to say that, say, some things are vague, so we shouldn't do anything seems like an extreme approach.
It depends on what the aim is for the platform. If the aim is to have the most open place for expression, less censorship is required for this. But without any incentive for constructive comments, it leads to hateful rhetoric and misinformation.
Social media services might be better split in two where the front-end, public part is more restrictive and this is best for businesses and ads. There would be a private part like how Discord has private channels and that part can be much less restrictive.
This would drastically limit the spread of misinformation and abuse as people wouldn't be able to share the private links to everyone and they would still have some restrictions on the private content.
It's not realistic that every conversation is suitable for public consumption. Many of them aren't appropriate in the same way people wouldn't have certain conversations in front of their parents or strangers in the real world but they happily post it online for everyone to see.
It also helps to segment discussions by interests because that's where people have common ground and have more wholesome interaction. Then they can contain political topics to a certain channel and people who just want everything except politics can turn it off.
Attacking a minority group is in no way the same as telling in individual that they are bad at the job or ugly (body shamming for size is probably a little closer). The latter are personal insults, and while they should be left out of discourse, they aren't harassing a community.
There isn't a universal standard for what kind of attacks are more or less acceptable. Some people have asked for fat-shaming to be treated as seriously as racist remarks.
Many people have a subjective tolerance of abuse.
A recent issue has been the conflict in the middle-east. There are left-wing Palestinian supporters marching through streets wearing Swastikas and carrying supportive images of Hitler and posting similar online. Jewish people are a minority group but there are people on the left who think it's ok to attack them because they view them as an oppressor group.
There was an Asian woman who was fired for making comments about white people in a satirical video:
The problem with suppressing abusive comments is that people expect it should only be applied a certain way but it can't be one-sided so it's how to make the rules fair for everyone involved.
This is what large-scale, international platforms have to weigh up. In Western countries, people would say it shouldn't be allowed to attack based on sexuality but there are countries the services operate in where it's illegal to be certain sexualities so for them it's illegal not to be against this and it's millions of people. The platform has to be somewhat consistent with the laws of the country or their staff can be under threat in that country. If people from those countries move to Western countries, they rarely leave those views at the doorstep. Dealing with this clash of cultures and interests is not that straightforward.
Running a service where half the planet is flooding content on it every day is a hugely difficult task but they should make more effort to tune their tools to suppress all kinds of abuse.
the problem it isn't simply content creators making content saying women are property and LGBTQ+ people are mentally ill. I can deal with that as I don't have to engage with the content. It's that the policy change means women and LGBTQ+ creators can be targeted with these types of attacks in comments, in direct messages, or that their content can be stitched to incorporate these types of attacks. I'm a queer person that owns a small business and up until this week used Instagram for promotional purposes. The attacks were already obnoxious enough, but now I can't try to mitigate them by reporting them; these things are now fair game. I can either lock down my account so people can't comment or share my content (kinda defeats the purpose of using it for promotion) or I can accept that I am now open to even more harassment. What is particularly messed up is these folks can send me direct messages attacking me for my sexuality, and if I do something like post a screenshot of it, I'll have my account suspended for promoting harassment against them. Seriously, that has happened. At the time, Meta wanted creators to report those types of comments rather than deal with it ourselves. Now what? Meta has given them the okay to do this, and I just have to shut up and take it.
It's good to read different perspectives to see what people deal with because it's not visible to everyone. This feels separate from the issue of misinformation.
Meta replacing a 3rd party fact-checking service with community notes shouldn't have changed their policies on harassment or direct messages. If that's changed too then it should be highlighted because that shouldn't be an acceptable part of any platform and there's no excuse for not having dedicated teams or automated systems to handle abuse in direct messages.
Even with the promising future of machine learning the human-in-the-loop will to a great extent be none other than ourselves, both individually and collectively via upvoting and downvoting in addition to the scoring done by the AI processing. I'm okay with that and now that AppleInsider has reinstitute the down voting we can start to get a small taste of how the approach may work. We will see how we can handle this on our own while unaided by AI, ML, etc. What works here may not scale to the level needed on Meta's and Musk's platforms.
A human voting system is what causes a lot of misinformation. People upvote comments that align with their own view and downvote ones that don't, that's where facts get lost and has degraded the standards for journalism because it turned media into being engagement-driven rather than quality-driven. It's one of the worst ways of tagging comments and produces tribal outcomes. A few people can also vote a lot so it gives a skewed impression. If someone makes 1000 posts on social media and one person likes every post, they get 1000 likes so they think they are doing great not knowing that only one person likes them.
