There are people within the government whose job it was to respond to the covid pandemic. Part of that response involved educating the public about the disease and best practices related to it, which therefore included fighting misinformation. Misinformation is spread on platforms such as Twitter, so it made sense for the government to communicate with Twitter and let them know what it considered to be a good course of action. Do you disagree with this explanation?
And even granting, for the sake of argument, that someone within the government had that job, suppressing disagreement and debate is not the right way to do it.
"Internal emails that I viewed at Twitter showed that both the Trump and Biden administrations directly pressed Twitter executives to moderate the platform’s content according to their wishes.
At the onset of the pandemic, the Trump administration was especially concerned about panic buying, and sought “help from the tech companies to combat misinformation,” according to emails sent by Twitter employees in the wake of meetings with the White House. One area of so-called misinformation: “runs on grocery stores.” The trouble is that it wasn't misinformation: There actually were runs on goods. "
> There are people within the government whose job it was to respond to the covid pandemic. Part of that response involved educating the public about the disease and best practices related to it, which therefore included fighting misinformation.
It wasn't Trump pushing Twitter to ban anything that disagreed with the CDC's official position, and Trump separately pushing to ban misinformation about panic buying doesn't justify it.
I fail to see how this conclusion is automatic or helpful in action. Educating people and providing best practices is harmed by taking direct action to shut down criticism and debate.
This part I disagree with, because what is misinformation is unknownable before serious scientific study is done. It just makes the government look untrustworthy if they flip-flop from "masks are pointless" to "masks are essential" and back simply all because these policies were not based on any real science.
Similarly debate of other aspects like COVID origin, vaccine health effects etc was stifled when the real answers were unknown to science, and by steering the conversation in any particular direction before that it's done irreparable harm to the reputation of government, science and tech.
Yes, otherwise what happens when the ruling party is no longer your team?
What if everything becomes inverted, so if you tried to say Bill Gates isn't one of the biggest beneficiaries of COVID then you get "visibility filtered" AKA shadowbanned?
Then you make a detailed explanation about how the story of the Wuhan lab having had a virus leak was all just a hoax, but oops that is a final strike and now you're banned?
The bar for censorship shouldn't be so low and arbitrary. Social media platforms should exist to help us change our minds by discussing and debating with others (like we are doing right here), not be all echo chambers and filter bubbles.
The bar for censorship shouldn't be so high that you legitimize misinformation by giving it a bigger platform than it merits. Social media can be a good place for discussion & debate, but in times when there's a national crisis occurring & you have people continually posting about how to take off-label drugs causing shortages for people who actually need it & injury to those taking it incorrectly, you run into misinformation causing real tangible harm to people. You cannot just ignore that. It's not just a run-of-the-mill philosophical debate about misinformation & censorship. The stakes are much lower in our discussion here.
No, my OP and this thread's link is about government intervention, which then lead to social media action.
Whilst I do think social media platforms should have additional regulation once they are big enough to become the new public square, there's no need to go that far yet and I'm uncertain of the appropriate balance.
However when it comes to the government's own response, they should have higher bar for taking action due to the oppressive influence it can have backed by it's monopoly on force. And again I state that this should be serious scientific study as the minimum prerequisite for this bar.
> in times when there's a national crisis occurring & you have people continually posting about how to take off-label drugs causing shortages for people who actually need it & injury to those taking it incorrectly, you run into misinformation causing real tangible harm to people. You cannot just ignore that.
Just like you cannot ignore the horror of slipping into a tyrannical police state like China.
Instead of shadowbanning and actual banning I was previously in favour of fact checking and warning labels under legitimately harmful information. Unfortunately even this tool has been abused by being misapplied to factual information, as well as non-harmful opinions. I have yet to see an intervention method since COVID that hasn't been corrupted to oppress the population, so I'm inclined to think that some harm is an inevitable tradeoff for living in a free society.
