Considering there are only few actors (the social media, search, internet infrastructure companies) the coercion is unlikely to stop due to a court decision. The government and the legislature have a lot of leverage, up to an anti-trust action, and instead of threatening emails or public statements they could do it with off the record conversations, which are much harder to sue against -- the public wouldn't even know. The more questionable is the position of a company regarding anti-trust, title VII, {something else I can't think of}, the more leverage the government has.
I would imagine that making threats through 'off the record conversations' (which can easily become on the record) would look even worse to the courts than their current strategy.
Considering the censorship is heavily tilted towards one ideology, what incentive does the opposing ideology have to stop this? It worked perfectly fine with no political capital loss in 2020 and 2022 midterms. In fact, most people within that ideology agree with the tech giants and want more censorship.
It is seriously unclear to me what ideology you think is promoting censorship the most, from my perspective the cat got out of the bag in the USA and now different kinds of censorship are being advocated for across the political spectrum.
What is likely is that the wheels of censorship will do what they always do and censor that other group. Nobody is immune to censorship for long.
Hopefully that will cause enough ruckus that we go back to being anti-censorship.
Censorship isn't just impacting one group - it's a whole bunch of smaller subgroups that make up both parties. It also hurts the uncensored groups because instead of responding to their opponents they are now just shadowboxing themselves in a corner.
Was the targeting of Twitter, FB, and YouTube hitting broadly across ideologies and groups?
Twitter files released tons of raw emails by gov agency staff with lists of profiles and it was pretty clear whom the executive/federal gov and Twitter's own staff had a hard on for.
Its possible it's merely a result of the current administration being in power and yes the risk to everyone is very apparent, but the people fighting the hardest against censorship vs those pushing hardcore social media moderation and top down wrongthink regulation has long had an obvious political divisions in America and here in Canada... For the past decade.
The UK and other EU countries is probably more "equally censor everything influential groups don't like" though so the divide is not universal.
Please don't take HN threads further into ideological flamewar. Regardless of how right you are or feel you are, it just makes the threads more predictable, and therefore more tedious and nasty. We're trying for the opposite here, to the extent possible.
> Appeals Court Rules White House Overstepped First Amendment on Social Media
No, the appeals court did not. This headline is inaccurate.
It found that the Administration likely did so in a narrower set of cases than the trial court had, in upholding in part and striking down in part a preliminary injunction placed by the trial court (likelihood of success on the merits is one of several considerations in issuing a preliminary injunction, but it is distinct from an actual ruling on the merits.)
Trial and an actual decision on the merits will happen later.
Just to be clear, this appeals ruling mostly reversed the original decision of the original court. The original court's decision applied 10 different restrictions on government officials. The 5th circuit (itself widely known to be conservative) overturned nine of those ten restrictions, and also overturned many of the agencies they apply to.
The appeals ruling, therefore, is being interpreted here (and, in many cases, intentionally spun) in a way exactly opposite to what it actually found, which is the government largely acted correctly.
> Did you actually read the article or the decision itself?
I read the decision. Did you read my comment?
Your citation is correct, but you're ignoring the parts where the appeals court disagrees with the trial court. In short, the trial court wildly overshot the mark. The actual violation as found by the appeals court is much more modest.
My opinion is that even this version goes too far and will be overturned as well. "Significant encouragement" is likely protected speech and does not constitute a violation.
An appeals court overturning portions of a preliminary injunction does not indicate that “the government largely acted correctly” — the appeals court itself says the exact opposite.
You stated that “The appeals ruling, therefore, is being interpreted here (and, in many cases, intentionally spun) in a way exactly opposite to what it actually found”, but that’s literally what you’re doing — blatantly in bad faith, contrary to the headline, the article in a major newspaper, and the actual decision itself.
Well, that's your opinion. My opinion is that striking down 9 out of the 10 restrictions placed by the trial court indicates precisely what I said. You're entitled to your opinion, but you have no basis to accuse me of acting in bad faith.
What’s not an opinion is that the decision explicitly states that the court agrees that some of the most powerful institutions in our society, the White House, CDC, and FBI, violated our most fundamental right of free speech.
My opinion is that you’re one of these pro-censorship people and are trying to spin how horrible and illegal the courts are saying this conduct is.
Sure, man. Also the libs are coming to force you to get gay married and to steal your guns.
This appeals court decision barely supported any of the overreach of the trial judge; and as a well-known super-conservative circuit, they're using the opportunity to grind their own political axe by paying homage to the current Fox News-promoted talking points. If you think this decision isn't political, compare it to similar attempts in the past when the give has requested compliance from media in exchange for favors or threats. Or contrast it to the conspicuous silence from the "anti-censorship" crowd when conservative governors gut their state's educational system and destroy programs that teach subjects they find politically objectionable.
And apparently you've bought into that narrative entirely, as soon as you call anyone with a bit more historical perspective "pro-censorship."
I'm not "pro-censorship", whatever that means. What I see is a good-faith if inept attempt to combat massive, coordinated, and dangerous misinformation, an activity that falls well within the gov's purview.
It’s not my opinion — it’s the appeals court’s opinion and the New York Times’ reporting of that opinion.
They couldn’t have been more plain, and that’s entirely sufficient basis for my accusation.
Upholding the position that the plaintiffs have standing, are likely to prevail, and more narrowly targeting the preliminary injunction is unequivocally not a finding against the plaintiffs.
> Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that".
Your comment is accusatory but not adding anything. A single random quote from a large decision with no context or discussion about the larger case doesn’t contribute the way it would if you wrote some original argument of your own based on your understanding of the original case and the appeal.
The powers that be decided that Covid was a virus with a droplet based spread, like the flu, and they silenced domain experts who asserted that Covid was a fully airborne virus, like the measles.
The mitigations that were put in place targeted a droplet based spread (washing hands, wiping down surfaces, putting up sneeze guards, staying six feet apart) and were ineffective against a virus you contract by inhaling it as it floats in the air.
Unfortunately, it took two years for the truth about Covid to be begrudgingly accepted.
> Two years of COVID: The battle to accept airborne transmission
Where is evidence that the government suppressed discussion about aerosols?
The article you linked about speaks only about believing.
Yes they didn't believe it but that is a very different situation.
Also I will point out that a huge portion of people believe the lockdowns were ineffective which is the only solve for aerosols.
EDIT: I will agree that the origin story was suppressed too much, given the uncertainty and some questions without disinformation in them were removed in the cross fire. But I hadn't heard heavy handed responses to aerosol theories.
The government issued categorical statements that Covid was NOT airborne.
The government instructed social media platforms to suppress "misinformation" that went against the official party line.
The government used extreme threats against platforms that did not comply.
> In an interview with MSNBC about anti-vaccine misinformation, White House communications director Kate Bedingfield responded to a question asking if Biden would change Section 230 to make companies “liable for publishing that information, and then open to lawsuits.” Bedingfield responded that “we’re reviewing that, and certainly they should be held accountable.”
I personally had a one decade old account banned on one social platform for asserting that Covid was airborne and many posts on other platforms deleted for sharing links that supported the airborne Covid theory as "misinformation".
We literally had platforms deleting links to information provided by sites like the New England Journal of Medicine or Nature if they didn't toe the official party line.
> The government instructed social media platforms to suppress "misinformation" that went against the official party line.
Do you have any evidence? It certainly is not true for the major platforms like Facebook or Twitter where the aerosol reality was widely discussed - in fact that was an increasingly vocal source of criticism of the WHO and CDC after the scientific evidence consolidated on airborne transmission (say roughly March 2020).
All you have to do is ask anybody who dared to question the narrative. I had several accounts banned for stating "misinformation" on what would later become fact.
It is easy to dismiss everything you hear from folks like me if you went right along with the government / media narrative. The actual truth is they lied their fucking heads off and worked tirelessly to suppress valid dissent by painting people who went against as alt-right grandma killing conspiracy kooks.
It will happen to you someday too. And you will never be able to let go of the deep sense of betrayal.
Well said. And lots of 'commenters' here popping up with the usual 'please give precise examples, also it would be lovely if you could dox yourself too?'
Like, we all watched it happen. It wasn't 1945, it was two years ago. And these things pop up in every comment section and try and make you seem insane.
I mean if that was happening on a reasonable scale then there would be stories about it.
There were many stories about disagreements.
There were stories about subtle disagreements leading to bans.
I am just saying "if people got banned en mass for saying aerosol where is the proof".
I don't like anecdotes because people interpret their words by intent and so will assume what they meant to say is why they were punished.
"I don't know why there is a mask mandate it is completely ineffective" as a hypothetical. Is that someone saying that aerosol viruses need more effective masks? I could see someone claiming that.
Is that what they wrote? Not at all.
Moderation tends to be context free and unless people are willing to do a similar mental process they won't necessarily know why they got banned.
I don't think the poster above should do that analysis. I think feeling betrayed and wanting to leave when it happens is a perfectly reasonable response from them.
I just don't plan on listening to anecdotal evidence of bans from individuals on that kind of thing.
Not really well said. More conspiratorial thinking that relies on this vague narrative boogeyman. Oooohhh, The Narrative! So scary... around every corner, waiting in the shadows to pounce! Beware of the dastardly narrative.
When there's a deadly virus spreading around, I'm not worried about The Narrative. I'm worried about dying. If the consensus is that rubbing my belly and tapping my head at the same time is going to keep me healthy, that's what I'm going to do. I'm not going to automatically reach for the "Well, that's just the narrative that the Belly Rubbing Head Tapping Illuminati WANTS you to think!" line of reasoning.
> I'm not worried about The Narrative. I'm worried about dying.
The narrative was to implement mitigations that could not be effective against an airborne virus, like wiping down surfaces, staying six feet apart and washing hands.
They pushed disposable masks that weren't capable of filtering the air you breathe instead of the bare minimum of a properly fitted N95 mask which can filter the air as long as it's fitted tightly enough to your face to prevent air leakage around the sides.
The false narrative that was put in place did result in more deaths than mitigations effective against an airborne virus would be.
If you are worried about dying, you should definitely be concerned about the government suppressing “misinformation” that turns out to be true, which could have shaped policy and individual choices early in the pandemic.