There are objective measures of offensive comments. Stephen King used to be on Twitter and when he left, the replies to the announcement were abusive:
Scanning those replies it's easy to see which replies are combative/abusive and which are supportive and many have insults.
He moved to Threads and Bluesky. At first glance, those threads look a little more wholesome but this is partly because the more extremes of left and right have split into different services.
Some threads on Bluesky are similarly low value messages but it's majority left-oriented with the replies:
Looking through those type of comments, nothing in there is of value so it doesn't need to be publicly facing.
All this type of content influences younger generations. When they see public figures being abusive like this then they get involved and it creates a cycle of more division and abuse.
The front-end, public side of social media should be wholesome, not insulting people or public figures, not abusing anyone. The type of content that's in Tim Cook's twitter feed:
Some of this is marketing but none of it is offensive to look through. It would so much better if the majority of social media sites looked like this.
I don't understand what people in those abusive threads get out of it. There's something giving them a dopamine hit from being abusive but if they are going to bed at night feeling good that they hurled dozens of abusive messages online, this is what needs to be fixed. They should go to bed at night feeling ashamed of that in the same way they would if they hurt someone close to them.
The end of so called “fact checkers” is a welcome relief for true free speech. When one person, or group, has the power to decide what is ‘true’ or not, we are all in trouble. See exhibit one: China, or even worse, North Korea. We all need to fight against this sort of abuse of money and power, and while I am not a huge Facebook fan, I’m glad that they are following X’s lead in allowing free speech.
I'm assuming this means that when a teacher graded your paper and marked an answer incorrect, it was a violation of your free speech? No one has the power to decide what is true or not. Reality is the only truth. But by making fact checking crowdsourced, you remove truth from fact, and I guess that's why they say we're in a post truth society. People only want to hear things they agree with, and everything else is deemed a lie, "fake news."
It is tragic how bad things have become. People mistrusting professionals, believing conspiracies, hating everything different from themselves.
It is tragic. I mourn the death of knowledge, of fact, of reality, of compassion. The only thing left is greed and hate in the people that follow him. It is pitiful.
Two things here:
1. Being a 'professional' doesn't make one immune from scrutiny as professionals are often wrong. These people have very real motivations to say what they say, vs. what you think you're hearing. I.e. walking into a doctor's office and they're pushing the flu shot, regardless of your personal risk. What they don't disclose, is if they get X% of people a flu shot, they get a financial bonus. If the internet had existed in the 40's, saying "smoking causes cancer" would have been flagged as misinformation by "professionals".
2. These "professional fact checkers" were taking down legitimate information. In February 2021, I was among the first to get vaccinated. A friend, who is a nurse, worked at a hospital administering vaccines to seniors and once they opened a pack, they had to use it within a certain time, so when there were no-shows she'd call friends/family as to not waste them. In any case, my entire body broke out in welts (spontaneous chronic urticaria). In posting trying to find information online to see if anyone else was experiencing this, multiple platforms took my posts down and flagged them as "misinformation" that the vaccines could cause this, despite my doctor telling me she saw it with the Moderna shot (but not Pfizer or J&J). To this day, I still have the welts if I don't take an antihistamine. It started as daily, but now I'm good if I take it every 2-3 days. Since then, it's been recognized as a possible side effect, but it was just as much a fact then as it is now and definitely was not misinformation.
It's certainly complicated, especially since science isn't set in stone and is in constant flux. However, it is still important to trust science and its institutions because they are not a monolith. If something is currently scientific fact, it had to get there through mountains of texting and peer reviews to even be considered something more than a simple theory. And many scientific principles are still theory, which means they could one day be proven wrong when the right information is presented.
However, that doesn't mean that random people on the internet should be allowed to spread misinformation based on hunches or things they heard from a guy on social media. Doctors can disagree on the best way to handle a medical issue, sure, but random users on an internet forum have no ability to discuss whether or not a vaccine is safe or useful. People can "do their own research" but it will never be enough to counter a proper education. Yes, professionals can be wrong, but that doesn't mean a random person online is right.
Fact checking exists to ensure that information is spread with context and nuance and removes outright misinformation from the algorithms -- at least when it is working correctly. It doesn't stop users from having discussions or debates, but it does stop people from making grand proclamations without any evidence. And how a platform chooses to handle fact checking is up to them. Meta may have had fact checkers, but it didn't stop the flood of misinformation on the platform entirely. It slowed it for sure, but there is so much that some always got through. Now there's no effort to stop it.
