"If someone is pointing out a case where a vaccine caused harm or that they're worried about it — you know, that's a difficult thing to say from my perspective that you shouldn't be allowed to express at all."
If the post literally reads "MY DAUGHTER HAS AUTISM BECAUSE OF [X] VACCINE" then it's not that hard to refute with scientific literate.
What is much harder to police with a coherent set of guidelines is a facebook page where thousands of moms have each written "I got my child vaccinated and then they developed autism". When a new mom, with little sleep and little background in biological science, who is still on the fence about vaccines, see those thousand posts all together it paints a compelling narrative without ever really having contradicted science.
I mean, don’t they have a right to say if not “A because of B” but “B happened right after A”, which could be an observation? At what point we should do thought police? I do agree it sounds not very well educated but that could be a good start to get this education from someone in the comments. If it’s only echo chamber of like-minded people, I doubt thought policing helps in this situation as well and nothing will change their minds at this moment. If anything, blocking people’s posts strengthen conspiracy theorist ideas about invisible forces controlling information.
You are misrepresenting that story (deliberately, to make a point?). One person on a vaccine trial has reported adverse symptoms -- it is not yet known whether the patient's symptoms are a reaction to the vaccine or not. They could be sick with some completely unrelated issue.
The trial has been paused in order to investigate the cause of this person's symptoms.
> “At this stage, we don’t know if the events that triggered the hold are related to vaccination,” said Dr. Luciana Borio, who oversaw public health preparedness for the National Security Council under Mr. Trump and who was acting chief scientist at the F.D.A. under former President Barack Obama. “But it is important for them to be thoroughly investigated.”
If anything, this should make you more confident, not less, in the safety of a well-tested vaccine.
> this should make you more confident, not less, in the safety of a well-tested vaccine.
Indeed it should! The fact that people are about to communicate messages such as "I am worried that this vaccine caused harm" means that it is more likely that this risk of harm is being appropriately managed.
Which word do you have an issue with in the NYT headline, 'reaction'? As in, the 'adversity' faced by this patient may not in fact be a 'reaction' to the vaccine?
The NYT makes the headline about an adverse reaction and the study is paused because of it. To my mind 'adverse reaction' means that they've established the cause and effect, and the study was halted because someone reacted badly to the vaccine.
My issue is that it's not clear whether the patient's illness is due to the vaccine or something else, so headlining with 'adverse reaction to the vaccine' is jumping to a conclusion. They don't say 'possible', which is the truth.
I'm struggling to understand what you are saying here. Can you... sort of... unpack your point rather than indirectly alluding to it? (I'm an ex-biologist and read the Times article and don't see it as misinformation. It is almost entirely factual and lays out all the critical information an educated reader would need to understand the current situation).
This is a _much_ harder epistemology problem than you are giving it credit for.
Do you know of a way to ensure that a newly-developed effective vaccine has a non-figuratively literally 0% chance that it could cause anti-dependent enhancement or other harms. If so, I'd love to also hear your technique for writing software with absolutely 0 bugs.
Otherwise, we are dependent on trusting institutions to
1. Gather data about the statistical prevalence of harms.
2. Analyse that data and confer with their peers.
3. Broadcast judicious conclusions to the general population.
vaccines cause harm all the time. its why the us has a mechanism to settle damages from vaccines.
that doesn't mean vaccines arent one of the cheapest, effective, and most life-saving instruments in human history, but it also doesnt mean you get to ignore the part of reality where vaccines can and do have a negative impact.
Controversy breeds clicks and pageviews which drive advertising income. As long as that cycle does not get broken you can expect a lot more misery from that particular corner.
Americans are probably the most woke to this, and very self-critical. In a lot of places nobody notices this stuff or feels embarrassed about it like Americans do.
The problem to me seems that people like what is being said, so they don't much care whether it's true or not.
I think you might be in a tech bubble if you think Americans are blind to how biased and disgraceful the media is. Most Americans are middle of the road when it comes to politics, and middle of the road conservatives and liberals are sick of the narrative the media has been pushing. All you have to do is ask people outside of tech circles how they feel about the media. (Then ask them how they feel about big tech).
In an age of Instagram and twitter, it's baffling and enraging to most Americans that the media pushes a narrative that video and photographic evidence from many different, disparate sources easily disproves. The obvious example in September 2020 is the notion that only peaceful protests are happening, despite much evidence of looting, rioting, and general wanton destruction.
There’s a difference between thinking that any media that doesn’t agree with my political views is disgraceful, and thinking that the entire media industry is profiting from fostering division and controversy.
