[TTDP] That's what I did

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[TTDP] That's what I did

Post by cidjen » Wed May 04, 2022 5:51 pm

My oh my the twitter deal is sooo an opportunity to breathe life back into the forums lol, let's take it ;)

"We never said that" haha hillarious. So Big Brother.
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Re: [TTDP] That's what I did

Post by Ningen 2 » Thu May 05, 2022 12:00 am

For the terminally lazy like myself - linky.
Image Ningen pity unfortunate individual.

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Re: [TTDP] That's what I did

Post by Arent » Thu May 05, 2022 3:13 am

cidjen wrote:
Wed May 04, 2022 5:51 pm
My oh my the twitter deal is sooo an opportunity to breathe life back into the forums lol, let's take it ;)

"We never said that" haha hillarious. So Big Brother.
Honestly guys, there are literally Taliban on Twitter :roll: No one ever called to lay siege to Twitter HQ or boycott Twitter because of that serious issue.

But now that Musk might potentially take over - with the endorsement of Jack Dorsey I might add - some people are suddenly up in arms. It's completely dishonest.

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Re: [TTDP] That's what I did

Post by tambo » Tue May 10, 2022 1:15 pm

Arent wrote:
Thu May 05, 2022 3:13 am
But now that Musk might potentially take over - with the endorsement of Jack Dorsey I might add - some people are suddenly up in arms. It's completely dishonest.
Social media has caused great harm to America by aiding the dissemination of misinformation about COIVD-19 and vaccines, and by giving a platform to Donald Trump and other toxic individuals. Twitter was part of the rallying cry for the January 6th insurrection.

Twitter has tried to push back against this. Of course, its efforts have been far too little and far too late, but they are still more earnest than those of Facebook.

The concern is that Elon Musk wants to make Twitter a "free speech platform," which means opening the floodgates to the kinds of lies, propaganda, and hate speech as before. It would hardly be surprising to see it misused again in exactly the same ways as before.

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Re: [TTDP] That's what I did

Post by tambo » Tue May 10, 2022 5:03 pm

tambo wrote:
Tue May 10, 2022 1:15 pm
Arent wrote:
Thu May 05, 2022 3:13 am
But now that Musk might potentially take over - with the endorsement of Jack Dorsey I might add - some people are suddenly up in arms. It's completely dishonest.
Social media has caused great harm to America by aiding the dissemination of misinformation about COIVD-19 and vaccines, and by giving a platform to Donald Trump and other toxic individuals. Twitter was part of the rallying cry for the January 6th insurrection.

Twitter has tried to push back against this. Of course, its efforts have been far too little and far too late, but they are still more earnest than those of Facebook.

The concern is that Elon Musk wants to make Twitter a "free speech platform," which means opening the floodgates to the kinds of lies, propaganda, and hate speech as before. It would hardly be surprising to see it misused again in exactly the same ways as before.
And now this story drops: https://www.npr.org/2022/05/10/10979428 ... witter-ban

> Elon Musk says he'll reverse Donald Trump Twitter ban

"Who could have seen this coming? Only everybody." - Stephen Colbert, January 6, 2021

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Re: [TTDP] That's what I did

Post by maldrul » Wed May 11, 2022 12:47 am

tambo wrote:
Tue May 10, 2022 5:03 pm
tambo wrote:
Tue May 10, 2022 1:15 pm
Arent wrote:
Thu May 05, 2022 3:13 am
But now that Musk might potentially take over - with the endorsement of Jack Dorsey I might add - some people are suddenly up in arms. It's completely dishonest.
Social media has caused great harm to America by aiding the dissemination of misinformation about COIVD-19 and vaccines, and by giving a platform to Donald Trump and other toxic individuals. Twitter was part of the rallying cry for the January 6th insurrection.

Twitter has tried to push back against this. Of course, its efforts have been far too little and far too late, but they are still more earnest than those of Facebook.

