Coronavirus and You - Page 663

On November 18 2022 19:20 BlackJack wrote:


A conversation on censorship of COVID misinformation does have some relevance to COVID

Consider the final tweet from Berenson before he was kicked off Twitter last year, which made the following statements about COVID-19 vaccination: “It doesn’t stop infection. Or transmission. Don’t think of it as a vaccine. Think of it - at best - as a therapeutic with a limited window of efficacy and terrible side effect profile that must be dosed IN ADVANCE OF ILLNESS. And we want to mandate it? Insanity.” The first two statements in the tweet are factually accurate. The third wouldn’t seem to qualify as a “claim of fact.” The fourth, with its reference to a “terrible side effect profile,” is at least tendentious and arguably misleading, but the overall point of the tweet is to express disdain for vaccine mandates.

On November 18 2022 21:32 BlackJack wrote:
The most troubling thing to me is when the government is leaning on the social media companies to censor speech they are not pleased with. Take for instance the case of Alex Berenson. I don't really know who he is but he seems to have some clout on Twitter with 340,000 followers. He was banned from Twitter for violating COVID misinformation rules. He then sued and was eventually reinstated with Twitter acknowledging that his tweets should not have led to his suspension.

Internal Twitter slack messages that surfaced during the lawsuit showed that during a meeting between Twitter employees and members of the Biden Administration the White House had posed a “really tough question about why Alex Berenson hasn’t been kicked off from the platform." One employee said they took a hard look at his account and didn't find anything violative. Nonetheless he was suspended on the same day Biden gave a speech about "social media companies killing people" by not doing more to censor misinformation.




Just like censorship over the lab leak theory, this is not exactly rantings of "5G cell towers cause COVID" or "vaccines will implant you with microchips."

Personally I find it very troubling if the government is going to lean on the tech companies in an effort to suppress or censor stories or speech they don't like. I'm very sure the tech companies want to stay in their good graces. Call it collusion or coercion but it seems like an obvious way for the government to censor speech by proxy. I've always felt far more threatened by the Orwellian silencing of dissenters than by COVID itself. Like when Trudeau just repeatedly called the trucker protestors racists because like 1 guy(?) showed up with a confederate flag before being chased off by the truckers.

On November 18 2022 21:32 BlackJack wrote:
The most troubling thing to me is when the government is leaning on the social media companies to censor speech they are not pleased with. Take for instance the case of Alex Berenson. I don't really know who he is but he seems to have some clout on Twitter with 340,000 followers. He was banned from Twitter for violating COVID misinformation rules. He then sued and was eventually reinstated with Twitter acknowledging that his tweets should not have led to his suspension.

Internal Twitter slack messages that surfaced during the lawsuit showed that during a meeting between Twitter employees and members of the Biden Administration the White House had posed a “really tough question about why Alex Berenson hasn’t been kicked off from the platform." One employee said they took a hard look at his account and didn't find anything violative. Nonetheless he was suspended on the same day Biden gave a speech about "social media companies killing people" by not doing more to censor misinformation.




Just like censorship over the lab leak theory, this is not exactly rantings of "5G cell towers cause COVID" or "vaccines will implant you with microchips."

Personally I find it very troubling if the government is going to lean on the tech companies in an effort to suppress or censor stories or speech they don't like. I'm very sure the tech companies want to stay in their good graces. Call it collusion or coercion but it seems like an obvious way for the government to censor speech by proxy. I've always felt far more threatened by the Orwellian silencing of dissenters than by COVID itself. Like when Trudeau just repeatedly called the trucker protestors racists because like 1 guy(?) showed up with a confederate flag before being chased off by the truckers.

On November 19 2022 03:49 ChristianS wrote:

I think it’s obvious to anyone who’s read your posts that you’re much more concerned about things that tickle your “Orwellian” detector than you are about things that cause specific, concrete harm to people. I just wish your concept of “Orwellian” were a little more coherent. Your prime examples in this case are 1) Twitter banning an anti-vaxxer, and 2) Justin Trudeau calling some protesters racist? I mean seriously, imagine inserting those plot elements into 1984. Winston Smith gets his Twitter account banned for telling people to take dewormer to treat their disease? Big Brother accuses Emmanuel Goldstein’s movement of racism, but otherwise allows them to protest freely? It doesn’t quite fit, does it?

I understand the idea of distrusting even indirect mechanisms of government policing speech. But like, you seem to like DeSantis a lot, despite there being quite a few instances of DeSantis explicitly advocating for policies designed to punish wrongthink (remember the whole Disney kerfuffle?). Which makes me think your real issue isn’t hypersensitivity to early-stage Orwellian government policies, you just find self-righteous liberals annoying. So private actors deplatforming anti-vaxxers? “Orwellian.” Criticizing a political movement as racist? “Orwellian.” Passing laws explicitly intended to punish a corporation for being too “woke”? Eh, that’s fine I guess.

On November 19 2022 07:19 BlackJack wrote:


We’ve been dealing with viruses that kill us since the dawn of civilization. Yeah I don’t feel particularly threatened by another one which by now is about as deadly as the flu.

On the other hand, all the other stuff is quite new. People used to be able to freely talk about how George Bush put thermite in the WTC to murder thousands and start the wars in the Middle East. Or any other nonsense conspiracy. Now we live in the era where words are violence so naturally we are morally obligated to censor and suppress speech more and more because they can harm people.

