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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

#51

Post by umvi »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #44
dukeofdoom wrote: post #32

Say you are successful tech Billionaire. Watching your other billionaire friend's hubris get the better of him, and decide to take up flying only to crash into the ground. You go through some phase of self reflection, and realize you won't live forever, and so decide you can make the world a better place. You consult some self help books, listen to some new age mysticism, and read some exciting woke ideas about gende…

A shallowly cynical take, if I've ever seen one. What comments like this do their best to ignore, is that many people, perhaps most, agree that platforms bear some responsibility for managing misinformation and the like. But arguing that point requires targeting popular will, instead of an unpopular rich dude. Much easier to demonize someone few people like, than debate a position held by many in earnest.

I would argue many people (if not most) don't want platforms to be arbiters of truth. Because it's very hard to arbitrate truth in an unbiased manner. And more often than not truth arbiters eventually fall into the trap of promoting their own agendas.

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

#52

Post by mountainb »

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.

Don't expect consistency: they just do whatever they think other people want them to do. You're expecting a higher level of thought than is really present. Their 'moral' guidepost is just whatever the blob of upper middle class fashionable opinion is.

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

#53

Post by tsimionescu »

m45t3r wrote: post #6
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…

There is a big difference between OMS and populist leaders like Maduro/Bolsonaro/Trump. What OMS said about masks and asymptomatic cases were the best we known about the pandemic at the current time (we still didn't have many studies on how the virus propagated). Once it became clear that masks helps and asymptomatic cases are super spreaders, OMS changed the tone quickly. Populist leaders say things about remedies t…

I'm guessing most people here will have no idea what you mean by OMS - the English name is WHO (World Health Organization).

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

#54

Post by TulliusCicero »

pumaontheprowl wrote: post #17

A lot of this is starting to remind me of the way Galileo and Darwin were treated for announcing their breakthroughs. I know nothing about this drug Maduro is touting, but I can't help worrying that one of these days somebody is going to find an actual cure and the world will never know about it because big social media companies exile them for wrongthink.

They laughed at Jesus. They laughed at Ghandi.

But they also laughed at Bozo the clown.

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

#55

Post by briandear »

m45t3r wrote: post #10
m45t3r wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a big difference between OMS and populist leaders like Maduro/Bolsonaro/Trump. What OMS said about masks and asymptomatic cases were the best we known about the pandemic at the current time (we still didn't have many studies on how the virus propagated). Once it became clear that masks helps and asymptomatic cases are super spreaders, OMS changed the tone quickly. Populist leaders say things about remedies t…

Also, context matters. OMS avoided recommending masks at the start of the pandemic since no study showed the efficacy of it, and there was no mass production of masks yet. So recommending it for general population would only generate shortage of masks for those who needed (frontline medics and nurses treating the cases). So this is why they're so against it.

> and there was no mass production of masks yet

But that’s not what they said. Fauci said “healthy people do not need to wear masks.” So he either lied then or is lying now. The reason for the lie is irrelevant. If healthy people should wear masks, the lack of production capability doesn’t change the fact.

If masks work and Fauci knew they worked, then his statement that healthy people don’t need masks was scientific fraud.

His exact words: “There’s no reason to be walking around with a mask. When you’re in the middle of an outbreak, wearing a mask might make people feel a little bit better and it might even block a droplet, but it’s not providing the perfect protection that people think that it is. And, often, there are unintended consequences — people keep fiddling with the mask and they keep touching their face.”

That statement was either patently false, or it was true and his current statements are patently false.

Did he lie in order to protect mask supplies? Did some new groundbreaking study come out during the next few months? Of course not. So why would a rational person trust anything coming from Fauci given that we don’t know if it’s the truth, or just some manipulative statement based on whatever the political need happens to be at the time? To be even more cynical, ask oneself why certain older mask-related research papers have been censored?

https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/04/data-do-...

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

#56

Post by macspoofing »

umvi wrote: post #51
TulliusCicero wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A shallowly cynical take, if I've ever seen one. What comments like this do their best to ignore, is that many people, perhaps most, agree that platforms bear some responsibility for managing misinformation and the like. But arguing that point requires targeting popular will, instead of an unpopular rich dude. Much easier to demonize someone few people like, than debate a position held by many in earnest.

