Another problem is that something like this can function as "evidence" for the claim. There are large groups of people who believe that censorship like this validates a worldview in which powerful interests are censoring true information in order to maintain control. It's similar to the Streisand Effect or "Banned in Boston" but for belief rather than attention.
It seems like the better solution is to have an outpouring of discussion around how and why the claim is wrong. Let others ridicule the statements, rather than shutting down discussion. You'll never convince everyone, but at least you'd avoid the validation-by-censorship effect.
I could be wrong on this though. I don't really have any evidence or data that would show doing it one way is better than the other. I suppose I simply prefer open discussion.
One issue is that it’s asymmetrical. Made up statements have more resonance and shocking value than well thought rebuffs or ridicule.
If you accuse your opponent of eating babies at breakfast, other parties will have a hard time to find something as punchy, and some minority of people will swallow your statement. Throw around enough of these and you’ll have a large base covered, with your opponents left scrambling for boring or after the fact retorts that won’t have the same reach.
I think that yes, I am effectively exposed to random baseless lies, and only a few of the voices crying foul will ever reach my eyes.
For instance I read a headline about future rising petrol prices due to the stuck Evergreen boat, and honestly I have no idea how true it is, don’t care enough to go down the rabbit hole, but still remembered it as an information, and might subconsciously be influenced by it on some decisions.
This is less likely to happen on fields I have decent interest or expertise in, but that only represents a tiny fragment of the information we consume everyday.
Thing is, any substantiative discussion will be way too complex for most people who could fall to these conspiracy theories, to understand, and they will arrive to a conclusion like "these Jews are trying to look too smart and bullshit us".
Sadly, this asymmetrical warfare from authoritarian nations hits the right point: it forces us to either let misinformation flow and people become manipulated by it, or to revert to authoritarian measures by gradually chipping away freedom of speech.
...which is the exact opposite of what these platforms, as businesses, were designed to do: maximally amplify and disperse the most "clickable" information - which is the one understandable to everyone (dumb) and appealing to people's instincts (authoritarian, because we are herd animals).
given the power these platforms have, i highly doubt this attempt to regulate their business in a clearly negative way to them, can be successful. they are so powerful, even CCP is afraid of them, starting a crackdown on social media in China.
> There are large groups of people who believe that censorship like this validates a worldview in which powerful interests are censoring true information in order to maintain control. It's similar to the Streisand Effect or "Banned in Boston" but for belief rather than attention.
Similarly, there are large groups of people that believe there are large groups of people who believe that censorship like this validates a worldview in which powerful interests are censoring true information in order to maintain control. The degree to which the respective beliefs of these two groups of people are actually correct, is unknown.
I suspect that the group of people that believe this is considerably smaller than the other two groups, at least in Western cultures.
I believe this phenomenon is (at least in part) what Hindus refer to as Maya.
For their own platform? Facebook is, obviously. How is this even a question?
It's not like a head of state doesn't have plenty of power to send messages through other means. Since when are private actors obligated to let them speak on private platforms?
Facebook doing it of its own volition is one thing, and I'd argue they are within the right to do so. Government pressurizing Facebook to censor stuff is entirely other ballgame, which poses a bigger risk, and nobody seems to be paying attention to. (Most attention is given to the content being censored, not the actors behind the censorship).
I agree that this is an issue. The first amendment should protect private actors here from government influence over their own membership policies, other than certain narrow exceptions like protected classes.
Don't like that they ban too many left-wingers/right-wingers? Feel free to get mad about it, just don't get thinking that this is somehow illegal, or should be.
Facebook has 2.7 billion users or 34% of world population. Out of interest, I'm curious to know if, given that they are in effect, judge and jury on their own private platform, there is any % level of penetration at which you might change your view? It appears you'd set no limit at all.
> given that they are in effect, judge and jury on their own private platform
You say this like it's some weird, bizarre thing. Who else should be judge and jury by default on a private platform? Should there be some government committee any time a new social media company starts up?
In any case, to answer your question: if the issue is that they've become too powerful, and there's a reasonable case to make there, then I'd say the answer is to either break them up or support alternatives, not have the government barge in and micromanage how they run the particulars of their business. I don't think there's some obvious right answer for "how tightly should a social networking company restrict what people say", so the best possible answer from a societal level is to help choices flourish and let consumers choose.
Every platform has some 'censorship' -- even Parler banned porn, and got rid of left wing 'trolls'. The only real way around it is to not have a platform so much as a protocol, like email.
You can actually sue in court (in America) if a business kicks you out for protected reasons. So we don't need a governmental committee- we have the courts to arbitrate our cases for us.
And you think courts should be arbitrating every time some internet message board bans someone for posting porn or spam or a swastika? Because that's the implication of what you're saying here: let's let courts handle it.
Is this a serious suggestion? The courts are already overwhelmed, packed full of cases. And you want to throw potentially millions of minor cases where someone's mad about getting banned for flaming some other user onto their docket?
>Since when are private actors obligated to let them speak on private platforms?
This is the same argument slave owners used to defend their "private property", and that business owners used to ban black people from their private property.
So, judging by the history of human rights, it's a perfectly valid question
Except we did decide a private business can refuse service unless its specific discrimination of a protected class. If anything this analogy proves the opposite of your argument.
> This is the same argument slave owners used to defend their "private property"
The difference is that slavery is inherently wrong, whereas deciding on your own internal membership policies for some club, or internet forum, or what have you, is not inherently wrong.
This is pretty obvious, because nobody's mad about the small private actors doing the same kind of thing. 99.9999% of the companies or private groups around, nobody gives a shit that they get to decide to ban whoever they like. They're just mad at Facebook and Twitter because they're big. Whereas "small time slaveowners" are still disgusting criminals.
And I get that, these companies being more powerful, their decisions have wider knock-on effects. But the right solution is still alternatives, not the government micromanaging and second guessing every single decision they make. At most, you could mandate some kind of 'nutrition facts' policy, where policies must at least be up front and transparent.
>But the right solution is still alternatives, not the government micromanaging and second guessing every single decision they make.
Agreed! Perhaps a publicly funded (not advertising funded) digital public square which protects lawful speech could be a potential solution?
>The difference is that slavery is inherently wrong, whereas deciding on your own internal membership policies for some club, or internet forum, or what have you, is not inherently wrong.
What is and is not "inherently wrong" is subjective and always changing.