Also yeah I think Ron DeSantis’ behavior with Disney was atrocious and has serious 1st amendment violation implications. Just like I think it’s atrocious the way him and others have tried to restrict abortion access. Does the Desantis-Disney saga have anything to do with COVID or are we just hoping I would rush to Desantis’ defense so that we can pigeonhole me ideologically?

On November 19 2022 08:49 ChristianS wrote:

I dunno, how am I supposed to know your position on something until you say it? Every time I’ve seen you reference DeSantis it’s been favorable, glad to hear you don’t like him policing speech either.

But fundamentally “criticizing others’ speech is censorship” is still incoherent. “Private companies’ moderation discriminating based on viewpoint is a violation of free speech principles” isn’t quite incoherent, but it isn’t workable, either. I get the impression that more than anything you’d like to prevent any circumstance where people feel pressured to say/believe the right-thinking position for any reason other than earnest evaluation of truth based on the evidence, so *any* consequences for speech, whether that’s being called racist or disappeared by the government, are anathema to you. Maybe that’s an overstatement, but otherwise why are we talking about private websites’ moderation decisions, or criticizing someone else’s speech, in the context of “free speech”?

Like, I assume “words are violence” is a reference to certain types of leftists that like to call all manner of microagressions or whatever “violence.” But like, what exactly are those people actually *doing* besides sending mean tweets? I’m not saying being the main character on Twitter won’t ruin your day, but it’s got nothing to do with Orwell.

On November 19 2022 14:43 ChristianS wrote:
Nobody’s banished from society. At most they’re banished from a social network or two. Don’t get me wrong, moderation decisions are often arbitrary and capricious, and frequently abusable by bad actors. By no means do I think the major companies have found good answers to how moderation should be done. But it’s rarely a product of direct or indirect government action. I don’t even buy that Berenson had much to do with administration influence, and it’s extremely rare to have even an indirect connection to the government like his case.

Maybe Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg having free rein to censor opponents is just as troubling a prospect as if it were Joe Biden. I have no love for any of those three, but I probably dislike Biden the least. That said, none of those guys actually have anything close to the ability to silence opponents. I can talk shit about any of them, on Facebook, Twitter, or TL. That’s not because they aren’t thin-skinned, it’s because they don’t actually have the power to stop me.

Are the social media companies too powerful? Maybe, but the answer certainly isn’t to give the government jurisdiction to decide how they should moderate. At the end of the day we have one set of rules for what speech the government can police, and a more permissive set of rules for what private actors can police on their own platforms, and that’s how it should be. Without the former the government gets to decide whether my views are too extreme to be spoken in public, and without the latter we can’t stop people from graphically describing their favorite porn on Club Penguin.

Back to the topic at hand: I don’t have a problem with a website banning anti-vaxxers for spreading misinformation. It’ll be sticky for sure, and there’s sometimes a risk of bundling valid hypotheses with the real crazies (e.g. lab leak, which to my understanding is pretty well debunked by now but wasn’t fundamentally implausible). But moderation is always sticky. TL has made moderation decisions I’ve agreed with and decisions I didn’t agree with, but it always seems to involve judgment calls of what’s reasonable, and what’s unreasonable, and what’s obnoxious but livable and what’s unavoidably disruptive. “What about Orwell?!?” ultimately isn’t actually very insightful in judging these questions.

Twitter also was eager to fall in line. "I'm looking forward to setting up regular chats," says an April 8, 2021, message from Twitter to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). "My team has asked for examples of problematic content so we can examine trends. All examples of misinformation are helpful, but in particular, if you have any examples of fraud—such as fraudulent covid cures, fraudulent vaccine cards, etc, that would be very helpful."

Twitter responded swiftly to the government's censorship suggestions. "Thanks so much for this," a Twitter official says in an April 16, 2021, email to the CDC. "We actioned (by labeling or removing) the Tweets in violation of our Rules." The message, which is headed "Request for problem accounts," is signed with "warmest" regards.

Like Twitter, Facebook was thirsty for government guidance. In a July 28, 2021, email to the CDC headed "FB Misinformation Claims_Help Debunking," a Facebook official says, "I have been talking about in addition to our weekly meetings, doing a monthly disinfo/debunking meeting, with maybe claim topics communicated a few days prior so that you can bring in the matching experts and chat casually for 30 minutes or so. Is that something you'd be interested in?" The CDC's response is enthusiastic: "Yes, we would love to do that."

On November 19 2022 16:56 Magic Powers wrote:
Censorship is not bad. It's a tool that can be used for good or for bad, and whatever constitutes good or bad is an ongoing debate and a matter of personal opinion. If censorship is 90% used for good and 10% used for bad, then the thing to do isn't to critizice all censorship, but to criticize the 10% of bad censorship.
When anti-vaxxers get banned, it's a good choice 99% of the time. We can worry about the 1%, but why should we care even for one second about the remaining 99%?

On November 19 2022 16:56 Magic Powers wrote:
Censorship is not bad. It's a tool that can be used for good or for bad, and whatever constitutes good or bad is an ongoing debate and a matter of personal opinion. If censorship is 90% used for good and 10% used for bad, then the thing to do isn't to critizice all censorship, but to criticize the 10% of bad censorship.
When anti-vaxxers get banned, it's a good choice 99% of the time. We can worry about the 1%, but why should we care even for one second about the remaining 99%?