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How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

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Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#951

Post by JSavageOne »

mullingitover wrote: post #945
JSavageOne wrote: post #932

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok I stand corrected on this law, which basically says that companies aren't liable for user-generated content (the article could've just said that in the first line). Either way from a moral perspective doesn't change the fact that a platform censoring viewpoints is a violation of the principal of free speech, and morally reprehensible in a free democratic society. Twitter tried to be the Orwellian Ministry of Truth…

> ...a platform censoring viewpoints is a violation of the principal of free speech, and morally reprehensible in a free democratic society Agree to disagree here - Twitter and every other social media site are essentially complimentary printing presses in the middle of town that some private party pays for and allows everyone to use, with some conditions. In a free and democratic society, we're all free to buy our o…

You're basically just arguing "Twitter can do whatever the hell they want", which is not what I'm debating.

I'm arguing that a platform like Twitter that operates under the pretense of accessibility to all and freedom should uphold itself to a higher standard of free speech than the blatant one-sided censorship it engaged in during COVID. This would make the product better for its users, and be better for society.

Of course legally they can decide to adopt the principles of the Chinese Communist Party, but I find that morally reprehensible and clearly I'm not the only one.

Fox News is a right-wing propaganda media outlet. Just because its articles have comments sections doesn't make it a social media platform.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#952

Post by [deleted] »

brigandish wrote: post #483
bgro wrote: post #424

There’s apparently a lot of people upset about Twitter for trying to manage misinformation. I’d like to see equal information leaked from Fox for comparison, who should have journalistic integrity since they’re a news company. It seems weird to me that Twitter is the only one people seem to be up in arms about, and not the times the US president did things like suggest to the public, on live national tv, that consumi…

> It seems weird to me that Twitter is the only one people seem to be up in arms about They're the only one releasing internal files. If others did, like Facebook or Youtube, or Fox if you really want (but that would be a strange choice) do you think we'd only be up in arms about Twitter or do you think you might hear "Now it's Twitter and Facebook!" Regardless, I've seen plenty of people pointing out that this proba…

[deleted]

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#953

Post by ravel-bar-foo »

philliphaydon wrote: post #617
ravel-bar-foo wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other countries got it right. When the CDC was dithering about whether masks work and whether the virus was airborne (which should have been clear by early February with all the case evidence we had from Asia), their South Korean counterparts ordered Samsung to purchase tons of meltblown fibers, because making the masks themselves is not hard. Then the Korean government instituted limits on exports and rationing of w…

> and whether the virus was airborne The WHO guidelines are to assume an atypical pneumonia is airborne until it’s proven not to be. The WHO didn’t follow its guidelines and instead parroted the CCP propaganda. (We knew it was airborne in December 2019)

Interesting. That's also the route our hospital took for Monkeypox: negative pressure isolation wards until proven not airborne. I'm quite satisfied that Korean public health authorities understand the precautionary principle.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#954

Post by dent9876543 »

astrange wrote: post #659
lettergram wrote: post #621

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 mask…

Do you believe surgical masks work during surgery? There’s “no evidence” they do this. There’s also no reason that hearing there is “no evidence” for something requires you to adopt the silliest possible assumption for whether it’s actually true, but doctors seem to like doing this anyway. (The actual answer for whether masks are “effective against covid” is “which covid?” - cause it’s different for 2020 covid and Om…

The major conclusion to that discussion ("surgical masks work during surgery") was that the did work, but because they form an effective barrier against spittle and so on.

Studies show that surgical masks are only marginally effective at their goal of reducing transmission, and then only if they are worn properly. Of course, one can rely upon medical staff for that. Not so much the general population.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#955

Post by t0bia_s »

cbsmith wrote: post #915
t0bia_s wrote: post #909

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Conspiracy theories are looking for ways to become something that fits people's predispositions." Maybe that is exactly yours predisposition?

Umm... I guess? What do you imagine happens to conspiracy theories that don't fit people's predispositions?

Those get a new name. Hoax, fake news, relativisation, anti-whatever, propaganda, PR...

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#956

Post by dent9876543 »

JoBrad wrote: post #588
paganel wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it shows that the government leaned on Twitter to do what it wanted but not able to mandate it, Why does a government has to "lean" on a private media company in a "democrat" and "liberal" democracy? Not able to "mandate" is total bs, see the Pentagon-related leaks where there wasn't any need of any "mandating". If anything, this shows how hypocritical the whole industry has become, including many of its workers. H…

You do recall the extreme levels of misinformation that were present during 2020, right? Hospitals running out of medical equipment while people were stocking up and re-selling them? Civil War was a concern, at least in my part of the country. We had police manning the entrances to stores like Walmart and Academy sports because they couldn’t let more than a few people in at a time, and armed idiots were trying to for…

That gets closer to a reasonable explanation for things — people executing those "information" campaigns were genuinely trying to make things better for people, perhaps motivated by their belief that, if they didn't do so, all would be lost.

It's a nice way to explain the consequence without resorting to accident or malice.

Nevertheless, in the end, they way overstepped what was needed or helpful.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#957

Post by jltsiren »

brigandish wrote: post #905
jltsiren wrote: post #792

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

> Testing rate is a meaningless statistic, because the criteria for testing vary between countries and over time. Testing is useful for two reasons - helping people who may have the disease (obviously), and for seroprevalence. Since Japan's testing was so low those seroprevalence statistics are lacking. As we know now, severity of the disease is linked to the overall health of the individual. It's quite possible thos…

> It's quite possible those waves you call nontrivial were just as large but that the health of the population meant the severity of symptoms (which is what actually makes a wave trivial or not, along with availability of health services) was lower and continued to be lower.

That's why you should not look at individual data points in isolation.

Based on the numbers that were reported, the COVID waves that hit Japan became worse over time. That already suggests that the waves that hit in 2020 and 2021 were not particularly big.

If you compare internationally, you can find similar patterns in countries that mostly managed to avoid COVID in 2020 and 2021 before succumbing to Omicron. In contrast, countries that were hit bad early in the pandemic had a lot of infections but fewer deaths from Omicron, largely due to existing immunity.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#958

Post by dang »

heartbreak wrote: post #616
dang wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We changed it to be less linkbaity, as the site guidelines ask: " Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait. " https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I think the misleading or linkbait titles on HN are a useful signal when deciding whether or not to read (or read the comments on) a submission. I would have been less, not more, likely to interact with this submission if the original title was used, because it demonstrates that the source is willing to mislead or clickbait. Maybe it’s time to revisit this policy?

Sorry for the delay in replying. I think that's a real phenomenon but a second-order one - i.e. the benefits of the current policy are greater than that cost (and the other costs it has). It's all about tradeoffs.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#959

Post by cbsmith »

t0bia_s wrote: post #955
cbsmith wrote: post #915

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Umm... I guess? What do you imagine happens to conspiracy theories that don't fit people's predispositions?

Those get a new name. Hoax, fake news, relativisation, anti-whatever, propaganda, PR...

Wait, are you asserting that calling them "conspiracy theory" implies they fit people's predispositions?

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#960

Post by imwillofficial »

insanitybit wrote: post #948
imwillofficial wrote: post #946

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is helpful in constructive dialogue how exactly? You’ve been engaged in good faith, it’s only good manners to return the favor.

Sounds like you've missed my point.

Perhaps, it's been known to happen. Can you restate it in a new way I might understand?
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