' "It's true that partisan content often has kind of a higher percent of people ... engaging with it, commenting on it, liking it," Zuckerberg told Axios. '
You would hope that the custodian of the world's most popular communication platform would have a greater sense of obligation to the social responsibility that comes with it. Unfortunately we don't live in that world, and Zuckerberg continues choose dollars over lasting damage to the standards of discourse. He is the Murdoch of the 21st century, tearing at the social fabric in pursuit of profits and facilitating the spread of foreign disinformation if it increases engagement metrics.
>would have a greater sense of obligation to the social responsibility that comes with it
Maybe that's why he is largely hands-off when it comes to policing or shaping content? Not everyone agrees that the best way to manage an important communications platform is to shape the speech allowed on it.
Allowing anti-vaccination sentiment to proliferate on the platform is fairly unambiguously harmful to society, especially during a pandemic that may rely on a vaccine to escape. It appears to be choosing engagement, which drives clicks, page views and ad impressions over being a force for good and then dressing it up as free speech, when moderators selectively remove millions of other posts per day.
Social networks have proven themselves so powerful, it seems unlikely their ability to wreak havoc on society will remain unlegislated forever. One day social networks will be legally responsible for the content published, and we'll see an end to the laissez-faire attitude of allowing disinfo to spread unhindered.
I mean, by that logic, the US government allowing anti-vaccination sentiment to proliferate without legal/policy action (read: the First Amendment), is also "unambiguously harmful to society".
Except, the issue is way more nuanced than that. The reason this expression is enshrined as a protection in US jurisdiction is because we decide that free expression trumps every other social need — with the narrow exceptions as laid out in Brandenburg v Ohio (imminent lawless action).
To the extent that this is undesirable, if the political will to amend the Constitution is absent, then you'd also have a hard time convincing people that Facebook should not exercise the same principle.
My point is that true freedom of speech of already only partially possible on the platform owing to moderators selectively taking down millions of posts daily that violate the 'community guidelines'. Extending this to anti-vaccination rhetoric seems like a small expansion of existing policy, and addresses a problem causing real harm in society.
Cities are paying millions to stop outbreaks of previously defeated diseases like measles and counteract disinformation primarily being spread on social networks [1]. Should social networks not be somewhat culpable for their quantifiable externalities on society?
Right, and that's just as easily an argument in favor of loosening the existing restrictions, not tightening them even further.
Epistemologically, where you come out on this all depends on which axiom you start from.
Also, there's a subtle difference between the existing guidelines and what you're proposing: the existing guidelines exist to maintain a positive experience directly for those consuming the platform (eg I don't want to see ISIS beheadings on FB). The new guidelines you're proposing exist solely to indirectly prevent others from seeing things you think they should not be seeing (eg I don't want my aunt to see this post). It's a very important distinction.
Is he the sole person responsible for policy on Facebook or is it by commission / shareholders? I often feel like Zucc is getting scapegoated and bears the responsibility for all of Facebook, but I'm not in the loop whether he still holds the majority of shares and policy of FB, etc.
This is the problem with "fact checking". It positions the platform as an authority. Now, any claim that isn't "debunked" by this "fact checking" gains a certain amount of credibility by comparison. The moral hazards are enormous, multiplied by the opaque behavior of Facebook's algorithm and again multiplied by its unprecedented reach in society.
Unfortunately the default level of credibility people give to things that appear on their feed is not zero; and Facebook's entire income depends on this, since advertising would be useless if people gave it no credence.
But the point is that one does this when traditional authorities have already broken down. When large numbers of people refuse to believe legitimate science, it's too late to be worrying about "moral hazards", the damage is already done. This is just an attempt to stem the bleeding by having entities like social media platforms step in and try to assume the role of the authorities that have been rejected.
And yes, I get that your response is going to be something of the form "But how do you KNOW Facebook is actually right?". And again I point out that this is a practical problem and that the subject we are talking about is vaccines (about which you agree, right?), not an abstract idea of Facebook-blessed truth.
So that they can be heard denying vaccine effectiveness, though. Again, it's a practical issue. Some messages, including this one, shouldn't get Facebook-level assistance with reaching listeners.
They generally don't deny vaccine effectiveness. They take aim at vaccine safety. If you don't even know what these people are upset about how can you be so sure about denying them a voice?
Facebook will happily amplify any voice, even incoherent rambling, and find customers for it. I welcome you to try - the only thing you have to do is write hundreds of comments in public groups. You will be successful immediately. The problem is the 'rational' side considers that 'below their level', often any Facebook usage at all is considered waste.
