Comment by GeekyBear | Hacker News Reader

Comment by GeekyBear | Hacker News Reader

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The government issued categorical statements that Covid was NOT airborne.

The government instructed social media platforms to suppress "misinformation" that went against the official party line.

The government used extreme threats against platforms that did not comply.

> In an interview with MSNBC about anti-vaccine misinformation, White House communications director Kate Bedingfield responded to a question asking if Biden would change Section 230 to make companies “liable for publishing that information, and then open to lawsuits.” Bedingfield responded that “we’re reviewing that, and certainly they should be held accountable.”

https://www.theverge.com/22585152/biden-white-house-facebook...

I personally had a one decade old account banned on one social platform for asserting that Covid was airborne and many posts on other platforms deleted for sharing links that supported the airborne Covid theory as "misinformation".

We literally had platforms deleting links to information provided by sites like the New England Journal of Medicine or Nature if they didn't toe the official party line.

> The government instructed social media platforms to suppress "misinformation" that went against the official party line.

Do you have any evidence? It certainly is not true for the major platforms like Facebook or Twitter where the aerosol reality was widely discussed - in fact that was an increasingly vocal source of criticism of the WHO and CDC after the scientific evidence consolidated on airborne transmission (say roughly March 2020).

Given your phrasing of "Coronavirus is political" my guess is the aerosol anecdote isn't the whole story.

Feel free to give actual examples as I said originally.

All you have to do is ask anybody who dared to question the narrative. I had several accounts banned for stating "misinformation" on what would later become fact.

It is easy to dismiss everything you hear from folks like me if you went right along with the government / media narrative. The actual truth is they lied their fucking heads off and worked tirelessly to suppress valid dissent by painting people who went against as alt-right grandma killing conspiracy kooks.

It will happen to you someday too. And you will never be able to let go of the deep sense of betrayal.

Well said. And lots of 'commenters' here popping up with the usual 'please give precise examples, also it would be lovely if you could dox yourself too?'

Like, we all watched it happen. It wasn't 1945, it was two years ago. And these things pop up in every comment section and try and make you seem insane.

Not really well said. More conspiratorial thinking that relies on this vague narrative boogeyman. Oooohhh, The Narrative! So scary... around every corner, waiting in the shadows to pounce! Beware of the dastardly narrative.

When there's a deadly virus spreading around, I'm not worried about The Narrative. I'm worried about dying. If the consensus is that rubbing my belly and tapping my head at the same time is going to keep me healthy, that's what I'm going to do. I'm not going to automatically reach for the "Well, that's just the narrative that the Belly Rubbing Head Tapping Illuminati WANTS you to think!" line of reasoning.

> I'm not worried about The Narrative. I'm worried about dying.

The narrative was to implement mitigations that could not be effective against an airborne virus, like wiping down surfaces, staying six feet apart and washing hands.

They pushed disposable masks that weren't capable of filtering the air you breathe instead of the bare minimum of a properly fitted N95 mask which can filter the air as long as it's fitted tightly enough to your face to prevent air leakage around the sides.

The false narrative that was put in place did result in more deaths than mitigations effective against an airborne virus would be.

If you are worried about dying, you should definitely be concerned about the government suppressing “misinformation” that turns out to be true, which could have shaped policy and individual choices early in the pandemic.

I don't mean dox yourself.

I mean if that was happening on a reasonable scale then there would be stories about it.

There were many stories about disagreements.

There were stories about subtle disagreements leading to bans.

I am just saying "if people got banned en mass for saying aerosol where is the proof".

I don't like anecdotes because people interpret their words by intent and so will assume what they meant to say is why they were punished.

"I don't know why there is a mask mandate it is completely ineffective" as a hypothetical. Is that someone saying that aerosol viruses need more effective masks? I could see someone claiming that.

Is that what they wrote? Not at all.

Moderation tends to be context free and unless people are willing to do a similar mental process they won't necessarily know why they got banned.

I don't think the poster above should do that analysis. I think feeling betrayed and wanting to leave when it happens is a perfectly reasonable response from them.

I just don't plan on listening to anecdotal evidence of bans from individuals on that kind of thing.

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