Twitter Launches Five-Strike System to Ban Users Who Spread Covid-19 Lies:
Twitter will ban users who spread misinformation about the coronavirus pandemic and covid-19 vaccines under a new five-strike system, according to a new blog post from the social media company. Twitter bans all medical information that's "demonstrably false or misleading and may lead to significant risk of harm."
"Through the use of the strike system, we hope to educate people on why certain content breaks our rules so they have the opportunity to further consider their behavior and their impact on the public conversation," Twitter's Safety Team wrote on Monday [(March 1)].
"Individuals will be notified directly when a label or required Tweet removal results in additional account-level enforcement. Repeated violations of the COVID-19 policy are enforced against on the basis of the number of strikes an account has accrued for violations of the policy," the blog post continued. [...]
- One strike: no account-level action
- Two strikes: 12-hour account lock
- Three strikes: 12-hour account lock
- Four strikes: 7-day account lock
- Five or more strikes: permanent suspension
Twitter's new five-strike policy comes after the company announced in December that it would be taking new actions to "protect the public conversation" around covid-19, a disease that has infected over 28.6 million Americans and killed more than 516,000, according to Johns Hopkins University.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 11 2021, @08:26AM (1 child)
The more you know 8=========================D ~
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 11 2021, @08:29AM
Yeah, 1st strike.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 11 2021, @08:30AM (47 children)
Who decides that something is "demonstrably false or misleading and may lead to significant risk of harm."???
WHO decides, probably, based on what China determines would be the most favorable alternate facts.
Barry Marshall and Robin Warren got the 2005 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their violation of medical dogma, determining that Helicobacter pylori caused ulcers. Twitter would ban them.
The importance of Twitter rules though, is that they can be unevenly applied. They are a weapon against people with wrongthink. Favored groups can get away with damn near anything. Give yourself an Islamic-style name on Twitter, and you can say all sorts of things about women, Africans, and LGBT. It's been tested.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 11 2021, @09:17AM
https://www.foxnews.com/tech/louis-farrakhan-vaccine-claims-posted-to-twitter-despite-misinformation-policies [foxnews.com]
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/newt-gingrich-says-hes-back-on-twitter-after-being-locked-out-for-biden-immigration-slam [foxnews.com]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 11 2021, @09:34AM (7 children)
Jack Dorsey and his pals of course.
Unless you have a contract with Twitter, they can do whatever they want with their site.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 11 2021, @09:40AM (6 children)
Do the internet backbone companies have contracts from Twitter? Or can they decide that they don't want their backbone traffic to include any packets to or from Twitter? I mean, they're private companies, they can do what they want with their pipes. Right?
Of course, the traffic would probably just route differently; that's what the internet was built for, after all. Having all their traffic routed around the planet might be a bit of a slowdown.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by c0lo on Thursday March 11 2021, @10:29AM (5 children)
The last word we heard on this one was from Ajit Pay. And he said that, yes, the ISP-es are entitled to apply whatever rules they want to the traffic that go through their network. I suppose the same apply to backbone carriers under US laws.
Of course, the peering contract are law between signatory parties, but that's also a private matter.
So, if you don't like the way it is, write to your representative to put something in a law (rather than just the regulations from FCC or other govt body elsewhere).
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 4, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Thursday March 11 2021, @05:58PM (3 children)
Net neutrality law to take effect in California after judge deals blow to telecom industry [washingtonpost.com]
Something as interstate as the internet seems appropriate for federal regulation to me but we'll take what we can get.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 11 2021, @06:49PM (2 children)
Watch how these rules are applied to physical providers but not information ones. Do not want to piss off the people with the money after all.
But watch how the physical ones will just not bother to invest anymore due to 'budget cuts'.
We get the best of everything. Everyone is in effect censored. Except the people with the money and right opinions of course. While some companies have to put up with it and 'just deal'.
'net neutrality' is two things and both groups like that. The one group of information providers. So they can do whatever they like and claim they are vicitims. Then the physical providers who want to double charge everyone and claim they are victims.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday March 11 2021, @09:02PM (1 child)
Hey, grate news! You too can be an information provider! Just build your own web site and publish whatever misinformation you want!
Yes, really. It is true!
The server will be down for replacement of vacuum tubes, belts, worn parts and lubrication of gears and bearings.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 11 2021, @10:14PM
Ha! Good one! Websites have been kicked off hosting providers, had their domain name registrar kick them off, had banks not do business with them... all for the sin of allowing expression of the views of half the country. The peasants, how DARE THEY!
