How Twitter moderated the Covid debate • Hacker News Board

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#821

Post by at_a_remove » Tue, Dec 27, 2022, 7:56 PM UTC

peter422 wrote: post #790

at_a_remove wrote: post #782

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know all of those things. It still doesn't matter. Informed consent must happen. We have a long and rich medical history of finding out what happens when that sort of thing is brushed off. "Hey, I'm doing you a big favor" doesn't matter, consent does.

Given all the things the government is capable of doing (drafting you, imprisoning you, taxing you, taking your property, etc), you are putting way too high a standard on this. The government has an interest in the overall public health and will make controversial decisions to that effect. They've done it before and will do it again. There were also right in this case so that is kind of important. I agree they could…

Okay, so someone in a labcoat tackles me, gives me a shot, tells me it is for my own good, then runs off. That's ... okay?

The end result is irrelevant. It's the "she had an orgasm, so how could it be rape?" defense. The recipient must consent, and they must be in full possession of the facts for them to make that decision. Even if it is a decision you do not agree with, it is still theirs to make.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#822

Post by bee_rider » Tue, Dec 27, 2022, 7:58 PM UTC

autoexec wrote: post #816

bee_rider wrote: post #736

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would have had worse short term political consequences because it would have been an unpopular decision. But it wouldn’t have reinforced the worldview of conspiracy theorists. They screwed up a bunch of things during COVID, but not many really trustworthy organizations actually just straight-up lied. Having something concrete to point to can’t help.

I don't think it would have even been unpopular. Most people understand that the masks needed to go to first responders.

My fairly anodyne conspiracy theory is that the government actually just missed the ball completely — didn’t want to admit it was going to be a big deal, etc, so they gave the “masks not necessary” advice. Then as the narrative was developing it became less embarrassing to appear manipulative than wrong and so here we are.

If they really wanted to save PPE for the hospitals, they could have made some calls to Walmart, Home Depot, and friends to pull it from the shelves. If it were an attempt at manipulation it would have been executed more smoothly.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#823

Post by autoexec » Tue, Dec 27, 2022, 7:58 PM UTC

ModernMech wrote: post #577

autoexec wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> It was ultimately handled at the retail end To be clear “handling” here meant that there were extensive and pervasive country-wide shortages, and many people went without toilet paper for weeks, including myself. People who needed toilet paper went without, while others hoarded more than they’d need for a year. That’s the problem people were trying to avoid with masks. First responders and doctors needed them most,…

I agree, it was miserable for people who couldn't get any and retailers took way too long to respond. It absolutely could have been handled better. I was glad to see stores refuse to allow returns and crack down on price gouging afterwards at least. Even the justice system got involved

https://www.today.com/news/brothers-who-hoarded-17-700-bottl...

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#824

Post by ethanbond » Tue, Dec 27, 2022, 7:59 PM UTC

SilasX wrote: post #800

ethanbond wrote: post #664

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pape…

Well no I don't have evidence of that. On the contrary I know for a fact it did, but that's not a necessary premise for my position.

Again, CDC did not say masks aren't effective. They said we don't know if they are. This was and largely remains true. For your other solutions, you think instituting a nationwide rationing system was a more accessible solution than saying "we don't know if they work [true] and medical professionals need them more [true], please don't buy them?" And yes, we very obviously should've invoked the Defense Production Act pretty much immediately on testing and PPE. Quite indefensible that we didn't.

"Has foreseeable negative consequences" != "is stupid," especially in emergency scenarios where you're picking between bad options and worse ones.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#825

Post by ethbr0 » Tue, Dec 27, 2022, 8:04 PM UTC

rajin444 wrote: post #735

ethbr0 wrote: post #611

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are few things that a government can do which is unforgivable, and brazenly lying to the faces of its citizens is one of them. That's a pretty naive position and by its definition one shouldn't trust any government on earth. Government exists to provide glue for societies when individual motivation is insufficient or harmful. These situations are generally pretty serious (national health crisis, economic fail…

> The first casualty when war comes is truth Most wars would not be fought if governments were trustworthy. And those that remain could be fought with full transparency. Trust is everything in society. When you start making exceptions everything falls apart.

Trust does create a post-scarcity society, and any government who fought a war with full transparency would lose (osint).

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#826

Post by autoexec » Tue, Dec 27, 2022, 8:07 PM UTC

code_runner wrote: post #715

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…

If the government quietly convinced all major retailers to stop selling masks that would’ve been 10000x more detrimental than the mixed messaging early on. If someone could produce even one document implying that this was discussed at all it would’ve been catastrophic.

> If someone could produce even one document implying that this was discussed at all it would’ve been catastrophic.