You are being overly defensive of vaccines. They are a great and effective treatment for many diseases and I get the sense you are trying to make zuckerburg's comments seem more demonstrable then they really are. Considering Facebook's diligence in cutting off speech on their platform that is racisst, climate change denying, etc. I find it hard to believe that they will refuse to crack down on antivax advertisers and dedicated facebook pages.
Tbh I have not done the research but I have no doubt there have been faulty or problematic vaccines at one time or another. Just like any other medical treatment there is a chance rhat they have defects, cause side effects, followed bad quality control protocol. Elevating vaccines to this status of being not allowed to be critisized for fear of our society being damaged seems like an almost equally dangerous alternative to what we have now. If people are legitimately hurt by a vaccine, they have a right to have a voice, and we have a responsibility as a society to hold those at fault accountable. That can't happen if we treat every person on facebook with even the slightest grievance about a vaccine like they are insane.
And to address your point on practicality; the fact of the matter is, anti-vax movements have never been normalized. There is enough pressure from employers, schools, government, and scientists that most people will get vaccinated if it is found to be of personal or public benefit. Hardcore antivaxers are generally looked down upon by the public.
Facebook's fact checking is uniquely bad in that they hire 3rd party fact verifying companies which are also publishers. So if you post something, they can flag it with a "clarification" which links to their own content and drives traffic/revenue to themselves.
Yeah, I think this is the best point to be made about the matter.
I would also add that part of the worldview has to do with fear of coercion. I don't profess to know how to fight conspiracy theories in general, but if I was tasked with doing it I'd be very wary about using coercion as a method. Streisand effect.
What about things that Facebook does take down, like fraud and scams or misinformation about voting requirements? Is that problematic because it positions Facebook as an authority about those things? Should Facebook remove posts which claim an election date has been moved, or that if you reply with your bank account details you will get some free money?
Yes Facebook should handle all such takedowns itself instead of outsourcing it.
It's tempting to say they can take down things like fake election dates without causing any concern, and that's probably true. But there also isn't much that falls in that category, and people can still send such messages via other messaging platforms like WhatsApp, email, the web etc. So it may simply not be worth the slippery slope in the end.
Sending messages between individuals on WhatsApp isn’t a remotely comparable problem to Facebook’s algorithm actively spreading posts to a huge audience.
You make a good point that knowing the content is not worthy of removal does have implications. However, I think the non-removal implies that the content is not a threat with regards to making the user a victim of a crime. This is an important distinction from "fact checking", which is evaluating the accuracy of the content.
The way to cure that is to pull Zuckerberg into these conspiracies and mis-information strategies. He's going to turn like a leaf on a tree when it starts to impact him personally.
“Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.” Marcus Aurelius
We need to stop trying to enforce "the truth" to other people. Just let people talk and have different opinions. That includes letting people having conservative values, because lately this thought police is getting out of control.
If a government body declares that there is no risk of human->human transmission of COVID-19, am I not entitled to evaluate other evidence and conclude that this statement of fact is incorrect?
> Based on the preliminary information from the Chinese investigation team, no evidence of significant human-to-human transmission and no health care worker infections have been reported.
No, see, that's a great example of incorrectly mixing the two up on your part. Nothing in that statement can fairly be read as "there is no risk of human->human transmission of COVID-19".
Fact: On Jan 5, 2020, the WHO had "no evidence of significant human-to-human transmission".
You can hold the opinion that they should've been more aggressive about the potential of that changing. You can hold the opinion that the WHO should figure out a way to rely less on member nations accurately reporting information to them. As the statement notes, much was unknown to the WHO at that point:
> There is limited information to determine the overall risk of this reported cluster...
"Is this organization credible?" is an opinion, that you might back up with various facts.
Right. 100% Agreed.
And that implies that a fact like "On 5 January 2020, the WHO said 'Based on the preliminary information from the Chinese investigation team, no evidence of significant human-to-human transmission and no health care worker infections have been reported.' " is based on an opinion like "The WHO's web administration team is credible and would not have misleadingly changed the content of a web page"
Unless you start comparing that fact with other facts as reported the internet archive or a checksum in your database...which also has credibility questions.
---------
I'm just saying "Sadly, there is no way to escape using human judgement somewhere." I suspect we agree on most relevant object-level questions about vaccines and COVID-19.
I realise I sound pedantic. In normal times, I just round 0.9999999999999999999 up to 1 and go on with my life.
