After Four More Phone Masts Attacked, YouTube Promises To Remove Some 5G Conspiracy Videos (theguardian.com) 335
The Guardian reports that YouTube "will reduce the amount of content spreading conspiracy theories about links between 5G technology and coronavirus that it recommends to users, it has said, as four more attacks were recorded on phone masts within 24 hours."
The online video company will actively remove videos that breach its policies, it said. But content that is simply conspiratorial about 5G mobile communications networks, without mentioning coronavirus, is still allowed on the site. YouTube said those videos may be considered "borderline content" and subjected to suppression, including loss of advertising revenue and being removed from search results on the platform.
"We also have clear policies that prohibit videos promoting medically unsubstantiated methods to prevent the coronavirus in place of seeking medical treatment, and we quickly remove videos violating these policies when flagged to us," a YouTube spokesperson said. "We have also begun reducing recommendations of borderline content such as conspiracy theories related to 5G and coronavirus, that could misinform users in harmful ways...."
YouTube says that since early February, it has manually reviewed and removed thousands of videos that spread dangerous or misleading coronavirus information.
"We also have clear policies that prohibit videos promoting medically unsubstantiated methods to prevent the coronavirus in place of seeking medical treatment, and we quickly remove videos violating these policies when flagged to us," a YouTube spokesperson said. "We have also begun reducing recommendations of borderline content such as conspiracy theories related to 5G and coronavirus, that could misinform users in harmful ways...."
YouTube says that since early February, it has manually reviewed and removed thousands of videos that spread dangerous or misleading coronavirus information.
Oh noos, all my HAARP videos also gone (Score:3)
And those weren't even fake...
Fallout (Score:4, Insightful)
The fall out is impacting credible sources, for example Quora removed links to video by this NHS Doctor who is debunking COVID-19 conspiracy myths.
https://www.youtube.com/playli... [youtube.com]
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It's hard to know what's a credible source of medical news these days. Trump corrupted the Federal guidelines to bend to his narcissism. Any news org can find a medical doctor with an outlying opinion if they want. The Information Superhighway has gone Mad Max.
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Good crisis leaders change direction when they know they're wrong, and rally people around them. While pointing out the most obvious things in order to mitigate their mistakes. Which is well, what Trump has done.
If you don't know that, you've never been in an actual crisis with peoples lives riding on the line. Your fake news might be better off directed at the entire swath of the MSM, which railed that the bug wasn't a problem. China has it under control. You don't need to do anything. Repeatedly telling you that the WHO is right.
Ahhh the Fox model.
Deny reality as long as you can. Then flip it and claim you knew all along.
Where do you think Trump learned that from?
MSM as you put it (a clear sign of a deranged mind), were way ahead of Trump and Fox on this. The only people that didn't understand in January what was coming, were people who just don't pay attention to reality. (Fox viewers mainly)
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That's Quora for you. Fucking shite.
Doomsday Device (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Doomsday Device (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure about the "ability to reason" part.
What social media taught me about people, is that we were already surrounded by huge numbers of people who lack the ability to reason. These people tend to believe whatever they hear repeated the most and to dis-believe anything that doesn't match their existing views (especially if that would mean them admitting being wrong)
Social media brought a large platform for everyone, and allowed people to put themselves in bubbles they can lead to them believing almost anything. From that point, you something rather like a cult, but one with potentially global reach.
So to me, social media didn't take away ability to reason. It simply amplified those who can't and drowned out those who can.
Re:Doomsday Device (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't know about that. Thanks to social media (Twitter, Reddit & Telegram) I was able to see this problem coming towards us from early january. Especially the videos leaking from Wuhan and Iran were very alarming. This information enabled me to be better prepared than most people in my country.
Social media are a very powerful means of information, provided you have the common sense needed to filter out the noise...
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Who ARE these imbeciles? (Score:4, Interesting)
How can anyone believe something so idiotic for even a nanosecond?!
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I thought you were kidding - holy crap!
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How can anyone believe something so idiotic for even a nanosecond?!
You answered your question yourself. They are imbeciles. About half of them are imbeciles who believe the shit. And the other half are imbeciles who love having an excuse to destroy things, because they are never going to achieve anything in their shitty lives.
Re:Who ARE these imbeciles? (Score:5, Funny)
How can anyone believe something so idiotic for even a nanosecond?!