Why? that sounds like a pretty reasonable measure to me. The government has every right to ask companies to limit supply or pull stock off shelves in a crisis. Hell, it could force them to if needed and bring back rationing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationing_in_the_United_States

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#827

Post by danShumway » Tue, Dec 27, 2022, 8:10 PM UTC

phpisthebest wrote: post #809

danShumway wrote: post #802

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think gutting the teams was the correct move If you don't trust the previous teams, then fire them and hire new people. Firing these teams and leaving them gutted was definitely not the correct move. If you're worried about the effectiveness of your current fire department, the solution is not to stop having a fire department, it's to get a better one. ---- Going after the legal team in particular is a little str…

How do you know that did not happen? I know for sure the consolidated and moved around positions. Just because the people salty they got fired from their job due to poor performance, and political basis does not mean they did not put people in those positions. Personally I think the platform is better today. The most "journalist" scream about it being unsafe the more I believe Elon is doing a great job, because I do…

> How do you know that did not happen?

Because Twitter's staff numbers are public? What are you talking about, are you going to try and claim that Twitter has the same number of moderators now that it used to? It doesn't.

This is not something that's debatable, Twitter's moderation teams today are smaller than they were before he took over the company.

> Under what basis to you believe Twitters lawyers were the "best free-speech advocates". [...] Sorry that does not make you the best free-speech advocates.

It's a heck of a lot more practical and useful than just complaining about it. They did what lawyers are supposed to do, they showed up in court and defended free speech rights.

Twitter's lawyers took on government cases and challenged police orders that other social media companies would have rolled over and accepted -- in particular around the right to anonymity and parody. This is important foundational stuff that free speech rights online are built on.

But again, if Musk disagrees, more power to him. It's not a problem for Musk to hire different lawyers, the problem is that he hasn't really done that. The most he's done is brought over some lawyers from Tesla that are essentially doing double-duty now, but he doesn't seem to have built a legal team that's centered around specifically defending free speech rights for users or challenging government requests.

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> If you listen to the people that took over from the ones that were fired it seems like the former Management was not providing money and resources for real enforcement for things like CSAM

See, this is exactly what I'm talking about. Musk makes a big deal about this stuff, but he has literally just gutted these teams. There are way fewer moderators right now on Twitter looking for CSAM, and Musk is leaning into automated/contracted moderation to try and fill in the gaps -- which pretty much everyone dealing with child safety agrees is not a sufficient approach for this kind of moderation. He's dropped CSAM teams for some countries down to the single-digits of workers.

Musk has criticisms about the amount of resources that Twitter was devoting to CSAM. But his response isn't to increase those resources. His policy seems to be that if you say something is important, it just magically gets better because you say you care about it. But it doesn't, you have to actually put work into it and devote resources to making it better.

The CSAM example is just so wild to me, because it's such a clear example of Musk criticizing Twitter for something and then doubling down and doing the same thing to an even greater degree.

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> Personally I think the platform is better today.

Good for you, but this is a wildly simplistic take on free speech. It undermines legitimate conversations about real problems Twitter had with moderation in the past to simplify the issue down to "he banned some journalists I don't like and let some right-wing people back on the platform."

Structurally, he's not really doing anything. He's just gutting teams and complaining about the way they used to run.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#828

Post by lamontcg » Tue, Dec 27, 2022, 8:11 PM UTC

the_why_of_y wrote: post #561

lamontcg wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That logic is most likely simple, elegant and wrong.

A quick search finds literally dozens of articles in medical journals like these: Thrombotic complications are frequent in COVID-19 and contribute significantly to mortality and morbidity https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32857878/ One of the special characteristics of this disease is that it may predispose patients to thrombotic disease both in the venous and arterial circulation. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33719…

Which doesn't tie the problem to the spike protein or relate it to the vaccines.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#829

Post by eric_cc » Tue, Dec 27, 2022, 8:12 PM UTC

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…

> How do you moderate at this scale without bots and contractors?

How about: you don’t. It’s not up to twitter moderation to determine what is fact in real-time.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#830

Post by lamontcg » Tue, Dec 27, 2022, 8:15 PM UTC

EdwardDiego wrote: post #479

lamontcg wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That logic is most likely simple, elegant and wrong.

Welp, I'm open to clarification. Given both the vaccine and the virus can cause myocarditis or pericarditis, and given that the only thing they have in common is the spike protein, I'm curious as to where you think I went wrong.

The vaccine induced thrombotic thrombocytopenia caused by the adenovirus vaccines turns out to be due to PF4 binding to the adenovirus capsid and has exactly nothing to do with the spike protein, even though that is the only common factor between the vaccines and the virus. But it turns out that the clotting problems are totally separate.

So that is a failure of the same kind of logic that you're trying to employ. You have a virus with a clotting issue and a vaccine with a clotting issue, and they both only share the spike protein, and we know for certain now that isn't the mechanism.