Anyone who pretends that they do not believe in things which will be considered "inherently wrong" 10, 50, or 100 years from now has a god complex and is deeply ignorant of human psychology and history.
You can't just shoehorn words like 'obviously' and 'despotic' into your opening sentence then move onto attacking a platform for interference. I would suggest reading into the history of who installed and backed Juan Guido and for what reason. Facebooks 'narrative management' of this issue is just another aspect of that.
WHO statement on masks was misleading but I didn't see it as wrong (only wrong in the sense that they should focus on people's perception of their statements). They said that there was no evidence that masks help. Which was true at the time. They paired that statement with suggestions use a variety of prevention methods.
The statement from Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove that symptomatic patients being "very rare" was definitely wrong. But she back tracked the next day and said it only possible they are rare and was aware of the 40% models which have now come out to be much closer to the truth.
Strong disagree, at this point people have choosen sides and any attempt to influence people one way or the other will look either pathetic, at an absolute best, or hamfisted if you don't roll a natural 20.
And you really don't want more hamfisted attempts to educate people to your way of seeing the world unless you also want to repeat january 6th.
Then they can spout whatever they want through their official channels. Facebook doesn't need to and isn't obligated to host their content.
In this case, Facebook can do what they please. Any uproar should be directed at the government which can go about using official channels as they please (press conferences, news releases, official government web pages)
You don’t really need to worry about drawing the line between facts and lies just because you remove the 10% most blatant disinformation. It doesn’t make Facebook the final arbiter of truth.
There are things that are controversial or debated and Facebook and others stay away from that.
Advocating injecting bleach or eating albinos to cure Covid is one thing while arguing the amount of asymptotic transmission is another thing entirely.
Does Facebook ban controversial statements such as “children should be given hormone blocking therapy if they request it, regardless of the wishes of their parents, even if it sterilizes them” or “transgender women should be allowed to go to/volunteer at battered women’s shelters”. Espousing the opposing viewpoint is a fast track to getting banned from Twitter/Facebook or wherever else.
Note I’m not making a judgement about these statements, merely using them as examples of things that absolutely won’t get you kicked off of Facebook for advocating.
This is first time I see someone worry about trans in battered women shelter. It just sounds like one of these made up issues that actual domestic violence activists dont seem to care about.
Battered women shelters also dont always have exclusively female staff. They do lean more female afaik, but penis won't prevent you to work as lawyer, psychologist, security etc.
What that worry shows mostly is that whoever is creating panic about this one was never interested in domestic violence - nor even curious about it.
Okay — but in practice, channels on YouTube and Facebook merely mentioning COVID have to resort to euphemisms due to the extreme censorship.
So your claim they “stay away from” controversial or genuinely disputed topics is plain wrong: they censor those topics heavily on FB and YT to shape narratives — from COVID to Amber Heard beating her spouse.
Your idealized “just a little” censorship has already been exceeded — showing why it’s impractical as a political idea: it’s inherently unstable.
> Don’t know what the answer is, we don’t want echo chambers of misinformation, but we want to live in a democratic society too
If we want less echo chambers we'd need to stop censoring and banning those who disagree with us, otherwise they go elsewhere, encountering those similarly ostracized and form a natural echo chamber.
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 people only hear these are 'hate filled' people and what they say be buried so that inconvenient information doesn't come out.
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 stupid your argument sounds? We're not talking about criticism. Were Nazis "criticizing" Jews? Do racists "criticize" other "races"? No, they hate them, and there is a pretty heavy difference between the two.
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?
Yes, another way to discredit someone with a valid concern is use name calling as the basis of their argument, just like what the parent post does here. School yard bullies used named calling to socially destroy the reputation of their victims and isolate them. Adults use the same name calling to do the same thing, they just use different words.
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 that study after study shown that there is no efficacy and they never change their tone because it would mean they're wrong. Instead, they simple jump for the next "miracle" solution.
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.
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?
So how many scientific studies about mask efficacy were completed to change the scientific consensus during those two months when we had a mask shortage and were being told that masks only protect doctors?
I don’t consider that a reasonable stance. New things happen all of the time, all people need to learn on the job. Scientific consensus at the beginning of the COVID pandemic was limited, transmission vectors largely unknown. There must be room for unknowns even for top advisors.
I admit it is not a reasonable stand, it comes from a deep level of fustration with how slowly the politicians are rolling things out and with how confident they sound when they are not doing anything.
what fauci said was true (given tolerance for the natural ambiguity inherent in speech). in most cases, masks have been, and continue to be, primarily a palliative and signaling device, not a mitigation. for healthcare workers, it's actually an augmentative mitigation used with other imperfect mitigations in controlled circumstances to get the best possible outcomes from their use. masks are poorer mitigations in most general circumstances in comparison to the easier alternative that is (context-specific) distancing.
at various points, he's buckled to the prevailing political winds to keep his job, but that particular statement was a moment of lucidity and frankness. it threatened the dominant mediopolitical narrative, so he eventually backed off.
> That statement was either patently false, or it was true and his current statements are patently false.
You’re actually missing the correct option which is that scientific consensus has shifted on this issue. Science is a process for the truth and conclusions can change with more evidence.
People keep saying this, but it doesn't make it true. The consensus of public health officials changed for sure, but I haven't seen any evidence that the science changed at all
The fact that he said "people keep fiddling with the mask and they keep touching their face" is exactly what I said about context: we still used to think that using alcohol and disinfecting surfaces are more effective than avoiding direct contact (at least for the general public). We now know that this isn't the truth, disinfecting surfaces are barely recommended nowadays since we know that the virus is airbone so masks and social distancing are the recommendation.
All this "nuance" about censorship vs deplatforming, or worries about misinformation, just sound like rationalizing something we know is wrong.
This power is always abused. It's always just another way to say "sure, I believe in democracy, so long as I get to 'educate' you and prevent you from hearing anything that might change your mind about who to vote for".
Religion is "misinformation". How long before that is censored as well?
Fundamentally, people scared of misinformation are people scared of diversity. They believe there's one right answer and that everyone must agree.
Not really; there are both many reasons why censorship is sometimes good, and why attempts to defend freedom of speech on the principle of democracy is not as persuasive as it would seem at first. Many powers can also be abused, and indeed have been in the past, from food and drug regulation to anti-terrorism measures. The fact that it can be abused is not in itself a great argument against the power.
