I am definitely pro vax. But please fight these idiots with facts and not authoritarian censorship. We've seen truth fall on the wrong side of censorship a few times in the pandemic with early mask wearing to ivermectin.
>But please fight these idiots with facts and not authoritarian censorship.
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.
I don't believe in censorship, but that doesn't mean you give people a bullhorn to spout false information. This platforms have a responsibility to not give a bullhorn out in these cases. This isn't censorship, it is not allowing scientifically false claims to spread.
Do you really want Facebook or their contractors to be the arbiters of truth? Putting aside whatever mixed incentives they might have, they're hardly qualified to be authoritative about an uncertain medical situation. And as the top level commenter we're all replying to pointed out, they censored a lot of stuff that turned out to be true. So it's not just a hypothetical concern.
Science is the arbiters of truth, it's a process not a destination. FB needs to stop giving people a loudspeaker, they can say it, but it doesn't get amplified.I'd love to see FB ban all conversations around politics.
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.
As vaccines are not 100% effective at saving individuals but "herd immunity" can eliminate viruses despite that if vaccination is widespread, the people killed by anti-vaxxers are often not anti-vaxxers or even anti-vaxxers' kids. Especially not with a virus like Covid.
Technically the gullible and mendacious killing the vulnerable is natural selection, but you'll have a tough job convincing me the right of morons to an mass audience on certain websites takes precedence over the right of older people to live
Fair point (although I wasn't the first person in the thread to use a derogatory term about antivaxxers, and probably wouldn't use it if I actually expected there were plenty of people somewhat sympathetic to their arguments browsing this forum)
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.
My Dad got the vaccine and developed no antibodies. Nor did any other kidney recipients under his doctor's care. The immunosupressive drugs he's on are the cause.
Unfortunately, the anti-vaxxers hurt tons of innocent, responsible folks. Like my Dad who didn't develop antibodies from the vaccine due to the immunosupressive drugs he takes so he doesn't reject my kidney.
Anti-vaxxers also hurt people who don't want to lose their loved ones who've been turned into anti-vaxxers and have been impossible to reason with because they've been inundated with anti-vax propaganda.
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.
You'll find a lot of success if you take the time to hear them out and don't treat them like their thoughts on the matter are ridiculous from the start. I've convinced a half dozen people to get vaccinated and was unable to convince a half dozen more.
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.
> You'll find a lot of success if you take the time to hear them out and don't treat them like their thoughts on the matter are ridiculous from the start. I've convinced a half dozen people to get vaccinated and was unable to convince a half dozen more.
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).
>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.
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.
Just like only Nixon could go to China, only Trump could have gotten through to the inherently skeptical people and encouraged them to care about their neighbors and make sacrifices for the general welfare.
"Flip-flop" is a natural part of science - the adaptation to new knowledge being discovered.
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.
> The problem is: de-programming all the propaganda takes an immense amount of time - months, sometimes years of effort.
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.
The problem is "fact checking" is often times not actually checking facts. The fact checkers said it is false that the virus came from the lab. Now we know that it certainly is a possibility.
Yes, we saw that work very well with the lab leak story.
</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.
There are many reasons that people have become skeptical of the "vaccines are good" narrative. Personally I've experienced my 5yo child go from speaking and developing normal to no speech, pissing herself rocking and screaming while the doctors at the ER gaslit me that, "it couldn't have been the vaccine she had just taken."
Conspiracy theory is a bit like a belief in God. You can present 'facts' until you're blue in the face, but it's very easy to just retort "that's what they want you to believe."
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.
> During the pandemic we’ve removed 18 million pieces of harmful misinformation about Covid-19 and worked with 80 fact-checking organizations to label over 167m posts as false.
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.
> 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?
Did these 12 account for all or the bulk of 18 million pieces of information, and the bulk of anti-covid-vax postings? That is the lumping together I'm talking about.
One of the CCDH's criticisms of Facebook's internal analysis is that apparently they counted shares as discrete "pieces of information", never mind paraphrases.
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..)
Amplification of extreme views to cause higher engagement is the entire business model of social media. Engagement is turning out to be the exact opposite of what we actually want and need as a society from social media but alas it correlates best with their profits so they continue to have features that ensure it runs rampant.
Just want to note it is not wrong or shameful to be skeptical. Most here would agree with that out of context. However, if you have even the slightest skepticism of the mRNA vaccines you must be an anti-vaxxer. This is a false dichotomy.
37 comments
[ 0.22 ms ] story [ 81.1 ms ] threadYou 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..)
There's nothing illegal about it, and it's none of these busybodies' business what people do with their constitutionally guaranteed freedoms.