YouTube Punishes Brazil's President For Spreading Lies About COVID (vice.com) 113
YouTube has removed videos posted by Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro for violating its content policies, in the strongest measure yet that tech giants in the social media-loving country have taken toward censoring the president. VICE News reports: YouTube has said that if Bolsonaro breaks the video-sharing service's rules again, his channel may be suspended for a week and, in case of recurrence, he should be permanently banned. The video platform told the far-right leader last week that 15 of his videos had been removed from his channel for spreading COVID-19 misinformation -- some of which promoted quack coronavirus cures that critics say can sometimes cause collateral health damages like kidney failure.
The news came days after the president was discharged from hospital after undergoing treatment for an intestinal blockage that provoked a 10-day hiccup attack that hindered his ability to speak. President Bolsonaro has so far remained silent on YouTube's decision, but he's been increasingly vocal in railing against lockdowns, stirring vaccine suspicions and COVID-related hoaxes, ridiculing people for wearing masks and downplaying the dangers of the virus as "a little flu." Last year, the former army captain accused the press of "tricking" citizens about the severity of the virus. Over 550,502 Brazilians have died from COVID-19, making the country's outbreak the world's second-deadliest after the U.S.
The news came days after the president was discharged from hospital after undergoing treatment for an intestinal blockage that provoked a 10-day hiccup attack that hindered his ability to speak. President Bolsonaro has so far remained silent on YouTube's decision, but he's been increasingly vocal in railing against lockdowns, stirring vaccine suspicions and COVID-related hoaxes, ridiculing people for wearing masks and downplaying the dangers of the virus as "a little flu." Last year, the former army captain accused the press of "tricking" citizens about the severity of the virus. Over 550,502 Brazilians have died from COVID-19, making the country's outbreak the world's second-deadliest after the U.S.
you are sentenced to 10 days of hiccup (Score:1)
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You say that, but... I had something like that happen once and it sucked. After maybe two weeks of intermittent activity I sneezed and that caused me to see bright white stars as a muscle had been so fatigued that the sneeze was kind of the last straw. I spent most of the rest of the day in a good amount of pain and it took several days to really get back to normal.
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Maybe, could it be, possibly, within the bounds of possibility, just slightly, possibly that it's because vaccines don't stop you getting the virus, they stop your immune system from killing you while it deals with the virus?
Can you guess how many covid deaths [reuters.com] there have been in Gibraltar this year?
More subtle (Score:2)
that it's because vaccines don't stop you getting the virus,
Vaccine *DO* stop you from getting the virus.
They are just not 100% always perfectly efficient (nothing is, in biology and medecine) at doing so.
At lof of people will not get the virus at all, some will get it, but these will be enough lower number than unvaccinated people for the disease control and drugs authorities around the globe to decide it's worth authorizing it.
they stop your immune system from killing you while it deals with the virus?
Indirectly, yes: among those vaccinated but still catching it (remember, not 100% efficiency), they tend to have more often milder forms th
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Screw biology and medicine *NOTHING* is 100% perfectly efficient in this universe period. The laws of thermodynamics say so.
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The vaccine only protects from one specific protein variant of the virus, once it mutates beyond that, you are no longer immune what so ever. Having the virus of course means antibodies with multiple connections points for the virus will more readily adapt to mutations.
This is dangerous misinformation: it's actually the opposite. The vaccine teaches your immune system to focus on the important part of the virus, while an actual infection has a good chance of being fought off by your immune system latching into irrelevant proteins that will be different in the next variant. Here's an article on a scientific paper on this. [news-medical.net]
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Please go and get it. Every infection helps to keep me in my home office.
Re:Kill yourself, BeauHD. Drink some HCN + Pepto. (Score:5, Insightful)
Getting the virus is still the best vaccine against getting a 'MUTATION' of the virus.
That is a very, very dumb thing to write. Mutations of the virus come from replication errors. Replication errors happen when people catch the virus. With the possible exception of vaccines made from live virus (which the Covid vaccines are not), new strains of the virus don't emerge from vaccination. They most certainly do emerge from people catching it.
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And don't forget the potential to have long covid - long time side effects, potentially for the rest of your life.
So yeah, getting infected to be "immune" is dumb, especially since some people have been infected twice over the pass 1.5 years. Which implies either immunity does not last long from an infection or other variants are still able to infect you.
