Have activist groups also been booted off other platforms such as Mastadon, Matrix and Gettr? Will Facebook shadow ban people for linking to competitors?
While I'm not surprised in Facebook's continual campaign of bipartisan self-abuse, I'm kinda having a hard time seeing the point of a convey protest in the US. The whole "50 smaller countries glued together" aspect of the United States means the Fed can't really influence local COVID policys as much as a regular nation-state, for good or ill.
The federated nature of the several states is largely theoretical at this point. Truckers are certainly engaged in interstate commerce, which is explicitly federal jurisdiction, and when all else fails the magic passphrase -- "national security" -- neutralizes the effect of that pesky Constitution.
A national protest resonates in the individual states.
I'm against these protests but extremely wary that FB etc. would shut them down.
GoFundMe locked the donations to the Canadian protest.
The 'powers that be' need only point at a 'canard' to do so, in the case of GoFundMe they cited 'police reports' ... imagine them doing thee same for BLM protests which, which largely peaceful, often had violent components.
It's reasonable to have policies to ban COVID liars and QAnoners etc. but it gives a lot of legitimacy to 'regular truckers who want to protest' to shut them down from wanting to communicate.
I can't imagine a more powerful way to permanently damage ostensibly legitimate authority than those getting shut down.
TikTok has not shut down the truckers live feeds from Ottawa, they're generally a good bunch that have utterly bad views on covid and vaccines, but their hesitation is partly rooted in 'the government lying to them' and the way the press has covered them, the way FB, GoFundME etc. have closed ranks on them, I'm fearful that it will just even further justify their actions now, and in the future as they entirely turn away from trusting the state, medical authorities etc..
I believe they do not like federal COVID vaccine requirement and crazy patch work of requirements between state lines.
Anyway this is all about politics: Biden says that he is for small blue collar workers (aka truck drivers) but he also does not want be shown as wrong and lifts COVID restrictions.
The bottom line is this: this is all about politics and Facebook is making mistake of not allowing pages like this.
Canada has even more provincial control than the US, so we are even more mystified about what this convoy actually wants (the whole convoy thing started up here, and a large majority of us are deeply annoyed.) Everything representing a "vaccine mandate" is implemented at the provincial level, with the exception of border controls.
Their original gripe was about lifting the order that unvaccinated truckers needed to test and isolate on re-entering Canada. Which was then made a moot point, since the US introduced a rule that says that truckers entering the US must be vaccinated.
Since then the group organizing the trucker protest has published a "memorandum of understanding" that demands that the entire government dissolve itself and hand over power to the truckers[1]. It is a wild document that seems to be a written request for a coup.
The national security take on these convoys is General Flynn and the fifth column are trying to reduce NATOs capacity to respond to whatever is going to happen in Ukraine and/or Taiwan. The misinformation networks are trying to amplify these convoy groups in every major NATO country with the dual goal of creating an artificial supply chain crisis, crashing the economy and requiring national security resources to clear the convoys.
Food for thought.
If for instance, that is the plan, how would you as a free nation defend against this? Their ham handed answer is censorship. But this is backfiring. So what do you do? Serious answers only.
What about that Federal government lifts all COVID restrictions, mask and vaccine mandates? England, Sweden, and Denmark already did that.
That will kneecap this convoy before they can even start.
Again, this is all about politics. Some people are sick of these restrictions and they want to vent their frustration. Facebook is making mistake of not allowing pages like this. I do not think these people are nuts or QAnon. They are just frustrated.
>What about that Federal government lifts all COVID restrictions, mask and vaccine mandates? England, Sweden, and Denmark already did that.
Just look at a comparison of covid hospitalizations and deaths between the US and those countries. Adjusted for population, they're super high in the US. Once those go dow, the covid restrictions will go away. If they were as high as in the US in England, Sweden or Denmark, they wouldn't have lifted the restrictions. It's so simple.
I understand and with this issue, I would side with truckers.
But nothing is ever all about politics.
Hybrid warfare exploits legitimate fault lines.