There is substantial contemporary reporting of the WHO's statements from January, and the Internet Archive has it snapshotted on Jan 9. http://archive.is/jZByM
No, I'm saying that in order to believe in any facts, you have to exercise some level of human judgement and conclude/assume that the entire world has not conspired to deceive you.
It is wise to exercise judgement in that direction for the same reason it is wise to round 0.9999999999999999999 up to 1
It is often wise to round 0.999 up to 1.
-----
I'm not saying '2+2=5'.
I am saying '2+2=4'. You are saying '2+1.99999999999999999=4'.
> Nothing in that statement can fairly be read as "there is no risk of human->human transmission of COVID-19".
So you'd like to be 'entitled to your own set of facts' about how to summarise that WHO post because I am a fallible human, correct?
Would you say that Facebook are composed of infallible humans who never misinterpret the results of dense scientific papers? Or can the human judgement they exercise on complex topics be mistaken?
> So you'd like to be 'entitled to your own set of facts' about how to summarise that WHO post because I am a fallible human, correct?
It is simply not factual that that statement states "there is no risk of human->human transmission of COVID-19". It explicitly states otherwise, in fact.
> There is limited information to determine the overall risk of this reported cluster...
And your choice to believe the webpage over me is an (entirely reasonable and wise) exercise in human judgement based on other evidence you have access to.
Yes, and Facebook as a platform is not a place solely reserved for "facts", one can also post "opinions".
This isn't even a new thing: Op-Eds (i.e. "opinion" and not necessarily "fact") are a common information propagation tool, one that isn't unique to Facebook.
This is generally a sleight of hand where one person's opinions are being referred to as 'facts' while the other's opinions are not. The rabbit hole here goes deeper than most people wish to believe because we're nested so deep into a particular dominant narrative.
As with almost everything these days, this topic is NOT black and white despite what initial comments say. Take a look at the vaccine for the 1976 swine flu outbreak.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1976_swine_flu_outbreak
A comment here already says that expressing concern over a vaccine is basically misinformation. I'm sorry but expressing concern about a vaccine that is developed in about 1 year, which is a record 1/10th of the time it normally takes is completely fair, as there can be serious consequences that you don't know about for a while.
And I say this as someone who is vaccinated for everything, even optional vaccines, and has vaccinated for everything when going to Asia etc.
See that is a fact check; if someone were to state "The 1976 swine flu vaccine was unsafe", that's a fact. If someone has the belief "The Covid-19 vaccine has not been tested adequately", that too is a fact - and the manufacturers have issued a joint statement saying they would not risk releasing an unsafe vaccine either.
But the fearmongering? The "Vaccines cause autism" claim (which is massively insulting, for one because it implies that people would rather have their kids be dead than autistic)? The misinformation about the contents and risks of vaccines? That needs to be tackled. Those are non-factual or disproportionate claims that are putting millions at risk.
My girlfriend initially made the conscious decision not to have her son vaccinated (for various reasons not related to the current anti-vax trend) but had to have it done later on because so many others refused to vaccinate their kids. She wanted to rely on herd immunity but the anti-vaxxers made that unlikely.
> "The Covid-19 vaccine has not been tested adequately," that too is a fact
That is very much NOT a fact. "Adequately" is entirely subjective. It is a subjective threshold that might be informed by other facts, but that doesn't make it a fact.
I get my flu vaccine every year. That said, I agree with Zuck.
I want to live in a world where we’re forced to teach our kids critical thinking skills than in a world that relies on controlling the flow of information. Let’s have articles about making critical thinking a required school class as is with English, math, US history, etc. Than Zuck is not blocking this or that.
Most people are capable of critical thinking, but that's really not the issue. The issue is the slow chipping away at people's ideas, beliefs, political alignments, caused by the rapid fire, high volume volley of headlines aimed at people.
For critical thinking, you first need to actually have an opinion and be invested in a subject. If you're not interested in vaccines but keep getting chips to the tune of "vaccines are bad", "vaxxines cause this or that", slowly your opinion will change.
If you zoom in to the individual then sure, critical thinking is important. If you zoom out to a society though, it doesn't really matter anymore. There are forces in play that know exactly what they're doing. They don't need to be right, they just need to chip away at people's beliefs and opinions.
And it's working; the US is an oligarchy run by rich nazis and headed by an ignorant scapegoat, the UK is leaving Europe and will be left poor, chaotic and vulnerable. Ukraine is a dictatorship. Russia, China and the US are freely suppressing or killing dissenters and putting people into concentration camps. And the world shrugs because what can they do? The powers that be are stuck in their status-quo; can't sanction the US or China because of trade deals; can't go against Russia because they'll help us win the elections. The list goes on.