There is the phrase "fighting the last war" which describes people who can't let go of old lessons learned when facing something new.
In this case, remember that there was a time when people thought bacterial infections, like cholera, or parasitic infections, like malaria, were spread through bad smells in the air.
Unfortunately there are scientists who overgeneralize the lesson that bacteria and parasites are not transmitted through the air into a dogmatic belief that nothing can spread through the air, even viruses, and those sorts of people were in charge at the WHO and CDC.
> Early in the pandemic, the World Health Organization stated that SARS-CoV-2 was not transmitted through the air. That mistake and the prolonged process of correcting it sowed confusion and raises questions about what will happen in the next pandemic.
It took domain experts two years to force those in charge to accept the truth that infected people do emit Covid into the air when they are just breathing normally, that the Covid they emit floats in the air for hours, and that people who inhale the virus do get infected.
Which is why it's unwise to censor everyone who doesn't toe the party line. Not just illegal, unwise.
To be fair, the droplets were down to nanometer size that N95 masks couldn't touch.
It was Dunning-Kruger meeting wishful thinking meeting cognitive dissonance. It was more convenient to shout one narrative than dither before generating conclusive evidence. Theoretically, you could don a moon suit and be alright, but 100% lockdown of the world doesn't scale for long, although 4 weeks of a real, absolute lockdown (wasn't meaningfully enforced uniformly in the US) would've been fantastic.
To be fair, a properly fitted N95 mask is infinitely protective against an airborne virus compared to standing six feet apart, washing your hands, wiping down surfaces or wearing one of those paper masks held on by two rubber bands with open sides.
However, it is my understanding that the UK's NHS did step up their game and require their equivalent of an N99 mask for frontline medical workers.
> a properly fitted N95 mask is infinitely protective against an airborne virus
People keep saying "airborne" as if that's the only route of transmission, but we know there are three routes - droplets in the eyes, air that you breathe, and fomites that you eat.
Eyes and mouth are significant, and there's some evidence that these are more important than airborne transmission.
The swiss cheese model does not say "use masks, ignore the rest, you'll be okay". It says "here's a package of measures and if you use all of them you reduce the risk".
> People keep saying "airborne" as if that's the only route of transmission
No. I am saying "airborne" as in the WHO issued a blanket statement that Covid was NOT airborne and the domain experts who asserted that it did indeed spread that way were crackpots.
Does the WHO's statement, "FACT: #Covid19 is NOT airborne", ring a bell?
Most infections were not from "airborne" transmission, but from fomites and particles.
It's always weird when people say "show me the evidence" as if it's a win. You don't know what you're talking about, and now you want me to do extra work for you? No. Maybe do the work before you leap into the conversation.
> Most infections were not from "airborne" transmission
Restating false information is not "proof".
Even the White House has now explicitly stated the new scientific consensus that Covid is primarily airborne and started talking about the sorts of mitigations that can be successful when you finally admit how the virus is spreading.
>The most common way COVID-19 is transmitted from one person to another is through tiny airborne particles of the virus hanging in indoor air for minutes or hours after an infected person has been there. While there are various strategies for avoiding breathing that air – from remote work to masking – we can and should talk more about how to make indoor environments safer by filtering or cleaning air.
I don't think it would be if it wasn't for a bunch of people who decided to start an unrelated holy war against any mitigation of the virus. They caused everyone to become hyper alert for any signs of dissent which has made this whole thing measurably harder to manage.
A huge component of that was outright lies from the CDC in the beginning. "No one needs a mask" "They might even be harmful" "they require special training" all of which directly contradicted studies they had funded and published from doing contract tracing with SARS, while simultaneously stating they were essential for healthcare workers. All instead of saying "hey look we have a shortage of masks due to some previous mistakes we made which make us look incompetent now, and our healthcare workers need them more."
Public health management 101 in any textbook will tell you that maintaining public trust during an epidemic is THE most important thing they could do.
Don't blame the people that were paying attention and realized they were full of it. I bought my masks in January because it was clear this was coming. They also silenced any debate about the costs/benefits of various mitigations. Don't even get me started on that one. With an R0 as high as it was, even in the beginning, it was clear to me that even with mitigations you were going to see cases surge beyond hospital capacities. (Bringing the R0 down from 4 to 2.1 would have been a great success, and yet... not that effective in a lot of ways.) Flattening the curve also prolongs the pandemic and deaths of despair were inevitable. This made some sense in the beginning to try and stall for time with the vaccine, but must be weighed against the costs, and there was no reasonable discussion of that at the policy level.
I think the perfect example of the mismanagement and corruption of the public trust for the pandemic at the CDC was the initial suggestion during the vaccine distribution scheduling meetings was that minorities should be the first in line for these new and experimental vaccines for “social justice” reasons.
Perhaps it did that too, but more importantly it further solidified government health authority distrust within minority communities because of the shadow of Tuskegee is still fresh in a lot of minds about the government willingness to experiment on minorities under the cover “help”.
That is a “what came first the chicken or the egg?” question. Folks opposed to many of the mitigation efforts would likely describe their attitudes as simply a pushback to what they perceived as an uncharacteristic overly authoritarian approach. Which in a lot of countries people are not just not used to such heavy handed government action. Couple that with very public examples of these same authorities who demanding the compliance and controls then disregarding them…then ice the whole damn cake with contradictory advice and outright lies and you have a pandemic that hard to manage because the folks in charge mismanaged it.
Possibly because surgical masks, plexiglass, washing hands, hand disinfectant, surfaces disinfectant... were cheap measures, already under way, but even more useless for airborne virus
They possibly wanted the spectacle that people could/were doing something to protect themselves
Different types of mitigations which have different levels of social acceptance. Washing hands is a more socially acceptable mitigation than wearing high quality masks, for example.
I don't know why the Whitehouse thought this would fly to begin with.
They basically said "Do X or there will be consequences". Every crappy compliance course I have ever sat though points out that behavior as a form of coercion. The Whitehouse clearly knew they weren't supposed to be doing this.
After the fact doesn't matter. If all tyranny requires is an after-the-fact judicial ruling then tyranny will just find a way to win before then.
The fact is, there is no such thing as a private company. Infringing speech is happening all over the place; the fact the Constitutions states Congress cannot enact laws against speech is tantamount to the people themselves being unable to enact action against speech and expression. Congress is the people, and the people don't get to privatize tyranny. Period.
There are plenty of legal restrictions on free speech. Defamation, for example. We don't consider it laws against defamation to be tyranny, but rather legitimate acts of governance.
Moreover, the case in question did not involve an act of Congress, or in fact any express act of governance at all. There's a difference between being legally or illegally compelled by the government and simply being contacted by a government official. The government has freedom of speech, too, and they are allowed to express concern about dissemination of materials counter to the public interest.
It’s great to see not only this ruling but balanced reporting on it from NYT. I’m optimistic that the turn towards accepting tyranny is finally ending.
The opinion NYT is reporting on is clear that the censorship in question went beyond Covid: "Their content touched on a host of divisive topics like the COVID-19 lab-leak theory, pandemic lockdowns, vaccine side-effects, election fraud, and the Hunter Biden laptop story" ... "Individual Plaintiffs seek to express views—and have been censored for their
views—on topics well beyond COVID-19, including allegations of election fraud and the Hunter Biden laptop story."
Yet the NYT only mentions covid and the discourse on HN-- which at the moment is substantially making excuses for the administration on the basis of "but covid!"-- is worse off for it.
I’m reading it a bit differently. Yes the censorship of political speech related to political figures is bad but we’re coming out of a period where much more fundamental rights were violated due to a slightly stronger than usual respiratory virus. The seriousness of the covid reaction is an order of magnitude greater than any alleged biden corruption. Until people are ready to reevaluate what happened, we’re still in danger of a return of extreme restrictions - since there are plenty of other things that have high death rates such as cars, drugs, and obesity.
The Fifth Circuit really isn't credible currently as they just make up rules as they go along depending on if it fits the politics they like. This sums it up nicely:
> The Fifth Circuit Court has now held that it's unconstitutional for the federal govt to influence platforms' moderation decisions, while also holding it's constitutional for Texas to compel platforms to leave up content they want to take down. Impossible to square that circle.
It's as if this crazy court ruled on one hand that the USPS can't refuse to deliver your mail just because they don't like your opinions, but at the same time the court ruled that Texas is allowed to force the USPS to deliver everyone's mail regardless of their opinions?
An important thing here though is that it doesn't matter that the views the government was imposing were right or wrong. 1A prohibits the imposition.
The fact that the NYT article only touches on one point has turned the HN thread into a debate over if tweets about masking, vaccine cardiac side effects, or whatever were right or wrong.
But that's immaterial to the law here and it's important because there is clear polarization between posters on the underlying facts. But we don't have to agree on the substance of the censored speech to recognize that the state's use of coercion to suppress views it disagreed with is plainly unlawful. The 1A doesn't only apply when we agree with the speech being protected -- in fact it's most important when we don't: Speech almost everyone agrees with is going to get communicated no matter what the government does to censor it, it's unpopular views that are the most in need of 1A protection.
So I think NYT does us a disservice by falsely portraying this as being about 'covid misinformation', as it invites everyone to substitute a discussion about the states power to censor here with yet another debate on covid -- a debate itself which has been tainted by politics and censorship.
COVID matters as we generally agree that during public health crisises it is reasonable for the government to overstep bounds a little to reduce loss of life.
Objectively it is different.
Additionally you are going to have a hard time justifying that the federal government shouldn't do anything about disinformation. We cannot allow foreign adversaries to include our politics by saying "but the first amendment".
So while we cannot be too broad with our actions and any action should be carefully monitored for violation it isn't fundamental that the government cannot say "please don't give a platform to disinformation".
Generally speaking most of the things involved weren't deleted but deplatformed. Most commonly by not recommending them or adding a warning to them.
Deletion did occur but my understanding was it wasn't a significant portion of the actions taken by platforms.
> COVID matters as we generally agree that during public health crisises it is reasonable for the government to overstep bounds a little to reduce loss of life.
