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Comment by DataWorker | Hacker News Reader

Yes, I was banned “for spreading disinformation”from a popular online forum for suggesting mask wearing could be helpful. The authorities at the time were fighting “disinformation” that masks work. A few weeks later I’m sure the same mods were banning people for saying the opposite.

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More recently people are getting banned and censored on YouTube and other platforms for suggesting widespread use of ivermectin as a COVID-19 treatment. It isn't on the "official" recommended list in most places and so some would consider that harmful disinformation. But there have been some encouraging study results recently so I wouldn't be surprised if the WHO or CDC guidelines change again in a few months.

https://covid19criticalcare.com/medical-evidence/ivermectin/

In general we need more humility and less confidence. Many of the scientific "facts" that we're certain of today will eventually be disproven.

So remember some "encouraging" studies saying Hydrochloroquine worked? Yeah.

People aren't getting banned for talking about studies, they're getting banned because the video they make opens with "the secret cure THEY don't want you to know about". They're not starting from a point of view grounded in facts about the actual scientific process of data.

The current scientific evidence for ivermectin is far stronger than that for Hydroxychloroquine (not Hydrochloroquine) ever was. So instead of posting a dismissive, low-effort comment I would encourage you to actually read the linked studies.

By the way, there was another study published a few days ago indicating that Hydroxychloroquine might offer some limited benefit. The observational study was rather weak from an evidence-based medicine standpoint, but maybe it does work at least slightly. Research continues.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33446136/

You accuse me of being dismissive, yet clearly stopped reading my post after the first line (or are choosing to ignore the rest of it).

Hydroxychloroquine particularly seems to be effective in combination with certain other medications which neutralize a part of the virus which HCQ does not. Fluvoxamine is also showing a lot of promise.

One of the main planks in the "hydroxychloroquine is bad" narrative actually had some disinfo elements itself: https://www.the-scientist.com/features/the-surgisphere-scand...

Well you didn't sign an NDA so which forum was it? So we all can know what to expect?

Amazing how we have these stark examples of the obvious dangers of aggressive moderation to enforce a party line (sorry, I mean "to combat disinformation") and it just doesn't seem to register at all. I'll bet it wouldn't even be hard to find people who say that banning mask advocacy one week and mask skepticism the next was the correct thing to do "because the available information changed."

The fun thing is that if you have biased moderation removing lies from one side it means that almost all lies people will see is from the other side. To me it seems obvious that this would cause people to distrust that side, since in their feed almost all liars comes from that side.

So really I don't think that this kind of moderation helps.

Right. When I know censorship is occurring it's harder for me to believe things.

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