Sorry, this turned into a bit of a rant that veered way off topic. Tl;dr critical thinking is not the problem, worldwide campaigns are, hundreds of impressions a year over multiple years are slowly influencing people.
>I want to live in a world where we’re forced to teach our kids critical thinking skills than in a world that relies on controlling the flow of information.
Technology has evolved faster than our ability to create a society of critical thinkers.
>Let’s have articles about making critical thinking a required school class as is with English, math, US history, etc. Than Zuck is not blocking this or that.
Education seems to vary state by state, for example Texas elected to eliminate classes that teach critical thinking.
"We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student's fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority."[0]
So if Americans are generally lacking critical thinking skills, and for various reasons those skills will never be taught or learned, do you still want to let propaganda and fake news run unabated?
Attractive and somewhat lazy ideological opinion. The world is so complicated and the group most susceptible to conspiracy theories in most cases also happens to have the least access to the type of education that prioritizes critical thinking.
When FB banned right-wing terror groups like Q, they also banned a bunch of leftist sites. Can't they use the same "both sides" logic here? They should ban anti-vaxxer but also ban a bunch of doctors and health officials so it's fair and balanced. \s \s \s
Don't use Facebook but I don't want any of the social media platforms performing any censorship beyond the legally mandated type (ie pirated material illegal porn etc)
Then I think you should get a Facebook account and and have a look and experience the problem of people spreading misinformation first hand.
I used to think that the right approach was to be completely hands off. The reason was that I thought it would have to be an all-or-nothing kind of affair. Because if you censor some of the crap, you have to be able to censor all of it or you will be sued into oblivion.
But "nothing" is considerably worse than "some" in this case. And if how law is practiced stops companies from doing some good and choosing to do nothing, that isn't a good way to go about it.
So I think there needs to be some legal protection for companies that do try to remove misleading information. So they don't get sued if they fail to remove all of it.
I can understand if you are against removing information on principle. I'm not fond of it either. But when people get hurt for absolutely no good reason, it starts to matter.
Currently, there is a clamping operation occurring on all topics in the US. Media clamps to the left or right extreme, and both extremes are completely nutty. Those extremes at least used to be vaguely rational, or at least they somewhat managed to balance one another out.
It's more likely to me that Facebook recognizes that the anti-vaxx community is one of the most active and most engaged segment of their users. Suddenly banning the topic they care most about is going to trigger a mass exodus of some of their most valuable assets, while maintaining the status quo just causes a little bad publicity. I've yet to see any mass exits of users because FB isn't doing something about it, so that's the profitiable option for them.
I don't use Facebook but my understanding was that in general it's tougher to do broad searches like that as they want you to be connected via social graph first. could be wrong here though.
At any rate, what's wrong with censorship in online media? It's been my experience that basically every platform lacking censorship turns into a cesspool of bigotry and misinformation.
Is this anti-vaxx in general, or specific concerns about a coronavirus vaccine?
Because there's a world of difference between repeating a debunked claim about vaccines causing autism or the idea that all vaccines are unsafe and saying you had a bad reaction to a specific vaccine or have concerns about an unproven vaccines development process.
I always had a sentiment that “thought policing” by blocking people’s posts just reinforces all the bad stuff that happens there. It will reinforce the idea that something is controlling the speech or information (conspiracy theorists rejoice) and the reaction would be to build even bigger misinformation echo chambers, at least this is anecdata I observe in my feeds.
103 comments
[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 167 ms ] threadWhere I'm from, we call that misinformation.
I mean, that's misinformation. When you know that no medical literature supports the idea that autism is caused by vaccine, and you still spread it...
What is much harder to police with a coherent set of guidelines is a facebook page where thousands of moms have each written "I got my child vaccinated and then they developed autism". When a new mom, with little sleep and little background in biological science, who is still on the fence about vaccines, see those thousand posts all together it paints a compelling narrative without ever really having contradicted science.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/09/world/covid-19-coronaviru...
The trial has been paused in order to investigate the cause of this person's symptoms.
> “At this stage, we don’t know if the events that triggered the hold are related to vaccination,” said Dr. Luciana Borio, who oversaw public health preparedness for the National Security Council under Mr. Trump and who was acting chief scientist at the F.D.A. under former President Barack Obama. “But it is important for them to be thoroughly investigated.”
If anything, this should make you more confident, not less, in the safety of a well-tested vaccine.