What are you talking about? Don't you see the clear link? Has the MMR vaccine damaged your brain that much? Or are you under the influence of the chemicals they put in your water or the chemtrails they spray over your city. This country has really gone downhill since the CIA blew up the World Trade Centre. But I bet you think that was a "terrorist attack too". OPEN YOUR MIND!
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Well let's be realistic, there's valid reasons why people would believe all those things. Let's run through a few of them. People believe that MMR vaccine has damaged your brain, because unethical governments used poisoned vaccines against specific populations in the past. And that's not even touching on the really shady medical shit, like infecting people with pathogens to study them. Chemicals in the water? Well, remember the couple of cases where governments were introducing heavy metal contamination
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Have you talked to a typical member of the public recently?
OST, fuck recently, have you talked to one ever?
Re:Who ARE these imbeciles? (Score:5, Insightful)
Conspiracy theories flourish because they're *comforting*.
If you're a scientific illterate, what do you do with the notion of a virus that spreads by asymptomatic people contaminating everything they touch? This particular CT substitutes one impossible-to-observe-mechanism with another one that seems just as plausible to you: radio waves! You know those exist because you use them every day. This CT takes the complex and abstract causes of the pandemic and replaces them with a simple concrete one -- bad people are doing this on purpose. Eliminate those people and bad things won't happen anymore.
Finally, this conspiracy theory gives you something to do about the problem that seems more appropriate to the drama of the crisis than simply washing your hands: destroy the evil coronavirus machine!
It's not so hard to understand why people believe nonsense like this: it actually feels less nonsensical than reality. The only drawback is that is that you can't believe it if you know too much. Fortunately, that's not a problem for many people.
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It may have degenerated into vernacular, but it's still an effective description, and thus effective communication.
You need to focus on the core of the discussion, rather than the peripherals.
Interaction with artifical environments? (Score:2)
Many people spend a large part of their lives interacting with the completely artificial environment represented by complex digital devices. As a user of that environment, science doesn't really work: you can't do reproducible experiments because things change out from under you. There are no basic physical laws, just a set of complex interacting rules, often changing, both intentionally and due to bugs.
Has that cause people to lose their intuitive grasp of science?
There is no reason whatsoever to think
Youtube has the right (Score:3)
... to remove every video that makes no profit for them.
Suppression makes conspiracy theories stronger (Score:4, Insightful)
Nothing on Earth could be make a conspiracy theory stronger than suppression of those who tout them. Suppression, censorship and memory holes are the conditions sine qua non of conspiracy theories in general. Without deletions, it would be mere quackery and loony bin.
Think about it: there are SOME conspiracies. Always have been. SOME conspiracy theories are - or were - TRUE. People sometimes conspire to the detriment of others. Fact of life, problem of evil and free will.
A true conspiracy would try to censor or ridicule any information about them. When the information is and remains open, it is possible for everyone to evaluate the claims and decide for themselves if it was ridiculous or not. When it is deleted by external powers, that is not possible and it becomes impossible for everyone to decide if an accusation has merit or not.
Deletions of "quackery" are a breach of trust between people: it divides the population into those who decide and those who are decided upon, with the rulers potentially deleting evidence of misdeeds and explicitly distrusting the ruled to make the right decisions upon knowing as much of the facts as possible. People have always had episodes where they attacked machines, so this is nothing new and nothing we couldn't recover from. It's just some machines, after all and it's perfectly possible in this case to roll out 5G later or not at all in the area, because why not, it's not mandatory.
That is why free speech is more important than any other right anywhere ever, always has been, always will. So whenever censorship is employed, people must assume the conspiracy theory was true, because otherwise, deletions of actual evidence would be far far too easy to accomplish.
So TL;DR even the attacks on hundreds of 5G towers are irrelevant compared to the erosion of trust that censorship and deletions bring. Machines can be rebuilt, trust cannot.
Re:Suppression makes conspiracy theories stronger (Score:5, Interesting)
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Maybe we should do the same thing for flatearthers, that will teach them.
The viedos are removed (Score:2)
The stupidity stays.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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Since the Big Man is taking measures to suppress the free speech, there must be something that they want to cover up.
The sad thing is some will no doubt believe such things. Seriously, how can we have competent leadership if we have incompetent voters who believe such utter crap?