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Let me cut your arm off, so you don't break a bone in your arm.
Vaccine misconceptions (Score:2)
Getting the virus
Yes: being sick can give you some immunity.
That's the whole point we evolved the "memory cell" part of our immune system: so that we can fight of "known" pathogen more easily in the future.
is still the best vaccine
Nope: it's definitely not the best.
Currently, the consensus is that:
- getting the sickness has definitely a higher risk of death (million of COVID-19-confirmed deaths overall on the planet - or another way to measure the impact: we observe many more deaths ("excess deaths") that what is usually expected) than dying from
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, peri-/myo-carditis confirmed to happen a bit more frequently in teenage boys, possible extremely rare occurrence of guillaume-baré syndrom, etc.).
Two of my daughterâ(TM)s classmates ended up in the hospital with myocarditis, one made it to intensive care. I know a few parents who called off vaccinations for their kids because of it. I am not one of them, my family is all vaccinated. That said, realize that there is a âoeshark attackâ phenomenon that plays on human psychology
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The New Pravda (Score:1, Insightful)
In a corporatocracy or technocracy, censorship and propaganda are not only reserved for government. Media and tech giant coziness with government is an existential threat to public debate, free thought, open discou
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This reads like an argument in favor of preferential treatment for government propaganda. I'm not sure what your actual goal was, but that's the message you appear to be giving.
Re:The New Pravda (Score:5, Informative)
The irony being that YouTube is basically censoring government propaganda - that's what they've removed.
The hard part is trying to figure out the truth from the lies, and really, the only thing you can fall back on is knowledge.
We know what vaccines do and how they do it (knowledge of this is actually several centuries old, though we understand how only just over a century ago), and these "new" (really, they're 50 years old by now) mRNA vaccines do the same thing in a different way. Thus, a reasonable conclusion is that since vaccines work, the way forward is to get vaccinated against COVID.
People promoting alternative medications - well, if they worked, we'd be doing it everywhere by now. HCQ shots would be available if they really worked, as would anyone injecting bleach into their veins.
But since none of this is happening publicly, your own choice is, it either doesn't work, or it's a massive conspiracy because...? (If you can come up with a good theory why HCQ shots are not publicly available that are cogent and logical, well, I'd like to hear it. And as a result, I'd also like to see the crowds banging at the gates trying to get HCQ shots).
Same goes with other things. The moon landing - is it real or fake? I highly doubt it's fake, simply because if it was a conspiracy, you're saying over half a million people are keeping a secret? And you're also saying Russia is keeping it a secret as well even though they'd love to expose it as a fraud?
There aren't many reasons to keep a conspiracy - money and prestige are about the only ones. Someone keeping a secret to make more profit? That's a good possibility. Someone keeping it secret because it's embarassing? Also likely, though if anyone unrelated gets the news, they'd have a hard time keeping it a secret without a profit motive (i.e., blackmail). And I'd have a hard time accepting the US is paying billions of dollars every year to have the Russians keep quiet about the moon landing being faked. (That also requires a lot of people to keep a secret, and we all know how well government does at that).
Quack coronavirus cures (Score:2, Insightful)
some of which promoted quack coronavirus cures that critics say can sometimes cause collateral health damages like kidney failure.
I wonder what other "cure" can "sometimes" cause collateral health damages, like thrombosis and myocarditis...
If you take medical advice from a nation's president you have lost it anyway, but I'd rather not have YouTube (designed explicitly to get people hooked to it) decide which health tips are "good" for you and which aren't. Open debate and flow of information is never a bad thing.
Re:Quack coronavirus cures (Score:5, Insightful)
Open debate and flow of information is never a bad thing.
You couldn't be more right, but desinformation is per definition NOT information rather the prevention of flow of information by purposefully inserting false information. Together with lies they are the antithesis of open debate. So allowing blatant lies and disinformation is preventing what you, and I, want–that open debate.
I used to be a very extreme free speech proponent, but the last couple of years have swayed me. Just as you cannot have an honest discussion with an internet troll, you cannot have an open debate with someone intent on spreading lies and without any inclination to be able to change their mind. Without willingness to listen, the ability to change your mind and the humility to admit that your point of view might not be fully correct open debate cannot exist. Open debate is not two entrenched extremes slinging mud at the other side while trying to rally a third party listener to their "cause". Or even worse, a mob crowd waiting to do some real damage to anyone they do not agree with.
