Facebook freezes Venezuela president Maduro's page over Covid-19
reuters.com
reuters.com
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...
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.
But that’s not what they said. Fauci said “healthy people do not need to wear masks.” So he either lied then or is lying now. The reason for the lie is irrelevant. If healthy people should wear masks, the lack of production capability doesn’t change the fact.
If masks work and Fauci knew they worked, then his statement that healthy people don’t need masks was scientific fraud.
His exact words: “There’s no reason to be walking around with a mask. When you’re in the middle of an outbreak, wearing a mask might make people feel a little bit better and it might even block a droplet, but it’s not providing the perfect protection that people think that it is. And, often, there are unintended consequences — people keep fiddling with the mask and they keep touching their face.”
That statement was either patently false, or it was true and his current statements are patently false.
Did he lie in order to protect mask supplies? Did some new groundbreaking study come out during the next few months? Of course not. So why would a rational person trust anything coming from Fauci given that we don’t know if it’s the truth, or just some manipulative statement based on whatever the political need happens to be at the time? To be even more cynical, ask oneself why certain older mask-related research papers have been censored?
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/04/data-do-...
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.
For example: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02801-8
There’s also the option that he was wrong and learned/was educated. A lot of scientific progress works like that. “He lied” implies intention.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Last spring the CDC and the WHO were consistently wrong on masks, on asymmetric spread, etc on just about everything.
Maybe the experts themselves don't even trust what is supposedly the truth anymore.
"Hate" is a pretty Orwellian[1] word in this context, with a meaning pretty far from its usage a couple of decades ago.
Most usage I've seen has a distictively political bend.
E.g. "X are stupid and science proves it!" is not hate when X is "conservatives" but is when X is "muslims".
[1] see the section on meaningless words: https://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_poli...
> 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.
X should die, or X are vile subhumans stealing our jobs, or we should rape X, or X are raping our dogs is hate.
"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?
Though you might have different standards... Would you say "So called transwomen are not women!" is hate speech?
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.
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.
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.
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.
We’ve gone down the path of good intentions that leads to hell.
Does this not interfere with self determination? Is there one true north now? Have Facebook found all truth?
This is getting ridiculous.
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?
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.
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.
From where does the idea of “private” come? Is it to distinguish its controllers from that which is government controlled?
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
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.
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.
That is an American pow, that is not shared in Europe or China.
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)
The real problem is that Facebook is in a position of such power and market control that moderation feels like censorship.
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.
WHO has been extremely incompetent in communicating with public. Their tweets were shockingly bad and misleading.
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.
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.
Giving powerful people a free megaphone for their opinions and anecdotal bs is also bad.
Nobody believes there is one right answer, but amplifying stupid is a recipe for disaster.
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?
The answers aren't always clear.
Forbidding Facebook from controlling its own platform is a slippery slope.
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_cost_of_the_Iraq_War
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.
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.
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 teacher in high school told us: to the question "which newspaper should I read?" the answer is "not one single newspaper".
Back in the days it would be "you can't just publish trial papers, it has to go through the church"
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.
Today, we demand evidence to back up claims whether or not we want to believe them.
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.
(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.)
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.
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].
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.
[Biden himself admits issues with drugs]https://www.businessinsider.com/hunter-biden-opens-about-add... [Same thing only in his book]https://people.com/politics/hunter-biden-to-release-memoir-d...
If the issue had gotten full press coverage if might have flipped some states.
It’s also a reminder that tech companies can now decide elections. Angry denial is easier then rational thought.
But they also laughed at Bozo the clown.
> 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
Carvacrol is a component of oregano oil, a common herbal supplement. This is one case where the XKCD strip is clearly wrong.
> Also, if you want to cite some evidence, Braz J Microbiol might not be the best source.
Is the Brazilian Journal of Microbiology not trusted or something?
How so?
> Is the Brazilian Journal of Microbiology not trusted or something?
Well it's not Nature, that's for sure
"When you see a claim that a common drug or vitamin 'kills cancer cells in a petri dish', keep in mind, so does a handgun"
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.
[1] https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1375543592018657285
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.
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).
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.
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.
Except if you're in a position to get them in trouble. Remember that Trump (mostly) got away with this while in office.
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?”.
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.
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”.
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?
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.
This is a mischaracterization.
> 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.
* C-SPAN: https://www.c-span.org/video/?471458-1/president-trump-coron...
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.
As someone said, we're living in the post-truth era.
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
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.
> And is there a way we can do something like that
Trump isn't a scientist, he had a vague understanding and was asking others if this made any sense.
>"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."
Though I thank you for getting the full quote, it raises the level of discourse. My excuse for not doing so is I was in a rush.
https://www.cedars-sinai.org/newsroom/cedars-sinai-statement...
They knew that wasn't OK, but were unwilling to do anything about it, and fear no reprisals from Maduro.
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.
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?
[1] https://theintercept.com/2020/05/09/venezuela-coup-regime-ch...
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.
Indeed, raising everyone’s critical abilities is a great idea. Hopefully it gets done
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.
Stop lying to them.
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.
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).
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.
https://maximumfun.org/episodes/sawbones/sawbones-bloodletti...
PS: Fun fact, George Washington was killed because of blood letting. they basically bled him to death.