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Thursday March 11 2021, @06:31PM
Exactly. It was congress's failure to pass legislation to make the FCC rules permanent. Now is their chance to take another stab at it.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 4, Interesting) by legont on Thursday March 11 2021, @01:48PM (16 children)
Yep, Fascism pure and simple.
However, they go farther than censoring. I, first time in my life, installed twitter app to get the latest from a ski area where I was (deleted already). That mountain was my only subscription. The twitter's motherfuckers would send me "recommended" twits from some other suckers and suggest I retweet them.
They are persistently building a fascist society where government and corporations are one and all the People are mindless slaves. We have to fight it; for real that is.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 4, Touché) by ikanreed on Thursday March 11 2021, @03:03PM (14 children)
Fascism is when you don't let far right movements kill millions of people
(Score: 3, Interesting) by khallow on Thursday March 11 2021, @03:59PM (4 children)
My take is that the other aspects that are usually thought of as fascist, like far right attitudes, adulation for things military, or the hate for various ethnic or religious groups aren't necessary and often come naturally after the fact. For example, the Chinese government is extremely conservative in outlook, has an amply funded and worshiped military, and oppresses a number of ethnic and religious groups that it deems threats (or perhaps merely being in the way).
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 11 2021, @09:06PM (3 children)
I do enjoy how the final tantrum by 45 caved in what little remained of your brain. You can't even be objective, now khallow the always calm has joined the loony Qultists. It wAs aNtEEeEfAAaa tEh wHoLe tImE!@!
(Score: 2, Touché) by khallow on Thursday March 11 2021, @09:48PM (2 children)
As to Antifa, that's a pothole of crazy that we should all be steering clear of. Claiming they're anti-fascist while they do all the crazy stuff, jackboots have been doing for the past century, like beating up people in the streets and burning down buildings?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 13 2021, @06:19PM (1 child)
Victim complex and massive dose of hypocrisy. Yup, classic hollow.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday March 16 2021, @02:45AM
Why do you even bother? Neither happened. There's something wrong with the narrative.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 11 2021, @04:49PM (2 children)
#ikantrereadbeforehittingsumbit
Where Marx wanted to socialize people based on class, Hitler wanted to socialize people based on race and Mussolini wanted to socialize the Enterprise. The modern left adopted the latter two ideas - fascism is Critical Race Theory and Intersectionality. Refuse Socialism! [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday March 11 2021, @05:53PM (1 child)
"Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it." - George Orwell [orwellfoundation.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 11 2021, @06:53PM
As he understood it [forbes.com] which most "socialists" do not. Orwell would have no problem discussing liberty with the libertarian right, a heresy for which the modern left would brand him a "fascist" exactly as the communists had done in Spain.
Orwell warned us precisely about this. [newdiscourses.com]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 11 2021, @05:40PM (1 child)
So are you just going to keep repeating the bugbear of the far right while the entire country descends into literal fascism? Do please check out the Fascist Manifesto [wikipedia.org]. The Fascist Manifesto was the ideology upon which fascism was founded. Fascio itself had a positive meaning at the time. It means something like a bundle or a sheath of sticks, like a quiver, in Italian. The idea is that society isolated and alone was weak and vulnerable, yet by working together they could all become strong and unbreakable. Yeah, if that's not a big enough tell, the Fascists were extremely liberal in their stated ideology:
Why then is Fascism now little more than a multilingual pejorative? It's not because of what the Fascists believed in, but because of how they behaved. They worked to attack, censor, and ultimately destroy anybody and everybody who didn't abide their ideology. They, no doubt, justified their behaviors by demonizing the people they were attacking - perhaps claiming as you are now that if they don't oppress these people, it'd somehow lead to the deaths of millions by [reasons]. And is it really bad if you do bad things to bad people? They no doubt thought they'd go down on the "right side of history."