The concern is that Elon Musk wants to make Twitter a "free speech platform," which means opening the floodgates to the kinds of lies, propaganda, and hate speech as before. It would hardly be surprising to see it misused again in exactly the same ways as before.
And now this story drops: https://www.npr.org/2022/05/10/10979428 ... witter-ban

> Elon Musk says he'll reverse Donald Trump Twitter ban

"Who could have seen this coming? Only everybody." - Stephen Colbert, January 6, 2021
What does any of this have to do with the comic?
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Re: [TTDP] That's what I did

Post by tambo » Wed May 11, 2022 2:35 am

maldrul wrote:
Wed May 11, 2022 12:47 am
What does any of this have to do with the comic?
Er... if you scroll up, you'll see the comments that led to this part of the conversation.

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Re: [TTDP] That's what I did

Post by cidjen » Wed May 11, 2022 3:34 am

tambo wrote:
Wed May 11, 2022 2:35 am
maldrul wrote:
Wed May 11, 2022 12:47 am
What does any of this have to do with the comic?
Er... if you scroll up, you'll see the comments that led to this part of the conversation.
tambo wrote:
Tue May 10, 2022 1:15 pm
Arent wrote:
Thu May 05, 2022 3:13 am
But now that Musk might potentially take over - with the endorsement of Jack Dorsey I might add - some people are suddenly up in arms. It's completely dishonest.
Social media has caused great harm to America by aiding the dissemination of misinformation about COIVD-19 and vaccines, and by giving a platform to Donald Trump and other toxic individuals. Twitter was part of the rallying cry for the January 6th insurrection.

Twitter has tried to push back against this. Of course, its efforts have been far too little and far too late, but they are still more earnest than those of Facebook.

The concern is that Elon Musk wants to make Twitter a "free speech platform," which means opening the floodgates to the kinds of lies, propaganda, and hate speech as before. It would hardly be surprising to see it misused again in exactly the same ways as before.
Provided context, cause I kinda started this so I want to maybe close this rant...
I am no large fan of EM either.
Just hoping his other companies to date, do have the integrity they vibe and tout. (Although if you believe e.g. The Guardian or the BBC, Starlink is actually making a difference in the Ukraine right now, which is a massive plus in that direction)

For Twitter to be the 'market square' of free speech, would need transparency (no anonymous accounts), no editing/deleting (or easy access to any history of any modifications in the posts just so everyone can see what was actually written) and a total ban on bots of any kind. Maybe some more but these three would need to be the pillars.

Yeah I don't see that coming either. And it would not encite me to join the conversation either.
Слава Україні!
🖕💩🥫🚽🖌️
--------
Translation to polish
and where it happens when I have time to stream

Blessed be those, who, having nothing to say, avoid trying to tell this to the world in their own words - J. Tuwim ( liberally translated )

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Re: [TTDP] That's what I did

Post by tambo » Wed May 11, 2022 12:40 pm

cidjen wrote:
Wed May 11, 2022 3:34 am
Starlink is actually making a difference in the Ukraine right now, which is a massive plus in that direction
Musk a skilled technology pioneer. Tesla, despite its flaws and missteps, has done more to push EVs and renewable energy infrastructure into the mainstream than the rest of the auto industry combined. And SpaceX has impressively filled the gap in U.S. space transport.

But being a mega-tech-pioneer is very different than being a responsible leader on social issues, which Musk most certainly is not. The success and money have gone to his head and he doesn’t understand the distinction, to our collective great peril.
cidjen wrote:
Wed May 11, 2022 3:34 am
For Twitter to be the 'market square' of free speech…
The problems you noted (bots, etc.) are only the tip of the iceberg.

Every single platform that has pursued the “free-speech zone” has gotten buried under an avalanche of bad content. Because bad actors will take the “free speech” permissiveness to disseminate hate speech, harassment, misinformation, propaganda, doxxing, instructions for making contraband weapons, graphic depictions of violence, drug transactions, spam, pyramid scams, normal adult content, *really fringe* adult content, etc., etc. It is inevitable and immediate.

Facebook, with all its resources, cannot keep on top of this stuff. Nor can YouTube, despite the resources of Google. And those platforms don’t even position themselves as “free expression zones” - they have no problem censoring bad content; they just literally can’t stop it.

Musk seems committed to steering the Twitter train right toward the brick wall. God help us all. And whatever you do, don’t buy TWTR.