There are also good reasons to bring religion into the discussion too, and whether it should be an exceptional part of freedom of speech. Some religious speech (in particular of parents to their impressionable children) should be second guessed as deserving of protection. Nevertheless, it's also a matter of degree. Most of the elements of religion are not so much misinformation as they are unknowables or taken on faith.
Science is merely a tool. It's conclusions still must be interpreted and translated to fit in to a human shaped system. There are almost as many interpretations of the conclusions of science as there are interpretations of religious texts.
Science shows us that eating too much leads to heart disease and shortens your lifespan. What conclusions do we draw from this? An extra 15 years of life is worth 90 years of a bland diet? Different people draw different conclusions.
My point is that science alone is not a comprehensive guide to how a life should be lived. It requires some extra interpretation.
In this Maduro COVID miracle cure situation it's obviously a ridiculous claim and could mislead thousands of people into taking a placebo pill and pulling their masks off and endangering the lives of other people.
Facebook truly believes that they are right in their conclusion that Maduro's interpretation of "science" will lead to people getting hurt. They have a moral obligation to stop it lest someone accuse them of having blood on their hands.
However, Maduro being in power has surely caused many thousands of people to die from political violence and starvation. What if stopping him from exposing himself as a fool and a liar has extended his position of power for another year? Psychology is also a science. The psychology behind why people would rally harder around a censored dictator. Which interpretation of science would kill more people?
It's not a megaphone. A megaphone forces people to hear whether they want to or not, and drowns out others trying to speak. A facebook page does neither.
You say “we” but there’s slim chance that everyone reading this even on HN would agree with this value (and I say value because “censorship is wrong” is a normative assumption).
Censoring Maduro, effectively a dictator, is absolutely the right thing to do here despite the effect being overblown (it’s a Facebook page after all). There is no reason to require a private platform to host any and all content, telling Facebook that once a page is created it must stay.
Forbidding Facebook from controlling its own platform is a slippery slope.
Have to wonder how long before non-US alternatives pop up and the US loses control of this industry segment. There are already regional alternatives to many of the US's biggest tech companies, so international alternatives might be next. How long before there's a tiktok of Google, where US and western consumers go to a Chinese or Russian source without even considering what the US companies have to offer anymore. Obviously companies in those countries will have their own local biases, but mostly on matters internal to those countries that aren't typically relevant to US and western users.
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.
That's hard to determine, I think. The wars aren't isolated actions that make or lose money, they're embedded in a frame work, that, at large, has probably been very beneficial. More influence, better trade deals, technological dominance, economic advantages. The average wage in the US is significantly higher than in most of Europe, so average citizens probably do profit.
Every state is selfish, it's one of the fundamental principles of foreign relations. Even when states are altruistic (e.g. the US Centers for Disease Control doing epidemic surveillance and distributing Ebola vaccines in Africa, or sending foreign aid to poverty-stricken countries) ultimately it's for self-serving reasons. The global system is essentially anarchism.
You say US-controlled, but I can't think of a country that would be better than the US in this regard. European countries are not the biggest fans of free speech. And then you have China, Russia, etc. which are even worse.
Perhaps there will be more than one, then. There will be different ideologies which will be protected and different ones which will be censored on each one of them. In total there might be more freedom of speech.
A teacher in high school told us: to the question "which newspaper should I read?" the answer is "not one single newspaper".
With federated protocols (like Mastodon) you don't need to trust a third party country. All countries can be part of the same universe, but each one controls their own data.
... 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 on the personal biases of the moderation team of the platform. These are surely a bit influenced by whatever opinion the current government tries to push, but they will not necessarily align with the current agenda. 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.
> 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.
I don't want to say the US is great, it isn't. The point is no country is great. A company residing in a country will always be somewhat dependent on that countries government and all of them have some form of subpoena, some form of secret agency or some politicians shoddy enough for backroom dealings. But some countries are worse.
My usual tip in these situations would be to use something under control of a government which does not have much interest in your dealings, but as a politician you're in the unfortunate position that a) basically any country will have a basic interest in your dealings or at least be very close to a superpower that does and b) you'll have to go out and seek your voters, which does not leave you much choice.
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.
> Who says you have to announce something a specific way first time?
Technically, at our current World state, government regulations say that. And yeah, you have to have the correct credentials and submit your paper to the correct institutions.
Superficially, the system is architectured exactly like the one you are complaining, while in a deeper level every component works in a completely different way. What in practice means that it right now works quite well (could improve, but it works), but it's just a series of isolated institution failings (instead of a full system failure) away from becoming like the other. So, well, keep those institutions in check, but unless somebody comes up with a better system design, there's little point on complaining about it.
There are multiple occasions in history where a landmark paper was laughed at just to be proven right later. It hardly matter the medium you use to publish.
"Peer reviewed scientific journal" is, at least in theory, a process as much as a medium, and the process at least makes an attempt to screen the worst misinformation or least rigorous scientific methodology through the mechanism of peer review.
(That it often fails at this isn't a point in dispute. The fact that the medium entails a process and that the process, at least nominally, serves truth is.)
There's also the reputational role that such journals serve, effectively transferring the trust bestowed on the journal to the authors appearing within it, where trust is a belief extended beyond the extent of verifiable fact though not in opposition to them (as in the case of blind faith).
To that extent, and in a world in which each individual receiving a piece of information cannot independently assess and verify that information, your premise is in large part false: the medium used does serve to indicate the truth of a claim.
(As someone who's made a point of publishing pseudonymousely and in numerous online, unreviewed media, I'm aware of the challenges of trying to assert facts, even those which are reasonably independently verifiable, without the benefits of a persistent and highly-established identity or other indicia of trust, reputation, or credentialing. In balance I prefer the freedoms that come with this, though the challenges are also considerable.)
The problem with that is, if it's not amplified on social media, it doesn't exist.
There were trials where it was shown that sufficient Vitamin D levels (most people are deficient) is very effective in preventing COVID. It got minor attention, but no-one is pursuing it on a widespread basis. Maybe it works maybe not, but even if there were clinical trials, it gets crowded out by what's being widely circulated in the media.
It must be your bubble/country, because in France it has been said and recommended by the Health Ministry that it probably helps, and doctors prescribe supplements with Vitamin D en masse.
Vitamin D has been recommended forever for general health and is available over the counter. Nothing is stopping people from taking and giving vitamin D in huge doses.
It's worth bearing in mind that Galileo was not treated poorly for his scientific advances. He was treated poorly because his scientific claims tended to run in advance of what he could prove, because he made an ass of himself when his peers pointed this out, and then he went on to antagonize the temporal powers that be.