To your points:
1. I'm not sure if you're referring to the rumors about Blue Cross Blue Shield, but they are not true. Private doctors not dealing with providing medications or services through federal programs might try to have some kind of kickback, but there are a lot of laws that prevent kickbacks so it isn't the norm. With vaccines, it just doesn't happen. Also, yes, it was normal for vaccine administrators to contact anyone and everyone to ensure they used up their stock of vaccines or else they would go bad.
The incentive to get as many vaccines into as many people as possible is to save lives. Wasting vaccines caused unnecessary sickness and death during the pandemic.
2. As I said, science changes. I'm not sure how you phrased your posts or where you posted, but it was likely moderators, not fact checkers, that took down your post for fear of contributing to misinformation. For example, people claiming vaccines made them magnetic or more sick caused some to not get vaccinated at all.
How a platform chooses to handle fact checking is up to them. That said, I'm sorry to hear you had this reaction, and it seems to be a known effect under investigation some minuscule portion of the population has reported. I hope they find a way to undo that effect in the future, and at least it seems it's not causing long term harm.
Still, none of this means we shouldn't have fact checking on the internet or that we shouldn't trust institutions. That's the fun part, we can question them and seek more information, but we should trust when people who know what they are talking about tell you something important. Like getting a vaccine, evacuating from a natural disaster, or that abortion is healthcare that prevents tragic maternal deaths.
Misinformation got some guy elected president twice! It's a powerful tool and needs to be defeated or else we'll continue to devolve into a hateful, angry, ignorant society. (more than we are)
The institutions own past behavior is why many people don't trust them, not 'misinformation' posted by random people on the internet. Look no further than the covid origins investigation. It's almost a certainty that it came from a Chinese lab. Even early on, what's more plausible? It came from a lab doing this very type of research, *located less than a mile away*, or that it jumped from a bat to a human at that very spot? "Experts" spewed misinformation, doubled down, and even punished other experts that didn't agree with their narrative. Later the FBI comes out and says "yeah, it was probably the lab.". In information though, corrected information months later gets swept under the rug on page 46 corrections. Most people still believe it was the wet market.
Everyone has an agenda, there are very few people or organizations that have your best interests at heart -- especially so in government and pharmaceuticals; you should examine information accordingly, be they come from a random guy on the internet or the CDC. I see no benefit in suppressing the random guy, the choice is each individuals how much they value that information.
But like is said, the reason people don't trust experts is they have a checkered history, be it in accuracy or motive. Does free speech cause harm? Absolutely. But the alternative is too scary to think about, that freedom of thought or expression are suppressed. The 'experts' should look in the mirror and ask themselves why people trust Joe Rogan more than someone with a PhD.
Often PhD's disagree (natural immunity vs. vaccine immunity) or one institution disagrees with another (see most of the legacy media vs. the NYPost on the Hunter Biden story). These are real examples from the past year or two where moderation did the public a disservice, and accurate information was labeled misinformation.
Since harm can be done -- be it free speech or moderation, I'll take free speech every time. Because those that can benefit from it will, and there is no watching the watchers.
The institutions own past behavior is why many people don't trust them, not 'misinformation' posted by random people on the internet. Look no further than the covid origins investigation. It's almost a certainty that it came from a Chinese lab. Even early on, what's more plausible? It came from a lab doing this very type of research, *located less than a mile away*, or that it jumped from a bat to a human at that very spot? "Experts" spewed misinformation, doubled down, and even punished other experts that didn't agree with their narrative. Later the FBI comes out and says "yeah, it was probably the lab.". In information though, corrected information months later gets swept under the rug on page 46 corrections. Most people still believe it was the wet market.
Everyone has an agenda, there are very few people or organizations that have your best interests at heart -- especially so in government and pharmaceuticals; you should examine information accordingly, be they come from a random guy on the internet or the CDC. I see no benefit in suppressing the random guy, the choice is each individuals how much they value that information.
But like is said, the reason people don't trust experts is they have a checkered history, be it in accuracy or motive. Does free speech cause harm? Absolutely. But the alternative is too scary to think about, that freedom of thought or expression are suppressed. The 'experts' should look in the mirror and ask themselves why people trust Joe Rogan more than someone with a PhD.
Often PhD's disagree (natural immunity vs. vaccine immunity) or one institution disagrees with another (see most of the legacy media vs. the NYPost on the Hunter Biden story). These are real examples from the past year or two where moderation did the public a disservice, and accurate information was labeled misinformation.