Having said that, if anyone believe I am wrong: I am willing to listen, open to changing my mind and humble enough to say that what I just wrote might not be the full truth. But please then convince me, while at the same time have that very same intentions I enter the open debate with.
Re:Quack coronavirus cures (Score:5, Insightful)
"Open debate" also assumes there are two sides of every issue. This isn't always the case. To give an example, back when I was in college my school newspaper decided to run an ad from a Holocaust denier that said that the Holocaust never happened. I confronted the editor asking why he chose to publish that. He answered that he wanted to show both sides of the issue. Except there weren't "two sides" here. The Holocaust provably happened. Saying it didn't isn't "another side", it's straight out false.
With COVID-19, we know many things due to science. Yes, early on information was sketchy and changing. Maybe some people could have been forgiven then for thinking A when the science had moved on to B. Now, though, we know much more about COVID-19. It is a deadly disease - having killed over 4 million people worldwide. There are also people who survive, but with severe medical issues (heart and lung damage). If you can avoid COVID-19 then it's much better than getting it and rolling the dice on whether you'll be fine, survive with heart/lung damage, or die. We also know that the vaccines work and are safe. Although each new variant seems to reduce their effectiveness, they are better than nothing and we might be able to improve the effectiveness with boosters. (This is still being hashed out.)
In any case, the pandemic would be a lot less severe if everyone who could be vaccinated was vaccinated. Anyone saying "the vaccines have tracking microchips in them," "the vaccine turns you magnetic," "people who get the vaccine die in 2 months," or any of the dozens of other conspiracy theories out there aren't "the other side of the story." They're spreading false information and actually helping the virus to spread.
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The really disturbing thing is how mainstream that view actually seems to be now. Not the one about the Nazis specifically (although modern apologists for the Nazis are extremely disturbing), I mean the notion that people are living in objectively different realities. Have you heard people talk about the "Mandela effect" who conclude that, because they have misremembered something - like how to spell the name of a family of cartoon bears, or when Nelson Mandela died, or the exact quote when Darth Vader reve
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"Open debate" also assumes there are two sides of every issue. This isn't always the case. To give an example, back when I was in college my school newspaper decided to run an ad from a Holocaust denier that said that the Holocaust never happened. I confronted the editor asking why he chose to publish that. He answered that he wanted to show both sides of the issue. Except there weren't "two sides" here. The Holocaust provably happened. Saying it didn't isn't "another side", it's straight out false.
This reminds me of a certain bit of mathematics I've noticed that plays out beautifully in the Intelligence Squared podcast [intelligen...aredus.org].
Basically, a question is posed, the audience votes for or against (or undecided), they have a debate, and then people vote again. The side that gained more votes is declared winner.
By far the most reliable ways to predict the winner is to look at the before votes. For instance, in this vote [intelligen...aredus.org] the split was 66% for, 14% against, and 21% undecided (66-14-21). That means the "for" side only
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The problem, of course, is who decides what is a blatant lie?
Every dictatorship uses the excuse that they are just suppressing harmful, false stuff.
Blatant lies should not be a problem (look up the definition for the word "blatant").
And note that the people spreading these know they are doing something wrong but come up with bullshit like, "alternative facts [cnn.com]". Few interviews have made me feel so nauseous as that one, it showed me what the next couple of years were going to be like.
If you live in under a totalitarian regime, yes, then you have a problem. But who decided what is true or not is not the biggest of those problems. So if you are, I am sad
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Once you're living under the totalitarian regime it's too late. You're right, the only thing is to say I feel bad for you.
That's why we need to fight for the right for free speech and open debate, even if we think we know what is right. (We might actually know, but the science could be, and has been wrong)
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Once you're living under the totalitarian regime it's too late. You're right, the only thing is to say I feel bad for you.
That's why we need to fight for the right for free speech and open debate, even if we think we know what is right. (We might actually know, but the science could be, and has been wrong)
Precisely this.
Re: Quack coronavirus cures (Score:1)
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Think you're wrong about what?
What an open debate is.
As for the open debate... Nobody wants that. Not even you, giving yourself an out by justifying silencing people by labeling them spreaders of "misinformation".