They don't claim to be. All they're doing is applying existing scientific consensus to new, unverified claims. If after going through legitimate peer review, this treatment Maduro is touting proves to be effective, you can be sure it will be allowed into the discussion as well.
Social media companies take on immense legal liability when they allow high-profile figures to promote unproven medical treatments. The current approach obviously loses a lot of nuance, but the alternative is opening themselves up to litigation when, for example, users ingest fish tank cleaner after hearing from the President that there's a miracle drug which goes by the same name [1].
In a sense, we already had some taste of tech-powers-that-are blocking information that ended up being true ( Biden's Hunter drug issues ).
edit: I am going to add some sources, since I am not certain why the downvoting is taking place on this particular comment. Not sure how the statement is controversial.
Crazy people don't know they are crazy. Facebook from now on will decide what is correct and what is wrong, even though they don't know what is correct and what is wrong.
Carvativir is the same as (according to Wikipedia) or derived from (according to other sites) carvacrol. From this, it took me five minutes to find evidence that we should actually investigate this and can't just dismiss Maduro as wrong: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3768712/
> Carvacrol alone exhibited high antiviral activity against RV with a SI of 33, but it was less efficient than the oil for the other viruses. Thus, Mexican oregano oil and its main component, carvacrol, are able to inhibit different human and animal viruses in vitro. Specifically, the antiviral effects of Mexican oregano oil on ACVR-HHV-1 and HRSV and of carvacrol on RV justify more detailed studies.
Even just on Wikipedia, it mentions apparently well-known antimicrobial effects, which sounds like it may help with secondary pneumonia caused by COVID (so even putting aside the possibility of antiviral effects, it may help reduce some symptoms): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carvacrol#Toxicology
It was the same story with hydroxychloroquine, which was a promising treatment until trump made the mistake of mentioning it publicly.
These purely ideologically driven non-experts in media and tech have absolutely no business playing gatekeeper with censorship. They're doing far more harm than good.
Killing viruses or bacteria in vitro is a vastly different thing than killing them in vivo. Also, if you want to cite some evidence, Braz J Microbiol might not be the best source.
The premise of the XKCD strip is that whatever was being tested isn't necessarily safe for humans. This however we already know is safe for humans because it's available in over-the-counter supplements, and the herb it comes from is used in cooking.
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.
Obviously they can and they do. We are discussing whether that is a good thing overall, which is further complicated by the political issues surrounding Venezuela and its current.. dual government.
Venezuela does not have a duel government. It has a government that won the UN certified election and an opposition leader that receives 100% of the US media industry's support.
Come on, link me the source where it says the UN certified the results, I'll be waiting... But I know that you won't link anything that is not from Telesur or RT and that it doesn't exists since they haven't allowed the UN to oversight the elections for quite a while.
My personal opinion is that after reaching a certain size of audience, the rules should be different - e.g. Facebook should be required to keep all points of views, even if they disagree with them, as long as they are legal. But until the rules are not changed it is what it is.
Well, this was once true of, say, television networks, telephone companies, electricity providers. But, they had too much power (mostly due to network effects), and so they were made into a special kind of private company, called a "utility". They still got to make a profit, but their actions were controlled by an elaborate web of rules and regulations, which were sure not perfect, but they were better than letting Thomas Edison decide if you could have electricity or Alexander Graham Bell decide if the contents of your telephone call were allowed or not.
What is a solution? Facebook is a private company, so they can do business as they please within the confines of applicable laws and regulations. Those laws and regulations say they can censor as they please on their platform. Should we enact laws forcing private platforms to give everyone a voice?
Perhaps. It's definitely a conversation worth having, given the advancements in public speech through social media. There is no reason to believe that 200-year-old laws should be the end of the conversation.
What if the law said that operator of a platform cannot delete user content, as long as it does not break the law and shouldn't artificially limit its exposure? In the event that the platform runs out of space they should be allowed to charge people reasonable amount for the space.
I would not use any platform that doesn't delete viagra spam or work from home spam or any of the other things we recognize are awful (say, someone spamming pages of all-caps AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA or Ż̵̧̦͈͕̼̜̫̦̟͈͎̆̈͒̀͆̉a̶̩̺͊̔͑́͆̕ļ̴̨͇̲͈͓̥̝̠̜̘̠̹̫̀̋͛̄g̸̹͇̫̗̼̺̰͍̻̦̯̹͆̆̈́̂͜͜ǒ̶̧̪̹͖͖̮̻̹̻̮̦͐́̌̐̀͐̃̒̓̏͝ ̷̠̯̹̣͖͍̩̦̪́̀̾ͅt̵̼͈͉͖̯̫̪̟͔͛͌̐̿̎́͌̇ͅe̶̫͓̖̲͍̞̞͈̎̔̿͐x̴̛̠̺̮̼̏͒̀̒̎t̸̮̼͔͖̹͙̦͚͙̣̜̍͋̈́͌). I regard a platform that won't remove this stuff as bad, user-hostile, and not worth using. In fact, I would think pretty poorly of Hacker News if moderators didn't want to remove what I've already posted because frankly the above text is annoying and detracts from the site.
I think any law that requires that platforms allow the signal to noise ratio to go through shit via spam (and in your specific law, even sets a minimum price to be permitted to spam) would be a bad one.
If you allow platforms to remove posts based on content, as I think you should, then we're back to having a debate about which particular types of content should be protected by law, or else which particular types of content a platform ought remove (irrespective of whether they are compelled to or not). You might disagree with me about which types of content those would be, but supposing we are in this type of world, then it is possible that the process of adjudicating which types of content might be removed could ultimately arrive at an end-point where fraudulent health claims (not so far removed from viagra spam!) are one of those types of content.
Also, as relates Hacker News, it's hard to imagine a world where it is illegal for a site owner to remove content a user posted, but it is legal for peer users, using a voting algorithm, to do so (by virtue of downvoting posts until they are dead or hidden). Would this lead to, for instance, wanting to impose criminal sanction on sockpuppet accounts, since we feel using multiple accounts to downvote is tantamount to interference that would be illegal if done by a moderator? This strikes me as a bit much.
Excellent points. Platforms obviously need to have some power of moderation for spam and off-topic remarks.