I would argue many people (if not most) don't want platforms to be arbiters of truth. Because it's very hard to arbitrate truth in an unbiased manner. And more often than not truth arbiters eventually fall into the trap of promoting their own agendas.

I would argue that people don't want the platforms to adjudicate THEIR views and THEIR side. They are fine with the other side getting the shaft. The woke, mainstream media and Democrats, the groups that are succeeding in pushing Twitter and Facebook and social media to increase censorship are doing it because it's advantageous to them because either their political opponents are being suppressed, or, as is the case with NY Times and other mainstream outlets, it leads to financial advantages (more views, more clicks, therefore more money).

It's also dismaying that even those on the left (as few as they are) that are against this kind of censorship, are against it because it could be used against them in the future (and it will) ... and not because it's the moral and ethical thing to let your political opponents have a platform to make their case.

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

#57

Post by tsimionescu »

Sebb767 wrote: post #49
cabirum wrote: post #12

People should start thinking twice before using US-controlled platforms/services/anything.

... unless they want to reach people. Try publishing an app while avoiding the AppStore and the PlayStore - your audience will be fairly limited. Same thing if you're a politician (especially one not currently in office) and an US-controlled service happens to be popular in your country. On the other hand, though, I doubt that much of this is actual government influence. Most of these actions are probably done based…

> And this is not really an US problem; in fact, in terms of government influence on private companies, the US is probably one of the better countries.

Only because influence typically goes the other way around in the US. But you're talking about a country whose banking system derives most of its value from government guarantees.

https://anderson-review.ucla.edu/bank-guarantees/

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

#58

Post by pumaontheprowl »

varispeed wrote: post #7

Facebook is a private platform, so they should be able to censor whatever they want as long as it is not discriminatory against protected characteristics.

Probably true in the US. But this is a global platform making decisions about foreign leaders. I highly doubt this same legal reasoning applies to every jurisdiction in which they do business.

Regardless, the more interesting question here is not whether this is technically legal but whether it should be legal. Obviously, there is a lot of social good that can be done by allowing platforms to ban obvious scammers. But it's far from obvious to me that this is scam. And furthermore since Maduro is a head of state, it's important to the health of the democracy for the people to know what he is thinking.

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

#59

Post by TulliusCicero »

umvi wrote: post #51
TulliusCicero wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A shallowly cynical take, if I've ever seen one. What comments like this do their best to ignore, is that many people, perhaps most, agree that platforms bear some responsibility for managing misinformation and the like. But arguing that point requires targeting popular will, instead of an unpopular rich dude. Much easier to demonize someone few people like, than debate a position held by many in earnest.

I would argue many people (if not most) don't want platforms to be arbiters of truth. Because it's very hard to arbitrate truth in an unbiased manner. And more often than not truth arbiters eventually fall into the trap of promoting their own agendas.

People say that in the abstract, but in practice they actually do want that.

It's the same way Americans want the government to be small and non-interfering until you're talking about specific policies that actually sound pretty good, like stimulating the economy by handing people money.

People don't want Facebook to be arbiters of truth, until you get people spreading dangerous anti-scientific conspiracy theories and the like; then suddenly they believe Facebook should've done more.

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

#60

Post by nannal »

macspoofing wrote: post #45
dukeofdoom wrote: post #32

Say you are successful tech Billionaire. Watching your other billionaire friend's hubris get the better of him, and decide to take up flying only to crash into the ground. You go through some phase of self reflection, and realize you won't live forever, and so decide you can make the world a better place. You consult some self help books, listen to some new age mysticism, and read some exciting woke ideas about gende…

No. This is revisionist. This isn't Zuckerberg's doing. Up until recently Zuckerberg wanted as little moderation and censorship as possible. This mirrors the libertarian ethos of all the founders of modern tech companies. All of them (from Facebook, to Twitter, to Reddit, etc.) wanted to be just a platform for ideas. After Trump's election there became a concerted pressure campaign by woke culture, mainstream media a…

This argument might be more appealing if we hadn't just come through a pandemic that an unnamed group of people were more than happy to describe as a hoax.

There's the myth of election theft if you needed a second example.

There really is a lot of 'misinformation' (outright lying) on social media.

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