Indeed it should! The fact that people are about to communicate messages such as "I am worried that this vaccine caused harm" means that it is more likely that this risk of harm is being appropriately managed.
A broken fire alarm is a risk to fire safety.
So is one that issues false alarms every 5 minutes, which is generally a better analogy for anti-vaxxers.
Epistemology is hard.
“The event is being investigated by an independent committee, and it is too early to conclude the specific diagnosis.”
Here is an article from another newspaper, about the same thing: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/09/oxford-univers...
The headline is: "Oxford University Covid vaccine trial put on hold due to possible adverse reaction in participant"
Compared to NYT's "Covid-19 Live Updates: Vaccine Trial Is Halted After Patient’s Adverse Reaction"
Notice the difference between the two of them?
So are they both misinformation, or are you painting with too broad of a brush?
The use of "halted" in the NYT headline commonly means stop or end.
halted; halting; halts Definition of halt
(Entry 1 of 4)
intransitive verb
1 : to cease marching or journeying
2 : discontinue, terminate the project halted for lack of funds
transitive verb
1 : to bring to a stop the strike halted subways and buses
2 : to cause the discontinuance of : end halt hostilities
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/halt
on hold in American English
1. in a period or state of interruption or delay the countdown was on hold
2. in a state of interruption in a telephone call, as during a transfer to another line I was on hold for five minutes
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/on-h...
My issue is that it's not clear whether the patient's illness is due to the vaccine or something else, so headlining with 'adverse reaction to the vaccine' is jumping to a conclusion. They don't say 'possible', which is the truth.
Do you know of a way to ensure that a newly-developed effective vaccine has a non-figuratively literally 0% chance that it could cause anti-dependent enhancement or other harms. If so, I'd love to also hear your technique for writing software with absolutely 0 bugs.
Otherwise, we are dependent on trusting institutions to
1. Gather data about the statistical prevalence of harms.
2. Analyse that data and confer with their peers.
3. Broadcast judicious conclusions to the general population.
vaccines cause harm all the time. its why the us has a mechanism to settle damages from vaccines.
that doesn't mean vaccines arent one of the cheapest, effective, and most life-saving instruments in human history, but it also doesnt mean you get to ignore the part of reality where vaccines can and do have a negative impact.
I look forward to whatever platform can figure out how to provide a viable alternative and thrive.
What's the use of worrying about him, or them? Just quit the site!
p.s. also hi Brian! chance encounter..
I really wish Americans would wake up to this, and realize that Facebook, and news media in general, are breeding grounds for our division.
The problem to me seems that people like what is being said, so they don't much care whether it's true or not.
In an age of Instagram and twitter, it's baffling and enraging to most Americans that the media pushes a narrative that video and photographic evidence from many different, disparate sources easily disproves. The obvious example in September 2020 is the notion that only peaceful protests are happening, despite much evidence of looting, rioting, and general wanton destruction.
correct information costs money (time, research, dollars).
Hmm, no vested interests there for sure! /s
Maybe that's why he is largely hands-off when it comes to policing or shaping content? Not everyone agrees that the best way to manage an important communications platform is to shape the speech allowed on it.
Social networks have proven themselves so powerful, it seems unlikely their ability to wreak havoc on society will remain unlegislated forever. One day social networks will be legally responsible for the content published, and we'll see an end to the laissez-faire attitude of allowing disinfo to spread unhindered.
Except, the issue is way more nuanced than that. The reason this expression is enshrined as a protection in US jurisdiction is because we decide that free expression trumps every other social need — with the narrow exceptions as laid out in Brandenburg v Ohio (imminent lawless action).
To the extent that this is undesirable, if the political will to amend the Constitution is absent, then you'd also have a hard time convincing people that Facebook should not exercise the same principle.
Cities are paying millions to stop outbreaks of previously defeated diseases like measles and counteract disinformation primarily being spread on social networks [1]. Should social networks not be somewhat culpable for their quantifiable externalities on society?
[1] https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2019/09/us-measl...
Epistemologically, where you come out on this all depends on which axiom you start from.
Also, there's a subtle difference between the existing guidelines and what you're proposing: the existing guidelines exist to maintain a positive experience directly for those consuming the platform (eg I don't want to see ISIS beheadings on FB). The new guidelines you're proposing exist solely to indirectly prevent others from seeing things you think they should not be seeing (eg I don't want my aunt to see this post). It's a very important distinction.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/20/shareholders-wont-force-zuck...