How in any version of reality can someone who isn't either literally a moron or delusional believe that 5G towers have anything to do with coronavirus? Some people never cease to amaze me. I know a doctor who had some mother with Hepatitis A who was a delusional antivaxer who refused the hepatitis A immunoglobulin I think it's called, which would have drastically reduced the risk of the baby contracting the disease. He had to spend six hours of his time to get a court order. Forgot what state he was working
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I was quickly introduced to the prevailing conspiracy theory around Covid-19. Itâ(TM)s quite simple. Adrenochrome is a drug for the liberal elite of Hollywood made from actual human brain stem containing hormones from the adrenal gland. Hillary Clinton manufactures this drug by torturing children in a pizza shop (if you order a cheese pizza thatâ(TM)s code). Tom Hanks is addicted to Adrenochrome and he caught Covid-19 from the latest batch of tainted Adrenochrome that came through Celine Dion who is a high priestess from the Church of Satan. She is well-versed in poison as sheâ(TM)s been lacing her childrenâ(TM)s clothing line with a chemical that makes our children âoegender neutralâ. Tom Hanks signalled to the Hollywood Liberal Elite Cabal DeepState in his Golden Globes acceptance speech that there would be a shortage of Adrenochrome. Ellen has closed her studio audience because sheâ(TM)s addicted as well. Heidi Klum is too. And so is Michael Rapaport.
Bet there'll be a dozen Youtube videos proving all that within a few days.
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Didn’t you see the X-Files episode “The lost art of forehead sweat”
It’s that evil mastermind, Doctor They who done it.
Re: There it is. (Score:4, Informative)
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Ffs, maybe read the whole article?
FFS maybe learn to understand the context of an article and click the link in the text the parent quoted.
The relevant part of the article is this
The whole article. From start to end including the bits the GP stated and not your weird arse cherry picked view of the world that strips it out of the current context.
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Yes, we have a load of people that are "Stupider than 'Stupid McStupidface' on a particularly stupid day". Unfortunately some of them are our leading politicians.
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And, from the link in that quote:
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yep of all the nutbag conspiracy theories, 5G towers causing/spreading corona has got to be right near the top of most insane.
I know that it's unfashionable to RTFA, but if you take the time to go look you'll find that nobody is actually making this claim.
Be patient, give it 24 hours ....
Re: There it is. (Score:3, Informative)
This is an article about the UK, dumbass.
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The UK has a materially similar leader whom they deserve. Only theirs isn't suffering from dementia.
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just hospitalised with COVID-19, fact not conspiracy
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The UK has a materially similar leader whom they deserve. Only theirs isn't suffering from dementia.
It's an invasion of intelligent hair pieces from outer space.
They took over the USA (Donald Trump), the UK (Boris Johnson), and North Korea (Kim Il-Yung). Strong resistance still in Germany (Angela Merkel).
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> The UK has a materially similar leader whom they deserve. Only theirs isn't suffering from dementia.
Sounds like you're falling for the same sort of videos YouTube is removing concerning our Prime Minister.
A classically educated toff with a cultivated eccentricity following the path of his whole life to walk the corridors of power as a liberal conservative in the British mould.
Does that sound like Trump?
Their similarity is they are overweight man with blonde hair with a sense of humour.
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Trump is not erducated, classically or otherwise. Alexander Ataturk DePfeffel III, to give him his real name, is at least fairly erudite on some subject matter.
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The UK has a materially similar leader whom they deserve. Only theirs isn't suffering from dementia.
No, but now that he has been hospitalised with Covid-19, I wonder if BoJo now sees in a new light his ideas of dealing with the crisis by sitting on his ass, doing nothing and letting the old and sick die in the name of herd immunity, austerity and small government?
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President Trump isn't suffering from dementia (probably). He's just a stupid narcissistic lying bag of shit.
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Biden is also mentally unfit to be president. However, since he's not president, that's not relevant to the current discussion.
Re: There it is. (Score:4, Insightful)
Biden is mentally unfit in the way Reagan was, and would make a similar prop president who lets the cabinet run the country and dutifully attempts to read the speeches people write for him. That's something the country can certainly survive. Mentally unfit plus an enormous ego that sabotages anything the mentally fit people around you try to do and demands sycophantic loyalty... that, we can't survive.
