Multiple subreddits are acknowledging the misinformation being spread on Reddit
old.reddit.com
old.reddit.com
I read some comments in that very thread and just saying that you had a week of side effects but are glad you got the shot is enough to get an antivax label.
There is a line between wanting to stop the spread of blatant nonsense and bullying people who dare ask questions and pose reasonable doubts.
Not allowing different viewpoints like this and flooding even the reasonable critics with insults and mocking is what concerns me the most
The Reddit posts present clear examples of blatant misinformation, such as:
* Claims that COVID-19 does not exist at all,
* Wearing masks can suffocate you,
* COVID-19 is just a flu,
* COVID-19 is a bioweapon,
* COVID-19 vaccines are not safe and are untested,
* COVID-19 vaccines are a DNA experiment,
* Etc.
Unless you're gunning for a slippery slope argument, we don't need to dig too deep to find subreddits that are a constant stream of these claims, and even worse claims.
Instead of venting your frustration, can you provide any evidence supporting your belief that any of the major vaccines is not safe?
Entire countries have already distributed at least the first dose to the vast majority of their population. If your belief had any merit or basis on reality, you have already a pool of hundreds of million of people who took the vaccine to gather evidence.
And where is the evidence?
I would dare say that the main risk associated with any of the major COVID-19 vaccines is presented by antivaxers who have been caught tampering with vaccination drives.
As if 2003 and WMDs is ancient history. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Not a fan of antivaxxers but I'm even less of a fan of liberals attempting to whitewash recent history to make themselves look more reasonable.
I recall seeing George W Bush and Colin Powell repeatedly pushing for military intervention using WMDs as the excuse.
Antivaxxers by and large, used to be highly educated people (PhDs) and leaned dem. Now it's the opposite.
The neo-cons who advanced the accusation of WMDs are now supporters of Biden. And, interestingly majorities in _both_ parties support the withdrawal from AF.
So, it's not straightforward as you may wish.
Other than everyone wanting the war in Afghanistan to end ASAP, every single one of your statements is.... Peculiar.
His statement of neo-cons supporting Biden could definitely use some sources, at least if it's in any way that's not just "Never Trump"
There weren’t good intentions where 2003 and WMDs were concerned.
Nothing, other than a certain administration, changed in the meantime. No new evidences. Yet now experts agree it's worth investigating.
I feel you're heavily distorting facts and misrepresenting them disingenuously.
The blend of remarks that you are referring to weren't based on a newly-found passion for the scientific method and objective thinking.
I'm sure you are fully aware that you are referring instead to baseless accusations fueled by conspiracy theories on how the virus was man-made by China in it's lab.
In some cases these conspiracy nuts go to the point of calling the leak intentional and even accusing it of being a bioweapon attack on the west.
There are also those who for some reason insist that Fauci is the mastermind behind the lab leak and not catering to the conspiracy theorist's demands is proof the US government in general and Fauci in particular is behind the virus.
And these accusations are reiterated in spite of any evidence of statement on the behalf of experts clearly refuting the conspiracy theories.
So no, it's disingenuous to frame what has been happening as being evil censorship attacks on honourable truth-seekers who routinely uncover major conspiracies by doing their own research and thinking independently.
Why not?
Of course this will depend on your definition of echo chamber, however, if any community doesn’t begin with “we hold certain things to be self-evident” then that community will be overrun with noise and off topic nonsense. It will be impossible to find any relevant signal.
And anyone who doubts this only needs to look at completely hands off forums to see this. They may be fun occasionally, but these are hardly useful if you’re looking for some kind of information. Im not implying you’re doing this, but many people imply that anything other than “hands off” is an echo chamber, and honestly, this is just silly.
that kind of definition of “echo chamber” is all but useless.
echo chambers are hardly inherently bad.
No, not really. In fact, you got it exactly backwards. The problem was only made possible by these echo chambers. These conspiracy nuts create their subreddits and ban anyone who expresses any dissenting or even inconvenient information. Once these conspiracy nuts remove all reactionaries from the picture, they double down on craziness and create an environment in which everyone feeds off myths and fables repeated ad nauseum as self evident in spite of any lack of substance of bearing in reality.
If these conspiracy loons weren't able to censor contrasting opinions and those calling them out on their bullshit, half these crazy rumours would not even go beyond the discussion.
No one is desperate, but not everyone wants to be confronted with conspiracy theory nonsense and racist shitposting everywhere they go on the internet just because some people believe "freedom of speech" means every site on the internet has to be run like 4chan.
Every forum since the beginning of time has been policing content for reasons other then strict legality. You're on a forum that polices tone and quality, relentlessly downvotes and flags anything for any reason, considers all politics and mainstream content categorically off topic (even though, strictly speaking, it isn't) and treats humor like the plague.
Laissez-faire hands-off general discussion forums have their place, just not everywhere. That's not fascism, or tyranny, or Orwellian dystopia, it's simply the result of the fact that servers and websites are private property, oftentimes services granted to users under certain and specific terms. Like it or not, all discussion on the internet has always been regulated to some degree.
But we are talking about censorship on the sitewide level at Reddit, which affects all communities, even ones you have no interest in. This isn't about protecting yourself from content you'd dislike, it is, as always, about preventing others from talking amongst themselves in ways you dislike, even when you're not around.
And nevertheless, subreddits aren't separate platforms. It's all still one big platform owned by one company. Subreddits are more like separate aisles in a supermarket - you can find frozen food in one aisle and bread in another, but the management still decides what does and doesn't go on the shelves.