Instead? By knowing the word "Fasce/Fascism/etc" you now know a political slur in more than a dozen languages. That's the side of history they went down on. And it's the side of history the people doing this insane crap are also going to go down on, you alongside them if you continue to indulge it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 11 2021, @07:00PM
Fascism had it's roots in Anarcho-Syndicalism (Trade Unionism) which Marxists attempt to deflect by pointing out that Mussolini abolished Trade Unions. The reality is they were integrated into the Fascist State mirroring the centralization and socialization of Communist Russia.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday March 11 2021, @05:56PM
Freedom to remain silent only counts for pastry-based communications.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 11 2021, @06:26PM
Hitler's Germany was state socialist and the holocaust is bolshevik lies. The international talmudic jews are the ones who killed 100+ million between ww1 and ww2.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 11 2021, @06:28PM (1 child)
Don't know 'left' orgs seem to be doing just fine with those numbers. The Socialists of Nazi Germany did what about 20million? The Communists of the USSR did about 150? The Communists of China did another 100-150 depending on where you get your numbers?
Yep those are all 'far right' orgs there just waiting to kill you.
But on a more serious note you should read the history of these places. It is one of grim death. All the while blowing smoke up your ass about how great they were.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 11 2021, @06:45PM
Sometimes they would acknowledge things were less than perfect in the present. It was always the grand 5-year plan that was going to solve everything. There's a good joke [johndclare.net] about this from the Soviet Era:
All jokes on that page are "real" by the way. And more than a few sent people to 'reeducation' when being heard by the wrong people. Hahah, so ironic when you consider it. It's like we're replaying the past, except this time we voluntarily decided to take on the role of the losing side.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday March 11 2021, @09:06PM
The problem is that word mindless. We now have a whole generation of that. That is the problem. People will believe things that are patently ridiculous. Can't do basic arithmetic. Can't put the phone or video game controller down.
The lies that would have been universally laughed at a few decades ago are now openly accepted as alternate points of view.
No fight of violence is going to fix this. The problem is the 'mindless'.
The server will be down for replacement of vacuum tubes, belts, worn parts and lubrication of gears and bearings.
(Score: 1, Troll) by Tokolosh on Thursday March 11 2021, @03:10PM (5 children)
Also demonstrably false are claims that socialism, communism and social democracy (anti-free market systems) are sustainable and lead to desirable outcomes. About time that Twitter bans people who spread misinformation about this. There can be no denying the overwhelming evidence.
(Score: 4, Touché) by DeathMonkey on Thursday March 11 2021, @06:00PM (1 child)
Sure, spreading false medical information that can kill people is the EXACT SAME as a political discussion.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 11 2021, @06:20PM
Such as the information that Fauci gave, when he knowingly lied and told people masks don't help? And so claiming that was wrong would have been censored?
Oh you are a monkey indeed. And I'm trying my hardest to avoid to monkey response of suggesting you apparently think nobody ever died over political disagreements.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Tork on Thursday March 11 2021, @07:01PM (2 children)
98% the chatter about socialism and its sustainability comes from the right labelling everything socialism then saying that it's unsustainable.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 12 2021, @08:30PM (1 child)
I think the issue is more that the left tends to:
1) Claim every effort to implement socialism in the past was not "real" socialism.
2) Claims places like those within Scandinavia are socialist, when in reality they are 100% capitalist, and are on occasion obligated to correct blathering by individuals such as Sanders.
If people want capitalism with better social safety nets, then they should call it capitalism with better social safety nets, because that's not socialism.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Friday March 12 2021, @08:38PM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 11 2021, @03:26PM (1 child)
Heh. S'not that hard when one side's gone to the batshit extreme.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday March 11 2021, @04:02PM
At that point, anything that the batshit extreme one side deems an obstruction or rival is "demonstratably false or misleading and may lead to significant risk of harm." Funny how people never figure out how these tools can blowback on you.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by DannyB on Thursday March 11 2021, @05:13PM (6 children)
Some people say the sun rises in the East. Others say the sun rises in the West.
Some people say the Earth is flat. (wrong because that would crush the infinite stack of turtles holding it up)
Some Televangelists say Silver Solution will cure[1] COVID!
[1]if you send them your money right now
All Democrats are Satan worshiping cannibal pedophile sex traffickers who drink the blood of babies.
That seems like a rare exception. The facts were on his side. Once he persuaded others to investigate, the truth was clear. It wasn't that the truth changed.
The problem with the things Twitter wants to ban is that they are
forbiddenfalse.The server will be down for replacement of vacuum tubes, belts, worn parts and lubrication of gears and bearings.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Thursday March 11 2021, @05:57PM (4 children)
False isn't the problem. Peoples' choice to believe is the problem
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday March 11 2021, @08:10PM (3 children)
An education system that has failed us is the problem.