I am all for an open debate, but you can only have an open debate if the people participating are willing to have an open debate, and as Jason Levine pointed out a few posts back [slashdot.org] that there is two sides (actually I would say more than one side). Inventing "facts" does not make up for one side, so having an open debate on facts is pointless. An open debate on the interpretation of facts is something else and usually what we do debate.
So in order to have that open debate, we cannot have
Re: Quack coronavirus cures (Score:1)
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And there we go. Calling me a conspiracy theorist and violent (despite me explicitly saying i was against violence) at the slightest sign of disagreement. I rest my case.
Where did I call you a conspiracy theorist? You might want to reread my post. I said that, there are people I don't bother to engage in debate with, but since I am engaging with you this should be a proof that I do not (at least yet) consider you to be one.
And you might say be against violence but you called for the end of talking and inevitability of violence, a stance I vehemently oppose. A debate should never lead to war. From your previous post:
Enough is enough. So no, there will be no more discussions. No more talking. [...] It will end in civil war.
So "rest" your case all you want, but you misinterpret me.
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The ship has sailed. After years of attempting a real discussion and instead being met with instantly being called deplorable if not falling in line and agreeing with all of the radical left, it's over.
Wow, right off the bat you're simultaneously making a straw man argument and also trying to claim ownership of position that it's bad to cede too much power to big corporations.
Re: Quack coronavirus cures (Score:2)
I wonder what other "cure" can "sometimes" cause collateral health damages, like thrombosis and myocarditis...
Walking. You can have both while walking, which is a treatment doctors now and then recommend for a number of ailments.
And now that you have this really concerning bit of information, what will you do about it?
I mean, you could use mathematical tools, such as statistics or cost-benefit analysis, to figure out a few things about it, but who wants to spend that much effort when declaring, wide eyed with voice trembling of terror, how super evil the conspiracy is, results in gaining so many more virtue signali
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I wonder what other "cure" can "sometimes" cause collateral health damages, like thrombosis and myocarditis...
I'm not aware of any that could cause those particular collateral health issues and are also cures. There's the vaccines, but vaccines are not cures.
It's worth noting here that a medication that does not cause medical problems in some cases is basically non-existent. A simple test to see if you should use the medication anyway is to compare it to the risks of not taking the medication. Looking just at death, more people have died in the US already from Covid than would from both vaccine side effects plus Co
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Science ALREADY decided this, Youtube is just doing their part to ensure science gets its objectively-correct word in.
Google Illumina sequencing (Score:1)
Take a look at the Board of Directors of Pfizer here and pay attention to the following two people:
1) James Smith worked his entire life as CEO of Reuters up to 2020
2) Scott Gottleib, former FDA chairman(appointed by TRUMP) and board member of a company named Illumina Inc.
1) Trump authorizes Operation Warpspeed, allowing Pfizer's and hence Gottleib's products, to be spread by the military out of all things.
2) Trump makes Gottleib chair of FDA in 2017 despite being aware of his potential conflict of interest
Youtube is only following orders... (Score:2)
“Our policies do not allow content that claims that hydroxychloroquine and / or ivermectin are effective in treating or preventing Covid-19, claims that there is a guaranteed cure for Covid-19, and claims that masks do not work to prevent the spread of Covid-19. virus, “YouTube said in a statement.” This is in line with guidance from local and global health authorities, and we update our policies as guidance changes. “
Brazil is NOT second worst (Score:2)
Total deaths is a useless statistic due to population differences. So are case counts, due to testing bias.
The solution is simple... (Score:1)
foolish speech (Score:2)
"Where there is a great deal of free speech there is always a certain amount of foolish speech" --Sir Winston Churchill (b. 1874)
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The democratically elected politician didn't pass a law preventing YouTube from doing that. So YouTube can do it.
But it can change if Brazil, decides it is unacceptable. China already did.
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Though in reality, blocked just once, they should never go back. Should they go back, they have allowed a private for profit corporation dictate policy to them, that is arse about face to what the reality should be.
At minimum the politician should never go back, they should delete all their content. As a political party they all follows suit, one strike and one strike allowed only. All politicians who do not follow suit, should be held under suspicion as behind owned and controlled by that corporation.