Since harm can be done -- be it free speech or moderation, I'll take free speech every time. Because those that can benefit from it will, and there is no watching the watchers.
Free speech is a protection from the government, not private institutions. Everything you mention in this comment in particular are all headlines shared by Fox News, a news resource that was sued and lost thanks to sharing election fraud lies for rating increases. The lab theory was debunked by experts and scientists the world over many times and continues to not be true, but you may have seen FBI director Wray (appointed by Trump) go on Fox News (Trump's media platform) and say it was a lab, because after an investigation by the Republican party (Maga Trump party) found no new conclusive evidence that it was a lab, said it was a lab anyway to the dismay of democrats and experts that said otherwise.
But somehow you believe that "everyone has an agenda" and don't even realize that all of the misinformation you just shared was from a resource whose agenda is to serve the Republican (now Maga Trump) party. The right's obsession with Hunter Biden is another aspect of this that proves how hateful and ignorant that news resource is. They blamed the LA fires on DEI for God's sake.
And there's the "both sides" nonsense. There is no credible evidence anywhere that natural immunity is an alternative to vaccines. Period. Ask the kids who got polio because their parents are anti-vaxxers. Or all of the preventable deaths during the COVID pandemic caused by lack of immunization and masking. Or perhaps more recently the leading cause of death from preventable diseases in children being the Flu due to lack of vaccinations this winter.
Clearly you have your own beliefs, so please spare me because I rolled my eyes enough the first time I heard them passed through the Fox News megaphone.
Facts and science win out every time, no matter how much a person denies them or dislikes them.
Seeing tech leaders like Zuck and Musk simply become mindless mouthpieces for the money which controls their companies just keeps reminding me how unique Jobs was. Seeing the bigger picture of humanity, your small role in it, having foundational principles, and sticking to a vision of how to move things forward. A lost breed in today's tech business world.
I fully agree with Mark Meta. With Jobs gone, the vision went too. All we have now in Apple is a company with excellent products that just keep on evolving but not revolutionising. it is very, very hard to be totally original. Once in a lifetime talent.
Free speech is a protection from the government, not private institutions. Everything you mention in this comment in particular are all headlines shared by Fox News, a news resource that was sued and lost thanks to sharing election fraud lies for rating increases. The lab theory was debunked by experts and scientists the world over many times and continues to not be true, but you may have seen FBI director Wray (appointed by Trump) go on Fox News (Trump's media platform) and say it was a lab, because after an investigation by the Republican party (Maga Trump party) found no new conclusive evidence that it was a lab, said it was a lab anyway to the dismay of democrats and experts that said otherwise.
But somehow you believe that "everyone has an agenda" and don't even realize that all of the misinformation you just shared was from a resource whose agenda is to serve the Republican (now Maga Trump) party. The right's obsession with Hunter Biden is another aspect of this that proves how hateful and ignorant that news resource is. They blamed the LA fires on DEI for God's sake.
And there's the "both sides" nonsense. There is no credible evidence anywhere that natural immunity is an alternative to vaccines. Period. Ask the kids who got polio because their parents are anti-vaxxers. Or all of the preventable deaths during the COVID pandemic caused by lack of immunization and masking. Or perhaps more recently the leading cause of death from preventable diseases in children being the Flu due to lack of vaccinations this winter.
Clearly you have your own beliefs, so please spare me because I rolled my eyes enough the first time I heard them passed through the Fox News megaphone.
Facts and science win out every time, no matter how much a person denies them or dislikes them.
What misinformation?
On the lab leak, the director of the FBI said it. Yes, he was appointed by Trump, but hates Trump and would perjuring himself in front of congress.. Also, various other government agencies, including the Department of Energy came to the same conclusion:
Three other agencies that came to the same conclusion. In a vacuum, that may not be news, other than the government tried to stifle this theory before there was any data to prove or disprove it. They weren't following the evidence:
So there are four sources - FBI director, NPR, The Hill, and USA Today. Feel free to cite your own source, but you didn't cite one and just attacked the source I cited without either providing your own or refuting the actual information. The point here though is the source being the lab isn't 'misinformation', though it is disputed, but only one side of that argument was being labelled as such.