The server will be down for replacement of vacuum tubes, belts, worn parts and lubrication of gears and bearings.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Thursday March 11 2021, @08:28PM (2 children)
Goes beyond simple education, doesn't account for our animal passions. The authoritarian patriarchy that suppresses them is the problem
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 4, Insightful) by DannyB on Thursday March 11 2021, @08:43PM (1 child)
It seems a problem to me that we have a generation of people that can't make change from a cash register, don't know basic arithmetic, or super complex ideas like percentages or God forbid fractions. Can't put down the phone or video game controller, even to walk, drive or have sex. A generation of people that will uncritically believe whatever they read online even if patently ridiculous. (Democrats are Satan worshiping cannibal pedophile sex traffickers who drink the blood of babies. Fires caused by Secret Jewish Space Lasers. The Deep State! The election was stolen.)
This is our problem. Those same lies told a few decades ago would have been laughed at universally. Now they can be openly said on (some) national news, and taken seriously by the audience.
The fact that we have a poorly educated and gullible population should not be considered a political issue. No more political than medical issues (Covid), or science issues (Global Warming). But you can't even talk about issues of general concern without it being considered political because a group of people have been fed ferry tails.
The server will be down for replacement of vacuum tubes, belts, worn parts and lubrication of gears and bearings.
(Score: 2) by canopic jug on Friday March 12 2021, @05:52PM
The fact that we have a poorly educated and gullible population should not be considered a political issue.
Much of the problem there has been cultivated since the Reagan administration. The US now has two, going on three, generations of citizens that don't have the basic skills and knowledge required for active participation in a Republic. I'm not sure if at some point there will be a point of no return, but there might well be one approaching soon what with Facebook, Fox "News", Cumulus, Clearchannel, and the other disinformation paths being such a major part of people's attention.
About the policy decitions to disassemble the educational framework in the US, how many times over the years have we hear the refrain about cutting school budgets until things improve? That's just a ploy to prevent investment in education. The more uneducated and gullible people there are the better that ploy works, setting off a vicious cycle. It has been established again and again that 1) you get no growth without investment and 2) any budget cuts in education end up costing massively more than they saved not that far down the road. That's where the US is now. If it gets worse, it may take external resources to get out of the mess, not money but actual teachers imported from or trained up elsewhere. I can see a benefit from some program like the Peace Corps sending (or training) teachers in the US, but first money is needed or there won't be anything to work with.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 12 2021, @08:06PM
>>The problem with the things Twitter wants to ban is that they are forbidden false.
The problem with poorly supported opinions stated as fact is that they are often over-generalizations.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 11 2021, @05:21PM
"demonstrably false or misleading" [cnn.com]
See YearCovid [twitter.com] for more 12 month old information from "authorities" that Twitter would now ban. Our technocrats really are a bunch of complete and utter morons.
(Score: 3, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Thursday March 11 2021, @05:49PM
The person who owns the website gets to decide what get posted and why.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 11 2021, @06:39PM (1 child)
Prince Alwaleed Meets Twitter Management in New York [mideast-times.com]
So, what's the Arabic for "Oy Vey! Shut it down!" And have you seen Jack Dorsey's beard lately? He looks like he's planning to move to Tora Bora.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 11 2021, @06:48PM
I thought he was planning on giving a lifetime ban to Merlin and moving to Camelot.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 11 2021, @08:40PM (1 child)
Can't fix batshit crazy. And by that, I of course mean the parent post... The anti-consensus extremists have hijacked the loons and are taking over the echo chambers again.
Marshall and Warren did an experiment on themselves. They actually followed the facts. Once demonstrated, the consensus quickly followed. WHO is a multinational organization of experts that have access to places in the world no one else has. Why? Because they try to stay away from political bullshit you are trying to hose them with. Quoting people that are your opposite doesn't change that you are opposite of them. Like the evangelical whackos quoting Jesus but doing the very opposite of what Jesus actually did and preached. But hey, the witch trials were also holy too!
It's fucking sad this has got modded up, but the whackos are strong here. The echo chamber is not exactly formed, but it's close.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 12 2021, @05:41AM
Here's a thought, actually learn what Barry and Robin went through to get their finding accepted. Then you won't be relying on some half remembered sensationalist media reporting and, consequently, you will look like less of an idiot.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 11 2021, @08:33AM (3 children)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday March 11 2021, @12:51PM (2 children)
You are an excellent argument for not doing lobotomies, yes. Look what it did to you!