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Neither is ours.
True. It may seem like the current POTUS has dementia, but in fact he was born a moron.
Re: There it is. (Score:5, Funny)
Why can't both be true? He was born a moron, but the way he speaks now compared to the way he used to speak shows that he also is demented.
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Now that all the TV channels have been giving him an hour (or more) of free ad space each day with corona-address, and I've had little else to do, I've become a lot more familiar with his recent speaking. If you haven't listened to it yet, try for at least a day or two. It's pretty bad. It's easy to dismiss these criticisms as political junk, but seriously, listen to him. It's bad. Ever been around a nursing home? If so, you'll recognize the mannerisms and mental/verbal confusion instantly.
Re: There it is. (Score:3)
Re: There it is. (Score:3)
Biden v.s. Trump would be worse than Waldorf&Statler from the muppets.
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Only theirs isn't suffering from dementia.
Neither is ours. You're probably thinking of the Democrats' prime choice to be president, Joe Biden. If you turn off MSNBC for a minute, you'll discover he hasn't been elected or sworn in just yet.
No, we are definitely thinking about Trump.
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Only theirs isn't suffering from dementia.
Neither is ours.
Correct. He's always been like that.
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It also applies
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It was pilot error.
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Yeah the only difference is that Boris is just pretending to be retarded [knowyourmeme.com]
Re: There it is. (Score:2)
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no
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That's funny. Most of the left-leaning columnists I've read go on endlessly about how horrible it is that American industry is falling behind on 5G! OH NO WE'LL LOSE THE 5G RACE.
https://www.theverge.com/2019/... [theverge.com]
Granted some Republicans have been caught up in the madness as well.
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That's funny. Most of the left-leaning columnists I've read go on endlessly about how horrible it is that American industry is falling behind on 5G! OH NO WE'LL LOSE THE 5G RACE.
https://www.theverge.com/2019/... [theverge.com]
Granted some Republicans have been caught up in the madness as well.
The left? It's an issue for them I suppose but to talk about 'some' Republicans having been caught up in the 5G obsession is a major understatement. Trump has been caught up in the 5G thing in a big way and if he has so have all Republicans since they take their cues from him as their party's leader. Why else do you think Trump and the Republicans are hunting Chinese technology giants with lots of 5G patents like captain Ahab chasing the white whale?
I've always been big on free speech... (Score:4, Insightful)
I've always been a big free speech proponent. Lately though I've started to wonder. The problem isn't so much that there is misleading information out there; the problem is that people believe it and continue to act on misinformation even once it's been proven wrong. One big example in the past few years have been anti-vaxxers; people have died as a result of parents not vaccinating their kids due to misinformation spreading like wildfire. Now we have this 5G scare; same deal with people burning down cell towers which are important for our modern telecommunications infrastructure.
The problem is, it's a slippery slope. Once you start removing videos for this, what's to stop removals fore more sinister reasons?
It really is a difficult conundrum, and I don't know what the solution is.
Your media is already heavily, heavily censored (Score:2)
I guess my point is a few coo coos getting their videos removed from YouTube should be the lease of our concerns.
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Also, it seems that there are more people (and organizations) who are willing to weaponize misleading information in a targeted manner to do the most harm. And not just the obvious culprits, but also more mainstream conservatives and libertaria
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Re: I've always been big on free speech... (Score:2)
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The marketplace of ideas, on which freedom of speech is based,
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2) Censorship doesn't stop the flow of ideas. Morons gotta mor.
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Ditto... /. ;)
I'd upvote you if I could... but I'm not right-wing enough to be given that power on
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I think this is something people have to experience themselves in order to grow as people.
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the problem is that people believe it and continue to act on misinformation even once it's been proven wrong.
What has been proven wrong? Nothing. I have it on good authority right from my original source that your proof is nothing but a deep state conspiracy to debunk my conspiracy about deep state.
And round and round we go. I'm not just being funny here. The point is the very people who fall into conspiracy theories will use those same conspiracy theories to debunk any proof however solid of said conspiracy. There's literally nothing you can do to change the belief of stupid people.
The problem is, it's a slippery slope. Once you start removing videos for this, what's to stop removals fore more sinister reasons?