Don't agree at all. Especially when the very same public health "experts" proved themselves entirely incompetent fools who don't understand their own data.
What these "experts" did was absolutely insane. It blows my mind so many people went along with it with nary a hint of intellectual curiosity and still to this day defend it.
Yes mistakes were made. The mask kerfuffle was a black eye on the CDC 100%.
But calling it overall insane and pretending everyone was ignorant at the time only makes sense if you are ignoring everything that wasn't eventually confirmed true.
Felt to me the CDC wanted to appear competent and authoritative while being caught flat footed[1] with something they hadn't dealt with before.
Me I tried to figure out what mitigations were needed and decided it wasn't knowable so did them all until the picture became clearer.
[1] CDC thought the next big pandemic was going to be influenza. And then got hit with something different. But then executed as if it was. Bonus for about 50 years they didn't fund any research on how influenza and other respiratory viruses spread either.
> ...we generally agree that during public health crisises it is reasonable for the government to overstep bounds a little to reduce loss of life.
No, "we" don't agree in the slightest. In fact, in my view, a "crisis" is exactly when government boundaries are most important and need to be strictly enforced, not relaxed, in order to prevent significant abuse.
We shouldn't allow the government to act quickly? That is nonsensical, going slower during a crisis makes zero sense.
You can argue what boundaries should be relaxed and how far to relax them but "hold the government to a tighter standard ahead of time during a crisis" is the opposite of helpful.
We normally hold the government to a strict limit due to there being no time limit.
> That is nonsensical, going slower during a crisis makes zero sense.
I never said anything about "going slower," I disagreed with your assertion that "we all agree" that government should be allowed to "overstep bounds" in a crisis. I am unsure why you think speed of action implies violating boundaries. Speed up your crisis response all you want, but do so within established boundaries.
> You can argue what boundaries should be relaxed and how far to relax them
I can argue whatever I want. And my argument is that no boundaries whatsoever should be "relaxed" for any reason. Ever.
> We normally hold the government to a strict limit due to there being no time limit.
No, we hold the government to strict limits because we have seen throughout history what governments that are not held to strict limits do to people during times of "crisis" and "emergency."
At the time we worry less and give deference to the government. Sue later if they screwed up.
Exactly what is going on is what you want, you don't need to add "they shouldn't have done anything in the first place" as if they very act of trying to prevent misinformation that was actively leading to the spread of a contagious virus was fundamentally flawed.
To be fair saying "there was election fraud" is disinformation at this point, we very carefully checked and the only real problems were people following Trump's advice and voting multiple times for him (on extremely small scales that didn't matter for the overall election so not material)
There is nuance in the laptop story. There were things said that were objectively disinformation so if those things were targeted it could make sense.
Now the White House ideally would have kept and arms length to put forward a "not protecting my own" attitude but there is a wide gap between ideally and illegal coercion.
The first amendment protect the right of the people to say wrong things, not just right things. The legality of the government suppression doesn't depend on the things being said being right or not.
People who said wrong thing may have committed crimes or subjected themselves to liability for doing so-- freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences. But the government doesn't get to go shutting down speech it deems wrong if it did the first amendment would have no force, because inevitably whatever is censored is viewed as "wrong" in some respect by whomever is doing the censoring.
They weren't prevented from saying wrong things or even penalized for lying.
They were deplatformed. You don't have a first amendment right to use platforms as you like and those platforms have the same first amendment right you do to decide what is brought forward as emphasized by that platform.
Should the government be allowed to influence that and in what way is an interesting question but it is less the end users rights and more the platforms rights in question here.
Getting removed from the algorithm isn't censorship.
Platforms can deplatform you, they're not beholden to the first amendment. The government cannot. The case made here is that it was the government that performed the deplatforming by coersively deputizing the platforms to act on their behalf.
It's uncontroversial that the government cannot lawfully force private parties to do what it cannot lawfully do itself. The controversy here is mostly over if the governments actions were sufficiently coercive here for this to apply.
which is a penalty for "lying" and prevents them from saying "wrong" things.
in that time What's "wrong" and what's a "lie" could change within a few weeks (do masks help? in march 2020 people were called lunatics for believing so, in October 2020 people were called lunatics for not believing so. or consider the absurd psyop about the accidental lab leak hypothesis)
people spreading the absurd notion that face masks work the same outside hospitals as inside hospitals are causing panic and mask shortages. therefore they needed to be silenced. (that was the state of public discourse in april 2020, maybe you have repressed the memory)
The misinformation/talking-points ideology is bipartisan norm for Russia and China discourse. There are numerous articles and studies now claiming to measure disinformation purely based on alignment: rough alignment with “enemy” = dis/misinformation, with no justification or discussion.
The NYTimes ran one such article about a week ago on China. The “fact checking” done by orgs like VoxUkraine amounts to similar alignment tests as well. You would think the results showing widespread wrongthink by your own population would be an indication of disagreement rather than a disinformation campaign working on a citizenry already justifiably motivated against Russia: https://voxukraine.org/en/the-ability-of-ukrainians-to-disti...
> Research Results
> Overall, the majority of respondents, both in Ukraine and abroad, agreed with pro-Ukrainian messages and disagreed with pro-Russian ones. This indicates a general tendency of the population to distinguish Russian propaganda narratives. However, when analyzing each narrative separately, the following concerning signals were noticeable:
> 43% of respondents in Ukraine and 36% abroad disagreed with the statement “Nazi and/or neo-Nazi ideology is not widespread in Ukraine”;
> 29% of respondents in Ukraine and 35% abroad disagreed with the statement “The Revolution of Dignity in Ukraine in 2013-2014 was NOT a coup”;
> 26% of respondents in Ukraine and 29% abroad agreed with the statement “Russia is fighting against the West/NATO in Ukraine”;
> 25% of respondents in Ukraine and 29% abroad agreed with the statement “The West is using Ukraine for its own purposes in the war against Russia”;
> 32% of respondents abroad agreed with the statement “Russian speakers are oppressed in Ukraine”.
This is all to say that I think your optimism is misplaced.
> There are numerous articles and studies now claiming to measure disinformation purely based on alignment
You are phrasing this as "being on Russia's side means you believe the propaganda" as if that somehow turns it into not a disinformation campaign.
How can something be disinformation in that mindset? You eliminated the category completely.
You phrase as if it is a marginal thing showing their bias is showing at the top, but then go to list the most egregious examples of disinformation as evidence... I mean at least your last three aren't explicitly false, so not all disinformation.
Disinformation is about false statements.
Neo-Nazi ideology being in Ukraine hasn't been meaningfully backed up by Russia nor is their any international precedent for such a thing being a justification for invasion. Remember the Nazis invaded first.
Revolution of Dignity was a coup by definition. If Hong Kong declared it was independent of China it would be a coup. It doesn't matter your feelings on the treaty saying it would be X years before control was taken or anything of that nature. Unilaterally leaving a parent entity is the meaning of coup.
Proxy wars are weird so your next two questions are odd. There is ambiguity in the question. Is the West using Ukraine to reduce Russia's power acting as a sort of proxy war? Certainly but since Ukraine is objectively the defender here that doesn't seem problematic, the alternative would be to let be invaded which while bad for the West is also bad for Ukraine.
I don't have any data on suppression based on language but also don't think mistreatment justifies invasion. We have economic pain points to push instead.
A coup is a change in leadership enacted outside of the accepted legal method for that unit of governance it has nothing to do with leaving the patent unit.
Perhaps that was insufficiently clear. Every nation has an acceptable legal method for choosing new leadership
> A coup d'état, or simply a coup, is an illegal and overt attempt by the military or other government elites to unseat the incumbent leader by force. A self-coup is when a leader, having come to power through legal means, tries to stay in power through illegal means.
The proper turn when an existing power structure attempts to detach itself from its superiors is secession
> You are phrasing this as "being on Russia's side means you believe the propaganda" as if that somehow turns it into not a disinformation campaign.
> How can something be disinformation in that mindset? You eliminated the category completely.
Not at all. VoxUkraine state accurately, though as a minor point I would dispute the terminology somewhat, that there is "pro-Ukraine" and "pro-Russia" propaganda. The truth or falsehood of individual pieces of each side's propaganda is a separate matter. As an extension, it's also the case that one side's propaganda may use lies to promote statements that are nonetheless true! If you insist on the "disinformation" label, then I think we often must go into Rumsfeld-ian territory and talk of "true disinformation" and "false disinformation".
So my original point was, statements may be true/false regardless of whether they are part of an evil/enemy/exaggerating propaganda campaign (likewise, statements may be false/true regardless of whether they are part of a propaganda campaign from an ally). I openly acknowledge the propaganda campaigns. I just consider VoxUkraine to be engaging in their own propaganda campaign, and making some false statements. Russia's propaganda campaign makes laughably false statements regularly (their "denazification" justification being one of them).
On the key topic you raise of justification for the war, I want to note that that was not part of the quoted text from VoxUkraine, so I made no argument about justification. I think there was no moral justification for Russia's invasion of Ukraine, certainly none of the ones they presented. Unfortunately, I don't think that lets NATO, etc., off the hook, as you are morally responsible for the predictable consequences of your actions, even if a predictable consequence is an immoral act from another party, but that is a more complicated matter.
And these questions came from VoxUkraine's polling. If you have quibbles with the phraseology, they're not with me.
I could write more to respond to your specific points, but because they seemed to mostly revolve around justification of the invasion and polling phraseology, I'll hold back for now, given my comments above. I also spent a few minutes editing this response for clarity and completeness, but am finished now.
> Unfortunately, I don't think that lets NATO, etc., off the hook, as you are morally responsible for the predictable consequences of your actions, even if a predictable consequence is an immoral act from another party, but that is a more complicated matter.
Is there a "moral" act here? What should they do?
Certainly providing arms will result in loss of life but that is twisted logic IMHO.
You pointed to the phrasing as problematic so I handled why responses would be mixed. You implied that the fact different responses came in was indictive of it being a political thing.
Nothing you have said has been consistent or clarifying simply muddying the waters by misdirecting.