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 11 2021, @03:51PM
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by DannyB on Thursday March 11 2021, @05:16PM
I think
* a lobotomy would actually have prevented that rather than caused it.
* it demonstrates is that one should pay more attention to where they get their news from.
The server will be down for replacement of vacuum tubes, belts, worn parts and lubrication of gears and bearings.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Zappy on Thursday March 11 2021, @08:36AM (10 children)
Especially politicians and political groups.
Please, pretty please?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 11 2021, @09:13AM (8 children)
Twitter's purpose is to earn money. So Twitter does what it thinks will make the most money. Like every company. Each and every action is put under the microscope of imaginable consequences, to divine which course of action will make more, or lose less, money. That is the ONLY metric! "Illegal" only works because getting caught means less money. Low risk of getting caught? Be illegal anyway! Bow to political pressure? Yes to prevent anti-twitter laws. Bow to public pressure? Only if the outflux of users is worse than the other pressures.
So stuff your pretty please where it belongs, I' m sorry to say. Nobody relevant cares. Take the above rule (may not hold for small companies with a decent toplevel boss), predict the future become rich. Or very, very frustrated.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 11 2021, @09:46AM (7 children)
No, Twitter's purpose is not to make money, or at least not anymore. The people at the top of Twitter already have more money than they know what to do with. Twitter's purpose is to monitor and, to the extent possible, control the thoughts of the masses using the service.
One of the sad legacies of libertarian thought on understanding of society is that supposedly everything comes down to economic self-interest. Well no it fucking doesn't -- most people have things they consider far more important than money. Once these billionaires become that stinking rich, their goal usually stops being "get more money" and starts being "get more power". Trying to examine their actions solely through the lens of economics misses the fucking point.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 11 2021, @10:21AM (3 children)
I'm no libertarian, at all. And I'm not saying you're completely wrong. The transformation from money to power definitely exists, and I didn't mention it for brevity ... but still, what you're saying does sound somewhat like a conspiracy theory.
From what I've seen so far, a combination (intermixed over the many levels of companies, governments and societies) of greed (for money and/or power, or call it generic selfishness) and varying levels of incompetence is more than enough to explain everything that happens.
I am deeply suspicious of people who see evil schemers everywhere, because they will be the ones eagerly shooting the undesirables once the revolution comes. And that's not any better.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday March 11 2021, @12:03PM
You mean like when I used to tell folks the NSA had rooms in all decent sized domestic phone switching stations that the employees weren't even allowed to look at or ask about and was spying on all domestic phone/internet traffic?
Science that bitch then. Test it. Make yourself a super-woke account and see what it takes to get that account banned. Then make a moderate but outspoken account that does not trust the government or Twitter and see what it takes to get that one banned. Hint: moderate does not mean "the middle of the political spectrum between Ultra Rabid Progressive and Chill, Reasonable Progressive".
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 11 2021, @12:58PM (1 child)
The GP overlooks the direct connection of:
money equals power
So by perusing "more money" they are also perusing "more power".
So no conspiracy theory necessary, and it neatly fits into the libertarian ideals of economics driving, in one way or another, most decisions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 11 2021, @04:36PM
The very fact that you think power and money are equal shows how economized your thinking is. Yes, the one can usually be used to get the other, if desired, but they're not the same thing.
A teacher has power over the students. That doesn't mean the teacher is shaking the students down for their lunch money. A cult leader has power over the believers. That doesn't mean he's taking their money, sometimes he's just taking their wives and daughters. Twitter has power over a large segment of communication on the internet. Sure, they'll sell your data to keep the servers running, but their power is used to decide what info anyone is allowed to see, to better control what anyone is permitted to think.
Martha Stewart had way more money than the FBI agents she (supposedly) lied to, or the prosecutor who tried her, or the judge who sentenced her. They had more power than her, though, so off to jail she went.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 11 2021, @01:35PM
Problem with libertarian thought only arises in socialist system, where you create fertile ground for corruption; money spent buying politicians, brings in a lot more money through regulatory capture.
Billionaires governing you by proxy is not because you had too much free market; it is because your market became not free enough. You had good intentions, now observe the end of the road paved with them.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday March 11 2021, @04:19PM
I have to agree with the other repliers. You don't get the point.
So what that there's more important things than money? Of course, there is. Otherwise there wouldn't be trade with money. We'd be tightly holding onto that money rather than trading it for stuff. And almost no one is rich because they have lots of money (the biggest exceptions IMHO being lottery winners and bitcoin hodlers). Instead they're rich because they have a lot of valuable assets.