So to defend against the weaponization of these protests, what do you do? I’m this case, capitulating to the demands may work. But next time? How do you protect against trolls trying to start fights and cause real issues?
hmmm,I'm not familiar with the content of the group, but being shut down for violating the qanon policy?? that seems questionable, and damn convenient. is it normal for a group administrator to have their personal profile permanently disabled for the content of a group?
With Covid we’ve witnessed the neoliberal dystopia blossom. Government and big tech is fully united, with any mild free speech aspirations beaten out via threats of regulation.
Attempts to silence Joe Rogan is just another nail in that coffin. They can’t control what he says, so they need to stop him from saying it at all costs. Ideally before the next election.
Everything liberals don’t like is “literally fascism” and people who disagree with them are “actual nazis.” And this is regarded as Very Serious Discourse among the self proclaimed highly intelligent.
Except a lot of conspiracy theories aren’t conspiracies any more. The vaccine is not 100% effective? Vaccinated can spread Covid? The virus is endemic and 90%+ vaxx rate won’t change that?
All misinformation a year ago and reality today.
But that’s besides the point. After they started deplatforming right wingers, they quickly started targeting socialists too.
Going after the hard right makes building the infra to silence people palatable. Then they get everyone else they didn’t like.
Those aren't very good examples, because a) you're giving the conspiracy theorists too much credit and b) the facts changed. The vaccines were incredibly effective - against OG covid. Then the variants came along. Feel free to correct my memory, but the conspiracy theorists weren't being censored for shouting that the vaccine's theoretical efficiency was under threat from possible future mutations - they were saying idiotic stuff like that it's a government conspiracy to inject us all with mind control drugs.
I just do not understand why certain "left leaning" officials cannot accept they were wrong. It is how science works.
Just say - "we were wrong by claiming that vaccinated cannot spread COVID so we will lift COVID restrictions". Also since data shows that it is unlikely that kids will get sick we will lift mask mandate in schools.
But data clearly shows that "vaccinated people are less likely to get seriously ill". So please do get vaccinated. ASAP.
Very simple - just follow science and maybe, just maybe, you will be able to convert some people to belive the science.
I figured with COVID-19 coming so hot on the heels of those measles outbreaks we would have seen the death of the anti-vaccination movement.
That said, I thought the internet would be the end of pseudoscience, but there's apparently no profit in debunking pseudoscience like there is promoting it.
I'm opposed to a company profiting off promoting potentially harmful speech (the more divisive & outrageous it is the more "engagement" it generates) which often leads to real-world violence.
While not directly applicable here (the article mentions QAnon policies but I'm not sure how close that particular group was to the ideology), in general I also believe calling QAnon "political speech" is a bit of a stretch. "Insanity" is what it should be called and should be dealt with by pointing them to counselling & mental health support services, not giving them a platform to publish their stupidity and grow an audience. That clearly isn't happening as Facebook is happy to profit off all these crazies and give them a safe space to communicate - the groups will only get shut down when and if the negative PR impact outweighs the profits.
The absurdity is that there is an anti vaxxers convoy to DC, not that their group is being removed from Facebook.
Mysteries of the human mind. Enact a law that forbids even for some good reason that it's illegal say to wear hats made of dried artichokes, and although nobody would have wanted to wear one before, suddenly you'll see flocks of protestors with dried artichokes hats claiming democracy is dying because some very clever manipulative actor told them so.
Mandatory vaccination for many diseases is already in place since many decades in many countries, and some those vaccines in their first days could have been "young and not thoroughly tested" as anti vaxxers claim of Covid-19 vaccines (which are not), yet nobody made a drama or thought to use mandatory vaccination as political leverage.
Back in the day, however, we had no such thing as this amplifier of human idiocy called social media, in which every matter can be abused to divide people in factions in order to exploit their tendency to become defensive, see enemies everywhere, compact their herd and ultimately also becoming sources of manufactured consent (votes).
So, I hereby swear that as soon as I'm being in power I'll ditch that absolute nazi-like law that prevents us from wearing our traditional beloved dried artichokes hats. Now vote me, thanks.
As an American citizen, I would like the big tech companies (the top six or so) heavily regulated like big pharma is by the FDA, to reduce possible harms inflicted on users. Also, I would like big tech to be subject to a stronger form of anti-trust law, to prevent anti-competitive behavior and market concentration.
