Twitter broadly bans any Covid-19 tweets that could help the virus spread
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
As of 3 days ago, weren’t the “experts” in the UK saying they were going to let the virus rip through the population to reach herd immunity? Until some dissenting experts noted that doing so would likely cause mass death and chaos. Would Twitter have shut down the members of the public noticing that the UK’s plan was insane, before the change of course?
You can sure as hell bet they wouldn’t shut down the UK government’s initial tweets, despite the fact that they caused the virus to spread.
And on and on. Twitter has done a huge service to correct these awful experts.
You definitely had to curate your follows, and actually read the scientific articles linked, etc, but thanks to Twitter and Reddit, my family is as ready as we can be, physically, emotionally, and financially.
And how here we are straight-up banning speech that is contra "expert guidance".
The slopes, they are slippery!
The day Twitter shut down Zerohedge for reporting on COVID-19, that was the market peak, and roughly a week prior to broad awareness of the scope of the problem.
Put another way: Twitter killed people by suppressing voices that were sounding the alarm.
To this day, they have neither reinstated, nor apologized to ZH for suppressing information that could have saved lives. Jack Dorsey is personally responsible for people dying.
"In a piece titled ‘Is This The Man Behind The Global Coronavirus Pandemic?’, Durden included a picture of a scientist at Wuhan’s Institute of Virology and suggested users could pay him “a visit” to find out more about what caused the outbreak." https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-01/zero-hedg...
That government official is an expert in the UK government's official policy position regarded the pandemic, but they are, again, not a medical expert.
Whether Twitter is able to distinguish between the two, I don't know.
Big picture, I'm all for Twitter shutting down tweets that proclaim that a specific combination of essential oils will shut down a viral infection.
What happens when two experts disagree with each other? This rule seems to assume that experts are all in agreement on everything.
They're bad stewards. They're made themselves into censors.
Suppressing "unofficial" or "inexpert" advice is extremely dangerous, I know people who would not have supplies by now if I hadn't convinced them two months ago that, because China is willing to shut down their economy to stop the spread of it, it is probably going to be extremely serious.
I hope they do not crack down on genuine, proactive communications: saying that the pathogen is more transmissible than it is yet officially recognized to be, or genuine arguments for more proactive isolation.
I had a physics professor in undergrad that still wasn't sold on the entire dark matter/dark energy phenomena and was proudly in the <1% of physicists who shared his beliefs.
I don't see this implied anywhere. Are you reading something I'm not?
Nothing! That happens all the time.
If twitter can just cull the most dangerous disinformation that's a huge improvement. What remains doesn't need to be consensus, just not disinformation.
Let me see all opinions and make up my own mind.
This should not be a radical idea in a free society.
(And fwiw, I use the unfiltered timeline view, combined w/ lists. I hate algorithmic timelines.)
Then again CDC says a bandanna is also appropriate alternative...
If it barely helps and hospitals everywhere are out of masks, then using one for very little gain does hurt. I think that's where we are.
It barely helps is a simple fact. Look at most of the masks being worn. The have huge gaps all around them. They do no cover the eyes. And if you're not used to wearing a mask you'll be adjusting it constantly -- touching your face.
What untrained people are doing is tying a fomite to their face and expecting it to magically protect them, ignoring the fact that most transmission is via your hands.
You can’t have a little gain being hurt.
1) Don't wear a mask unless your sick or caring for someone who is sick? 2) Masks help reduce spread.
If the USA had a steady supply of masks, they would almost certainly be asking or requiring everyone in public to have a mask on. Because we don't, they have been promoting the idea that "you don't need a mask" in order to minimize panic and make masks more available to people that really need them. Unfortunately this "you don't need a mask" statement is being misinterpreted by people to thinking that masks serve no purpose.
But lets just agree that this disease would not be spreading as fast if everyone had a mask on. If nothing else it would prevent people who have the disease (and maybe don't know they have it yet) from spreading it. Surgical masks are effective at stopping particles coming from the mouth of the user. It also minimizes face touching by creating a physical barrier. N95 masks provide the same purpose, but also offer the added value of filtering particles coming from the outside, towards the user.
Normally with a slippery slope argument there is some reason why the person who wants the final step to be taken has to take the earlier steps first, but here it just seems like the proposed bad guy can do what they want when they want to.
If we imagine that news and reporting works the same way, then what matters is not that only 10% of Americans read Twitter, but which 10%. If, say, all journalists and reporters and members of congress read Twitter, then that would be a conduit for misinformation posted on Twitter to spread more broadly, right?
(I do agree that in the past Twitter's role in civic life has been overblown, e.g. westerners projecting Twitter as being operative in the Arab Spring when in fact most domestic organization in the Arab Spring was done over local mesh network apps and Twitter was mostly used to report the events to the English-language world, not initiate change internally)
From Twitter's standpoint, if as a business their primary goal is to continue to at bare minimum exist, this is actually their most conservative and lowest risk option. We could debate all day on what sources of information have been the best, government or non-government, but I don't think Twitter is interested at all in considering that side of it.
The YouTube's intent is understandable, but it ban without considering the context, just blind matching to the word, even if the context is harmless.
The result, the youtubers start referring the coronavirus in an expression "the virus we can't say its name here" and alike.
It reminds me of the Harry Potter's You-Know-Who.
I am certain the power to decide what is and what is not acceptable should not be vested in private companies.
The tools you use to counter a disinformation campaign are not the tools you use to stop a virus. And with authorities actually getting stuff wrong stopping heterodox views is a suicide pact.
China is doing this because they're worried about the stability of their political system. Ours will survive goldbug1989 posting about how much they hate the quarantine or karenlovesyoga writing that essential oils will protect us.
Yes, I know Twitter is a privately-owned site and they can do whatever they want with their site. But it also means that it should no longer be seen as a neutral platform.
I really wish some hackers got together and created a censorship resistant social media platform. It is sorely needed.
Bizarre to me that anyone would ever have thought that in the first place. Twitter has always been a for-profit enterprise, which completely precludes neutrality.
"I really wish some hackers got together and created a censorship resistant social media platform. It is sorely needed."
And then what happens when that platform is used to plan and execute violent attacks and share illegal pornography? I don't disagree that this is a good idea, but it's also not a silver bullet. Free and open communication will always be a perpetual struggle requiring trade-offs and compromises.