Anti-vaxxers make up to $1.1B for social media companies
codastory.com
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You can't reason someone out of something that they didn't reason themselves into. We've seen time and again that "fact checking" only makes things worse. The only option is to draw a line and remove the bad actors.
Well we are, and thus the exploding case numbers right now in the anti-vax portions of the US. Darwinism is not a great public health policy though.
We shouldn't be so afraid of some mistakes while the entire world burns down around us. Make mistakes, but due it in the pursuit of a better society.
https://usafacts.org/visualizations/coronavirus-covid-19-spr...
What?
I do think the fact that people die as a result of this messaging is worth emphasising though, particularly when weighed against the supposed human right to use Facebook to disseminate their speech.
The references to darwinism here are especially infuriating cause in many cases it's specifically parents (older people) who are anti vaxxers. Bit late for natural selection. And also such a cruel thing to say.
The ones who I was unable to convince had something in common - bad experiences with people berating them online for their opinions on the matter. The people who shared their opinions were naturally much nicer, which caused them to double-down. Social media is full of people treating each other with smug contempt, but very few people are driven to change by that kind of behavior.
The problem is: de-programming all the propaganda takes an immense amount of time - months, sometimes years of effort. This is a waste of time that could have been avoided from the start if governments worldwide had done their job and cracked down on conspiracy bullshit and Russian propaganda warfare before thousands of people stormed the Congress and half a million people in the US died from Covid.
Democracy, similar to a human body, will only survive if it fights against threats. Democracy is nothing one should ever taken for granted, just look at Hungary how quick a democracy can fall under the attack of "populists" and "illiberal democrats" (this is actually how Fidesz see themselves).
Just imagine how many people would still be alive today if that large orange man had come out on Day 1 wearing a mask and asking people to be responsible. But once that ideological line was drawn, there became a certain percentage of the US population that would follow it (literally) to death. It's inconceivable how much of this was avoidable in retrospect.
And he would have won re-election in a landslide.
Were the statements that masks didn't help against sars-cov-2 inaccurate in retrospect? Yes. Was the assumption back in the time that a) masks were a rare good, desperately needed in ERs and b) that it was possible that covid19 was transmitted by smear/touch valid? Also yes.
Was it justified to stop issuing AstraZeneca vaccines after reports of blood clots? Yes. Was it justified to resume vaccinating using this vaccine after two weeks of investigations? Also yes.
Justified, maybe. The best policy decision in the face of widespread hostility/skepticism? Probably not.
I just said "I've convinced a half dozen people to get vaccinated". General availability for the vaccine in the US has only been around for about two months - less in some cases. That wouldn't have been possible if what you're saying is true. It really doesn't take that much effort for most people.
And I'm really not a fan of the "de-programming" mindset. To treat someone as though their thoughts and concerns were programmed by someone else is to disregard their reasoning and free will. Maybe they're missing information. Maybe they're misunderstanding something. Maybe they have been fed misinformation. In most of the cases I've been successful with, it's simply that nobody has taken time to address their concerns. Most of these people don't need "re-programming". They're worried and they need someone to listen to their concerns and reassure them with calm reasoning.
</sarcasm>
The world is changing and we don't know the answers. We should focus on inclusion of all suggestions and then order the world so that we can afford to have some people make mistakes - the alternative is that at some point we are going to have everybody (forced or not) make some terrible mistake from which we, as a society, will not recover.
Our distrust in government and authority is now running so deep (and often with good reason) that many people prefer to believe those with a big following on Facebook or Twitter if that person presents an argument that aligns with their world view. Doesn't matter if the entire scientific or medical community disagrees, that's the view they'll take. And one piece of evidence towards that view will count a thousand times more than everything against.
Almost certainly this count includes people referencing actual treatments of the Covid-19 disease like ivermectin, going so far as to ban links to congressional testimony by the likes of Dr. Cory, an MD actually treating covid patients, and references to NIH connections to the Wuhan lab, lab leak allegations, etc.
We know now there was insider incentive to much of the censorship. See the Fauci email dump, specifically emails from Jan 31,2020 to about Feb 4. Also recent news report in the Daily Mail, et al. that Google provided funding to the Eco Health Alliance.
Lastly I will say lumping concerns about the various SARS-cov2 vaccines with the usual suspects in the traditional anti-vax crowd is disingenuous.
You're responding to an article whose most dramatic claim is that a full two thirds of what they consider to be online COVID misinformation came from just 12 individuals. Extremely motivated individuals or not, that does tend to suggest the organization is letting a lot of more mainstream speculation slide.
Still the accounts are named, as are their backgrounds in peddling vitamin supplements and antivax literature and some examples of their posts about Bill Gates and microchips, medical industry plans to create chronically ill patients and the Pfizer vaccine killing more people than Covid. If you're going to call others "disingenuous" for "lumping these concerns in with the usual anti-vax crowd", perhaps you would like to tell us which one of the twelve accused individuals you believe is actually making reasoned arguments about testing procedures or possible evidence of side effects associated with some of these vaccines?
The "dirty dozen" highlighted producing 65% of the content CCDH class as antivax have a combined 59 million social followers and are extremely prolific. So if nothing else, we can be sure that [by Facebook's metrics] there's a lot more than 18m obvious "pieces of misinformation" by any reasonable standard posted to Facebook over that timeline.
Of course it's not totally impossible Facebook's review process is so bad that they focused all their efforts on suppressing mainstream news stories about blood clots and people wondering whether they should still take it if they'd had adverse reactions to vaccines in the past. Certainly nobody would argue Facebook is perfect, but with the quantity of actual ludicrous antivax content out there clearly being greater than what they removed, it would have to be extraordinarily bad to have primarily targeted standard concerns. And that in itself would be worthy of discussion (and again CCDH specifically question whether Facebook's algorithms are adequate to distinguish between individual and organized vaccine hesitancy..)