credible inmates is the winning argument.
Notably, the article doesn't say that he did lose his license, or that that is even a possible outcome. Also, I would like to point out that prisoners in the land of the free are still humans.
Why point that out? Seems like a non sequitur.
Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate
#755Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well we can disagree on the ethics for sure. Legally, of course consumers do not have the right to acquire any product they want on the market and of course the government does have the ability to seize most anything for the national interest. Both of these powers are well established and have been used throughout history both for good things and bad things. Regarding Fauci, are you pointing to his March 8 2020 commu…
>>Well we can disagree on the ethics for sure From your comments you clearly on the camp of supporting government tyranny, I bet you fully supported lock-downs, mandated masking, mandated vaccinations as well? let me ask then, are there any limits on government at all in your worldview or can the government exclaim "national emergency" and wipe away any an all limits to their authority? >>the government does have the…
There are a lot of limits on government powers! You can find them in the Constitution and the last 200 years of case law, and of course you're free to challenge any of those powers even today.
"The government has the ability to seize most anything" == there are not classes of items the government cannot seize. Rather there are circumstances under which they can and circumstances under which they cannot. I suspect the reason you're not seeing much adjudication about these circumstances (medical supplies during a pandemic) is that it's not that controversial an application in legal circles.
Ah yes the vague "that thing I remember that I cannot point to."
Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate
#756I wonder how many of the "my kids and I are masking forever" crowd is due to the Twitter echo chamber. If anything contradicting the most dire of COVID effects is stifled then it's no surprise that some of the population became extreme. Their beliefs are even now reinforced by the Twitter/ social media echo chamber of the people they follow. It's sad and I feel for these people and especially for their kids
Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate
#757Earlier quoted context omitted.
“The” source? Assuming you were alive and paying any attention the past two years, the source would be your own eyes and ears, consuming the (US) CDC’s official communications. I wasn’t even in the US and encountered them! In fact, I once even repeated one of their false claims about masks very early last year during a recorded zoom call with a friend. Then after looking at the very different claims from my local CDC…
I think so much of the messaging would have been better if there were disclaimers about “we are still doing research” and “based on our knowledge at this time”… or even timeboxing the advice so it’s updated every 12-48 hours even if unchanged. This specific messaging has been a rallying point for people who don’t even believe covid exists. At least that was the case in the US
In most cases it was. But the 15 seconds that would get distilled down for the short cable news attention spans didn't usually include it.
Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate
#758Earlier quoted context omitted.
"CDC spent over a month spewing bullshit telling people not to wear masks because masks don't stop the spread of COVID." Can you provide the source for this?
Late Feb 2020 until early April 2020 https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2021-07-27/timeline-cd...
It is clear that the message in almost all that mask communication was that masks actually do work, but please save them for medical personnel... here are a few weak reasons why they probably won't help you that much anyway.
And comparatively, they are way more critical for medical personnel. They should have just communicated it that way rather than trying to downplay effectiveness. Shortages abounded anyway.
Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate
#759Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
If it's such a hard tradeoff then maybe don't make the trade in the first place. Just don't censor speech. Problem solved. Insisting on censoring speech in this case is what's known as a Hegelian dialectic: there is a problem, we need to solve the problem, here's how we solve the problem.
You have the power to choose, but no power to escape the necessity of choice. If you choose to do nothing you still have made a choice.
Life doesn't require anyone to confront bad stuff that only grows worse if it is tolerated.
Life does, however, require everyone to live with the consequences of our choices.
Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate
#760Earlier 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…
> Be a conspiracy theorist. To be anything else is to burry your head in the sand. That's dangerously wrong. Yes, if you have some rational reason to believe that a conspiracy is the best explanation for a particular thing, even if others don't see it, then go nuts. That's healthy and good IMO. Even laudable. However, "conspiracy theorist" as an ongoing identity or habit is not healthy either for your own reputation…
Sure, don't jump to "the government is conspiring against us" at first pass, but also don't dismiss otherwise reasonable arguments on the grounds "there's no way the government isn't acting as a force of Platonic Good, what are you some sort of conspiracy theorist?"