[0]https://old.reddit.com/r/vaxxhappened/comments/pbe8nj/we_cal...
Do you have any evidence that supports your accusation?
Meanwhile, the Reddit post you're commenting on has currently 140k upvotes.
That post is immediately followd by the repost on/r/TIFU that has 70k.
Shortly after, the post in /r/bestoff has 40k upvotes.
On the second page, /r/LeopardsAteMyFace shows up with the same post with 70k upvotes.
In /r/futurology that post got 27k upvotes.
On the third page, /r/YouSeingThisShit shows up with 25k upvotes.
I mean, how do you go from multiple subreddits on the frontpage of /r/popular with tens of thousands of upvotes to a conspiracy theory bases on the idea that all this is instead "very few people that disproportionally mod a lot of subreddits"?
Do you believe these upvotes are falsified and don't reflect support? Do you believe tens of thousands of registered users mindlessly upvote these posts even though they don't agree or support the message?
It's a common post, shared by all subreddits that adhere to the protest.
Those subreddits are listed in /r/popular because tens of thousands of registered users upvote them.
The top post on /r/popular this week is the post in /r/vaxhappened calling for action against misinformation, and so far is the top5 post of the past month.
> It’s funny because several of these subreddits have rules against cross posting for that reason.
Why do you feel it's appropriate or relevant to complain about alleged rules that may or may not exist instead of facing the fact that tens of thousands of registered users subscribing to any of the countless subreddits adhering to this protest actively supporting this message?
> It’s possible that 140K people in total are upvoting all of these while others are ignoring it or out of the loop.
The amount of people that may or may not be out of the loop is irrelevant. What's relevant is the tens of thousands of registered users that are actively supporting this message.
I remind you that the initial thesis was that this was a conspiracy from a hand full of users. Do you actually believe this is a realistic assessment?
So I guess you're advocating for /r/jailbait to be brought back?
Not sure why in this particular instance this is newsworthy.
Because in this case the users who disagree belong to the same website that has 100s of millions of users?
But when the misinformation results in the spread of a deadly disease, it becomes noteworthy.
Personally I’ve noticed increasingly aggressive censorship site wide, which is very upsetting given how pro free speech Reddit once was. Cofounder Aaron Swartz was famously against any censorship but now Reddit has gone so far as to omit him from their pages (https://reclaimthenet.org/aaron-swartz-reddit-founder/). Reddit’s leadership was “taken over” and its original mission was slowly corrupted in favor of censorship.
I used to not care about this issue until it came to affect me directly. Mods aggressively shape opinion. I was banned in one subreddit early in the pandemic for advocating for masking, and then banned elsewhere for supporting the lab leak hypothesis. With the Jan 6 Capitol riot I was banned in one subreddit for drawing comparisons against past incidents at the Capitol and rioting from 2020. I was banned elsewhere for claiming Trump’s election complaints should be investigated by authorities rather than tried in the court of public opinion. Each subreddit has its own special flavor of echo chamber cultivated by aggressive mods, through a mix of their rules and mod actions undertaken with little transparency. The division in our society feels fueled by such social media, since no one is allowed to freely and authentically interact anymore, which is white depressing.
I really wish there was a way for better products to compete against the network effects of incumbents like Reddit. There is a long list of alternatives (https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/oioeot/...) but I don’t see any having much of a chance. The only ones that did have a chance, Gab and Parler, were attacked and banned in a coordinated manner from app stores and elsewhere. They also carried their own biases from what I’ve read. Is there a way to avoid ending up with a Balkanized internet of echo chambers?
This seems to be reddits peak do-gooder echo chamber moment.
I can hate gravity all I want, but hurling myself off a freeway overpass in protest is not justified.
If nothing else, the strain on the healthcare system is a substantial harm. This is not a strictly personal freedom issue. Most people seem to understand that bodies flying across the road because of a lack of a seatbelt causes substantial harm to others. I also don't see many people complaining that they are not allowed to burn their suburban house down, despite it being their own property.
That's not to say I'm for this move. I'd rather see reddit be more hands off. I'd rather go back to the days when users banded together to try to stop reddit from reaching their hands out further.
Gravity is the thing that causes the consequences of stepping off the overpass. It's those consequences we find unacceptable. The same more or less goes with masks, etc. You can not wear them or follow the other rules, but natural forces ensure that doing so causes harm to others.
They aren't pushing back against new norms either. Quarantines, lockdowns, public focus on overcrowding and public health were were popular in the early 1900's when TB AKA Consumption was hitting the US hard. We have always steered clear of sick or contagious people.
The thing that they're (NNN folks) glossing over is their feelings. Their feelings don't dictate the way commerce works. Commerce needs to flow and when a global pandemic threatens that flow. Mountains will move to prevent collapse. When people are afraid of an invisible virus and are unable to tell when you have it or not, and other folks don't care and are actively spreading it or hindering the prevention of spread. You will have Mask mandates, lockdowns, and vaccines mandates by large employers. Because guess what...if a virus threatens their bottom line, you better believe they going to do everything in their power to keep the money coming. And so will every person who wants to continue to participate in a functioning society.
It's as valid of a position as the argument against airbags or seatbelts.
Being against vaccine mandates is not a valid position to hold.
Calling it a "do-gooder echo chamber" is a line from a comic book villain. Please tell me you can see that once it's shown to you.
Vaccine mandates are a human rights violation.
This definitely hearkens back to WW2 propaganda literature.