Except that’s an impossible task. Some minds are closed to reason. For so many it’s “just the flu” until someone close to them dies.
More than not, probably, common sense not being so common after all.
Most of the public health communications in the US have been “messaging” rather than facts, along the lines of “don’t use masks because China bought up most of the PPE and you life is less important than some health care worker”. And then they played up the very rare young people deaths to try to scare them into getting a vaccine and follow lower risk activities.
They don’t trust the public, and in turn, the public doesn’t trust them. And why should we? The media and politicians have been lying non-stop for 5+ years and trust in both are at all time lows. Look at Fauci and Rand Paul getting into accountability and you could easily come away unimpressed. For comparison, look at Singapore leadership
So do you prefer where a small percentage of people die from their bad choices, or where you forcibly vaccinate everyone against their will for the “seemed like a good idea at the time” greater good?
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For a majority of people it is just the flu, and the person close to them who dies had multiple elevated risk factors that are not applicable to them… So who’s mind is closed to reason?
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The flu doesn’t kill 600,000 Americans in a year and almost never kills the healthy. High enough exposure and Covid can kill anyone. (That’s why so many medical people died in the early months.)
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But it did around 1918 when a new bad one first showed up, and was pretty much never that bad again since. Fingers crossed, covid will never kill even a fraction of half a million Americans again.
Those are talking points to push a message, that intentionally avoid using reason.
High enough exposure to just about anything can kill anyone. And a vast majority of those 600,000 deaths involved circumstances that simply do not apply to most Americans. Using the statistics of high risk populations to demonstrate the alleged risk to low-risk populations is no more valid than just making up whatever numbers you want and claiming it to be ‘fact’.
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Uncle Joe killed 42 million.
Uncle Joe killed 22 million.
Uncle Joe killed 36 million.
Which one is accurate? The others must not only be deleted, but the users must be damned/banned because they are obviously heretics. (welcome to the sixteenth century, among others)
Crazy Adolph killed 5.8 million.
Crazy Adolph killed 6.2 million.
Crazy Adolph killed 6.8 million.
Which one is accurate? The others are obviously misleading/deceitful, and should not only be deleted, but the wrongful writers eliminated/deleted.
Southern American slave traders killed 64 million blacks.
Accurate or not?
I hope you see the point. Everyone has an opinion. It may be incorrect, but is their opinion, and they have the right to speak it, orally, on Facebook, on a soapbox, on Snapchit, or a NaziSApp.
I think you have a big forehead. Because you own the publicly available website, can you prevent me from expressing my opinion? If so, then you are a publisher … in my opinion, a jackass publisher, but the courts will decide if I can say that on your jackass (my opinion) site.
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The internet changed everything by allowing anyone who feels like it at any time to spew false and misleading information and present if as fact and people seeing it over and over again, as in social media, will begin to believe whatever they are presented. Of course as the years have gone by this has been exploited more and more to manipulate the public. Before the internet, this still existed to some extent but was relegated to talk radio(which was the realm of conspiracy theories but what was allowed/wasn’t allowed was at the host’s/producer’s discretion - callers were often cut off and hung up on even on the more extreme conspiracy shows), newspaper op-eds(managed by the editorial board of the newspaper typically but sometimes conspiracy ideas were published), public access tv(remember when people could apply to have a slot of time on the public access channel(typically still monitored for content and future access could be denied), and mailed newsletters/magazines/other print media(typically only people that had discretionary income could access the more extreme conspiracy oriented stuff). Guess we need to, once again, thank Al Gore for inventing the internet.
And here is where you get it wrong. You have a right to speak it–but nobody is under any obligation to provide you a soapbox to speak from. That’s what Facebook is doing–saying that they will not provide a soapbox for speech they consider sufficiently harmful.
And this is 100% perfectly OK and you are right. Facebook is a private entity and they may establish and enforce any rules they believe are right.
However
What is not OK is for Facebook simultaneously to be benefitting from certain protections offered by law to platforms. Its censorship activity unavoidably moves Facebook to the category of publisher.
Platforms like Twitter, Google, and Facebook - prior to initiation of censorship - are protected from the legal consequences of their users’ speech by section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
But importantly
The provisions of that section apply solely to free speech platforms, and not in the least to publishers. Efforts today by Facebook to invoke those Section 230 protections are clearly and self evidently specious. Having recently defined itself as a publisher opens Facebook up to lawsuits for defamation and other liability for the content users publish, something they were previously immunized against.
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Which, as was mentioned, makes them a publisher that is liable for all content posted under their purview. But they repeatedly absolve themself of that responsibility as an open forum.
I understand what you are saying, but they simply cannot have it both ways.
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That’s not the way it works. A forum can choose to remove certain posts without becoming liable for everything that’s posted.
And note that not removing anything can have bad results–GETTR is full of jihadist stuff because they don’t remove things. Is that what you want?
If you are in denial regarding the existence of Section 220 of the communications decency act I suggest you look it up for yourself.
And the “way it works” is quite clear and a matter regarding which there is general agreement.
There are platforms and there are publishers, with different rules for each category. They are not the same things under law. You may be one or the other, but not both simultaneously.
Agreed. But facts are stubborn things and the law is what it is.
It’s not about what each of us “might want”. It’s about adhering to existing law.
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I don’t even know what you’re talking about. Now, if you actually meant section 230, here’s the important part of what it says:
“No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider”
As for editing it, it specifically says there’s no liability for
“any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected;”
Note that term “otherwise objectionable”–any platform is free to make it’s own decisions as to what to zap. Removing stuff contrary to the policies of a system does not turn them into a publisher of what is left.
When you accept the censuring of dissident perspectives, you have become part of the problem.
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You’re showing why Facebook is deleting stuff. I just showed the law doesn’t say what you think it does and rather than accept the truth you go on about other points already discussed–you’re free to say what you want but they are under no obligation to provide you a soapbox.
There are first amendment issues tho when the government starts telling private platform companies who to censor online and where it would not be legal for the government to do so if the person was speaking in person. And the Biden admin is happily doing this.
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No, all you showed is your claim that anything you dont like can be called “objectionable”. Which simply is not a fact. “obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing” sets the context for what is objectionable, not “it goes against what I think so it must be evil and racist”.
Obligated, no. But if they pick and choose who they give that soapbox to, they become responsible for what the soapbox is used for. That is the entire purpose of this law.
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In the spirit of this topic generally, I thought this was a good summary of where things are these days.
”the norms of institutional citizenship can take a slavish turn, while gatekeeping institutions can grow imperious in their presumptions.”… We have, as others have noted, shifted from a culture of persuasion to one of coercion.
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My local gun store has few posts flagged by Instagram. The reason is Instagram does not allow gun stores to promote “regulated products” on their platform.
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