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Re: [TTDP] That's what I did

Post by maldrul » Wed May 11, 2022 3:15 pm

tambo wrote:
Wed May 11, 2022 2:35 am
maldrul wrote:
Wed May 11, 2022 12:47 am
What does any of this have to do with the comic?
Er... if you scroll up, you'll see the comments that led to this part of the conversation.
My point being that this is a story discussion sub forum. If you want to voice your opinion on non-story related issues, there are other sub forums within the MegaTokyo forums for that.
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Re: [TTDP] That's what I did

Post by tambo » Wed May 11, 2022 4:59 pm

maldrul wrote:
Wed May 11, 2022 3:15 pm
My point being that this is a story discussion sub forum. If you want to voice your opinion on non-story related issues, there are other sub forums within the MegaTokyo forums for that.
Okay, here's the MegaTokyo board index:
  • Announcements
  • Story Discussion
  • Fan Works
  • MegaTokyo Visual Novel
  • MegaTokyo Central
  • Anime & Manga
  • Video Games
  • Board Games & RPGs
Which other subforum do you recommend?

Besides, the other person in this discussion has 1,100 posts. I think they have a pretty good sense of what belongs where here.

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Re: [TTDP] That's what I did

Post by Invisigoth » Wed May 11, 2022 5:29 pm

tambo wrote:
Wed May 11, 2022 4:59 pm
maldrul wrote:
Wed May 11, 2022 3:15 pm
My point being that this is a story discussion sub forum. If you want to voice your opinion on non-story related issues, there are other sub forums within the MegaTokyo forums for that.
Okay, here's the MegaTokyo board index:
  • Announcements
  • Story Discussion
  • Fan Works
  • MegaTokyo Visual Novel
  • MegaTokyo Central
  • Anime & Manga
  • Video Games
  • Board Games & RPGs
Which other subforum do you recommend?

Besides, the other person in this discussion has 1,100 posts. I think they have a pretty good sense of what belongs where here.
Technically it'd be Central but since me and chemi are the mods here and I'm the only one of us that does stuff here I got not problem with the discussion so far.

Now there are things that will motivate me to exercise mod powers and even abuse them at times but not too much and nothing so far here.

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Re: [TTDP] That's what I did

Post by paarfi » Wed May 11, 2022 6:45 pm

Fred's working on the next comic. Soooooooon.
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Re: [TTDP] That's what I did

Post by S1arburst » Thu May 12, 2022 9:01 pm

Yay Chokky!
tambo wrote:
Tue May 10, 2022 1:15 pm
Social media has caused great harm to America by aiding the dissemination of misinformation about COIVD-19 and vaccines, and by giving a platform to Donald Trump and other toxic individuals. Twitter was part of the rallying cry for the January 6th insurrection.

Twitter has tried to push back against this. Of course, its efforts have been far too little and far too late, but they are still more earnest than those of Facebook.

The concern is that Elon Musk wants to make Twitter a "free speech platform," which means opening the floodgates to the kinds of lies, propaganda, and hate speech as before. It would hardly be surprising to see it misused again in exactly the same ways as before.
From what I heard, FB tried pretty hard to push back against "misinformation". I ran into lots of complaints on right-wing news sites and alternative right-wing social media about FaceBook posts having to do with COVID and other topics being removed. From a United States Bill of Rights perspective, it causes more harm to have some shadowy powers that be decide who is a toxic individual, and mute and muffle them, than it does to allow people to discuss their wrong thinking. You're a second-class citizen if you're not allowed to speak, right? That's one of the big messages I'm getting from this comic so far, that if you're not allowed to speak and act, your life is hardly worth living.

One of the things I was most unhappy about was YouTube and FaceBook taking down videos by doctors about COVID that did not align with the proper stance. Why do non-doctor mediators think they know better than doctors about treatments for a medical problem?

Have you heard that the Federal government is opening an investigation in Musk's takeover based on a tardy filing of a form? I doubt they'll allow this free-speech attempt come to fruition.
Just call me prissywings

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Re: [TTDP] That's what I did

Post by tambo » Fri May 13, 2022 11:43 am

S1arburst wrote:
Thu May 12, 2022 9:01 pm
From a United States Bill of Rights perspective, it causes more harm to have some shadowy powers that be decide who is a toxic individual, and mute and muffle them, than it does to allow people to discuss their wrong thinking. You're a second-class citizen if you're not allowed to speak, right?
The Bill of Rights applies to the government. The government isn't censoring misinformation.