And yes, I get that your response is going to be something of the form "But how do you KNOW Facebook is actually right?". And again I point out that this is a practical problem and that the subject we are talking about is vaccines (about which you agree, right?), not an abstract idea of Facebook-blessed truth.
Tbh I have not done the research but I have no doubt there have been faulty or problematic vaccines at one time or another. Just like any other medical treatment there is a chance rhat they have defects, cause side effects, followed bad quality control protocol. Elevating vaccines to this status of being not allowed to be critisized for fear of our society being damaged seems like an almost equally dangerous alternative to what we have now. If people are legitimately hurt by a vaccine, they have a right to have a voice, and we have a responsibility as a society to hold those at fault accountable. That can't happen if we treat every person on facebook with even the slightest grievance about a vaccine like they are insane.
And to address your point on practicality; the fact of the matter is, anti-vax movements have never been normalized. There is enough pressure from employers, schools, government, and scientists that most people will get vaccinated if it is found to be of personal or public benefit. Hardcore antivaxers are generally looked down upon by the public.
I would also add that part of the worldview has to do with fear of coercion. I don't profess to know how to fight conspiracy theories in general, but if I was tasked with doing it I'd be very wary about using coercion as a method. Streisand effect.
It's tempting to say they can take down things like fake election dates without causing any concern, and that's probably true. But there also isn't much that falls in that category, and people can still send such messages via other messaging platforms like WhatsApp, email, the web etc. So it may simply not be worth the slippery slope in the end.
We need to stop trying to enforce "the truth" to other people. Just let people talk and have different opinions. That includes letting people having conservative values, because lately this thought police is getting out of control.
If a government body declares that there is no risk of human->human transmission of COVID-19, am I not entitled to evaluate other evidence and conclude that this statement of fact is incorrect?
> Based on the preliminary information from the Chinese investigation team, no evidence of significant human-to-human transmission and no health care worker infections have been reported.
https://www.who.int/csr/don/05-january-2020-pneumonia-of-unk...
Fact: On Jan 5, 2020, the WHO had "no evidence of significant human-to-human transmission".
You can hold the opinion that they should've been more aggressive about the potential of that changing. You can hold the opinion that the WHO should figure out a way to rely less on member nations accurately reporting information to them. As the statement notes, much was unknown to the WHO at that point:
> There is limited information to determine the overall risk of this reported cluster...
So you would say that the WHO should be 'entitled to their own set of facts', separate from that of the PRC, correct?
That would imply that "How do we determine the credibility of organizations?" is a sometimes-difficult exercise in human judgement, correct?
No, not really. "The WHO doesn't have reports of X" and "No one has reports of X" are separate (if related) facts.
> That would imply that "How do we determine the credibility of organizations?" is a sometimes-difficult exercise in human judgement, correct?
"Is this organization credible?" is an opinion, that you might back up with various facts.
Right. 100% Agreed.
And that implies that a fact like "On 5 January 2020, the WHO said 'Based on the preliminary information from the Chinese investigation team, no evidence of significant human-to-human transmission and no health care worker infections have been reported.' " is based on an opinion like "The WHO's web administration team is credible and would not have misleadingly changed the content of a web page"
Unless you start comparing that fact with other facts as reported the internet archive or a checksum in your database...which also has credibility questions.
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I'm just saying "Sadly, there is no way to escape using human judgement somewhere." I suspect we agree on most relevant object-level questions about vaccines and COVID-19.
I realise I sound pedantic. In normal times, I just round 0.9999999999999999999 up to 1 and go on with my life.
There is substantial contemporary reporting of the WHO's statements from January, and the Internet Archive has it snapshotted on Jan 9. http://archive.is/jZByM
It is wise to exercise judgement in that direction for the same reason it is wise to round 0.9999999999999999999 up to 1
It is often wise to round 0.999 up to 1.
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I'm not saying '2+2=5'.
I am saying '2+2=4'. You are saying '2+1.99999999999999999=4'.
https://birdsarentreal.com/ is fun to chuckle at, but it's not a useful philosophy for encountering the world.
So you'd like to be 'entitled to your own set of facts' about how to summarise that WHO post because I am a fallible human, correct?
Would you say that Facebook are composed of infallible humans who never misinterpret the results of dense scientific papers? Or can the human judgement they exercise on complex topics be mistaken?
It is simply not factual that that statement states "there is no risk of human->human transmission of COVID-19". It explicitly states otherwise, in fact.
> There is limited information to determine the overall risk of this reported cluster...
This isn't even a new thing: Op-Eds (i.e. "opinion" and not necessarily "fact") are a common information propagation tool, one that isn't unique to Facebook.