So in summary, why don't you learn something about economics first before criticizing belief systems for elementary observations that almost everyone else has already figured out. In particularly, there's not much point to that criticism, if your approach makes the problems worse. I frequently have heard complaints about business power followed by clueless proposals that concentrate that business power further or worse, replace it with unaccountable government power.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday March 11 2021, @05:20PM
Twitter seems to be planning an IPO. I wonder if the SEC reads SN. Statements of 'fact' could affect the market ahead of an IPO.
But then, Twitter would ban non factual statements that could cause public harm.
The server will be down for replacement of vacuum tubes, belts, worn parts and lubrication of gears and bearings.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 11 2021, @07:23PM
The people who should by all rights get banned under these rules are media publications. They have lied, misinformed, and hysterised all aspects of covid since day 1.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Mojibake Tengu on Thursday March 11 2021, @10:39AM (3 children)
https://www.rt.com/russia/517688-twitter-slowed-down-block/ [rt.com]
https://www.rt.com/russia/517768-twitter-concerned-public-conversation-slowdown/ [rt.com]
https://www.rt.com/russia/517577-measures-plan-social-media/ [rt.com]
I think Russians are doing it right and well.
Rust programming language offends both my Intelligence and my Spirit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 11 2021, @08:43PM (2 children)
RT is like reading Pravda. It's only meant as a propaganda channel to spread chaos in the 'western' world. Quoting it now? Why not 4 chan too?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 12 2021, @07:52PM
Because 4chan has standards?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 12 2021, @08:37PM
The irony here is that you sound like a Soviet Censor denouncing Western news.
RT in general has excellent reporting and has broken a number of stories long before western media gets around to it. Like when we fabricated claims that Maduro attacked and set an aid truck on fire. RT had the video footage debunking that claim (a US backed protester set the aid convoy on fire with a molotov cocktail) within 24 hours. It took 2 weeks for the US corporate media to get around to reporting it, long after all of our politicians had long since used it as an effort to try to drum up a new war on just as sound of evidence as we had for Iraq.
The problem with RT is that they actually report the news. In the US large media outlets are expected to parrot the political establishment narrative, or face the consequences.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 11 2021, @12:54PM (6 children)
I'm glad that only approved speech is allowed now, meaning, whatever Fauci is telling the people this week.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 11 2021, @01:00PM
This is deja vu right out of 1984. Newspeak was exactly this. Only the centrally approved speech is authorized, citizen.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 11 2021, @03:44PM
(Score: 2) by MIRV888 on Thursday March 11 2021, @03:59PM (3 children)
Had polio lately?
Leave the science to the scientists.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 11 2021, @05:59PM
Interesting example. There was recently a major outbreak [theguardian.com] of polio caused by vaccines developed and deployed by Bill Gates' driven organizations. The corporate media has reported widely on this, but is remiss to mention the name of the organization that developed the vaccines and was running the experiments. It was (and is) the Global Polio Eradication Initiative [wikipedia.org] which is funded primarily by Gates. The WHO had, somewhat ironically, announced the eradication of Polio in Africa. If you read those announcements, it's now the end of "wild Polio" since vaccine derived polio outbreaks are now surging rapidly in Africa.
I'll happily leave science to the scientists of 60 years ago (when the Polio vaccine was first developed), but our modern corporate driven, ideology infested, publish or perish "science" is already a deeply dysfunctional system.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 11 2021, @06:35PM
polio was cured by indoor plumbing, not vaccines, you brainwashed slave.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 12 2021, @08:10PM
Pick up that can, citizen.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 11 2021, @01:11PM (14 children)
That is the base problem here. Who gets to decide what is "correct and proper" and what is not?
To take a small example from one year ago. Back in Feb 2020 we had the Surgeon General of the US tweeting that masks do not protect the general public from the coronavirus [snopes.com].
So, the Surgeon General is generally considered an expert, right? So if Twitter took the experts advice, in March, Twitter would have ended up banning any Twitter account that tweeted that masks did actually reduce risk for the general public (i.e., that they do work, something we do know now).
This is the problem with any of these "remove the bad speech" proposals. The result might have been a much longer time-frame before the experts revised their narrative to the current state of "indeed, masks do offer protection". Because part of that change in opinion on the part of the experts came about because of all of the push-back they got, via channels such as Twitter. But if this policy had been in place back then, most of the push-back would have been squelched, and so the experts would have seen much less push-back, and would likely have taken much longer to come around to the proper viewpoint.
