How Twitter moderated the Covid debate • Hacker News Board

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#791

Post by Klinky » Tue, Dec 27, 2022, 6:13 PM UTC

wizofaus wrote: post #774

Klinky wrote: post #700

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tryin…

Well if nothing else, blocking such posts has the real possibility of making the posters even more certain they've uncovered some conspiracy, and driving them to less well-monitored corners of the interwebs, where misinformation breeds like a virus. I'd agree posts containing suggestions that directly contravene expert medical advice should be tagged with warnings though.

Well if nothing else, allowing such posts to propagate and be reinforced has the side effect of legitimizing them. Tagging posts as misleading is certainly one strategy, but people also complain about that being censorship or a conspiracy against them as well. Also if the argument is we should be moderating less, not more, then you're just arguing to turn mainstream social media platforms into those less well-monitored corners of the internet. Let it stay there.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#792

Post by jltsiren » Tue, Dec 27, 2022, 6:16 PM UTC

brigandish wrote: post #730

jltsiren wrote: post #685

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The details matter. Japan did not experience a major wave before the borders were reopened. The peaks were lower than in Europe and the US, and contact tracing never failed as badly. Contact tracing was the key tool, at least before omicron. If there were sufficient resources for it and compliance was high enough, local outbreaks could be kept under control. Contact tracing was also where international border closure…

> Japan did not experience a major wave before the borders were reopened. The peaks were lower than in Europe and the US, and contact tracing never failed as badly. Japan's testing rate was described as "ultra-low … 0.2% of the population"[1][2], no one can claim to be able to compare the infection waves with any certainty, and there certainly were major waves[3]: > Japan is reporting nearly 200,000 Covid-19 cases a…

Testing rate is a meaningless statistic, because the criteria for testing vary between countries and over time. Especially after some places started testing everyone routinely every week, which made the number of tests artificially high and the positivity rate artificially low.

Comparing statistics between countries is difficult, because data definitions vary, old definitions may no longer be appropriate, and there are all kinds of measurement errors. However, if you compare multiple statistics (e.g. cases, deaths, hospitalizations, positivity rate) and look how they change over time, you can get some idea.

According to various per capita figures, Japan had the first nontrivial wave in August/September 2021. That wave was maybe half as bad as in the US and Europe around the same time. Then there was an Omicron wave in early 2022, which was bigger than the previous one but much smaller than in the US and Europe a bit earlier. Then, in August/September 2022, there was a major wave similar to the initial Omicron wave in other countries.

Contact tracing is mostly about public health personnel interviewing those who test positive and actively seeking out their contacts. And then using targeted measures to isolate those who may have been exposed to the virus. Apps may be of limited use, but as far as I know, they were not a significant part of any successful contact tracing effort (except maybe in China).

Infectious diseases spread exponentially before they get out of control. Measures used to control them lower the base, and there is a qualitative change around 1. As a consequence, if you look at any individual measure (e.g. mask use, border closures, lockdowns, contact tracing), it is likely to be ineffective. However, if you use multiple "ineffective" measures at the same time, the combination may be effective.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#793

Post by tootie » Tue, Dec 27, 2022, 6:17 PM UTC

cryptonector wrote: post #410

tootie wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least HN doesn't filter COVID disinformation. Your first paragraph is all incorrect. Patent-free treatments were extensively tested and some (notably dexamethasone) were put into treatment regimens for a while but none proven effective. "Corporate" vaccines were very effective and I'm not sure what alternative you're thinking of (artisanal vaccines? Maybe Sinovac?) but either way it's irrelevant. Twitter is just a…

> What if the executive starts censoring politically incompatible thoughts? Trump certainly tried or at least threatened to do so many times but it's nowhere near reality. Is that a reference to his comments about libel laws?

That's one example, there's also the endless rhetoric which contributed to physical threats against journalists, threats to revoke broadcast licenses, harassment at borders. He even threatened to shut down social media a few times

https://www.npr.org/2020/05/27/863011399/trump-threatens-to-...

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#794

Post by evandale » Tue, Dec 27, 2022, 6:19 PM UTC

slg wrote: post #770

evandale wrote: post #703

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, confiscating privately owned equipment and telling people you need them in hospitals is better than lying to people and telling them their equipment doesn't work because secretly they need them for hospitals. I don't know why you think that's more dystopian.

The government coming to my home and demanding I hand over my private property that the government tells me is vital for protecting my health during a pandemic is pretty dystopian. If you believe that the government lying to us is dystopian, then we have always lived in a dystopia.

I live in Canada where they do this already based on how scary a gun looks (rather than their functionality) so maybe that's why I find it more palatable than being lied to.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#795

Post by stiltzkin » Tue, Dec 27, 2022, 6:22 PM UTC

thinking4real wrote: post #473

twblalock wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The FBI comes up in plenty of the other Twitter censorship stories. Covid is not a one-off, and this article exists in that broader context, or it would not be interesting. It was part of a sustained, illiberal, counterproductive, and overall pretty stupid pattern of behavior from both the government and Twitter.