A comment here already says that expressing concern over a vaccine is basically misinformation. I'm sorry but expressing concern about a vaccine that is developed in about 1 year, which is a record 1/10th of the time it normally takes is completely fair, as there can be serious consequences that you don't know about for a while.
And I say this as someone who is vaccinated for everything, even optional vaccines, and has vaccinated for everything when going to Asia etc.
But the fearmongering? The "Vaccines cause autism" claim (which is massively insulting, for one because it implies that people would rather have their kids be dead than autistic)? The misinformation about the contents and risks of vaccines? That needs to be tackled. Those are non-factual or disproportionate claims that are putting millions at risk.
My girlfriend initially made the conscious decision not to have her son vaccinated (for various reasons not related to the current anti-vax trend) but had to have it done later on because so many others refused to vaccinate their kids. She wanted to rely on herd immunity but the anti-vaxxers made that unlikely.
That is very much NOT a fact. "Adequately" is entirely subjective. It is a subjective threshold that might be informed by other facts, but that doesn't make it a fact.
I want to live in a world where we’re forced to teach our kids critical thinking skills than in a world that relies on controlling the flow of information. Let’s have articles about making critical thinking a required school class as is with English, math, US history, etc. Than Zuck is not blocking this or that.
For critical thinking, you first need to actually have an opinion and be invested in a subject. If you're not interested in vaccines but keep getting chips to the tune of "vaccines are bad", "vaxxines cause this or that", slowly your opinion will change.
If you zoom in to the individual then sure, critical thinking is important. If you zoom out to a society though, it doesn't really matter anymore. There are forces in play that know exactly what they're doing. They don't need to be right, they just need to chip away at people's beliefs and opinions.
And it's working; the US is an oligarchy run by rich nazis and headed by an ignorant scapegoat, the UK is leaving Europe and will be left poor, chaotic and vulnerable. Ukraine is a dictatorship. Russia, China and the US are freely suppressing or killing dissenters and putting people into concentration camps. And the world shrugs because what can they do? The powers that be are stuck in their status-quo; can't sanction the US or China because of trade deals; can't go against Russia because they'll help us win the elections. The list goes on.
Sorry, this turned into a bit of a rant that veered way off topic. Tl;dr critical thinking is not the problem, worldwide campaigns are, hundreds of impressions a year over multiple years are slowly influencing people.
Reality doesn't look too great though.
>I want to live in a world where we’re forced to teach our kids critical thinking skills than in a world that relies on controlling the flow of information.
Technology has evolved faster than our ability to create a society of critical thinkers.
>Let’s have articles about making critical thinking a required school class as is with English, math, US history, etc. Than Zuck is not blocking this or that.
Education seems to vary state by state, for example Texas elected to eliminate classes that teach critical thinking.
"We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student's fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority."[0]
So if Americans are generally lacking critical thinking skills, and for various reasons those skills will never be taught or learned, do you still want to let propaganda and fake news run unabated?
[0] https://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/teaching_now/2012/06/texas...
I used to think that the right approach was to be completely hands off. The reason was that I thought it would have to be an all-or-nothing kind of affair. Because if you censor some of the crap, you have to be able to censor all of it or you will be sued into oblivion.
But "nothing" is considerably worse than "some" in this case. And if how law is practiced stops companies from doing some good and choosing to do nothing, that isn't a good way to go about it.
So I think there needs to be some legal protection for companies that do try to remove misleading information. So they don't get sued if they fail to remove all of it.
I can understand if you are against removing information on principle. I'm not fond of it either. But when people get hurt for absolutely no good reason, it starts to matter.
1. Trump is pushing for a vaccine to be authorized before Election Day.
2. Democrats are saying a vaccine before Election Day should not be trusted.
3. A simple anti-vaxx detection algorithm would identify Democrats as anti-vaxxers
4. Zuckerberg either wants Facebook to stay out of this controversy, or he's siding with the Democrats.
It is almost impossible to find anti-vax groups on Facebook in their search feature. They won't surface them at all.
Even if you type in the direct phrase sometimes.
You have to have a direct link to the anti-vax group.
That is a form of censorship.
At any rate, what's wrong with censorship in online media? It's been my experience that basically every platform lacking censorship turns into a cesspool of bigotry and misinformation.
Because there's a world of difference between repeating a debunked claim about vaccines causing autism or the idea that all vaccines are unsafe and saying you had a bad reaction to a specific vaccine or have concerns about an unproven vaccines development process.