So deciding that a given viewpoint should be suppressed is a dangerous thing, because while it can sometimes suppress an illegitimate fringe/dangerous opinion, it is also just as likely, if not more likely, to also suppress a legitimate difference of opinion, and shutting down debate over legitimate differences of opinion is how one gets stuck with the wrong opinion remaining the "approved one" for far too long.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 11 2021, @01:40PM (1 child)
You think "legitimate", they think "not Party-approved". Welcome to USSRofA
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 11 2021, @01:44PM
Or, given current conditions, the "Peoples Republic Of America"...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 11 2021, @02:56PM (1 child)
Yip, I think this is the thing so many people miss out on.
Demonizing the ability to think for themselves, even if they're wrong, is in effect doing little more than claiming only "the party" can be right. Because the rightness or wrongness of thought will be determined solely by "the party." And "the party" is often wrong. Sometimes they're wrong because they made a mistake, and sometimes they're "wrong" because they're actively lying to people. For instance when Fauci said masks don't help he knew he was lying. He said that because there was a shortage of masks (PPE in the article = personal protective equipment aka masks) and didn't want people hoarding. So he simply claimed they didn't work. Which was a lie. And so unless you repeat the lie, you would have been subject to punishment. This is literal fascism.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 11 2021, @02:58PM
And failing to link to the article [msn.com] I mentioned is just awesome. Though there are countless others as well. Fauci did not make a mistake. The evidence did not change. Or anything else like that. He lied. And then got a $1 million prize for being a defender of science. Our country is going to shit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 11 2021, @03:51PM (5 children)
"they" being masks.
Except we don't actually know that. The recent studies showed an approximate 2% benefit from wearing a mask. And the study had a margin of error of +- 5%. That is not proof. And, then we have comparisons of states with mask-regulations and states without mask-regulations. The covid infection rates are essentially same across both groups.
It's nice to say "we know" and spread that around to everyone who will hear. Except there is evidence it's not actually true. And this evidence is being blacklisted through actions like Twitter is using.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 11 2021, @04:05PM (2 children)
Fair enough, but from a risk mitigation viewpoint, masks "work" because they at best reduce the risk of transmission and at worst do not change the risk. [1]
And in this game, everything an individual can do to reduce risk of infection is helpful long run. Even if that risk reduction is only 2% +-5%. You are still better off using one, in case you get the 2%+5% side of the equation, than not using one, which guarantees a 0% risk change. Without your state is 0% change. With your state is somewhere from 0% to 7% (simpleton addition of the plus side of +5%, the point being you have an opportunity for more than 0% with, no opportunity for more than 0% without).
[1] Focusing on 'masks' alone, without factoring in foolish people's tenancies to take higher risk when they think they have a "safety net" to catch them should they fall.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 11 2021, @06:17PM
You really can't just put [1] in a footnote, because that is a very real possibility. If you poll most Americans, I'd imagine the majority believe the masks are supposed to be about protecting yourself from getting the virus. The media even tends to run with and exploit this by those hospital bed side videos of, "*cough* *cough* I really wish I'd worn a mask." Consequently, when people wear a mask you are *definitely* going to see a very non-zero increase in people engaging in behaviors they might not otherwise have engaged in without a mask.
And given mask's nominal effect is near 0, it's entirely possible that mask mandates (without an extremely well informed, and benevolent) end up causing a *negative* overall effect.
(Score: 2) by bart on Saturday March 13 2021, @11:14AM
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Thursday March 11 2021, @05:46PM (1 child)
Do you have a link to that study? We were just discussing that mask mandates had a tiny 2% effect, but the majority of science seems to support that masks work.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 12 2021, @08:33PM
>> but the majority of science seems to support that masks work.
Got any RCT references with which to back that up? Retrospectives are all I've seen in the literature to date, with outcomes that do not strongly support this statement.
I work in biostatistics in a university School of Public Health. I wear a mask in public. I don't enter the mask debate in any identifiable mode, as it seems to take on characteristics of religious debates. Much better to conform and shut up and not discuss the published data.