Tha
Re:Private, for profit tech company (Score:5, Insightful)
What is it with people with conservative political leanings that they can't seem to understand the simple concept of "terms of service." Rules you agree to abide by in exchange for using a service. Youtube is a privately run service from a for-profit company which is under no obligation to allow anyone to use it.
You [collective] run around acting like complete ass hats as if the rules don't apply to you, then when someone finally holds you accountable it's always because of censorship, not because you were acting like a twat who was above the rules. Next comes the whining about other people being special little snowflakes while you run to your safe spaces like Parler and Gab and Fox News is about as liberal as you are willing to get with your news coverage.
Who in their fucking right mind politicizes a deadly disease?! You'd think if there was one thing we could all still agree on these days it's that we need to be able to trust our doctors and other health officials. Especially when that 100-year pandemic happens on your watch and you're the one responsible for guiding the people of your country through the event as safely as possible. If people like Trump, Bolsonaro, and Modi had done the responsible thing we wouldn't be as likely to have things like the delta variant on covid-19 which is currently killing thousands of people. Once the vaccines started rolling out we could have started mass vaccination programs and reached herd immunity, or something very close, to where we wouldn't need all the restrictions everyone is whining about.
Being an elected official doesn't change jack shit about his violating the rules he agreed to when signing up for the service. So to paraphrase the late George Carlin: Fuck him in the asshole with a big rubber dick! Then break it off and beat him with the rest of it. Same goes for all the anti-vaxxers and people who whine about "censorship" rather than taking a good look in the mirror.
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It doesn't work that way.
If YouTube wants to operate in Brazil they do it on Brazil's terms of service, aka Brazilian law. If YT doesn't like those terms they can choose not to do business in Brazil.
Re:Private, for profit tech company (Score:4, Insightful)
Bolsanaro is not a dictator (yet), he does not make the law. He can whine and moan all they like but he can't ban a company without a lot of effort, and his position at the moment is not too steady.
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Which is how it should be. When corporations have more power than government, things go badly. And government needs to be accountable to the people, otherwise things go badly.
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And when did liberals become the stalwart defenders of private corporations?
Liberals aren't defending corporations, they're pointing out that conservatives, self-proclaimed champions of personal responsibility, are acting like petulant children and refusing to take responsibility for their actions.
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They still are. But democrats not only aren't left, they are frequently to the right of Republicans, and hate the real left far more than the GOP does. Just ask Ralph Nader, Jill Stein, Jimmy Dore...
Re:Private, for profit tech company (Score:5, Insightful)
try to have civil dialogue.
Good-faith attempts to disseminate scientific information, only to be drowned out by conspiracy theorists and science denialists means civil dialogue is over. They make it impossible to have civil dialogue in the first place.
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If you're saying that, I doubt you've ever really tried other than perhaps telling people how dumb they are for not believing what you do.
Now, make no mistake--anti-vax is a terrible idea and completely wrong scientifically. But if you actually talk to people like reasonable human beings, you'll find that they're more reasonable than that and just making loud political noises. But you have to not hate their guts or it won't work. This may surprise you, but people don't take advice from people who hate th
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I have a buddy that I run and cycle with occasionally.
He's not getting any of the vaccines. The main reason is because they're free.
He doesn't trust free stuff if it comes from big corporations, and is staunchly convinced that if such corporations release free stuff, then it must be because they do it for some nefarious purpose, because it's some kind of Trojan Horse.
While I'm all for being scientific and rational, you simply won't get far if you argue with people that have not learned the val
Re: Private, for profit tech company (Score:2)
As a pothead I say fuck you. I'm not some magic believing moron.
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From my experience, for stupid people it tens to have the effect to make them feel very very smart, like they've managed to stare through the universe and seen the code that our 'Matrix' runs on.
Ok, for smart people it's not too different. Among my current peers (predominantly academics) recreational drug is us is pretty normal, though it's mostly psychedelics. But I digress.
The main difference would be that sm
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Tell him it's not really free, our taxes are paying for it.
And all the people who are making the vaccines are also using them. So if there's something bad in there, they're doing it to themselves.
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I doubt you've ever really tried
Then you'd be wrong. I was trying BEFORE it all became this shit show. They take advantage of your "niceness" and just make up more and more adhoc justifications and more and more insults.