IIRC the story wasn't as told. Specifically while peace talks were possible the West reminded Ukraine before they began they needed to make clear that there were certain uncompromising demands.
In particular Russia had to leave Ukraine completely. Russia was not willing to put that on the table so peace talks sputtered out.
Note that this doesn't mean the West prevented peace talks. There would have been a lack of fighting for a month or two while the peace talks were going on, sure, but they wouldn't have gone anywhere.
Ukraine said from the moment the invasion slowed down at all they were only going to be willing to accept Russia leaving completely with no land left in their hands.
Russia in turn has always said they want a land bridge to the ocean at minimum.
Until one of those changed peace talks were futile.
A "moral" act by NATO, etc., before the war would have been to listen to the advance warnings and concede on some minor points like NATO membership (remember that NATO membership means eventual bases in Ukraine, and questionable status for Russia's lease on Sevastopol), making the same kind of concessions that the US demands other nations make when operating on/near its border. You don't have to like or agree with the angry 800lbs gorilla to know that you shouldn't walk right up to it.
You claimed I was defining disinformation out of existence, and I countered that it exists as part of almost all propaganda campaigns, and is such a loaded/partisan term that it is not useful, IMO. My original point was "enemy propaganda" != "disinformation" and "agreement with one element of enemy propaganda" != "victim of a disinformation campaign". I think the polling responses were mixed largely because of genuine disagreement amongst Ukrainians, who are not a political monolith.
> A "moral" act by NATO, etc., before the war would have been to listen to the advance warnings and concede on some minor points like NATO membership
NATO did that when Russia demanded that NATO not offer Ukraine and Georgia Membership Action Plans in 2008, complying with the Russian request. Russia responded almost immediately by invading Georgia, this is also a factor in why Ukraine, even after deposing Yanukovych, did not renew its bid to join NATO until after the Russo-Ukrainian War started with the Russian invasion in 2015. To quote a famous American statesman: “Fool me once, shame on you; fool my twice... can’t get fooled again.”
> (remember that NATO membership means eventual bases in Ukraine, and questionable status for Russia's lease on Sevastopol)
No, it doesn't mean foreign bases in Ukraine (not all NATO members have foreign bases), and Russia's invasion on 2014, largely carried out from and in violation of the agreements governing the bases it had in Ukraine, pretty much guaranteed that their use of those facilities was gone if and when Ukraine regains control of Crimea.
> NATO did that when Russia demanded that NATO not offer Ukraine and Georgia Membership Action Plans in 2008, complying with the Russian request.
That is not my understanding of the historical record, and I don't think it's the understanding of the US, French, or German leaders at the time either. The 2008 agenda report states "NATO welcomes Ukraine’s and Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership in NATO. We agreed today that these countries will become members of NATO", emphasis mine.
> No, it doesn't mean foreign bases in Ukraine
This is fair, and I thought about clarifying the point myself. The reason I left it as is, is that regardless of whether there would be a literal NATO/US base in Ukraine, there would be a highly effective level of military command and equipment synchronization, such that NATO ally troop/materiel movement into Ukraine would be vastly more fast and simple to accomplish. It would certainly vastly expand the risk profile of that section of Russia's border. Of course, since 2014 Ukraine became a NATO-lite member and most of this synchronization began anyway.
> The 2008 agenda report states "NATO welcomes Ukraine’s and Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership in NATO. We agreed today that these countries will become members of NATO", emphasis mine.
Both countries were hoping for a formal onramp to membership via a MAP at that summit, Russia demanded that they not be given MAPs, saying that doing so would be a provoication and destabilizing, NATO acceded to the Russian demands and papered over the denial of a concrete onramp with the no-process, no-timeline language you quote, and Russia immediately invaded Georgia.
Yes, Russia’s demands 8 years into its subsequent war on Ukraine were somewhat greater (including permanently ruling out all further NATO expansion—not just for Ukraine—and withdrawing all alliance troops from Eastern flank members of the alliance), but the 2008 experience weighed heavily against consideration of acquiescence, even in part, to Russia’s demands of this kind.
In the annals of diplomacy, it would not be strange for Russia to have interpreted the near invitation and late-stage downgrade to a "will join" statement as something far from acquiescence. I think it was taken as quite provocative, just less so than an invitation. By analogy, I think a statement from the USSR that "Cuba will join our nuclear military defense pact" would not have been taken as acquiescence during the Cuban missile crisis.
> In the annals of diplomacy, it would not be strange for Russia to have interpreted the near invitation and late-stage downgrade to a "will join" statement as something far from acquiescence. I think it was taken as quite provocative, just less so than an invitation. By analogy, I think a statement from the USSR that "Cuba will join our nuclear military defense pact" would not have been taken as acquiescence during the Cuban missile crisis.
I think it didn't matter what happened at the NATO conference Russia was looking for an excuse to invade and they were going to find one regardless of what was said.
The reason Russia invaded soon after was because NATO blinked when Russia dared them to, if NATO had given Georgia and Ukraine a MAP I think the situation would be very different today.
NATO clearly justifies its existence largely as an anti-Russia organization as it denied entertaining the idea of Russia as a member, has an offensive first-strike nuclear doctrine, the US pulled out of the ABM and the INF, installed missile defense systems in former Warsaw Pact countries that are clearly part of a strategy to mitigate Russia's capabilities (when Russia has no aggressive first-strike doctrine and only has a defense of Russian territory first-strike doctrine). Almost all of which happened when Russia was a relative "friend" to NATO when it was doing worse things in Chechnya as part of "GWOT" than it is currently doing in Ukraine, and what it is doing in Ukraine is appalling enough.
A good offense is a good defense, but you leave yourself more open to losses when your opponent is able to effectively fight back. In this case, NATO was perfectly happy to accept those losses because they would be Ukrainian. The world is far worse off as a result.
Edit: I'm going to stop responding to this thread now, as it really is a huge tangent from the original "disinformation" topic. At this point, nobody is arguing about Ukraine/Russia/NATO in order to dispute my points about the use of "disinformation" by VoxUkraine, we're just arguing about Ukraine/Russia/NATO.
> NATO clearly justifies its existence largely as an anti-Russia organization as it denied entertaining the idea of Russia as a member
To clear this up. Russia tried to join by bypassing the typical application process, was told pretty much, no you join like everyone else and then decided they didn't want to join anymore.
> has an offensive first-strike nuclear doctrine, the US pulled out of the ABM and the INF, installed missile defense systems in former Warsaw Pact countries that are clearly part of a strategy to mitigate Russia's capabilities (when Russia has no aggressive first-strike doctrine and only has a defense of Russian territory first-strike doctrine).
Russia also has multiple different agreements / treaties / etc where they promised to respect the sovereignty of Ukraine.
Great good they did.
Russia not having a first use policy would be great if I trusted them to not make up an excuse to nuke someone if they think it would benefit them.
Like how they just chuck out international agreements / etc when it benefits them.
> Almost all of which happened when Russia was a relative "friend" to NATO when it was doing worse things in Chechnya as part of "GWOT" than it is currently doing in Ukraine, and what it is doing in Ukraine is appalling enough.
NATO is currently helping Ukraine defend itself from a country which is trying to subjugate it.
> A good offense is a good defense, but you leave yourself more open to losses when your opponent is able to effectively fight back. In this case, NATO was perfectly happy to accept those losses because they would be Ukrainian. The world is far worse off as a result.
Im confused by this statement.
Russia is the one on the offence and Russia is the one who invaded, Ukraine is the one invading itself.
With the help of NATO.
I think the world is far better of with Russia losing the current war in Ukraine.
> NATO clearly justifies its existence largely as an anti-Russia organization as it denied entertaining the idea of Russia as a member
False. Russia was on a track toward membership, with some additional special treatment, but then Putin demanded immediate membership without readiness criteria ahead of any other former Warsaw Pact countries, NATO balked at that demand, and Russia abandoned its pursuit of membership and became antagonistic to the expansion process it had previously been part of.
> I'm going to stop responding to this thread now, as it really is a huge tangent from the original "disinformation" topic.
Disinformation was never the topic (though you keep repeating Russian disinformation), this whole discussion about Ukraine/Russia/NATO history was in response to your separate claims in the same post as the disinformation ones about justification of the war.
I was referring to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37447928 which was clearly about "disinformation", and how one must actually debate the merits of the subject, instead of doing alignment tests. Obviously that means I have to debate the substance of the issue, but at this point, I think I've done enough to show that there is room for debate (you attacked one plank of my argument, even if I were to concede that point, it would not be a critical blow), i.e., this thread is a kind of existence proof for abandoning alignment tests. Ironically, you are now disputing all of that and tarring me with an alignment brush. I consider my point made, regardless.
Russia does not get to veto NATO membership, they are not at the table.
Saying if NATO just ignored Ukraine then Russia wouldn't have invaded us ridiculous. The entire reason Russia pushed to exclude Ukraine was to allow invasion. Otherwise they would have asked for a treaty guaranteeing Ukraine wouldn't be used as a forward base instead.
Disinformation was used because in the internet age propaganda isn't direct. When a Russian controlled newspaper posts propaganda it is obvious. When a Russian controlled social media post goes viral is it propaganda in the same way?
The West hasn't tended to use as much disinformation (I won't claim they don't use it at all) mostly due to not controlling their own news sources to the same degree.
Note how OP doesn't include anything about journalism. Journalists are considered an independent group in the US and so anything too nakedly false tends to result in everyone downplaying.
You can still pull off lies, we did have quite a few pointless wars after all, but it requires more focus and effort. They didn't outright lie about the situation just bent the truth about non public information.
But I would consider the "weapons" in Iraq to be just as much disinformation if it came out during the internet era just as much as it was propaganda before.
BTW "people believe it" isn't proof of anything. A non trivial percentage of people believe the earth is flat after all.
When a social media account that is not Russian controlled goes viral, but nonetheless it contains quote "pro-Russia propaganda" unquote, is that "disinformation"? Maybe they just disagree with you. Are John Mearsheimer, John Pilger, Jeffrey Sachs, etc., spreading "disinformation"? Geopolitics involves a lot of historical understanding, and there are legitimate disagreements, and "disinformation" is a brush swept very liberally. Jens Stoltenberg said a few things in a speech recently that were called "disinformation" a year ago -- he is the NATO secretary general.
