He brought up conspiracies that weren’t mainstream (i.e. never talked about on TV or newspapers) that came from the depths of the interwebs and spread on social media.
No, you miss the point. Keeping trying to make something of the laptop is disinformation because it inherently has no credibility (there’s no way to prove anything juicy was actually on the original–all that can be established is that it was at one time a copy of his laptop.) The current flap is just another version, trying to make an issue of Twitter suppressing disinformation.
There didn’t used to be nearly so many people intentionally pushing disinformation.
There didn’t used to be nearly so many people intentionally censoring actual information either.
Which do you suppose is More Dangerous To Our Democracy?
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That terribly slippery slope that is feeding me tons of home improvement shorts all of a sudden on facebook because I clicked like on a few randomly. The are so plugged into my brain. I think I’m gonna quit my job and become an extreme cabinet maker.
@glitch99 responded perfectly, but I just wanted to point out what the algorithm is really doing 99% of the time and how silly it is to want to regulate the algorithm, of all the things there is to regulate.
Back when your post would have been deleted and you would have been suspended for saying the virus leaked from a lab or if you shared a NY Post article. Those attempts at banning false content sure have aged well. Yet here you are, still advocating it.
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There didn’t used to be algorithms that intentionally pushed false information onto anyone who happens to seek out or stumble upon something LIKE it. You know, things like JFK Jr. is alive, Osama was CIA or is still alive, 9/11 was an inside job, the election was stolen, etcetera. This actually is dangerous for our Democracy, as evidenced by the events of January 6th.
I agree that censoring is also dangerous, which is why I’m choosing my words carefully. I do not want anything on youtube to be censored (again, with exceptions like imminent threats), but I also do not want stupid shit to be amplified to a wide audience of people who didn’t seek out that exact content. I.e., you have a direct link or exact title, fine, you can find it. But it should not be on the “watch next” list simply because you watched something that the algorithm considers similar.
No doubt the arguments over the best joints, materials, or cabinet making techniques are certain to create problems for the woodworking community, but they’re not a threat to the social order.
Even if the lab leak is true and the govt covered it up, I could hardly blame them. The most important thing then was to save as many lives as possible, and that required a whole lot of trust in the government. I think a lot more people would have died due to COVID in the US if we had protests related to the lab leak and a lower rate of COVID vaccinations. Not to mention the repercussions for international relations.
The speech was still free – the Post was still able to say whatever the heck they wanted. They just couldn’t spread it on other private platforms. I see no danger to Democracy in this scenario.
Democracy works with an informed public - without that you’re just guessing or picking your leaders randomly or at worst for those most willing to use the levers of power to suppress their opponents. Arguably such situations are not the “free and fair” election standard we keep hassling other countries to uphold.
Twitter’s actions were election interference since enough people said the Hunter story could have changed their votes that the censoring of speech on Twitter very well could have caused us to elect the wrong president. If you prefer, Twitter provided a huge in-kind advertising contribution to the Democrats in violation of election laws.
Trump pollster John McLaughlin found that 4.6% of Biden voters would have changed their minds if they had known about it, easily enough to flip results in key states. Another survey by The Polling Company showed that even more Biden voters in seven swing states — 17% — would have switched their votes if they had been aware of the laptop and other stories.
Likewise, you may recall Pfizer did the same with last minute changes and coverups in their vaccine results by delaying the very positive results, which they had promised to release as soon as they were available, by several weeks until after both the election and the media had crowned Biden President.
Apparently HL Mencken is still right after all these years.
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
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There still arent. The algorithms curate posts and articles that are related to what you are looking or searching for. There is no inherent true or false to those results, the only selection bias comes into play when the pool of results is artificially censored like you want to happen. So your entire argument is based on a false premise (which is rather ironic).
I agree with you that social media, and even moreso smart phones in general, is the root of all evil. But it’s not going anywhere. You can either hate the game, or you can play the game. Like I’ve said multiple times, stop crying about the stuff you dont like and be more persuasive - and your arguments will gain equal footing in those algorithms.
But of course, it’s much easier to delete the opposing viewpoints so that your is the only one available.
Wait - I thought you were the one complaining about false information being amplified? Now you are endorsing it?
It is rather funny how this argument has changed over the past couple months, as said private platform has used it’s private discretion to roll back censorship efforts.
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It’s kinda crazy how two smart, well meaning people can see the exact same thing and come to completely different conclusions. I saw everything you saw (I assume) and concluded that, had the public health authorities been honest with people during the start of the pandemic, admitted mistakes, and changed course properly as new data came in, MORE people would have trusted them and taken the vaccine. The main reason we had as low a rate of vaccination was specifically BECAUSE of the lies told by public health officials.
Yeah, don’t want to piss off that country that puts Uyghur’s in camps, turns its back on the promises made to Hong Kong, doesn’t acknowledge the sovereignty of Taiwan, and padlocks its own citizens inside their homes. The last thing we need to do is make that country think we aren’t going to take their $hit. 
What upsets me the most about hearing you say this is that we are two years past what happened - plenty of time for hindsight - and you are still defending it. It’s one thing to defend the outright suppression of a legitimate news story at the time because it is “difficult” to verify, where the leftists of the intelligence community quickly circled their wagons and threw their “authority and credibility” behind the claim that it was Russian disinformation. It’s a completely different thing, two years later, to continue defending it when every single revelation since then has pointed to the story being based on 100% authentic evidence and no one that claimed it was Russian disinformation has been able to back up their claim. And again after brand new revelations this week that one of the main suppressors took a “suppress first, come up with a reason for suppression later” approach to it.