One idea for a type of system for adjudicating disputes would be something similar ot the jury system used in common law countries. When a conflict arises (some moderator deletes a post whose poster feels is within the rules), a set of users could be chosen randomly and asked to deliberate whether that is the case or not. This would be similar to a court proceeding, with the accuser and accused allowed to argue their case, but much less formal. Participation in such juries would just be a cost of using the platform. This would not apply to posts that are removed for legal reasons, where the regular legal system would have to be used instead.
Note that spam is generally already illegal, and advertising products with specific health claims that you do not have proof for is definitely illegal in many jurisdictions (fraud / false advertising).
I would also expect that any such moderation should only apply to broadcast messages. Direct, private communication between two or more people must not be moderated in any way (though users should be given certain tools to help them, such as optional spam filters, the ability to block specific people from sending them messages, etc).
Especially since eventually the winds will change, as they always do, and the "but it's a private company" crowd will find little argument against these same companies as they press the censoring boot against their necks. Creating a monster just ends up with that monster running out of control destroying everyone but they naively believe they'll always have it on a tight leash.
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.
You want the US Government to legislate a law that mandates Twitter and Facebook cannot deactivate the accounts of foreign leaders/government officials?
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.
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.
Are masks effective or ineffective against covid? Are fats good or bad for you? Are carbs bad for you? How many times a day should you eat? How much cholesterol in your food matters? What's the perfect amount of water to drink? Is veganism healthy? is paleo healthy?
Your questions seem to exploit an asymmetry between the comment you're responding to and your examples. I can't tell you "how many times a day should you eat", but I can tell you there are theoretically claims about eating which are obviously beyond the pale -- for example claims about Mystical Gurus who live for years without eating off the sunlight.
I would imagine that if I were asked to determine whether something is bad medical advice, I might consider some of the following questions:
- What is the strength of the consensus on the issue?
- Does the claim advance evidence that the consensus is wrong which actually engages with the consensus?
- Does the claim advance a powerful cause to action?
- If wrong, is the claim likely to lead to immediate or irreparable harm if followed?
- Is the claim posed authoritatively or speculatively?
- Is the person doing the posing attempting to convince others, or just expressing themselves?
- Does the claim engage with its own shortcomings or leave room for the possibility that it is wrong?
- Does the claim have only private health consequences, or does it have public health consequences?
And while each of those have a continuum of answers, I might holistically come to the conclusion that a particular claim is "bad medical advice", and I might do so fairly easily, given a certain threshold for bad medical advice.
It seems to me less that you're saying it's hard to determine that something is bad medical advice, and more that there exists some medical advice which is neither clearly bad nor good. The two things aren't in opposition.
So, I feel comfortable saying "Human beings should not drink water because it is poison" is bad medical advice -- and it was very easy for me to determine that -- while a debate about, say, whether there's a particular target amount of water or if people should just drink water when thirsty might be supported or unsupported without rising to the standard of bad medical advice.
By the standards I have just elucidated, the Maduro claim strikes me as trivially bad-faith and unsupported medical advice made declaratively to a huge audience with fairly large likely public health risk, and so I would qualify it as bad medical advice.
No it's not easy but why would Facebook be bad at it? They can consult with the worlds best. Is there any reason to believe they have performed poorly in this regard?
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.
I can kind of see the difference possibly being that Politics is slow moving. Journalists will call out bad behavior and other journalists will call out bad journalism.
With some events - such as the pandemic, or the aftermath of the US election, information doesn’t have time to pass through the normal cycle. The damage is already done if a lie gets viral the wrong way. It’s better to suppress one truth and one lie (overreact) then.
The key differentiator isn’t “how bad is this” but “how damaging is it if this information reaches X million people in 48 hours?”.
Following that line of thought, the best option for journalists is to only tell the truth if it coincides with "what's best to tell the public" and lie otherwise.
I believe that centrally planning "public opinion" is similar to centrally planning the economy. It's alluring because it'd solve so many problems, it takes a gigantic ego to think one was able to, and it usually doesn't end well.
> Following that line of thought, the best option for journalists is to only tell the truth if it coincides with "what's best to tell the public" and lie otherwise.
Journalists wouldn’t remain credible (and thus relevant) that way.
This isn’t about states centrally planning opinion. This is about everyone’s duty to not do harm by relaying bad information. That includes journalists who should properly vet information - but not resort so self-censorship, as well as social media that shouldn’t let “a lie travel half way around the globe before the truth can get its boots on”.
What flag an authoritarian claims he’a waving isn’t very interesting. If you come to power by pointing at an enemy of “imperialism and capitalism” or “migrants and socialism” makes no difference. Authoritarian regimes are all the same.
Maduro convinced me, that's who. Specifically, Maduro's behavior in office for the last N years, and even more specifically, his behavior toward opposition parties. (Imagine Trump having Biden arrested in April 2020 on some transparently fake charges, so that Biden can't conduct a campaign. Trump wins the 2020 election, though there were "irregularities" in the vote. Then he dissolves Congress. Then in 2023, Trump arrests whoever the leading Democrat candidate is. Would that be authoritarian? I would say, absolutely yes.)
I think it's more interesting to ask, who convinced you that Maduro is not authoritarian? And, what possible evidence would change your mind?
The same opposition that illegally declared itself the government after losing an election? The one that attempted to smuggle US weaponry into the country under the guise of humanitarian aid? The one that attacked and killed poor black people in the streets? The one that bribed military personnel to betray the country? The one that welcomed a (thankfully incompetent) US coup attempt? It’s not like Guaido was arrested on the spot. He was free to continue breaking the law as due process was being followed.
Also worth considering the constant sanctions and threat of invasion by the US that Venezuela is subjected to. Of course capitalist-owned media will smear a revolution of poor, black and indigenous workers against the former slave owning colonisers.
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.
You are welcome to either a) promote a set of research articles or materials of similar quality from reputable sources, or b) come across as thinking that basically all reputable mainstream media and universities in liberal democracies are sources of “right wing propaganda”.
Looking at your post history I know the answer already (It’s a bit hard to read considering most of your posts are so for voted the font is almost invisible). If you are on a crusade to convince people that undemocratic regimes foster trustworthy media while Swedish universities produce right wing propaganda I think you’ll find it’s going to be hard work.
I wish this site gave people a reputation cooldown so enough downvotes resulted in a 48h ban.
Have you read what you linked? There’s a lot of supposition and extrapolation on undefined terms. A lot of words as an excuse to bash a country already under attack. It’s not like Sweden doesn’t have a long history of imperialism either.
I’m well aware we communists aren’t welcome on HN. Considering it’s US-centric and has a bourgeois focus, it’s not surprising it would welcome only right-wing politics.