I doubt you've ever tried on people who aren't sitting on the fence and already leaning towards to science anyway. I doubt you've tried on people who use "debate" to legitimize themselves in the eyes of an audience.
Re:Private, for profit tech company (Score:4, Interesting)
Because it turns out that if you give in too often, in the end it's the idiots that are going to win because other idiots see the 'giving in' part as an admission of defeat.
Ideally, bad speech is not countered by censorship but by better speech. However for that to work, someone needs to listen to that 'better speech'. Because this only works if people have learned how to think for themselves using critical thinking, weigh the pros and cons of an argument and then come to a conclusion, even if they themselves don't like it.
This does not appear to work very well.
Now I'm not claiming that it wasn't always like this. I do think that most people have been emotionally driven throughout human history, but tools like the communication platforms on the internet have amplified this effect by orders or magnitude. No longer we have drunken ramblings happening in a bar with others agreeing "he tells it like it is!" only to be confined to that bar and potentially forgotten until the next time. Nope, now people get to write their carve their drunken ramblings into stone and have accessible all around the globe within a matter of seconds. So they can get other idiots all around the place to "he tells it like it is!"
Now one solution here would be to teach people to think for themselves. But since humanity has tried to do so since the Age of Enlightenment, which happened around 300 years ago, I am not sure how fruitful it is to rely only on education any more.
Hence we probably should try something else.
To be honest, I don't have any good answer here. Making large and powerful organizations (be it private or government) the arbiters of an approximation of a universal truth, does not seem like a good idea. Consolidating power like that has only ever lead to misery. However such an 'approximation of a universal truth' is also not a matter of democracy, so letting all the idiots decide what is true certainly isn't good either. Well at least not if those idiots have such wide reaching power that affects a lot of other people as well.
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That's a false equivalency.
Even if, as the argument goes, social media platforms have become a public square, it still doesn't apply when you're making a bunch of false statements. In the US and most other countries, there's some carve out specifically for when you go around lying about something. In the US it's broadly called defamation law.
Second, again assuming the public square argument is valid, in the US the first amendment simply means the government cannot put you in jail for saying something politi
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The problem is who gets to decide what is science, especially in this time when we're really still figuring out. I think I understand what Fauci is saying when he says the science is changing. That was his reply now that he's saying the vaccinated should wear masks again. Before, he said you didn't need to, after he said you did, after he said you didn't. I understand that we get new evidence and things change, but when the experts are still figuring it out, there's a lot more room for the experts to be wro
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^^^^ THIS! Damn where are my mod points when I need them?
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Well, even ignorant boobs [fb.com] sometimes get mod points. [atlanticcouncil.org]
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What is it with people with conservative political leanings that they can't seem to understand the simple concept of "terms of service." Rules you agree to abide by in exchange for using a service. Youtube is a privately run service from a for-profit company which is under no obligation to allow anyone to use it.
As the saying goes: "Rules are for thee; not for me." Most politicians are like that, but the right wingers are especially guilty of that.
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The problem isn't terms of service or conservatism, it's the fact that all information is corrupted by corporate influence and profit bias, and thereby all decisions are corrupted by corporate influence, public and private
Re: Private, for profit tech company (Score:2)
Have you ever met a girl who let you stick your pee pee in her? If not it sucks to be you.
Re:Private, for profit tech company (Score:5, Insightful)
A private entity is incapable of censorship.
Bolsonaro can walk outside and talk into any press microphone that gets stuck in his face. He's not the least bit censored.
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Laughably false. The act of censorship is no more confined to government than spying or torture.
Like on Parler? Oh wait, that was crushed by hypocritical [twitter.com] tech monopolies.
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The dude can literally go on live television at any moment of his choosing.
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Dude you're stuck in 2016 when networks would rather show an empty Trump podium than a massive Bernie rally, when a sitting president wasn't cut off [apnews.com] by networks and banned [cnn.com] by social media.
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Dude you're stuck in 2016 when networks would rather show an empty Trump podium than a massive Bernie rally, when a sitting president wasn't cut off [apnews.com] by networks and banned [cnn.com] by social media.
You forgot one [heavy.com] or two [businessinsider.com].
Re: Private, for profit tech company (Score:2)
This.
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No. I can go to the next ISP and use that one instead.
To do the same with governments, I'd have to move quite a long distance away, provided the government allows that. You see the difference?
