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Facebook freezes Venezuela president Maduro's page over Covid-19

reuters.com

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Re: Facebook freezes Venezuela president Maduro's page over Covid-19

#171

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

concordDance wrote: post #164
DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A slight mischaracterization (doctors should do it, instead of people should do it themselves), and the original does not make Trump look any better. Edit: Looking again, OP did not misrepresent Trump's comment at all. Trump did clearly recommend that doctors try injecting disinfectants (including bleach) into patients.

I think it's important to differentiate saying X should be investigated as a treatment and X is a viable treatment. When I hear "Trump recommending bleach injections" what I, and I think most people, understand from it is Trump recommending everyday people inject themselves with bleach as a cure for covid, not Trump saying doctors should investigate whether injecting bleach would cure covid. And the former is clearly…

This was during the peak of the first wave, in mid-April 2020. The president was up on stage improvising about how injecting patients with bleach or isopropyl alcohol might be a good treatment. I think most people were just shocked that a man who would even consider that as an idea had somehow become president of the most powerful country on Earth.

Re: Facebook freezes Venezuela president Maduro's page over Covid-19

#172

Post by concordDance »

sofixa wrote: post #121
pitay wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do remember that something like 'fossil fuels are destroying the environment' would be called 'hate speech' if power shifted a bit. 'Hate' is an emotive term used to bypass peoples thinking so that criticism of certain things can be disposed of by emotion rather than evidence. People bringing up evidence of malfeasance could be called 'hate filled' people, have what they say aggressively censored, so that other peopl…

There's an expression in my native language which, directly translated, is something along these lines: "If my grandma had a rotor, she'd be a helicopter". I think it perfectly encapsulates your "slippery slope" argument, that if today we accept that saying you want to rape someone on Twitter is hate that needs to be stopped, tomorrow saying that processed foods are bad will be hate as well. Do you even realise how s…

> Do racists "criticize" other "races"?

The word "racist" seems to have a thousand subtly (and not so subtly) different meanings depending on who is using it. I think this is a good example of the phenomena.

Do you think it impossible that someone could believe that Chinese people are more intelligent than Nigerians due to genetics without hating them? Or do you just think said person would not necessarily be racist?

Re: Facebook freezes Venezuela president Maduro's page over Covid-19

#173

Post by concordDance »

timmytokyo wrote: post #168
concordDance wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's important to differentiate saying X should be investigated as a treatment and X is a viable treatment. When I hear "Trump recommending bleach injections" what I, and I think most people, understand from it is Trump recommending everyday people inject themselves with bleach as a cure for covid, not Trump saying doctors should investigate whether injecting bleach would cure covid. And the former is clearly…

How does anyone read what he actually said and not instantly think "moron".

I can (and did) also think that, but that's not relevant here.

Re: Facebook freezes Venezuela president Maduro's page over Covid-19

#175

Post by JumpCrisscross »

abhinav22 wrote: post #2

Not sure about this - I don’t think government leaders or anybody should be censored. Better to have public health messages as part of the platform than to censor It’s a fine line between hate and misinformation and dissent (Clearly the content in question is wrong; but in other cases, WHO and others been proven incorrect - eg on masks and asymptotic transmission) Don’t know what the answer is, we don’t want echo cha…

We have a mechanism for this. It’s defining protected classes. I don’t see an argument for putting Maduro’s speech into a protected class.

Re: Facebook freezes Venezuela president Maduro's page over Covid-19

#176

Post by hetspookjee »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #94
Lazare wrote: post #37

Conventional wisdom in the US is that Maduro is a ruthless, violent dictator, who has suppressed opposition, smuggled drugs, funded terrorism, violated human rights, etc. But that doesn't get you kicked off Facebook. Facebook and Twitter happily provide platforms to violent, human rights abusing regimes. ...but recommend one snake oil cure for Covid-19, and suddenly the hammer drops, I guess? Interesting priorities.

They have a specific policy against bad medical advice (which is easy to determine), but not against being a ruthless dictator (which can be very subjective). Seems consistent to me.

Aren't human rights transgressions also easy to determine? Or the harmful lies that Trump slung into the world during his presidency? Facebook is consistent on whom to censor as long as the censored don't hold too much sway over Facebook, like Trump did near the end of his presidency.

Re: Facebook freezes Venezuela president Maduro's page over Covid-19

#177

Post by MikeUt »

ativzzz wrote: post #119
A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is unfortunate, but US shot itself in the foot by proving that it is not willing to be a neutral third party, which it was perceived as in the 90s.

The US hasn't been a neutral third party in any worldwide matter since WW1. The U.S's foreign policy is aggressively selfish (which is good for US citizens)

It's good for owners of defense industry companies. For the average citizen it's probably a net loss. The Iraq War alone cost about $6,300 per US citizen.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_cost_of_the_Iraq_War

Re: Facebook freezes Venezuela president Maduro's page over Covid-19

#179

Post by alkonaut »

lucian1900 wrote: post #169
alkonaut wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? I post some recent academic papers and you respond with “yeah but what about Telesur?”. I have to stop wasting my time trying to discuss politics online. > Telesur works as a propaganda network for the governments of Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro (Wikipedia) I’m sure their coverage has the very best quality.

[flagged]

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Re: Facebook freezes Venezuela president Maduro's page over Covid-19

#180

Post by seanmcdirmid »

hetspookjee wrote: post #176
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have a specific policy against bad medical advice (which is easy to determine), but not against being a ruthless dictator (which can be very subjective). Seems consistent to me.

Aren't human rights transgressions also easy to determine? Or the harmful lies that Trump slung into the world during his presidency? Facebook is consistent on whom to censor as long as the censored don't hold too much sway over Facebook, like Trump did near the end of his presidency.

I’m with you, but one is something that someone on the other side can claim “is just an opinion”, the other can be backed by scientific evidence. As far as speech goes, censoring the latter is a lot easier to justify than censoring the former.
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