You clearly have an issue with Fox News, which I get. ABC News just had to put out 16M dollars for defamation. The View has to read legal disclaimers very often due to what they're saying and how they say it. I'm curious, which news sources do you find credible? You attacked references that I didn't even make (Fox News) as well as the FBI Director, which is a reference that I did make. CNN may as well be the Clinton news network, I think they have a single republican on their panels. MSNBC is the mirror image of Fox News on the left, with crazy conspiracies and borderline tabloid sensationalism.
"There is no credible evidence anywhere that natural immunity is an alternative to vaccines. Period."
I was comparing the antibodies produced once you've already had covid to getting a covid vaccine. Once you've had covid, your body has fought it off and established antibodies for it. It's one of the reasons that people don't get chickenpox multiple times or you can't get the 'same' cold more than once. Neither seems particularly effective on reinfection with Covid though, I know people that have had every recommended booster and still had covid multiple times. Most vaccines mimic natural immunity by injecting dead virus into you, which lets your immune system recognize it and attack it. The covid mRNA vaccine is very different.
You don't have any natural immunity until after you've already had the virus/infection and fought it off. Getting a vaccine AFTER that doesn't make sense in most cases. In any case, not misinformation.
"Or all of the preventable deaths during the COVID pandemic caused by lack of immunization and masking. Or perhaps more recently the leading cause of death from preventable diseases in children being the Flu due to lack of vaccinations this winter."
I think this is delving out of what we're talking about here. I was talking about stories in the media and censorship, and you're making conclusions here based on your reading of stories, etc. That said, my opinion is Masking did absolutely nothing, unless you were wearing an actual N95 mask all the time. It was like putting up a chain link fence to keep bugs out of your yard. Put all the kids in school (with homemade masks) that they got to take off during lunch period when they were all in the cafeteria? Does the virus know that you're eating and not to spread? Some of the stuff was laughable.
How many people died due to lack of flu shots? I haven't heard a number. I haven't even heard an efficacy number for the flu shot -- in order to manufacture enough of them each year, they're guessing at which strain will be the most prevalent.
"The right's obsession with Hunter Biden is another aspect of this that proves how hateful and ignorant that news resource is. "
It was definitely politically charged, and they made an issue of it because they saw it as tit for tat law fare. But he was convicted by a prosecutor appointed by his father. My issue with this isn't the prosecution, it was as you said malicious -- my issue was the media denying the laptop was real and Facebook and Twitter taking down the story as 'misinformation' (the topic we were discussing). Not only was it not misinformation, they lined up 51 intel people to say it was misinformation. That could have had consequences on the election, much like the Hilary email server did.
Fact-checking is a great idea in principle. The problem is the people checking the facts aren't just taking down 'misinformation', they're taking down stuff that either damages an ally or is their belief system just doesn't align with.
And you're right, private companies can do whatever they want, the first amendment only protects people against government. Unfortunately, the government was leaning on these platforms that people were using to communicate. Gray area, but scary nonetheless.
I'm sure if you looked for it you could provide five sources that claim Bigfoot is real. It's funny that even in one of the links they explain that the science overwhelmingly debunks the lab theory, and only the non scientists believe otherwise.
*Providing links that agree with you doesn't prove anything except you know how to use Google. True knowledge isn't gained from a headline.*
You've been misinformed, manipulated, tricked. It is so much easier to believe conspiracies because it is human nature to seek the easiest path. I only hear the talking points of Fox News and Republican senators in what you post here, no better than a parrot repeating what they heard with no understanding of what it means.
Yes, your bullshit about natural or herd immunity kills people. You can have natural immunity to some diseases, but morons like to use it as a reason not to get vaccinated from diseases that can kill you.
Regardless, you believe what you like. Watch the racist news network full of assholes. I'll continue to stand by science and ensure I live by real values like loving my neighbor and caring for my family. Hope you enjoy the gulf of America and our 51st state. Fucking clown show.
It is funny that the only people out there that have a problem with fact checking are the ones that spread lies. But I suppose if they believe the lies they spread, there's nothing that can be done at that level. I'm not sure if it's an education issue, fear, or good old fashioned bigotry. Perhaps a mix.
My frustration isn't with you, anonymous internet poster. It is with the sad state of affairs that our world and our country is in. So I do apologize for the heat behind my words here, though I don't apologize for what I stand for.
I don't think I'll be replying here again, but I look forward to the next inevitable story that leads to our forum members posting a lot of conspiratorial nonsense.
I'm sure if you looked for it you could provide five sources that claim Bigfoot is real. It's funny that even in one of the links they explain that the science overwhelmingly debunks the lab theory, and only the non scientists believe otherwise.