Still, it doesn’t cost me much to push back a bit on imperialist rhetoric. Maybe one or two people will reconsider their world view in terms of material interests.
I don’t mind socialists. I do mind people who think socialism is worth giving up democracy for.
Yes, even if the alternative is the “dictatorship of the bourgeoise” or eternal “imperialism” I mind.
I also very much disagree with the idea that everything that pushes back on communism is “right wing”. I’d consider myself center/left wing (e.g Social Democrat). Everything I write isn’t voted down to oblivion. Get over yourself. There is line to be drawn between Marxism in a democracy and murdering people with opposing views because “imperialism”! It’s fine to argue that workers should own the means of production. Or that the US is an imperialist bully. But one can’t dismantle democracy or murder journalists over it. No sir. Starving your own population I won’t even mention.
And no, no what aboutism. The capitalists and imperialists don’t do this. Autocrats across the world do regardless of color though. Putin, Maduro, the list can be made long. It’s not right vs left it’s autocrat vs Democrat. If one is pro socialist authoritarianism - one is also pro the others. In an autocracy you don’t get to choose what political color the ruler of the day fancies (The dictatorship of the proletariat never arrives - it’s autocrat forever, remember).
It’s completely uninteresting to pin crimes to political ideology. It’s also completely worthless rhetoric to try excuse them with e.g oppression, imperialism, try to claim that murderous capitalist democracies are “just as bad”. People who claim this aren’t giving an alternative view, they only come across as uninformed.
Maduro isn’t starving his people, that’s US sanctions. Putin is a social democrat that brought back the healthcare system after the shock therapy enforced by the US.
I’m not excusing crimes, I’m explaining you are being consistently lied to. Media in imperialist countries has a vested interest in perpetuating an incorrect but monstrous image of anyone opposed.
Were the missing WMDs in Iraq and the Nayirah testimony not enough to make you sceptical? Do you remember Galizia getting murdered over the Panama papers? Or Black Panthers getting murdered by police over feeding the poor? Or even just Assange being pursued and tortured over reporting on NATO crimes?
You point to various wrongs committed elsewhere in the world when the discussion was about whether there is Authoritarian rule in Venezuela. I interpret the deflection as a silent acknowledgement. You aren’t even attempting to convey any sense of non-authoritarian rule (freedom of press, independent judiciary, no demonizing of opposition, use of law by the executive, clear separation between executive and military etc). All you are doing is saying “yes but what about X”.
Is there or is there not a reasonable independent media in Venezuela? It’s as a simple as that! If there is (including for foreign “imperialist” interests of course!) then I’d say the country is under authoritarian rule.
Perhaps the world is being lied to and the smelly imperialist orgs like RSF make up these lies about disappearing journalists and suppressed opposition media?
I think the key thing here is: non-authoritarianism would mean (for example) free press and of course opposition. That in turn obviously includes media and opposition pushing what can be seen as foreign interests (what you’d call imperialist). Taken together that means: Venezuela has two options: either thriving pro-US media and political organizations OR authoritarian and undemocratic rule. Which one is it?
I'm trying to describe to you a pattern of behaviour where US enemies get attacked under the guise of supposed human rights, democracy and freedom. Based on past cases, surely you can see how regardless of the reality, concerns about "authoritarianism" can be used to serve the extraction of super-profits from the working class of the global south?
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.
I don't know how to speak on behalf of "people" in general but I know that I personally am in favor of some solution that weeds out misinformation while still giving all political parties voices.
If you want to talk policy, values, goals, and agenda, go for it. If you want to talk hate or amplify things known to be factually untrue, you should be fact checked loudly and clearly, and if that doesn't change what you are saying, you should not get to say it any more.
Now how to achieve that is of course a completely different issue and seems quite difficult...
You can start by stuffing a sock in their mouth, if that doesn't work, cut of their tongue. If they still dare to speak their mind, well than do whats been done in the past, and off their head....if only you could be King.
>I know that I personally am in favor of some solution that weeds out misinformation while still giving all political parties voices.
The way this will manifest itself is through a left-wing 20-something low-pay intern who will be tasked to decide whether something is or isn't true. Or put another way, you're delegating what you should or shouldn't see to that intern. Are you OK with that? Because I'm not. I neither want you, nor that intern, to decide for me.
>If you want to talk hate or amplify things known to be factually untrue, you should be fact checked loudly and clearly, and if that doesn't change what you are saying, you should not get to say it any more.
And who will arbitrate this?
And the context behind a statement like this is that your side is truthful and the other guys are liars because nobody thinks THEIR speech should be curtailed. For example, when Hillary Clinton went around and claimed Trump was an illegitimate President who stole the 2016 election [1] - should she be banned from all social media? By the way, most major media outlets have echoed this sentiment as a 'fact' many times since the 2016 election - the vast majority of which turned out to be bunk. Should the NY Times be banned for that? Or are you OK with only the NY Post being banned for reporting on a true story against Hunter Biden and his laptop?
How about when Democratic politicians and Democratic base claim that Republicans steal elections due to voter suppression, voter id, and gerrymandering - is that grounds for a ban? This happens after every major election Democrats lose. This is so normal you probably don't even notice it. Even today, there are outright lies being promulgated against Georgia's new elections laws by Democrats for partisan reasons - is that grounds for a ban? Or do you just want a laser focus on what Republicans are saying?
Right now on YouTube if you try to cast doubt on the outcome of the last election, it's an outright ban. OK. Let's make it so that this rule applies equally ... but then, I'm watching Sam Seder and he's got a video titled "How GOP Legislatures are already trying to steal the next election" [2] (which is one video in a long series of videos across years making this claim) - I guess it's OK to assert election theft as long as you just assert the Republicans are the ones doing the stealing (and by the way, Democrats have asserted the 2000, 2004 and 2016 presidential elections were stolen - "coincidentally" the ones they lost). Would you be OK with one set of standards by which everyone gets banned? Or do you want double-standards?
There are way too many strawmen here to rebut, but I'll take on a couple.
> The way this will manifest itself is through a left-wing 20-something low-pay intern who will be tasked to decide whether something is or isn't true.
I mentioned above that I don't know if this ideal can be met, but I still think it is ideal to me. I do believe there are other ways beyond your suggestion (was it as serious one? You couldn't think of any other ways?)
> How about when Democratic politicians and Democratic base claim that Republicans steal elections due to voter suppression, voter id, and gerrymandering - is that grounds for a ban?