[flagged]

And most surprisingly HN falls into this.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#796

Post by jakear » Tue, Dec 27, 2022, 6:23 PM UTC

Nursie wrote: post #516

jakear wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You’re doing exactly what I said, exaggerating and twisting to claim victories where there are none. That Fauci email says that masks are primarily to prevent infected people from spreading disease, and a lot of crappy masks are unlikely to do much but prevent some droplets. This was before a lot of the studies were in that showed there was some effect. People can be wrong early on, this is expected. Later on when th…

> Nope, I’m not American, and it appears neither does your source, because the link that should take you to the original claim goes to some other story.

Here's another: https://news.yahoo.com/cdc-director-data-suggests-vaccinated...

And more: https://twitter.com/ryanstruyk/status/1376925777397186560

---

> Anything can affect women’s menstrual cycles [...] It's not really surprising and it's not necessarily serious.

Me: Don't make the mistake of saying fucking with menstrual cycles and covering it up isn't serious, as it will out you as someone who speaks to things they have no clue about

You: aight ima fuckin do it

---

Besides that all your points are "your sourced claim is in disagreement with my feelings", which is hilarious coming from the "It’s very funny to watch [people talk about their feelings with no support]" guy.

Also flagging isn't an appropriate response to "this person disagred with me in a civil way" but you do you.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#797

Post by insanitybit » Tue, Dec 27, 2022, 6:23 PM UTC

jdthedisciple wrote: post #501

insanitybit wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I did.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#798

Post by roflyear » Tue, Dec 27, 2022, 6:33 PM UTC

etchalon wrote: post #190

andrew_ wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect we could go around and around as to what constitutes moderation versus ideological censorship. I hope that we can agree that the feds putting pressure on the scales is wrong during any administration, and that transparency in moderation is a good thing.

"The Feds putting pressure on the scales" is a fairly broad term for something every level of the state does in multiple, almost incalculable ways.

In my experience, and I don't mean this as an insult, people who think this stuff is such a big deal are either young and immature and don't understand how things work, or extremely naïve.

I have family who are surprised that the government surveils people, like it is some kind of conspiracy.

I disagree with government surveillance, but inevitably they use these examples as why "the XYZ are bad" where XYZ is ... whatever they don't like. Clintons, globalists, democrats, republicans, trump, jews, whatever.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#799

Post by ryanobjc » Tue, Dec 27, 2022, 6:43 PM UTC

AlchemistCamp wrote: post #761

code_runner wrote: post #718

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In America we were already in such a weird situation I doubt anything would’ve truly been 100% effective. It’s interesting to hear these different perspectives though

To be clear, I think that lockdowns are a gross affront to civil liberties and unjustified for anything under a 10 (and probably even) 20 percent lethality rate. My opinion at the time (when vaccines looked very distant) was that places like Japan, Taiwan, Singapore and Korea could still control the pandemic via border quarantines and contact tracing (which happened) and that places like the US also could also achiev…

Which btw in the early days, think early march 2020, a 10% ifr was still on the table. Italy and wuhan (incomplete) data was … not encouraging. And remember that SARS-cov-1 had an ifr of 40%. And was spread by fomites.

So in early 2020, with limited data - china really screwed is here - the initial lockdowns in places like SF Bay Area made sense. But the lockdown didn’t persist of course and realistically speaking people always had freedom of movement: the police were NOT and we’re directed to not aggressively ticket/arrest: all those contacts just increased the chance of infection anyways.

Now as for the rest of the US I disavow what happened there.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#800

Post by SilasX » Tue, Dec 27, 2022, 6:50 PM UTC

ethanbond wrote: post #664

SilasX wrote: post #658

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they weren’t advising the public not to wear masks based on genuine skepticism, but on a confused belief that it would have the narrow effect of relieving the supply crunch, with no long term effect on mask compliance in the future, even given the loss of trust from having told the public BS reasons not to wear them. (Like the Fauci quotes and assertions of ineffectiveness.) That was stupid, and foreseeably so.

I think even now it's very hard to establish whether it was stupid, never mind foreseeably so. Do you have evidence to suggest either 1) there was no supply crunch, 2) the supply crunch wasn't alleviated by this guidance, or 3) the supply crunch wouldn't have affected the medical system's capacity? It's completely believable to me that future mask compliance among the general population is way less valuable than ensu…

Do you have evidence that the earlier advice wasn’t responsible for mask reluctance later? Because when you tell people masks are ineffective, that’s a very very hard bell to unring, and indeed, many mask rejecters were citing those very same health officials. And why wouldn’t they? Those are the trusted authorities!

Of course there was a mask shortage. But like the others said, the correct way to fight a toilet paper shortage is not to tell people that it’s ineffective at removing feces from your anus. It’s to a) throttle sales at retail, b) give guidance on alternatives (here, how to turn a shirt into a mask), c) coordinate on increased production.

If masking up had been a high status thing to do early on, that would have saved a lot of effort in policing later.

Yes, lying to the public and expecting them to both trust and keep up with the latest lie is foreseeably stupid. I hope you don’t need insurmountable evidence to agree with that part.