I find it fascinating how angry people on HN get about this particular issue; but rarely seem as concerned about the fundamental human rights violation of banning medications and medical procedures for one half the population.
Yes, this is relevant; and I say this as a former life long libertarian: I wanted the government out of my life in most ways; and that included laws on abortion, marijuana and others.
What I learned with life experience was that I benefitted from being part of a society, and I have to both give as well as take.
sometimes, I get less...a lot less to be honest. and sometimes i get more. and hopefully the balance works out over a lifetime.
Watching the foaming rage about words; but remaining silent when actual people are dying due to the actually tyrannical governments in the southern united states, belies the real motivation of a great many people.
I'm sure you'd be even more upset if those tyrannical governments worked to ban pro-choice messages/people from social media, removing the ability for those people to organize and thus any hope of challenging the laws you're talking about.
Perhaps that will have to happen for you to see how bad it is.
As you know the most brutally totalitarian regimes suppress speech that contradicts the views of those in power(edit). The Comparison of the American government’s decision to tamp down on the algorithmic reach of misinformation during a pandemic to a totalitarian regime is neither fair not an accurate; and frankly is hyperbolic.
I get to say what I observe. When I read the comment history of the angriest folks on this thread, it’s never anger on anyone else’s behalf but their own.
I think history will be quite harsh on the censors in the west once we regain our footing, but not only the activists who pushed for these ideas through various means, but also to technicians (looking at a lot of people who might be reading this comment) who enabled their arguably obviously ill behavior.
Naturally, one can only demand so much of the average citizen in terms of civil courage to say no when tyrants try to dictate the direction of society, but for the sake of your own clean conscience I ask you humbly to simply quit your job if you work for and enable people who push policies like this. It would be honorable to make a fuss, whistleblow etcetera, but there are clear drawbacks to your private life in general to this. But you can choose to not enable their ill activism, by not working for them.
And if you decide not to, how will you argue that you did the right thing when all the chips fall down, as they do for all of us eventually. In the end not everything in our lives is an economic calculation. Are you happy with what you've accomplished, proud even?
> urging the major social media platforms to remove misleading or false content about the Covid-19 pandemic
They didn’t tell them what they had to do, and didn’t censor anything specifically from these companies, so can you explain what exactly you mean by “censors in the west”?
I am afraid a too candid discussion about what is being censored on these plattforms is a discussion that easily leads to flames. I also certainly don't mean to just talk about censorship performed at the request of governments. (a request without explicit threat of coercion, but a request nonetheless) I also highlight the censorship which these same social media companies perform on society at large on a variety of contentious political topics.
I hold the belief that these social media companies have become new types of a public square, and the freedom of expression must be guaranteed on these platforms just as well as freedom of expression is guaranteed on a irl public square in most western countries. They should be required to carry and broadcast ideas which they themselves do not subscribe to, just as well as telecom companies are required to transmit phonecalls between people they dislike.
No I mean the west in the traditional usage of that word, countries in Europe just as well. I am sorry, but at the moment I don't feel like writing something comprehensive up about the situation in Europe, or my country Sweden.
But it should suffice to say that policy on a multinational platforms such as Youtube, Facebook and Twitter also effects our political discourse in our countries as well as the US. Censorship policy on Facebook and Youtube, arguably effects the entire world.
There is clearly a lot of smoke around the president’s son receiving millions of dollars from Ukraine and China (why would he get that money?) yet all the news is about the orange man. Shouldn’t we be just as concerned about Ukraine collusion considering there’s an actual war we are funding there, and the Russian collusion was totally debunked? We live in clown world.
In what way are the criminal charges against Trump "show trials"?
All of the charges against Trump are going through the normal court process, backed by substantial evidence (including recordings of Trump himself admitting many of the key facts in several cases)
At what point can we finally admit there is a coordinated war on against freedom of expression online?
The platforms censor on their own accord, the government pushes the platforms to censor even more, the legislature is talking about ways to make the platforms censor more yet.
It seems they're afraid of the situation where anyone can publish to anyone regardless of content. Our efforts should be along these lines, on the most popular of devices.
TikTok doesn't even let you access bio links in a normal browser, and you can't copy them. You can get banned from TikTok based on what you have listed in your bio link webpage on a different service.
Instagram doesn't linkify URLs in comments or descriptions.
Apple doesn't let things in the App Store unless they're firmly PG13. This is what killed Tumblr and ruins the photography site 500px's native app.
There are whole domains of URLs that you can't even send in DM on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, or Discord.
Personally I delete my accounts on these and use Signal exclusively, but how do we solve for the society-wide censorship problem?
These don’t really sound like examples of a war on expression, nor are they really related to the government making questionable requests of private companies.
Instagram isn’t obligated to render text in their app in a way that you’d prefer.
But if Instagram is blocking links in DMs between second and third parties at the request of the state (which we saw happening at Twitter), then that is a different matter entirely.
What makes you think Meta would be exempt from the same pressure Twitter received, given that Meta's platform is larger?
On the contrary: yes, because that's irrelevant; the back-and-forth between disparate interests, and over interpretations of current legislation (and the constitution, for that matter), is just what normal democracy has that is lacking from other polities.
Dislike away, but don't justify your dislike of a specific UX using the language of human rights abuse. An app kind of sucking is not a humanitarian crisis.
Accessibility is one obvious counter-example of where a specific UX “kind of sucking” can in fact be a humanitarian crisis, albeit one that disproportionately affects disabled persons. Fortunately we have laws on the books for that and people have sued and won.
I'll grant that, but that still doesn't excuse OP making it sound like this UX issue is about freedom of expression. I'd readily believe that Instagram's UX is bad for screen readers.
UX that limits expression (not linking urls, not allowing some speech) is just that.
These apps limit expression because it makes them more money. But they still limit expression. Instagram doesn’t want you linking out of instagram so you stay and view more ads. Tiktok bans for off site bios because it wants less controversy so they sell more ads. Etc etc.
By this logic, a forum for cooking that doesn’t permit discussion of biking is “limiting expression”. As is a restaurant that doesn’t let me stand up and start singing in their dining room.
Being a private entity that allows users to express themselves isn’t a restriction on the types of expression you don’t allow. The default is that Instagram doesn’t exist, not that it exists and must all anything you want it to.
If I sell you a burger, I haven’t limited your dinner.
Instagram offers what they offer. A forum for a topic or a medium offers something to you. The fact that they’ve chosen not to offer other things isn’t a limitation on your expression, any more than my burger shop is for not selling salads.
And we're allowed to say Instagram is a bad burger shop, we don't like their burgers and we don't want to buy their burgers. We can choose to do business with someone else, and make use social pressure on the people who still use Instagram.
We don't owe Instagram some sort of being nice or saying nice things. If they run a subpar business that punishes freedom of expression, we can call that out and say it sucks.
You're, of course, welcome to not like Instagram, and to not do business with them, and to do business with other people, and to suggest that other people shouldn't use Instagram.
But it's absolute baloney to claim that they punish freedom of expression because the venn diagram of "content they're willing to host on their infrastructure" and "content you want to publish" aren't perfectly aligned. Calling my burger shop bad because it doesn't serve salads is similarly baloney.
I never suggested you couldn’t dislike a platform. I dislike eggplant, but I’m not going around saying eggplant is part of a war on broccoli consumption.
Let's say if _every_ restaurant in town, when you tried to order broccoli, gave you eggplant instead.
You say "hey, I don't want eggplant, I don't like eggplant" and the restaurants response is to say "but eggplant is really good and only bad people don't like eggplant. You aren't anti-eggplant are you?"
It's not an issue when it's one restaurant - that's just weird - but when it starts being 90%... 95%.. when they restaurants all get together and form an anti-broccoli commission, and start colluding to make selling broccoli illegal..
When the restaurants go to the Federal Government and say they need laws making broccoli illegal?
Restaurants are free to petition the government, in the same way that you're free to petition the government. And insofar as there has been lobbying to make some kinds of expression illegal, I've generally been opposed to it. But as far as I can tell, every modern example of a group lobbying the government to make kinds of expression illegal have not come from social media platforms, they've come from Republican lobbying groups trying to get books banned or drag shows banned.
Well, we're commenting on an article where the Whitehouse, the President of the United States, has been told to stop abusing their authority to censor speech.
I would point out those book bans are not banned from reading or publication.. they are banned from school libraries because they have graphic descriptions of sex. If you feel it's important for your kid to be exposed to a storybook primer on gay oral sex... I suppose you should write your congressperson.
And in banning drag shows, the prohibition is on drag shows with underage attendees, usually without parental permission. Again, if you feel your kid needs to see someone in drag hip thrust in yoga pants on a stage without your consent.. you're welcome to lobby for that as you see fit.
I will spend my time fighting and continuing to fight for the freedom of expression.
> Instagram doesn't linkify URLs in comments or descriptions.
This is a personal preference you have that Instagram decided against in order to offer a slightly larger barrier to scams. Not a great example.
> This is what killed Tumblr and ruins the photography site 500px's native app.
I know nothing about 500px, but forcing PG-13 killed Tumblr because Tumblr was built on NSFW. They tried to pivot too late. Apple has never had their brand wrapped up in NSFW—on the contrary, their brand is explicitly family-friendly and this policy is designed to keep it that way.
Honestly, there may well be a coordinated war on freedom of expression, but your examples kind of suck. Each of them is trivially explained by companies pursuing their own goals in ways that are only vaguely related to each other and only tangentially related to freedom of expression.
Break up social media into far smaller segments with the segments required to provide api for competing services and for users to download their data.
Also, the data should be obscure to the company Facebook account should only be able to encrypted junk. My friends, then are given decryption keys.
Of course, there needs to be through data auditing requirements for any large store of data, just like we mandate external audits of any large publicly traded company
They don't have to admit it because nobody is against it anymore. Everyone just has a different idea of what should and should not be allowed, even what should and should not be legal.