*Providing links that agree with you doesn't prove anything except you know how to use Google. True knowledge isn't gained from a headline.*
You've been misinformed, manipulated, tricked. It is so much easier to believe conspiracies because it is human nature to seek the easiest path. I only hear the talking points of Fox News and Republican senators in what you post here, no better than a parrot repeating what they heard with no understanding of what it means.
Yes, your bullshit about natural or herd immunity kills people. You can have natural immunity to some diseases, but morons like to use it as a reason not to get vaccinated from diseases that can kill you.
Regardless, you believe what you like. Watch the racist news network full of assholes. I'll continue to stand by science and ensure I live by real values like loving my neighbor and caring for my family. Hope you enjoy the gulf of America and our 51st state. Fucking clown show.
It is funny that the only people out there that have a problem with fact checking are the ones that spread lies. But I suppose if they believe the lies they spread, there's nothing that can be done at that level. I'm not sure if it's an education issue, fear, or good old fashioned bigotry. Perhaps a mix.
My frustration isn't with you, anonymous internet poster. It is with the sad state of affairs that our world and our country is in. So I do apologize for the heat behind my words here, though I don't apologize for what I stand for.
I don't think I'll be replying here again, but I look forward to the next inevitable story that leads to our forum members posting a lot of conspiratorial nonsense.
I'm not sure why you've resorted to name-calling and attacking my intelligence, education level, and/or character. I've done nothing of the sort to you, and have tried to have an open and honest conversation, including asking you to point out where I've posted anything wrong. You'll never win a debate attacking the person vs what they're saying. I'll save you any further mental distress, have a good one.
The end of so called “fact checkers” is a welcome relief for true free speech. When one person, or group, has the power to decide what is ‘true’ or not, we are all in trouble. See exhibit one: China, or even worse, North Korea. We all need to fight against this sort of abuse of money and power, and while I am not a huge Facebook fan, I’m glad that they are following X’s lead in allowing free speech.
I'm assuming this means that when a teacher graded your paper and marked an answer incorrect, it was a violation of your free speech? No one has the power to decide what is true or not. Reality is the only truth. But by making fact checking crowdsourced, you remove truth from fact, and I guess that's why they say we're in a post truth society. People only want to hear things they agree with, and everything else is deemed a lie, "fake news."
It is tragic how bad things have become. People mistrusting professionals, believing conspiracies, hating everything different from themselves.
It is tragic. I mourn the death of knowledge, of fact, of reality, of compassion. The only thing left is greed and hate in the people that follow him. It is pitiful.
Two things here:
1. Being a 'professional' doesn't make one immune from scrutiny as professionals are often wrong. These people have very real motivations to say what they say, vs. what you think you're hearing. I.e. walking into a doctor's office and they're pushing the flu shot, regardless of your personal risk. What they don't disclose, is if they get X% of people a flu shot, they get a financial bonus. If the internet had existed in the 40's, saying "smoking causes cancer" would have been flagged as misinformation by "professionals".
2. These "professional fact checkers" were taking down legitimate information. In February 2021, I was among the first to get vaccinated. A friend, who is a nurse, worked at a hospital administering vaccines to seniors and once they opened a pack, they had to use it within a certain time, so when there were no-shows she'd call friends/family as to not waste them. In any case, my entire body broke out in welts (spontaneous chronic urticaria). In posting trying to find information online to see if anyone else was experiencing this, multiple platforms took my posts down and flagged them as "misinformation" that the vaccines could cause this, despite my doctor telling me she saw it with the Moderna shot (but not Pfizer or J&J). To this day, I still have the welts if I don't take an antihistamine. It started as daily, but now I'm good if I take it every 2-3 days. Since then, it's been recognized as a possible side effect, but it was just as much a fact then as it is now and definitely was not misinformation.
It's certainly complicated, especially since science isn't set in stone and is in constant flux. However, it is still important to trust science and its institutions because they are not a monolith. If something is currently scientific fact, it had to get there through mountains of texting and peer reviews to even be considered something more than a simple theory. And many scientific principles are still theory, which means they could one day be proven wrong when the right information is presented.
However, that doesn't mean that random people on the internet should be allowed to spread misinformation based on hunches or things they heard from a guy on social media. Doctors can disagree on the best way to handle a medical issue, sure, but random users on an internet forum have no ability to discuss whether or not a vaccine is safe or useful. People can "do their own research" but it will never be enough to counter a proper education. Yes, professionals can be wrong, but that doesn't mean a random person online is right.