Serious question: What exactly would have to come out for you to change your mind and agree with us that the suppression of a legitimate news story by social media companies makes it harder for people to make an informed decision on who to elect to public office? If you want to take the Sam Harris route and just admit that Trump was a particularly unique threat that justifies nearly any action by social media to suppress news that could help him, that’s fine. I get it. Just be honest so we can know where the line is for you.
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former twitter exec doubling down on policies that led to Elon buying it
https://twitter.com/mtracey/status/1598899401732558848
adding a few extra words here because I accidentally posted this in the wrong thread first, deleted it there, and now as I try to post it in this thread (where it should have gone in the first place), the forum is telling me it is too similar to another post (that I just deleted)
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Some Twitter perspective
I also am trying my best to keep matters in perspective, but Musk’s takeover of Twitter is far worse than anything Hitler ever did. I do not approve of mass genocide, but it pales in comparison to providing a social media platform where Eddie Izzard might be misgendered.
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Meantime in the non-Twitter world
Predictably: LOL
You have fallen for the disinformation and regard anything that contradicts it as false.
Exactly. If the Post had been prohibited from printing it that would be an issue. For other sources to say they didn’t want to deal with it causes no harm.
There is no way the lab leak hypothesis can ever be truly disproven because as in so many cases it’s impossible to prove a negative. Of course China isn’t interested in investigating it because there’s no way to exonerate them. There’s also the complication that the local authorities tried to cover it up–in the process destroying most of the evidence.
The stuff that’s not being shouted from the rooftops is not information in the first place.
I don’t care what a Trump pollster said. Partisan pollsters aren’t worth much of anything these days. And stuff like the laptop was known–it was just dismissed as irrelevant because it’s impossible to show it’s not the equivalent of a photoshop. You believe it because you want to believe it, not because the truth has been established.
And Pfizer didn’t hold back anything other than what the research protocol required. This is normal–you wait until you have enough data points before evaluating the data. I don’t recall the numbers but they only analyzed the data once they had a certain number of confirmed infections in the test groups. (One of the attempts to discredit the vaccine has been based on there being a number of cases in their sample groups that had signs of respiratory illness but did not have positive Covid test results. If you pretend those were Covid cases anyway you get a pretty low effectiveness. However, the real world performance matched what they saw counting the confirmed cases.)
There’s no way to make the truth as persuasive as a well-crafted lie. Persuasiveness is a very poor measure of the truth.
Because the censorship hasn’t been lifted, it’s just been changed. Bans galore for people who make points Musk doesn’t like.
What did the officials do that you think made people not get vaccinated? And now you’re asking for the opposite of what you wanted before–they did change course as the information changed, you criticized them for changing course.
And this is supposed to be a problem? You don’t realize the vile stuff moderators of big sites see.
From the quote this appears to be satire.
But this one isn’t satire, it’s part of the hate being stirred up because schools try to reflect reality rather than the Christian White Supremacist ideas.
He is literally doing the opposite. You are the only one here who’s disregarding anything that is inconvenient to your preconceived beliefs“truths”.
Yes, it’s much easier to adamently surpress it and pretend it doesnt exist, than to simply ask Biden if those messages are authentic. Ok, “easier” isnt the right word, it is “safer” to ensure Biden doesnt have to lie about what can eventually be authenticated.
And to your own claim - if it is impossible show proof, then it’s impossible to debunk it too. Yet that’s exactly what a slew of talking heads and esteemed former whatnots did, pushing what is at best an equally baseless conclusion.
And for 2+ years now we’ve been told that isnt a problem because it’s a private platform that can do whatever it wants. That has not changed, only the response has changed.
Let me refresh your memory. The original data monitoring interim checkpoint was 32 cases for the PFE trial, as they laid out originally in their trial documents. Then, when they realized the results were going to be good and they didn’t want to release them before the election, they stopped processing covid tests so they couldn’t pass the threshold and sat on them for several weeks at least until they miraculously had over 90 cases to report on just after our Dear Leader’s coronation. I laid out all the timetime, changing goalposts and retroactive trial design changes by PFE, and shady political implications here.
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Are you saying that suppressing a story is an in-kind advertising contribution to the Democrats, but magnifying the same story is not an in-kind advertising contribution to the Republicans?
I don’t think that is correct. They magnify by “curating” the most outrageous content, because that is what people are more likely to click on. The algorithms don’t just give you similar results, they dig a deeper hole for you.
The human mind gravitates towards outrageous click-bait, not towards persuasion.
I was thinking of our allies when I mentioned international relations.
If you dropped the word “social” I’d completely agree with you. I only have a problem with “social” media, because it amplifies, and I believe if makes the public less informed as a result, not more.
Sure it would be if they put it as a hard coded story on the top of everyone’s news feed. The alternative proposal isn’t that they magnify it to favor the R’s, just that they let people use the platform as they want without any new special political intervention. Let them talk about Hunter, Kardashians, whatever. If Hunter’s antics are popular, let them be.
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I’d be OK with that if the platform’s algorithms did not create political intervention. The algorithms amplify – they take something (true or false, or likely and more often with elements of both, but with a particular political slant) that appears to be popular (real or manipulated, i.e. with bots) and make it even more popular by putting it at the top of everyone’s news feed.
Twitter banned people from sharing the links to the Hunter NYP story. It wasn’t about them amplifying it. They normally only used that level of censorship for child porn.
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When you say “sharing”, do you mean posting? Isn’t a bunch of people accounts posting the same thing what causes amplification?
If we’re gonna get technical, I suppose if they had another way to suppress amplification without bans, that would be better.
No, they didn’t. They changed course only when it was clear that the public wasn’t going along with their recommendations anymore.
I criticized them for taking way too long to change course and keeping kids out of school WAY longer than nearly every other country.
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