Reddit rejects moderators' call for harsh measures against Covid misinformation

This whole thing is really a group of people trying to jam their opinion down everybody else's mouth holes.

It is truly frightening to me how many people are so eager to shut down any kind of debate. The science around covid and it's mitigations are far from settled.

The internet isn't a new thing under the sun. It's just the same old things faster and more widespread.

There have always been liars and manipulators who enjoy subverting expectations and undermining honest people. They've mastered the art of seeming perfectly reasonable while demanding the impossible.

They say things like, "For thousands of years, you were only told what the people in power wanted you to know" and "I think this may be the first time in history that an average person can come to their own conclusions", and other such seemingly reasonable poppycock.

The paradox of tolerance is mentioned quite often, in that a tolerant society cannot tolerate intolerance as otherwise the intolerant will destroy the tolerant.

In the same way, there is a paradox of information, that for information to be reliable and free flowing, it must be verifiable from trustworthy sources, and unverifiable and untrustworthy information has to be dammed off from the flow of information.

If untrustworthy news is allowed to flourish, then liars and connivers will flourish as well, with Machiavellian intentions to profit off of the lies and confusion they sow along the way.

It's happening now and if you don't believe me look at how many people have proudly proclaimed their desire to know untrue information as their right as a citizen of the internet, and how much distrust they have towards people like the CDC who gain nothing from lying to the population.

They hold the innocent guilty until they prove themselves innocent and beyond reproach while the people investing in whatever the next quack covid treatment of the week will be they laud and sing praises for them, becoming their enlisted personal army.

It's madness and it's all because we allow every lying huckster who can spin a good tale to keep on babbling and dogpile anyone who disagrees with this practice.

This is like telling someone not to treat a broken arm because everyone dies eventually.

What it should be looked at is like jump-starting a dodgy engine. You give it some fuel and some spark and it spits and sputters and dies. You tinker with it and do it again.

If we tinker with the engine of truthfulness long enough, giving it enough fuel and enough spark, eventually we could work out the kinks and get it running. Sure, there will be a lot of false starts and backfires, but it can be made to work.

That is worthwhile, and that's what I'll keep advocating for. Too bad you and others like you refuse to be on my side, it would make it a lot easier.

Because Reddit is not an unbiased information repository. It amplifies some messages and suppresses others, by numerous mechanisms. Some of those are under direct admin control, some subreddit moderators, some the collective hivemind of users, and a large portion through direct manipulation and gaming by various sources.

The platform is already tilted. The question isn't "who" or "how", but what should it tilt towards: bulshit or truth?

And even now it is highly debatable that masks worn by most people are effective. And even if they are effective, do they need to be mandated? And even then, what about kids?

Society needs healthy debate.

Covid-19 is both.

Even with the relatively limited consequence of automobile accidents, societies collectively take numerous measures to reduce risks, from highway engineering, traffic laws, and safety equipment to requiring individuals to participate in specific practices --- wearing seatbelts, using child safety seats, and not driving whilst impaired, amongst them.

These people are intentionally spreading lies to the detriment of society as a whole. Allowing the lies to spread increases their location in search results and starts giving people who are technically illiterate a misguided belief that because it's on a popular site or shows up high in a search ranking that somehow makes the lies more likely to be truth. I've seen it first hand via a friends younger sister who has gone off the deep end and points to "reddit wouldn't allow something like this if it weren't true" when providing such facts as: vaccines have mercury in them so that the government can control your mind through electromagnetism.

>Have you never been wrong? How did you correct your error? Was some form of communication involved? Wouldn't you like others to have that chance too, of correcting an error?

The people in question have had over a year to have their incorrect beliefs corrected and are still regurgitating provably false statements. It's well past the point of "they just didn't have access to the proper information".

>Has the "settled science" not been found to have nuances and complications that might be worthy of further discussion?

The people in question aren't talking nuance. The people in question are claiming viruses don't exist, that science has fabricated it all. What discussion are you planning on having with someone who denies basic reality? There's no nuance to "viruses exist".

>I personally have been saved from likely severe injury by seatbelts. I require passengers in my car to wear them, (absent real reason not to). I still don't think the government has any right to mandate their use nor fine people for failing to wear them. I cannot imagine what positive use would be served by attempting to silence debate on the issue. Negative results of such dogmatic approaches are well documented and often repeated.

"The government" isn't some faceless beast, it is made up of representatives that you and I elect. The majority of people felt that a seat belt law was appropriate, so we have one. If you don't like it, try to convince your fellow citizens to vote for people who are willing to get rid of it. Or if you have the financial means to do so, move to another country in which the majority of the population aligns closer with your belief system if this one doesn't.

As for not being able to imagine what positive results could come from silencing debate: there's no debate occurring. There's a subset of folks who refuse to believe subject matter experts and cast aside any scientific study as fake. You're trying to bring logic and reason to a table at which they aren't just unwanted, they are actively ignored.

Nearly 100 years ago Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., voting to uphold the Espionage Act conviction of a man who wrote and circulated anti-draft pamphlets during World War I, said “[t]he most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic.”

That flourish — now usually shortened to “shout fire in a crowded theater” — is the media’s go-to trope to support the proposition that some speech is illegal. But it’s empty rhetoric. I previously explained at length how Holmes said it in the context of the Supreme Court’s strong wartime pro-censorship push and subsequently retreated from it. That history illustrates its insidious nature. Holmes cynically used the phrase as a rhetorical device to justify jailing people for anti-war advocacy, an activity that is now (and was soon thereafter) unquestionably protected by the First Amendment.

https://www.thefire.org/popehat-on-the-medias-most-common-pr...

In practice I don’t think banning NoNewNormal now matters much. I prefer unbanned because I don’t like censorship, but this isn’t a slippery slope problem, Reddit has long been free falling into the latrine pit. I’ve had to go offsite with my old Reddit community. Efforts can be made, but I think the entire process here is useless.