I don't see a problem with private and public sector collaboration, it happens all the time. Not all communications between Twitter and the government resulted in Twitter taking action, and even when Twitter took action it does not mean they did so outside their own community guidelines.
>Whilst I do think social media platforms should have additional regulation once they are big enough to become the new public square, there's no need to go that far yet and I'm uncertain of the appropriate balance.
So which is it? You want regulation or you don't? Stop speaking out of both sides of your mouth.
>However when it comes to the government's own response, they should have higher bar for taking action due to the oppressive influence it can have backed by it's monopoly on force. And again I state that this should be serious scientific study as the minimum prerequisite for this bar.
No, governments are expected to lead and provide information to their citizens on urgent matters. In a situation like COVID you can't wait 12 - 24 months for comprehensive scientific meta-analysis studies to confirm things. It seems you want a very hands off approach during a national crisis. I assure you this would not go over well, and is just as reprehensible(e.g. lackadaisical responses to Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana or Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico), as an overly heavy handed approach(e.g. China welding people's doors shut).
Also my original reply was regarding your claim that it's not possible to disprove misinformation without serious scientific study. That statement in and of itself is misinformation. You do not need exhaustive proof to show an in-vitro study does not mean a drug is a cure for COVID, or to show confounding variables, or that there were zero cited sources for claims being made in a post.
>Just like you cannot ignore the horror of slipping into a tyrannical police state like China.
You also cannot ignore a million+ dead people, many of whom were likely duped by charlatans into believing something that eventually lead to their demise. As you note later, you're fine with this harm, it's the cost of "freedom", except you don't actually want a private company to do as it pleases it sounds like, yet you also seem to lack any tangible action items or regulations you want applied. It seems like you just want to put your hands in pockets. I dunno?
The reality is that truly unfettered free speech & unmoderated discussions/debates devolves into all sorts of distractions from the primary goals of the platform (e.g. spam, hate speech, illegal activity, off-topic discussion). There must always be some level of moderation and censorship, even if that is at a basic level watching for spam bots & illegal activity. Typically that's not enough to ensure decorum, so you end up with additional community guidelines to set the tone for the platform.
My point here is that freedom of speech on online platforms is a mythical unicorn, that never existed, nor will it ever exist. It seems more like a wedge issue certain people like to bring up, because they're unhappy with how a platform has acted towards them, and want to claim superiority by championing "free speech", even if they don't actually believe in it. For all the belly aching Musk did about Twitter, he is doing exactly the same things he complained about. That'd be fine, if he wasn't such a hypocrite about it & understood the ramifications and expectations of free speech, and the complexities of competent content moderation.
I'd also disagree that crackpot ideas are best debated in the open on social media. I think in a well moderated forum where people are held accountable, and expected to cite their sources yes. In the firehose that is social media where attention spans are limited, consumption is often on mobile devices which may hamper ability to do in-depth research, it leaves much to be desired as a place to find deeper truth easily. Also with puppet accounts, the moment you debunk one thread, ten more have popped up regurgitating the same talking points.
A lot of the mis/disinformation about COVID passed this bar (i.e. serious study had been done, and there was direct evidence that countered their claims).
On top of that, if you're going to make a positive claim about something, "unknowable before serious scientific study is done" means that you shouldn't make that claim, not that anyone can say anything they want because the truth is unknowable. If no one has studied the effects of drinking bleach to cure COVID, it's not appropriate to say "drinking bleach cures COVID".
It's a nice way to explain the consequence without resorting to accident or malice.
Nevertheless, in the end, they way overstepped what was needed or helpful.
Why does a government has to "lean" on a private media company in a "democrat" and "liberal" democracy? Not able to "mandate" is total bs, see the Pentagon-related leaks where there wasn't any need of any "mandating". If anything, this shows how hypocritical the whole industry has become, including many of its workers.
Hopefully this will scare away all potential future Aaron Swartz-es from this industry, or from the main parts of it at least, and hence bring it all down a peg or too.