I personally don't see a proble
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Free speech (and democracy) only work when the people have some minimal understanding of how things actually work. The problem is that if you start to curb free speech, it will invariably be abused and in the end nothing those in power do not like will get through, no matter whether true or not.
So yes, humanity has far too many idiots that believe any stupid thing if it sounds minimally plausible. Education has failed to fix that. Censorship is worse. There is no known solution at this time.
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The known solution is education, only it needs to be done properly.
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Don't hold your breath on that.
People who can do it right can demand good salaries, and therefore mostly work for the rich. The poor remain ignorant, having been taught by the ignorant. Its not a conspiracy, its money.
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The latter can - and have - kicked individuals and
Re: I've always been big on free speech... (Score:2)
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We can do both things. We can and should step up mental health care. And we can and should remove misleading information.
Google has a right to remove any videos they want from their service. They are not obligated to give you a soapbox. And Google also operates a MVNO and inciting lunatics to attack the phone infrastructure is directly contrary to their interests. Forcing them to retain and transmit such videos would be like forcing you to wear a shirt that says you're a public masturbator.
If people are jus
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I don't think there is nearly enough evidence to even say that the misinformation is the problem.
You're joking right? Mental health issues aren't a root cause, they are an enabler. The root cause of the mobile mask attacks is misinformation. Now they may have set something else on fire, but that would also depend on whatever information they got to decide to make that a target.
This bullshit isn't random. You don't go from nothing to suddenly having people burn down mobile phone towers coincidentally just a week after the conspiracy theory of 5G causing coronavirus first spreads.
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In most cases, the people responsible for promoting this trash are doing it for money, and know perfectly well it is false.
You, however, are just pig ignorant: The Youtube video you link to is based on gross misrepresentation and straw-man arguments.
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Since the Big Man is taking measures to suppress the free speech, there must be something that they want to cover up.
And if you don't do anything, they'll go "see even the lizard people aren't hardcore enough to try to cover up the 5G danger! They know it's huge!!!"
There's pretty much nothing you can do to convince someone in this state of mind. Otherwise we wouldn't have religion by now ;)
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Since the Big Man is taking measures to suppress the free speech, there must be something that they want to cover up.
And we need to treat all the other anti-science conspiracy theories this way if we are ever going to kill the virus, stop emitting carbon, or solve any of our other large-scale problems. Big Data, time to step up and unify on this.
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People experiencing the growing problem of cell congestion might disagree with you. Enabling some sub6 bands in busy areas will work wonders.
Re:All for it. (Score:5, Informative)
I'm also for taking down 5G towers because 5G sucks ass
Says the guy who doesn't understand what 5G is.
5G is mostly a protocol upgrade to 4G. The lower frequency range of 5G (FR1) is almost exactly the same as 4G with the top end about 6GHz. The towers themselves don't really change.
The second frequency range for 5G (FR2) is 24-40GHz. This higher frequency range has problems penetrating buildings and cars and has caused concerns that it would need many, many more cells and antennas to provide continuous coverage. I don't know of any carriers that have deployed this frequency range and no production cell phones that can receive it. Theoretically this higher frequency range could provide more bandwidth per channel, but the practical side would limit it to fixed locations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ [wikipedia.org]... [wikipedia.org]
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You aren't the reason for 5G, it's the 20 billion (literally) IoT devices that they expect to have installed worldwide by the end of the year. And no, I'm not talking about your connected refrigerator but about the sewer flow monitors, the traffic system controllers, the weather stations, the factory automation, and the other devices that are going to take our civilization into the future.
Re:All for it. (Score:4, Informative)
Right now a couple of cities are installing IoT devices which will monitor sewer systems in residential neighborhoods for Covad-19 to see which areas need most attention, which I think is interesting. Game trail cameras have found several species recently that were thought to be extinct, allowing protective measures to be put in place. Cheap remote weather stations are being scattered all over the planet, including in mid-ocean where monitoring has always been lacking, generating unprecedented amounts of data for weather and climate models. Traffic monitoring already saves billions of dollars per year in road construction costs, pothole detection cameras are being installed on municipal vehicles to monitor roads for damage and schedule repair, and traffic cameras are also being used now to find blocked storm sewer grates so they can be cleared before they cause flooding and accidents. Industry is the big user, of course. Expensive wired analog devices to monitor equipment are going away, replaced by inexpensive and more capable wireless devices which allow easier reconfiguration of production lines. Ultrasensitive microphones listen for signs of damage to motors and generators to allow preventative maintenance. Food factories can monitor the production line continuously now for contamination and quality control, reducing waste and improving safety.