Be careful... I never called for banning sides or people, only statements. And yes, saying things that are proven untrue should not be allowed by anyone in government or politics or public positions. (It isn't relevant but I'm not a Democrat, fyi).
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.
That may be, but looking back through recent history, there were plenty of powerfull people that fell into the grips of the fashionable, obscure and laughably wrong ideas, and ideologies. And imposed them on society through fiat, murder, and force.
The price of being wrong, always seems to pass down in society. Those at the bottom suffered the most in wars.
Just because you are INTJ, a billionaire with funds, and a fashionable reading habit, does not make you a qualified social engineer.
Generally, the masses going about, acting in their own self interest, talking to each other freely, makes for a better world, than one imposed upon them, through the dictates of a King.
This misses the part where Facebook got massive complaints and government investigations over not doing anything to prevent the spread of certain information. You can't have it both ways.
Having watched and listened to most (though not yet all) of last Thursday's House Energy and Commerce hearings on disinformation in social media[1] does show considerable concern from both GOP and Democratic members.
Though the specific tenor of complaints differs.
Democrats for the most part are concerned with disinformation and racial, ethnic, and gender bias.
Republicans tend to raise issues of perceived political bias, disrespect to sitting / former electoral officeholders, social values issues (notably transgender and other LBGTQ+ matters), bullying, suicide, and policies concerning what is perceived as legitimate legal terminalogy concerning immigration.
I see frustration and anger largely equal on both sides. The underlying factors however differ by parties.
You say this all as a joke or as a way to impress upon people the risks of wokism - but every type of justification for someone having more power over another comes down to someone claiming that their form of running the state is better than others - and that uneducated idiots shouldn't hold power.
This isn't leftism gone wrong - this is the allegory of the cave.
And no one wants to elect them. How do anarchists and libertarians do in elections? Oh right pretty terrible everywhere. You know it's bad when your best counterarguments are the zapistas or like catalonia circa the 1930s
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 and Democratic party against Facebook and other social media companies to moderate and ban anybody who doesn't conform to their particular narrative. Social Media was blamed for Hillary's loss. Social Media was blamed for Russian misinformation. Social Media was blamed for giving a platform to right-wing media and Trump supporters. We saw the end-result of this in the run-up to last year's election where Facebook and Twitter actively banned and suppressed Hunter Biden stories (which was applauded by many here as well). Stories that were true, by the way.
So no. Don't think for a second this is Zuckerberg. He never wanted this. None of the tech companies wanted this .. but here we are.
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.
This is a great illustration of the point I'm making. Thank you for providing a crystal clear example of how we got here.
>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.
Yes. If you give people a platform they'll say all kinds of things, true, untrue, and, partly true.
Regarding COVID, what's interesting is social media companies decided that anything that goes against WHO guidelines is a hoax, even if you have credible epidemiologists having a discussion. WHO is staffed by very good people who are experts in their fields, but WHO is a human organization that is susceptible to political influence and regular human faults. For example, I don't fully trust any conclusion the WHO reaches when it comes to COVID and China. I just don't. I'm glad WHO exists and they do a lot of good work, but I don't want WHO dictating (directly or by proxy) which opinions I am allowed to hear.
The implicit argument you're also making is that if you just ban your political opponents promulgating views you think are false (and some many be false), those views will go away. That's not going to happen. All you did was increase mistrust and increase conspiracy thinking.
>There's the myth of election theft if you needed a second example.
By who exactly? Because up until this election, EVERY election that Democrats lost was because of election theft, through either Russian misinformation, or voter suppression, or gerrymandering, or voter id, or systemic racism or unicorns. EVERY.SINGLE.ONE. Trump's election was deemed as stolen by huge swaths of Democratic politicians (including Hillary) and voters.
Oh but those are credible 'election theft' allegations because they come from YOUR political side. It's the other side that gets everything wrong. Your allegations against 'election theft' shouldn't be suppressed, but theirs should. Right?
>There really is a lot of 'misinformation' (outright lying) on social media.
And you're afraid that your reasoning abilities are so feeble that you don't trust yourself to see this misinformation lest you be affected by it? And therefore you need a low-paid, 20-something, intern-censor to tell you what you should and shouldn't see.... You may be OK with that, but I'm not.
Hillary conceded literally in day one. The democrats who said "not my president" shut up and stopped protesting after a month.
You're trying so hard to make it seem like this is a both sides problem but we all know that it isn't. Political rehtoric is far different than actually taking the capital over.
Plus - the democrat lost elections due to it being "stolen" narrative you claim is being fostered by the democrats is more likely being fostered by the democrats political enemies. I don't believe bernie sanders is begging his supporters to stay home because bernie got screwed on super delegates in 2016 or 2020. Most of the "not my president" crap might as well have been from russian bots with how effective it is for democrats. So, maybe you should celebrate democratic incompetence since you dislike them so much...
She did ... and since that time has been going around claiming Trump is an illegitimate president and the election was stolen. Here's one source[1] but honestly, there are hundreds.
>The democrats who said "not my president" shut up and stopped protesting after a month.
No. That's a lie. Huge swaths of Democratic politicians, voters and media have made direct claims about the 2016 election being stolen (and any election they lost).
>Plus - the democrat lost elections due to it being "stolen" narrative you claim is being fostered by the democrats is more likely being fostered by the democrats political enemies.
No. That's a lie. Even now the new Georgia election law is being characterized by Democrats as a way to steal future elections. But these kinds of claims were being made after every election as far back as I can remember (I can remember the claim of presidency being 'stolen' in the 2000 election, certainly the 2004 election with voting machines being hacked, up until now). Stacy Abrams lost by 50 thousand votes and still claims that election was stolen. It's so normal for Democrats to make those claims nobody even bats an eye anymore. It's so accepted.
You have a blind spot for your side. You can see everything the other guys are doing wrong, but you don't see your guys doing anything wrong. And that's the problem here. You don't want tech companies to censor everyone by the same standards. You want double-standards. You want them to censor by YOUR standards.
"Hillary Clinton dismissed President Trump as an “illegitimate president” and suggested that “he knows” that he stole the 2016 presidential election in a CBS News interview to be aired Sunday."
Sure, whatever you say. Here's the quote since apparently we've all forgotten:
>"A question that probably some of you are thinking of if you’re totally into that world, which I find to be very interesting. So, supposedly we hit the body with a tremendous, whether it’s ultraviolet or just very powerful light, and I think you said that hasn’t been checked, but you’re going to test it. And then I said supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way. (To Bryan) And I think you said you’re going to test that, too. Sounds interesting, right?"