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You have another ISP? Lucky you.
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Yeah, you see, in functioning capitalist systems, there are no monopolies for crucial infrastructure.
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Ah but see, you've actually said something intelligent! Albeit accidentally, I'm sure. The government telling private entities what speech to allow and what speech to suppress ACTUALLY IS CENSORSHIP! Because it's the GOVERNMENT who is acting! Amazing!
Luckily the Federal Courts shut down Florida's attempt to do just that.
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The definition of censorship says nothing about the government. It's just legal for other companies to censor. I'm for the government staying out of what companies do, so in general I'm all for that.
My argument is that if companies have legal protection (Section 230) that says that they are not publishers and the content isn't theirs, they're just the platform. They should stick to being a platform and not censor (though I know it's not currently illegal). If they want to censor, which they are doing, t
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Except Section 230 doesn't make some sort of "publisher/not publisher" distinction and instead explicitly allows website owners to moderate user content as they see fit. That's kind of the whole point of the law. Without it their choices would be either to not allow user content or allow all user content completely without moderation, as anything
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You're right. It does state that they shall not be considered a publisher for moderating. I would like to see that changed. I would like a platform where we can talk about subjects, even controversial subjects, even subjects some find offensive. Where we can talk about the evidence.
Right now it seems that there is a mainstream narrative that if questioned you're ridiculed and called names and if you make arguments good enough that people start thinking you may be right, your ideas, and maybe you, are deem
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You're free to make that platform. Literally no one is stopping you.
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Yes. And then it would even be censorship if the government told the ISPs who to silence.
Maybe, just maybe, you can identify the relevant portion of that previous sentence? I tried to give a subtle hint there, maybe that way you can find it better.
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I understand you're saying it's not censorship if it's not government directed.
First, I agree, it's not unlawful if it's not government directed, but government isn't the only one who can censor, they're just lawfully prohibited while others aren't lawfully prohibited. My argument is that, if a company says they aren't liable for what is on their platform because, like the telephone companies, they are just a medium, a tool for other people to use to communicate, it should be illegal for them to censor sp
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They may not legally be responsible for what's on their platform, but let's be honest here, who cares anymore about what's "legally" permitted? In the court of public opinion, it's on their page and that's what determines goodwill damage.
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You're right. They're afraid of goodwill damage. The problem is that half of America has been labeled things like deplorables and science deniers and their goodwill is summarily dismissed. Especially when the country is so polarized, shutting down and dismissing one side isn't going to unite the country.
Also, most are not science deniers. One of the problems is that I believe the authorities are claiming something is settled science before it really is. This only serves to cast doubt on what they say. S
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Well. I'm assured by the telecom's that we have a functioning capitalist system, which is why they have the highest profits per GB in the world with lots of competition about who will raise prices next and who will buy out that new guy.
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When a crook tells you his spiel is legal, do you believe him?
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Well, if they can get the law changed to make what you'd think is illegal, legal, then they are correct.
Re: Private, for profit tech company (Score:2)
If I was breaking the TOS and got caught I would expect it.
In fact I know far better than you, "son". (Score:2)
You know, I shouldn't feed the trolls, but I'll go ahead and bite.
Wanna know something funny? If you go back in my history in Slashdot--I mean, WAY back--you'll find I was a Bush conservative. I grew up 100% believing Reagan was God's gift to the country. My beliefs haven't really changed that much, to be honest. I don't consider myself a Conservative but if anyone could convince me to honestly discuss my beliefs they'd probably come out of the conversation convinced I am one.
And back in the 80s and 90s? Th
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What does that sentence even mean? No they don't. They answer to their shareholders. The 'public' can just not use their services if they're unhappy.
I don't recall any discussion of monopolies.
This is rapidly becoming incoherent.
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Moderating information that is being used by your site.
Free speech doesn't mean consequence free speech.
If you say something that people don't like, and especially if it is proven false, and leads to dangerous activities. The owner of the property can have you removed.
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A Brazilian suing an American website for saying a politican lied?
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Making pretty much any statement opens people up for libel suits. In the US, truth is a defense. It looks like truth, or a reasonable belief that what you are saying is true is also a defense in Brazil, although it has an enhancement specifically for statements against the President. It looks like there are a lot of suits against bloggers, etc. there though. Mostly civil though.