I can go on like this for a long time, I'll stop here. People don't realize what a massive change the Internet of Things is going to usher in.
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Non ionizing radiation isn't overly scary. Some denatured proteins are about the worst problem...
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sunlight will cause cancer.
a 1W flashlight will not cause cancer.
A microwave oven will grill a burger in about 3 minutes.
Putting a burger on your phone will not cook it, even after 30 years.
"Flux" is related to energy, frequency is not.
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Check some of the research into interference to voltage-gated calcium channels (VGCC's). It looks to not have to be ionizing to mess with things. Early days...
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Non ionizing radiation isn't overly scary. Some denatured proteins are about the worst problem...
And these denatured proteins wouldn't be caused by the cell towers, they would be caused by your own phone. Because whatever the cell tower transmits, arrives at your body with very low signal strength, while what your phone emits is strongest where the phone is.
I wonder why nobody has built a phone for the truly paranoid: One where the transmitter is outside the body of the phone, connected by a meter of cable, so the transmitter is a meter or so away from your head which is obviously the most vulnerabl
Re:A little aggressive with 5G tower placement. (Score:4, Insightful)
We have not really had this technology long enough to know long term detriments
Yes we have. There's nothing new or magical about transmissions in the 600MHz, 3.6GHz, 6,GHz, or 26GHz spectrums. We've been using them for 70 years. Also practically all 5G masts being installed in people's backyards and apartment buildings use the same frequencies as LTE does for propagation efficiency reasons.
If you're still scared about this I hope you haven't owned a mobile phone for the past 20 years because damn man you got the cancer!
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Dude, you are rambling!
The subject matter sounds interesting, but it is not coming across very well.
For people to understand it, and for people to be able to debate against you, it needs to be comprehensible and more concise. It is better to get to the point early in the post and then provide details further down. Also, don't expect that people know about everything you talk about: introduce things gently.
But if the post just contains wild rambling, people will just dismiss it outright as an expression of m
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The 5G thing is big currently in Apocalyptic Christian Circles. It's part of the Anti-Transhumanist narrative going on in Christian Fundamentalist Circles right now.
Ah, lie.
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(Alot of this just doesn't make sense.)
You can say that again.
Whatever the strategy is here in attempting to bootstrap a political nonentity like "transhumanism" by manufacturing a conspiracy theory of "Christian Fundamentalists", I hope you realize it's far too absurd to go anywhere.
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I don't know if the original claim is true or not, but your argument against it has a flaw: Churches have a long history of opposing things that are not real, and it's a common tactic in all political discussion to misrepresent an opponent. Transhumanism is a very niche idea, advocated by only a few enthusiasts and a lot of science-fiction authors - but it's still possible that some church leaders might be under the impression that it is a much more serious ideology than it really is, and act accordingly.
I
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None of your supposed examples have more than .001% of support in any "Christian circle".
I'll go with my direct experience, over your claim to psychic powers of remote analysis.
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Oh, what's this? Physics news. Or at least, news to you. [askamathematician.com]
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The dogma goes that certain sectors of Technology are advancing to the point where we are no longer Humans, but a race of Cyborgs. The Cybernetics will in some way change us such that we "cannot be redeemed" because we are "no longer children of Adam."
On the other hand, some people are no longer humans, but rather braindead idiots. Definitely not longer "children of Adam" either.
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Yeh, it would be most embarrassing when you take the Aliens to your leader these days, with the current bunch of brain dead right wing nutjobs running the English speaking West, might be better to tell them that they picked a bad time and come back in a few years.
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There are things just so out-of-left-field that I can't wrap my head around them: like people believing the moon landings were faked, or that the Earth is flat, and so on.
Well, they are on different levels. Moon landings being faked is a very remote possibility. The best argument against it "there would be so many people knowing about it, they wouldn't all have kept quiet for 50 years". Plus the debunked evidence, but debunking evidence doesn't prove it's not true.
For debunking "the earth is flat", you can buy a round-the-world ticket on the Queen Mary next year, and you will get your evidence that the earth is round in the nicest possible way.