I searched the literature once after supporting the use of masks during an argument. Afterwards, intending to email links to studies whose outcomes supported my position, I was surprised at the lack of solid studies (study type, statistical power, etc.) as well as not being able to find any that showed much of a statistically significant difference in infection rate outcomes between mask users and non-mask users.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by MIRV888 on Thursday March 11 2021, @04:02PM (3 children)
When our 'leader' is incompetent and a megalomaniac, the CDC gets strong armed just like the rest of the government.
Leadership, and apparently science, starts at the top.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 11 2021, @04:22PM (1 child)
If you read the snopes article in full, you'll find some reference to the real reason the surgeon general tweeted what he tweeted in Feb re. masks not working, and it had nothing to do with "our fair leader" at the time.
The end of Feb. into Mar. last year was when China had put much of Wuhan and the surrounding territories into a hard lockdown, which halted Chinese production facilities in these areas. A good many of the N95 masks being used everywhere were produced in this part of China, so the idling of these production lines let to the extreme shortage of N95 masks that was occurring at the time.
The surgeon general's tweet was a deliberate lie on his part to try to convince the general public to not run out to buy N95 masks, because they wanted to reserve the N95 masks for use by healthcare workers. But rather than tell the truth, which was "we have a shortage, because we have a shortage we ask you not buy out the stocks so we have something the people on the front lines can use to protect themselves with" they went with an outright lie "masks don't protect you, general public member, but somehow they magically protect a healthcare worker when the same mask is worn in a hospital setting" (well, not in so many words, but that's essentially what the underlying meaning reveals. Unfortunately treating people as idiot dolts just results in those same people being less likely to believe what you tell them later when the truth come out that you treated them as idiot dolts the last time.
And, of course, all the worry about "hoarding" N95 by the general public was silly, because at the time, no hospital would have authorized use of the N95 masks at Home Depot or Lowes, because the HD or Lowes masks were certified as "dust masks" not as "medical masks", and unless the regulators would have authorized use of N95 dust masks in a medical setting, the general public buying dust masks would neither have helpled, nor harmed, the supply of N95 medical certified masks.
How can you tell an N95 dust mask from an N95 medical mask? Look for the exhale valve. If it has an exhale valve, it is a dust mask, not a medical certified mask (because the exhale valve would allow a dr/nurse to potentially infect a patient, something the non-exhale valve N95 mask prevents).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 11 2021, @05:25PM
> The surgeon general's tweet was a deliberate lie
Yes, it was misinformation and should have seen the account banned under Twitter TOS. Just as the WHO and CDC should also have been banned under Twitter TOS for publishing obvious bullshit throughout the early stages of the pandemic. Twitter and Fakebook could do take this to it's obvious conclusion, do the world a favor and ban themselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 13 2021, @09:31PM
>>When our 'leader' is incompetent
Enough of that shit. He may be old and slip up now and then, but the dementia narrative is right-wing bullshit.
(Score: 5, Informative) by DannyB on Thursday March 11 2021, @05:31PM
Freedom of the Press belongs to he who owns one.
Create your own platform if you don't like Twitter. Or Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Wikipedia, or 16chan.
Twitter had to build its own infrastructure.[1] Invested significantly to do so. Others can do the same. Then they can allow whatever false information they would like to perpetuate.
Examples would include Conservapedia [conservapedia.com] and Parler. [parler.com]
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
[1]and in 2012 rewrote it all from Ruby to Java for large scalability and performance [a] [infoq.com] [b] [infoq.com] [c] [twitter.com] [d] [readwrite.com] [e] [medium.com]
The server will be down for replacement of vacuum tubes, belts, worn parts and lubrication of gears and bearings.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday March 11 2021, @06:20PM
It's spring, and people have become twitterpated. No, not the happy bunny frolicking in the flowers and grass kind of twitterpated, but the bad kind of twitterpated.
Stop using twitter. Stop talking about twitter. Before you know it, its censorship problem will solve itself with them going out of business.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 11 2021, @06:40PM (2 children)
kill jack dorsey!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 11 2021, @09:09PM (1 child)
Learned from cheetoh bandito how to make threats eh? #FBI
Gonna have to start reporting these posts to the feds.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 12 2021, @08:50PM
GP is a tard but what he said is 100% legal to say. Advocating for illegal behavior is legal so long as it cannot be reasonably expected to lead to imminent lawless action [wikipedia.org]. This has been trialed in the courts a *lot* and imminent + cause are both interpreted very strictly and very literally. It's the reason e.g. 'gangsta rappers' are able to get away with advocating for all sorts of criminal activity in their music (which is where some of the court cases have come from).