>"And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning, because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it’d be interesting to check that, so that you’re going to have to use medical doctors with, but it sounds interesting to me. So, we’ll see, but the whole concept of the light, the way it kills it in one minute. That’s pretty powerful."
UV light is a disinfectant and experimental treatments have proposed inserting a UV light into the lungs via mouth, or yes, literally injecting it into veins. Whether that's a good idea is another question.
Trump spitballed about injecting disinfectants into people's lungs. He didn't say that individual people should do it, but he did say that doctors should test it out.
> And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning. Because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it would be interesting to check that. So, that, you're going to have to use medical doctors with. But it sounds - it sounds interesting to me. So we'll see.
The specific disinfectants Trump was talking about were bleach and isopropyl alcohol. Trump's comments came right after a presentation by the undersecretary for Homeland Security about using these specific disinfectants to clean surfaces. Trump then genuinely appeared to think it might be a good idea to try these disinfectants out inside the human body. Anyone can watch the video and judge for themselves whether Trump was being sarcastic, as he later claimed - I think it's obvious that he was completely serious.
Trump had just gotten done watching a presentation on how surfaces could be disinfected with chemicals that the average person knows to be extremely toxic (such as bleach). His takeaway was that maybe doctors should try injecting those extremely toxic chemicals into patients. I was amazed that the president of the United States thought this might possibly be a good idea. But let's pretend, for a moment, that it was actually a reasonable suggestion: why was the president even spitballing possible CoVID-19 treatments on live television? The whole spectacle was just absurd, and I think the White House recognized that, because this was the last press briefing the task force gave for months, and when they started up again, Trump was not present.
> He didn't say that individual people should do it, but he did say that doctors should test it out.
Only, people regularly think that they're smarter than doctors, and will self-medicate based on suggestions of somebody they trust. We saw people die because Trump boosted hydroxychloroquine -- he should have known at that point in time that people would follow his suggestion. And guess what? Thousands of people followed his advice on disinfectant/bleach.
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 not what Trump was communicating
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.
That's what I find most incredible about this thread and the confidence of the person denying something Trump said on the record. It hasn't even been a year and we're already forgetting the dumpster fire that was the original response to COVID.
It's a disgrace that the USA, founded on a constitution that defends free speech, has globalist private companies operating out of the USA gagging opinions and dissent while blatantly amplifying factions and ideas it is aligned with.
They have every right as a S230 regulated company to do this, but we have no other free speech places to go as alternative services are closed down.
We are going to see Trump create a parallel social media universe platform shortly that will be a disaster for unity, beliefs and the credibility of what's left of the 'corporate entertainment media' as Tulsi Gabbard calls the oligarch owned omnipotent corporate 'news 'channels.
Facebook is acting on behalf of the US's long-term, bipartisan effort to undermine any Latin American government that doesn't grant its corporations access to that nation's resources. More specifically, the Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations have undermined the Venezuelan government in many ways, including supporting coup attempts.[1]
I'm not arguing that I support what Maduro said. He has an awful record as a leader. I'm arguing that this is the natural result of social media censorship. It's censorship by the US government by proxy.
Here is a simple test to see if the above statement is true: would Facebook censor a world leader as swiftly and as severely if this were a leader of an allied state, or even a leader within our own government?
I worry about this kind of censorship. There is no guarantee that the WHO is right either. Remember that the entire group of doctors thought blood letting was a good idea. How can we be sure that modern science doesn't have significant gaps in understanding either? Remember how the majority thought the housing market was too big to crash?
I'd much prefer no censorship and let people decide for themselves. What we should be doing is trying to raise everyone's critical thinking game.
Im not disagreeing or anything but is bloodletting a bad thing? Genuinely asking. I thought it was known regenerating ones bloodcells is a good thing. Is that erroneous? Last time I went to a blooddrive I was browsing a pamphlet that contained some benefits of giving blood aside from helping others in need.
It isn't, the practice stopped in the 19th century or so, its still used for some ailments but its not a cure all as they used to believe 200 years ago.
There is some limited evidence that excess iron could be a risk factor for heart disease. This may be part of the reason why menopause seems to increase the risk of heart disease in women, even after adjusting for age. So it's possible that blood letting could be beneficial from that standpoint, but it remains unproven. And there don't appear to be any significant risks from occasional blood donation.
> What we should be doing is trying to raise everyone's critical thinking game
How do you propose we do that, and what do you propose while waiting for the day where that's the case? The proliferation of Q lunatics and anti-vaxxers shows that we're not really there and there are real-world deadly consequences to "letting people decide for themselves". When it comes to public health, most people can't decide for themselves because they lack the medical background needed to understand the science and decide.
Good, let's try to convince anti-vaxxers, Q people, Covid-deniers and what not of that, it will surely work!
Of course it won't, because people tend to listen to other people due to a variety of reasons ( personal charisma, luck, circumstances, etc.). We wouldn't have cults and science deniers otherwise.
> Good, let's try to convince anti-vaxxers, Q people, Covid-deniers and what not of that, it will surely work!
You don't seem to understand. Don't tell them on Day 1 that mask are useless, and on Day 2 that mask are mandatory under threat of jail. Tell them on Day 1 that you fucked up and destroyed mask supplies a few years before and that you're not prepared anymore. Though, that will never happen as these people want to get re-elected and do-no-wrong.
If masks are useless on Day 1, they are useless on Day 2. If not, it means that people making these statement are full of shit on potentially ANY subject and thus can not be looked upon to (including vaccination).
Or maybe our knowledge of the situation and the unknown virus was evolving? And the rate of asymptomatic cases, and the fact that they still spread the virus wasn't initially known/certain? Why the binary approach?
It has nothing to do with a binary approach. The anti-masks arguments were very much a red-herring argument really being all about on anti-hoarding and anti-panic arguments from unprepared institutions (despite hoarding taxpayers dollars for years). A couple of month earlier, just mentioning the damn thing was enough to get you banned from social media. I was even arguing about the difference between test positivity rate and actual cases (including asymptomatic ones) early on, especially wrt. seasonal flu numbers, being treated like a complete fool (and still am).
The amount of layers upon layers upon layers of ass covering about all this has been staggering.
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 chambers of misinformation, but we want to live in a democratic society too...