How do you balance the free speech of the platform operator relative to the free speech of the members of the platform? There is some zero sum free speech here. If you require platform operators to include all of their member's speech, you are violating the operators speech.
This is a valid argument when it comes to things like recommendations but there are some simple functions of platforms that in no way constitute the platforms speech:
- When two people privately chat with each other, this is not the chat platforms speech, anymore then a phone call is the phone company's speech, it is something that should fall under common carrier laws, just like phone companies.
- When someone explicitly decides to follow someone else and that person posts something, then relaying that post is not the platforms speech, anymore then delivering a magazine to a subscriber is the postal services speech.
The operators, as corporate entities (that only exist at the government's permission in the first place) rather than human beings, do not have all the same freedoms. Their behavior can be coerced or restricted in many different ways.
I think there's a very reasonable distinction here between platforms that publish content without promoting it, and what Facebook is in the business of doing which is promoting content. Facebook opens itself to additional liability by increasing the reach of posts which do well.
In practical terms I see the basic issue as being a lack of downvotes. Users can do nothing to combat disinformation, because every form of engagement boosts posts.
The only war against freedom of expression is the constant threat of no longer allowing private organizations their freedom of speech by letting them publish what they want.
Society doesn’t have a censorship problem, we have an entitlement problem. People now apparently think they’re entitled to someone else’s platform, when they’re not.
A request from someone with power is bound by law.
I went through a ton of government contract law training. I can’t request that my contractor wash my car. I can’t “just ask” that they work unpaid labor. Etc etc.
It’s one thing if a rando or equal power requests. But a person in authority can’t do that.
Imagine all those jerk bosses saying “I just asked my secretary to perform fellatio on me. I didn’t require it. And I never even threatened to fire them.” That defense doesn’t work just like the courts found that the government requesting isn’t allowed.
It is factually incorrect to claim a request from someone with power is bound by law.
You can absolutely do those things as a matter of law. You can’t do those things as a matter of policy, however. You were trained on policy, written out of an abundance of respect for the law, training it’s clear needs to be more common, but the law itself is less clear.
No, the courts have ruled that the law prevents these types of illegal requests. Policy was created to make it easier for the government to follow the law.
The other issue is often it is government employees who have been paid by laws passed by congress (appropriations) making these requests. So the act of making the request potentially makes the appropriation a violation of the first amendment. I don’t think it’s a stretch to interpret the government using money to pay people to request twitter to remove protected speech as ‘abridging free speech’ and such appropriations as congress passing a law. There is similar case law for how publicly funded universities must conduct themselves. Though, even though you could make a similar argument for how public universities work I suspect courts have used a different argument to justify that framework.
But it’s very weird to me that universities run by the state must be viewpoint and content neutral in their speech restrictions even if there is no explicit law passed by the government to restrict speech but the government is allowed to employ a mass of people to make ‘requests’ and such requests don’t need to pass a viewpoint and content neutrality test. The situations are very similar because in both cases there is not an explicit law passed by the government punishing people for making bad speech.
That's a nice legal fiction, but realistically, they did until the moment the courts stepped in and told them to back off. Unless there are severe consequences for unconstitutional actions, the abuse always comes first.
You are confusing de jure power with de facto power. Government has shown, again and again, that they will abuse and overstep without any legal right to do so. In the meantime until the courts catch up, that coercive power imbalance still exists.
The problem, as you can see in the story we’re commenting under, is that often requests from the government can imply (either intentionally or not) the threat of retaliation or force.
The government spends a lot of time making requests of private companies, of other governments, and of individuals. But they have a duty to avoid crossing the line and applying unfair pressure to coerce the response they want.
Agreed, the threats were going too far. But those are clearly being dealt with, and not in any way indicative of a free speech crisis such as what was referenced to in the parent comment.
I really don't get it. There was a massive wave of misinformation during covid-19 that contributed to the USA having the worst mortality count of any country.
A lot of people died. This isn't a case where people thought the wrong things and it made them vote wrong. It caused them to spread diseases to other people and kill them.
That's what this court case is about right? I'm shocked that people think this is a case where the government should not step in. I think they should have been much more aggressive.
The state has an interest in keeping people alive, and in having people not make decisions which will negatively impact those around them. Someone not taking simple precautions like wearing a mask or getting vaccinated and taking a bed in a full hospital is a legitimate state concern – but a time-limited one, too, which is only compelling during a crisis.
The state has an interest in forcing people to make the Right Decisions. Thus... who cares about free speech anyway, when it can lead to the Wrong Decisions?
But yes, that is one of many Legitimate State Concerns.
If it is legal for the state to aggressively censor what the state deems misinformation in the case of a real crisis, it is similarly legal for the state to aggressively censor true things that the state deems misinformation in the case of a manufactured crisis.
That's the issue: we do not trust the state to be impartial enough to decide what is or isn't misinformation. Remember when they lied and told us not to wear masks so they could hoard them for healthcare workers? In that instance if they had been "much more aggressive" as you advocate, saying the true and correct statements of "this is an airborne respiratory virus and you should wear a mask" would be subject to such censorship.
Given that we've seen governments carry out all manner of atrocities (eg the US CIA torturing people in the wake of 9/11 for a recent example, or the Third Reich's famous death camps) throughout literally all of human history up to and including present day without exception, by both "good" governments and "the bad guys" (also without exception), why on Earth should we allow such organizations the power to decide with force of law what is or isn't true?
A lot more people will die from direct and intentional actions by government than will die from misinformation.
> how do we solve for the society-wide censorship problem
Or: how do we "solve for" the people-that-want-absolute-freedom-of-speech problem? Because that's the other side of the coin. Some mild restrictions on what can or cannot be said in public environments is not tyranny.
It's not about truth. It's about stability, safety. How do you keep a bunch of pretty hard-core fascist propagandists from stirring up the people without any repercussion? A government needs control, or it loses its legitimacy. I think that's at least implied in the main text of the constitution.
> How do you keep a bunch of pretty hard-core fascist propagandists from stirring up the people without any repercussion?
A million Iraqis probably have the same question.
Preserving the ability of the public to organize and publish freely is probably one of the foundational elements of the solution to keeping a populace from getting so hijacked. The problem is that the incumbent state and military fits your description much better and more often than any upstart group.
I honestly don't understand why anyone with this attitude wants to live in the United States, when the default worldwide is this, and the United States is the sole exception.
Obviously not. "Seriously" and "absolutely necessary" are subjective terms, essentially matters of personal opinion, and plenty of Americans argue that the limits in the US are either too loose or too rigid (see the current debates around social media, Section 230 and whether or not private platforms should be forced to act as common carriers.)
Meanwhile, cultures differ, and people outside of the US may well see their own governments' drawing the lines elsewhere, for instance banning of hate speech and Nazi propaganda, as "absolutely necessary."
Yeah, this attitude that what sort of limit is absolutely necessary is "subjective", "essentially a matter of personal opinion" is exactly what the US (not every single american, but american first amendment jurisprudence) is the exception to.
> To differ doesn't mean to accept that something is subjective.
Yes it does. That's what subjective means.
Obviously, many people refuse to accept that their personal opinions on political matters are anything less than absolute, immutable, objective fact, but that isn't relevant, because refusing to accept that doesn't make it, or you, objective.
>Even mathematicians have differed about proofs.
Politics isn't math. There is no equation or statement that can quantify the American model of freedom of speech, nor prove it correct, much less more correct than all other models, in the same way as E=MC^2 or Pythagoras' theorem.
I don’t think you understand the first amendment - there are numerous Supreme Court decisions that place limits: obscenity, defamation, fraud, incitement, speech integral to criminal conduct, threats, child pornography.
You cannot have absolutism in a well functioning country.
This isn't a case where people thought the wrong things and it made them vote wrong. It caused them to spread diseases to other people and kill them.
I'm honestly shocked that people think this is a case where the government should not step in. I think they should have been much more aggressive.
This judgment and the comments here just baffle me. The scientific consensus is that countries that took a much more proactive, aggressive approach were far more successful in preventing people from dying. And this isn't like a seatbelt issue where people just put themselves at risk.
The fact that people are defending the spread of false information that contributed to people literally dying in favor of a hypothetical tyranny problem just leaves me feeling completely lost.
It's not the governments job to decide what speech is "correct" in the US at least under the current judicial regimes interpretation of the laws. There are some very narrow exceptions but this is not one of those.
That people honestly think this is a bad thing is depressing. The government simply cannot be trusted in the wider picture to make these decisions about good vs bad speech.
> It's not the governments job to decide what speech is "correct" in the US at least under the current judicial regimes interpretation of the laws. There are some very narrow exceptions but this is not one of those.
I mean, the court seems to agree with this statement but it makes absolutely no sense to me. The classic example is yelling "fire!" in a movie theater because people might get hurt.
This seems like the same kind of thing but much, much more harmful.
EDIT: ok the "yelling fire" thing is not a great example, here are some others to jog your intuition that maybe your understanding of the concept of free speech needs to be fleshed out a bit:
What about telling someone that a loaded gun is just an inert replica and giving it to them to use as a prop?
What about telling someone that your company has a bunch of clients and tons of revenue when you are raising money as an investor?
What about if you put the wrong ingredients on your food product and it kills someone with an allergy?
> The classic example is yelling "fire!" in a movie theater because people might get hurt.
This is legal [0], and is a misunderstanding. The case where this came up was overturned as yelling fire falsely is crime depending on the circumstances. And yelling fire truthfully is never a crime.
If there’s a fire in a crowded theater, you definitely want people yelling fire. And trying to limit them will lead to more deaths, not less.
This case almost seems more like there is an actual fire in the movie theater and the firemen run in, but now they are banned from telling the theater operator to shout "FIRE" over the public address system?
> The classic example is yelling "fire!" in a movie theater because people might get hurt.
This commonly brought up example is a complete garbage. It was first brought into American jurisprudence during WWI
In fact, this case illustrates exactly why we ought not to criminalize speech. The phrase first entered American jurisprudence in Eugene v Debs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_V._Debs), in which the government tried to prosecute an anti-war protester. Do you think the anti-war guy was popular in his time? Do you understand now why the government has no business policing speech?