Fact checking exists to ensure that information is spread with context and nuance and removes outright misinformation from the algorithms -- at least when it is working correctly. It doesn't stop users from having discussions or debates, but it does stop people from making grand proclamations without any evidence. And how a platform chooses to handle fact checking is up to them. Meta may have had fact checkers, but it didn't stop the flood of misinformation on the platform entirely. It slowed it for sure, but there is so much that some always got through. Now there's no effort to stop it.
To your points:
1. I'm not sure if you're referring to the rumors about Blue Cross Blue Shield, but they are not true. Private doctors not dealing with providing medications or services through federal programs might try to have some kind of kickback, but there are a lot of laws that prevent kickbacks so it isn't the norm. With vaccines, it just doesn't happen. Also, yes, it was normal for vaccine administrators to contact anyone and everyone to ensure they used up their stock of vaccines or else they would go bad.
The incentive to get as many vaccines into as many people as possible is to save lives. Wasting vaccines caused unnecessary sickness and death during the pandemic.
2. As I said, science changes. I'm not sure how you phrased your posts or where you posted, but it was likely moderators, not fact checkers, that took down your post for fear of contributing to misinformation. For example, people claiming vaccines made them magnetic or more sick caused some to not get vaccinated at all.
How a platform chooses to handle fact checking is up to them. That said, I'm sorry to hear you had this reaction, and it seems to be a known effect under investigation some minuscule portion of the population has reported. I hope they find a way to undo that effect in the future, and at least it seems it's not causing long term harm.
Still, none of this means we shouldn't have fact checking on the internet or that we shouldn't trust institutions. That's the fun part, we can question them and seek more information, but we should trust when people who know what they are talking about tell you something important. Like getting a vaccine, evacuating from a natural disaster, or that abortion is healthcare that prevents tragic maternal deaths.
Misinformation got some guy elected president twice! It's a powerful tool and needs to be defeated or else we'll continue to devolve into a hateful, angry, ignorant society. (more than we are)
The problem see it is the fact checkers seem to be producing a situation which is the exact opposite of what the goal would be. The more someone is told this is fact checked to be false the more some wackos will believe it is a conspiracy or “the man” trying to hide th truth. It is only those who already know not to trust everything you read in the internet as true this would help except they don’t need it.
At some point one has to recognize that people need to be taught how to think critically and for those who do not or are unwilling to learn that is on them. As sad as it is when someone dies as a result of misinformation on the internet, it is that persons fault since they didn’t not check with the experts.
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Social media services might be better split in two where the front-end, public part is more restrictive and this is best for businesses and ads. There would be a private part like how Discord has private channels and that part can be much less restrictive.
This would drastically limit the spread of misinformation and abuse as people wouldn't be able to share the private links to everyone and they would still have some restrictions on the private content.
It's not realistic that every conversation is suitable for public consumption. Many of them aren't appropriate in the same way people wouldn't have certain conversations in front of their parents or strangers in the real world but they happily post it online for everyone to see.
It also helps to segment discussions by interests because that's where people have common ground and have more wholesome interaction. Then they can contain political topics to a certain channel and people who just want everything except politics can turn it off.
There isn't a universal standard for what kind of attacks are more or less acceptable. Some people have asked for fat-shaming to be treated as seriously as racist remarks.
Many people have a subjective tolerance of abuse.
A recent issue has been the conflict in the middle-east. There are left-wing Palestinian supporters marching through streets wearing Swastikas and carrying supportive images of Hitler and posting similar online. Jewish people are a minority group but there are people on the left who think it's ok to attack them because they view them as an oppressor group.
There was an Asian woman who was fired for making comments about white people in a satirical video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLBzIoFhGOY
The problem with suppressing abusive comments is that people expect it should only be applied a certain way but it can't be one-sided so it's how to make the rules fair for everyone involved.
This is what large-scale, international platforms have to weigh up. In Western countries, people would say it shouldn't be allowed to attack based on sexuality but there are countries the services operate in where it's illegal to be certain sexualities so for them it's illegal not to be against this and it's millions of people. The platform has to be somewhat consistent with the laws of the country or their staff can be under threat in that country. If people from those countries move to Western countries, they rarely leave those views at the doorstep. Dealing with this clash of cultures and interests is not that straightforward.
Running a service where half the planet is flooding content on it every day is a hugely difficult task but they should make more effort to tune their tools to suppress all kinds of abuse.
It's good to read different perspectives to see what people deal with because it's not visible to everyone. This feels separate from the issue of misinformation.
Meta replacing a 3rd party fact-checking service with community notes shouldn't have changed their policies on harassment or direct messages. If that's changed too then it should be highlighted because that shouldn't be an acceptable part of any platform and there's no excuse for not having dedicated teams or automated systems to handle abuse in direct messages.
A human voting system is what causes a lot of misinformation. People upvote comments that align with their own view and downvote ones that don't, that's where facts get lost and has degraded the standards for journalism because it turned media into being engagement-driven rather than quality-driven. It's one of the worst ways of tagging comments and produces tribal outcomes. A few people can also vote a lot so it gives a skewed impression. If someone makes 1000 posts on social media and one person likes every post, they get 1000 likes so they think they are doing great not knowing that only one person likes them.
There are objective measures of offensive comments. Stephen King used to be on Twitter and when he left, the replies to the announcement were abusive:
https://x.com/StephenKing/status/1857165864346267891
Scanning those replies it's easy to see which replies are combative/abusive and which are supportive and many have insults.
He moved to Threads and Bluesky. At first glance, those threads look a little more wholesome but this is partly because the more extremes of left and right have split into different services.
Some threads on Bluesky are similarly low value messages but it's majority left-oriented with the replies:
https://bsky.app/profile/stephenking.bsky.social/post/3lfn6fjpxa22y
Looking through those type of comments, nothing in there is of value so it doesn't need to be publicly facing.
All this type of content influences younger generations. When they see public figures being abusive like this then they get involved and it creates a cycle of more division and abuse.
The front-end, public side of social media should be wholesome, not insulting people or public figures, not abusing anyone. The type of content that's in Tim Cook's twitter feed:
https://x.com/tim_cook
Some of this is marketing but none of it is offensive to look through. It would so much better if the majority of social media sites looked like this.
I don't understand what people in those abusive threads get out of it. There's something giving them a dopamine hit from being abusive but if they are going to bed at night feeling good that they hurled dozens of abusive messages online, this is what needs to be fixed. They should go to bed at night feeling ashamed of that in the same way they would if they hurt someone close to them.
Everyone has an agenda, there are very few people or organizations that have your best interests at heart -- especially so in government and pharmaceuticals; you should examine information accordingly, be they come from a random guy on the internet or the CDC. I see no benefit in suppressing the random guy, the choice is each individuals how much they value that information.
Since harm can be done -- be it free speech or moderation, I'll take free speech every time. Because those that can benefit from it will, and there is no watching the watchers.
And there's the "both sides" nonsense. There is no credible evidence anywhere that natural immunity is an alternative to vaccines. Period. Ask the kids who got polio because their parents are anti-vaxxers. Or all of the preventable deaths during the COVID pandemic caused by lack of immunization and masking. Or perhaps more recently the leading cause of death from preventable diseases in children being the Flu due to lack of vaccinations this winter.
Clearly you have your own beliefs, so please spare me because I rolled my eyes enough the first time I heard them passed through the Fox News megaphone.
Facts and science win out every time, no matter how much a person denies them or dislikes them.
it is very, very hard to be totally original.
Once in a lifetime talent.
*Providing links that agree with you doesn't prove anything except you know how to use Google. True knowledge isn't gained from a headline.*
You've been misinformed, manipulated, tricked. It is so much easier to believe conspiracies because it is human nature to seek the easiest path. I only hear the talking points of Fox News and Republican senators in what you post here, no better than a parrot repeating what they heard with no understanding of what it means.
Yes, your bullshit about natural or herd immunity kills people. You can have natural immunity to some diseases, but morons like to use it as a reason not to get vaccinated from diseases that can kill you.
Regardless, you believe what you like. Watch the racist news network full of assholes. I'll continue to stand by science and ensure I live by real values like loving my neighbor and caring for my family. Hope you enjoy the gulf of America and our 51st state. Fucking clown show.
It is funny that the only people out there that have a problem with fact checking are the ones that spread lies. But I suppose if they believe the lies they spread, there's nothing that can be done at that level. I'm not sure if it's an education issue, fear, or good old fashioned bigotry. Perhaps a mix.
My frustration isn't with you, anonymous internet poster. It is with the sad state of affairs that our world and our country is in. So I do apologize for the heat behind my words here, though I don't apologize for what I stand for.
I don't think I'll be replying here again, but I look forward to the next inevitable story that leads to our forum members posting a lot of conspiratorial nonsense.
I'll save you any further mental distress, have a good one.
help except they don’t need it.