In the United States, short of direct threats, you can always say whatever you want. It's a fundamental human right, and frankly, no government has a moral right to take that away. This idea is foundational to American democracy. FFS, civil rights group will defend your right to proclaim 'hate speech' in
Fraud and intent to kill are all reasonable things for the government to fight. Forcing consensus on all speech surrounding a new and unknown virus doesn’t seem to fall into those categories. There’s plenty of gray area, and probably some intentionally harmful misinformation was disseminated, but on the whole, I’d prefer to err on the side of liberty when dealing with gray areas.
>The scientific consensus is that countries that took a much more proactive, aggressive approach were far more successful in preventing people from dying
This isn't the consensus at all; the data shows that overwhelmingly lockdowns etc. had no positive effect on overall mortality or even a slightly net negative one. That's why New York had a higher fatality rate than Florida even though Florida had an older (and hence more vulnerable) population. They also had a devastating effect on childhood education/development outcomes.
> That's why New York had a higher fatality rate than Florida even though Florida had an older (and hence more vulnerable) population.
New York had a higher fatality rate for the first 2 months, when COVID was new and nobody knew how to treat it. After that Florida had a higher rate. The overall fatality rate in Florida passed that of New York about a year ago.
Here is a graph of the overall COVID deaths per 100k for Florida and New York from the start of the pandemic through the first quarter of this year [1]. I've also included a couple of other large population states (California and Texas), and Washington.
I included Washington because I'm in Washington and my cookies make that site default to including Washington in all the graphs and I was too lazy too remove it. :-)
Note the "Show" drop down below the graph. You can use that to add the numbers for regions, top 10 or top 25, bottom 10 or bottom 25, greater or lass than 5 million population, and others, to get a better idea of how various states did.
Use the "Data" drop down to switch to cases instead of deaths, or to show weekly or daily rates instead of cumulative.
It's very common for discussions on this topic to only look at one particular factor and use it to fit some narrative one believes to be correct. Mentioning the difference in population age while ignoring things like population density or different climates is a good example of this.
To this day it seems most people are misinformed about the WHO's statements regarding lockdowns.
The WHO's position was that the total closure of businesses and public areas was a tool that could be effective early on in a wave of infections, but governments should recognize that it came with a terrible cost in terms of increasing poverty and other social problems.
They also repeatedly stated that the half-assed "lockdowns" implemented by most jurisdictions (hey guys let's close the pool but we'll reopen it on Wednesdays and Fridays, also restaurants are delivery only for nine months) were next to useless.
Basically, they said you had to go all-in, do it early on, and make it brief or it wasn't worth it.
Not once have I ever seen the nuance of their position accurately reflected in the media or in statements by politicians and governments. It was all 100% left vs right tribe wars / oh look libs are stealing our freedoms / here's another dunk on Trump / Americans of all stripes hating and blaming each other. Millions are poor or dead because we all failed.
"When is it OK to take a wrong/bad action in order to prevent some really wrong/bad event?"
"How wrong was this action?"
"How bad does the event have to be to justify the wrong action?"
"Who is responsible for making the judgment call?"
"If that party shirks, does it fall to anyone next?"
"Who is morally accountable for the bad event given that it could be avoided via certain actions?"
The scientific consensus you refer to gives important and helpful facts that inform this discussion by characterizing the bad event in detail. But the scientific facts cannot answer the foregoing questions, as you hope, because it provides no insight on any of the other facets. That's why there's debate and discussion rather than an open and shut case.
Yes! I totally agree. The conversation is really important.
But in this case the costs (people dying, or in many cases losing months of their lives to extreme fatigue, other health problems, the overloading of medical infrastructure causing many other problems, etc) far, far outweigh the costs of a hypothetical tyranny situation.
> people dying, or in many cases losing months of their lives to extreme fatigue, other health problems, the overloading of medical infrastructure causing many other problems, etc
Except none of these "experts" had any clue if their costly measures would work at all. And to this day you can't look at a chart and see a major difference between anywhere. Virus is gonna virus. You cannot control it.
Simply put, you were lied to. Break out of your echo chamber and listen to people calling you out. They are right, you are not.
There is more to life than a myopic focus on exactly one form of illness.
Are you based in the US? Freedom of speech is deeply ingrained in American culture as one of our founding principles. It's very common to believe that the threshold must be extraordinarily high before suppression is valid.
Actually calling for specific individuals or groups of individuals to be lynched crosses a line with most people, but not all. Spreading sincerely held beliefs that are unintentionally harmful is below that line for many if not most.
This is so thoroughly ingrained in our legal system and culture that only Alito (who is on the conservative wing) dissented in Snyder v. Phelps [0]—all four liberal justices concurred that hate speech against gay people outside of a funeral could not be punished (in the circumstances in the case).
> This isn't a case where people thought the wrong things and it made them vote wrong. It caused them to spread diseases to other people and kill them.
The government was pushing an entirely incorrect assessment of how Covid spread.
They shut down domain experts who correctly asserted that Covid was fully airborne.
> The evidence that Covid-19 spreads through the air has been there since early in the pandemic - in a Seattle choir, a Chinese restaurant, an Arkansas prison. And “Covid is Airborne” scientists have from around the globe have been pleading with authorities to tell the world, holding symposiums and writing editorial after editorial.
They wrote an open letter in June of 2020 signed by hundreds of fellow scientists appealing to “national and international bodies to recognize the potential for airborne spread” of COVID-19. They have shown that 85% of viral load is in the air. They have explicitly laid out how respiratory viruses hitchhike on aerosols to penetrate the lungs and infect people.
And yet despite all this, and even as the Delta wave - as contagious as (the known-to-be-airborne) chickenpox - rages, there has been no clear guidance from the most prominent public health authorities that Covid is indeed airborne, in plain language that regular people and businesses can use to modify their own behavior and prevent airborne transmission.
> Early in the pandemic, the World Health Organization stated that SARS-CoV-2 was not transmitted through the air. That mistake and the prolonged process of correcting it sowed confusion and raises questions about what will happen in the next pandemic.
> I'm honestly shocked that people think this is a case where the government should not step in. I think they should have been much more aggressive.
The United States government lacks the right to do this in essentially all cases because it's a right retained by the people. It's a pretty nice right and ought to be protected, which it -- usually -- eventually is.
> The scientific consensus is that countries that took a much more proactive, aggressive approach were far more successful in preventing people from dying. And this isn't like a seatbelt issue where people just put themselves at risk.
Human rights are not -- and should not be -- subject to scientific consensus.
One way in america we've always defined free speech is this:
"your right to swing your fist ends when it lands on my face."
I don't think people have a right to free speech when that speech is purposely, and I do mean purposely because it was done on purpose, designed to spread misinformation in such a way that others are harmed by it.
There are limits to free speech, and the conversation ends with Popper's paradox.
Would you please stop perpetuating flamewars on HN? You started and fueled a doozy in this thread. We're trying for exactly the opposite here, so please don't.
> So does your understanding of the first amendment allow about passing a photo of a child being raped?
No... You know it doesn't and you also know that this kind of speech is nothing like the speech that was directly prevented here by the government, so let's stop playing games.
I'm trying to establish some basic understanding of our laws here. There are no absolutes, lines have to be drawn somewhere. And in the case of encouraging people to spread diseases to kill other people, seems obvious a line should be drawn. IMO it's as serious as any of the things I mentioned.
There's no carve out for "a really good reason". The Government may not "abridge the freedom of speech".
It can make educational posters, it can distribute information, but it can't use it's authority to limit the speech of others.
One of my videogame youtubers, the GameGrumps, couldn't say "We have covid" on youtube. Not fake health advice or anything, just explaining they got it and couldn't record for a few days.
You're confusing a prohibiton on speech with behavior you can get in trouble for.
Let's say you put out a fraudulant ad selling a bridge. You can be sued, the FTC can sue you, and there could (unlikely) be jail time for you.
What the Government can't do is say you're prohibited to take out an ad until they approve it - which is exactly what happened with covid. The Whitehouse abused it's power to prohibit speech being made - it didn't sue someone for eg selling a false cure.
Part of the problem is the process. When I sue you for fraud, we go in front of a judge. I have to prove you're engaged in fraud - the burden is on me. If we prevent any unapproved ad from being posted by Government power, there is no due process and the burden of proof shifts to you that you aren't breaking the law. That's not how our justice system works.
Really? What was the mechanism by which this was enforced that was fundamentally different from, say, the police coming to someone's house and arresting them for the possession of child pornography?
The ability to go in front of a judge and that the burden of proof is on your accuser, for one.
Second, there are defenses to CSAM - it's not whatever the government feels is CSAM. The material has to actually be exploitative of children and for obscene purposes, it can't be a medical photo or a Nirvana album cover.
Do you really not see a difference between a probibition on any speech not preapproved by the Whitehouse versus charging people for CSAM posession?
This wasn't the Whitehouse post-hoc suing someone for hawking false covid cures. This was the Whitehouse saying unapproved messages could not be even discussed by private citizens on platforms.
Americans are a peculiar people. You might save a few lives in the short term by censoring ideas that cause harm (which are usually legally protected even if they're false). The problem arises once people get wind of the fact that there is centralized government influence on what they're allowed to say or hear. Americans generally don't believe their governments to do this fairly or competently.
So a lot of people fall into conspiratorial thinking about what they're not being allowed to hear. They also lose trust in a government that doesn't trust them in return (or allow them to make their own decisions). So there are very negative second-order effects to going down the route of paternalistic censorship here.
I think what you're feeling is a lack of control. Mask, lockdowns, for those who support them it was a way to control and force the population towards your goals. Your ideals cannot easily be attained without government force.
The masks and lockdowns didn't work, they were just tools one political ideology used to oppress the others despite evidence to the contrary. That behavior has been found to be unconstitutional.
Deciding what constitutes "misinformation" is highly subjective and can lead to censorship of diverse opinions. A government empowered to regulate speech based on content risks suppressing valid dissenting voices. While misinformation can be dangerous, attempting to police speech can lead to unintended consequences and threaten democratic principles. Instead, a better approach is to provide accurate information, promote critical thinking, and foster open debate. Maintaining individual freedom for everyone across the country is more important than the lives of a few people who choose to follow misinformation.
I think the concern is less about a small handful steeping themselves in misinformation and more about what to do when a large chunk of public discourse starts to veer in a tabloid-like direction because such ideas are more captivating and viral than reality, especially with narratives specifically designed to do that being spun ever more frequently by a growing array of parties. Hoping that people think for themselves and practice due diligence only goes so far, particularly when there’s a shocking number adhering to a culture of ignorance and taking pride in not critically thinking or scrutinizing sources.
With that in mind, I can see why a government might want tools to help keep yellow-journalism-like discourse from dominating public forums, but as noted there’s dangers that come with that. It’s a thorny issue.
Restricting speech can lead to censorship and the suppression of dissenting voices, potentially undermining democratic principles. Determining what content should be restricted is subjective and can be susceptible to abuse, causing bias and political manipulation. History shows that limitations will expand beyond their original intent, stifling legitimate criticism (examples include McCarthyism, Patriot Act, Great Firewall of China). Instead of relying solely on government intervention, promoting media literacy, fact-checking, and responsible journalism can be more effective in combating misinformation while preserving essential democratic values. The temptation for authority figures to abuse their authority is too great.
> Instead of relying solely on government intervention, promoting media literacy, fact-checking, and responsible journalism can be more effective in combating misinformation while preserving essential democratic values.
Sure I agree in principal, but what is to be done when mentioned advocacy largely falls on deaf ears and ultimately fails? It doesn’t seem like there’s any last line of defense in this situation, making a “game over” frighteningly easy.
At the end of the day, I think that you must respect a person's autonomy to listen to what they choose and to make up their own minds, even if they don't come to the conclusions that you want them to. Advocacy and change are ongoing processes. The real game over scenario comes with the government legally stifling dissent
> The fact that people are defending the spread of false information that contributed to people literally dying in favor of a hypothetical tyranny problem just leaves me feeling completely lost.
Except a lot of that "false information" turned out to be true. You don't get to decide what constitutes "misinformation".
> It caused them to spread diseases to other people and kill them.
My issue is that I think while a Ministry of Truth may have good intentions, it will do more harm than good.
Based on the principle that the counter to misinformation is better information, not less misinformation.
> The scientific consensus
The issue is that this isn’t a fixed thing and changes in real time. So it’s challenging to know what the “consensus” is now, especially if your goal is to filter out wrong or anti-consensus, what method do you use to decide what is allowed and what isn’t?
Finally, while Covid is serious and millions of people died. Diabetes and drug overdoses kill as well. We would be better served by limiting the misinformation that is ads for pharmaceuticals and coca cola.
I think people buying sugary drinks over the past 50 years killed more than many diseases. [0]
So I feel like the harm caused by trying to filter social media messages by the government is greater than any potential benefit.
There is no such thing as absolutes in social policy. Every situation has an edge case, a grey area. Something will always come up where you will have to balance an interpretation of a rule.
The US has the most extreme version of freedom of speech of any country in the world. There are quite a few versions that are perfectly reasonable and implemented successfully without sliding down a slippery slope into a "ministry of truth".
So the slippery slope is a fallacy in this case.
The issue of sugary drinks is a false dichotomy. Nobody gets sick and dies from drinking a coke. They get sick and die from drinking tons of it all the time. If you want to draw a line for what kind of speech puts people in imminent danger, sugary drinks are definitively not over that line, while spreading a potentially lethal disease is clearly over that line.
> So I feel like the harm caused by trying to filter social media messages by the government is greater than any potential benefit.
What evidence are you basing that on? In the past the government granted licenses to broadcast networks on TV, and had strict requirements on the kinds of things they could say on air. Did we fall into a tyrannical dystopia as a result? Did something worse than hundreds of thousands of people dying happen?
They get sick and die from drinking 100k cokes over their life due to watching lots of ads.
No one gets sick from just one exposure to misinformation either. They sick from thousands and thousands that change their behavior.
Ads for coke impact behavior negatively and result in poor health outcomes and death.
Ads for opioid painkillers impact behavior negatively and result in poor health
outcomes and death.
Much more so than any Covid misinformation. That’s why I compared them.
If the goal is to protect people, then we should restrict ads of “unhealthy” things. Right? Have that ministry of truth review what products are healthy or unhealthy.
And just have them review all ads for if they are healthy or unhealthy.
It’s exactly a slippery slope argument. I think applied correctly because if the government does this for some topics they will do them for more. Especially if they apply your logic of whether they should reduce harm.
> Did we fall into a tyrannical dystopia as a result? Did something worse than hundreds of thousands of people dying happen?
This is an unprovable statement. But other countries had better outcomes. Perhaps the government’s actions resulted in more deaths than otherwise. Maybe only 900k would have died instead of 1.1M if government hadn’t restricted information flow.
This comparison is verging on hyperbole. I can't recall any soda ad that implied any health claims or encouraged drinking in excess. There's nothing unhealthy about sugar in moderation. What danger that exists is only expressed after years of heavy abuse. Even then, we have treatments for diabetes and heart disease. Unhealthy diets are not communicable diseases! Soda isn't forcing doctors to use garbage bags as PPE or fashion ventilators out of surplus hardware. Soda isn't cutting down young athletes after a single exposure. If there is to be any censorship or just fact-checking alongside misinformation, it's clear which occasion deserves it.
I am not claiming that Covid and sugar are the same. They are different.
But sugar is bad for you. Ads for sugar aren’t intended to convince people to drink it in moderation. Just like ads for cigarettes aren’t intended to make people smoke one per day.
My point is that if we wanted to limit misinformation that causes harm, limiting ads for coke that result in sugar consumption that contributes to diabetes deaths. Lots and lots. Hopefully Covid won’t keep causing hundreds of thousands of deaths per year (1.1M so far in 3.5 years) but diabetes is just getting worse.
Obviously government can do both and doesn’t have to choose. But it seems like limiting free speech for a minor benefit isn’t worth it when there’s a much clearer line to take. Preventing drug advertising is pretty simple and was already illegal until 1998.
That is not true. Face masks at the start of the pandemic we're Forbidden and only many months later became mandatory. The amount of misinformation that came from official sources is ridiculous.
It was so funny to suddenly see the Surgeon General in the USA saying that face masks and coverings are useless, to creating a YouTube video showing how to make one yourself using a rubber band...
We know Today that face masks are useless, because it's not the first time we have a large scale virus. Sars and Mers a decade ago gave valuable information which official sources ignored.
Maybe you’re “completely lost” because you believed false information early on and cling to it. You are willfully pretending as though Covid-19 was anything more than a particularly contagious flu. Only 7 million died to Covid-19, compared to the 50-100 million of the 1918 Spanish Flu, a number exacerbated by government payouts for false reporting and willfully infecting those who are at-risk for all respiratory diseases.
As someone who had knowledge of Covid-19 before the mainstream AND got sick from it before it was widely reported, (they were still denying it was in the US at this time), I knew that it wasn’t anything major for the majority of the population. Yet the government and corporations used this as an excuse to force us inside for no logical reason. Masks assist the spread, yet we were told the opposite[0]. Vaccines were first said to “prevent”[1], and then they moved the wording to being “less likely to spread”[2]. Social distancing only prolonged the pandemic and put more at risk, as the only way to reasonably mitigate a non-deadly and contagious disease for which we have no real vaccine against is to create herd immunity, just like we do with the flu every single year. Yet the government used social media to continue to spread the misinformation that you crave, creating propaganda and draconian rules in order to worsen the long-term impacts.
> Do you think maybe every surgeon in the world, who spends 8+ years studying medicine, just wears masks because they're brainwashed?
As is a pattern in your replies you continue being either horribly ignorant or just downright malicious, neither of which is surprising from someone who uses CSAM as a shield for censorship. If you think for even an iota of a second that properly worn surgical masks are comparable to the cheap slapped-on masks that were worn during the pandemic, then you’re genuinely not worth discussing this with. Not to mention you didn’t even actually interface with any of previous reply, namely the very first reference I used which already discredited this ignorance.
Continue mindlessly spreading misinformation and lies, you’re a waste of my time.
And surgeons are standing above cut openings in the body, so preventing spittle and other bodily droplets is the main reason for the mask. They use a better mask and throw it away upon hours of use. Covid is airborne, not droplet based infection. Wearing a mask for hours and improperly also has other health-related issues aside from mental ones.
A lot of countries did not have much restrictions and seemed to get through without a catastrophic population decline. Are there any countries that saw more than 10% of their country perish? Keeping in mind that the policies included human rights violations such as the right to travel, the right to food, the right to work, and the right to speech.
Human rights are really important to me, and it was quite shocking to see what are supposed to be inalienable rights violated for something that’s much less than catastrophic.
What's the big deal about the 1st Amendment and "Freeze Peach" anyway? The majority of anti-vaxxer neo-Nazis are spreading disinformation and literally killing people with their bad ideas.
1. You can't shout fire in a crowded theater.
2. Paradox of tolerance anyone?
3. We already limit "frees peach"
4. Freedom of Speech is not Freedom from Consequences (freedom after speech)
5. Twitter-Facebook-Insta-Snap-Google-Apple are private companies. It's exactly the same as if you owned a mom-and-pop store and I said you couldn't tell the guy screaming "KILL ALL N-------" to leave.
If everyone were banned from expressing false information on social media, as defined by trustworthy fact checkers, the world would be a better place.
I can almost understand the Covid censorship, considering that there were lunatics going around telling people to poison themselves or drink bleach. But the laptop story was purely cynical, as that contained both evidence of severe corruption and implications of child molestation.
He has topless photographs of his underaged niece, he had to hush his psychiatrist because her parents to her implied he molested her, he has chat messages about her "thinking I raped her" and openly admitted to showing her his naked body. You can go read the leaks right now if you want a source.
Ignoring the reliability of those claims, this thread is about allegations that government authority was misused. Do you have any links to examples of that?