Rather, the censorship is being done by private companies over their own platforms: Facebook decides what goes on Facebook; Twitter decides what goes on Twitter; etc. In general, a private company has the right to decide what content its own service carries.

Consider Donald Trump. Immediately following the January 6th insurrection, Facebook and Twitter each - independently - decided to ban his accounts. Donald Trump retained the ability to share his message - just not on those platforms. And he has rolled out at least two attempts at his own social network to continue sharing his message. The government is doing nothing to stand in the way of those efforts.
S1arburst wrote:
Thu May 12, 2022 9:01 pm
One of the things I was most unhappy about was YouTube and FaceBook taking down videos by doctors about COVID that did not align with the proper stance. Why do non-doctor mediators think they know better than doctors about treatments for a medical problem?
In that case, "the proper stance" is decided by the U.S. Centers of Disease Control, which is staffed by doctors with decades of experience in epidemiology - i.e., the experts in this field. It wasn't Facebook and YouTube deciding anything about COVID.

And we're not just talking about people having different opinions. According to this study by the Kaiser Family Foundation, 234,000 people in the U.S. have died of COVID-19 in the past year who wouldn't have died if they had been vaccinated. That's 234,000 people killed (so far) by misinformation. There are real and massive costs, in terms of human lives, to antivaxx misinformation.

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Re: [TTDP] That's what I did

Post by paarfi » Fri May 13, 2022 12:33 pm

*frowns at forum and wishes fred would hurry up with the next comic so we'd have something better to talk about*
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Re: [TTDP] That's what I did

Post by Invisigoth » Fri May 13, 2022 1:21 pm

The real problem is the algorithms.

See, social media algorithms are narrow AI that seek to maximize user engagement. This means feeding you clickbait and as an aside the fastest clicks are driven by rage.

So, rather than skeletal robots we are facing an AI that seeks to make us angry by creating a feedback loop of anger, fear and sadness.

It doesn't matter what side or what your beliefs are, if you go on any of the major platforms the algorithms will seek to keep you engaged.

Personally I deliberately overshare dog and opossum images so as to subvert the AI

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Re: [TTDP] That's what I did

Post by tambo » Fri May 13, 2022 9:22 pm

Invisigoth wrote:
Fri May 13, 2022 1:21 pm
The real problem is the algorithms.
I mean, it's a complex, multidimensional problem. The issues are synergistic - they exacerbate one another - and solving one won't solve the others.

But I agree 100% that the algorithms are indisputably one of the primary issues. The New York Times published a great podcast series called Rabbit Hole that tracked a few people as they descended into QAnon by YouTube recommender systems, and eventually pulled themselves out. Fascinating, but also horrifying.

But that podcast is merely cumulative with our own personal anecdotes about family and friends who've gone down the crazy hole on certain issues. It's as endemic as COVID, and the antidote for misinformation is... much more difficult to administer.
Invisigoth wrote:
Fri May 13, 2022 1:21 pm
This means feeding you clickbait and as an aside the fastest clicks are driven by rage.
Yes, that's a good description of it. But I submit to you that long before the infliction of recommender systems, other parties were playing the same games with humanity.

Alex Jones is a rage factory. So was Rush Limbaugh. So is Tucker Carlson, today. Their shows present an incessant parade of aggrievances that are designed to cultivate persistent rage.

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Re: [TTDP] That's what I did

Post by Yl33 D4 N00b » Sat May 14, 2022 9:27 am

paarfi wrote:
Fri May 13, 2022 12:33 pm
*frowns at forum and wishes fred would hurry up with the next comic so we'd have something better to talk about*
There is an anime discussion forum here, but it's mostly just me shouting my shittakes in an empty hall....... :roll:

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Re: [TTDP] That's what I did

Post by Rapierman » Sat May 14, 2022 3:58 pm

paarfi wrote:
Wed May 11, 2022 6:45 pm
Fred's working on the next comic. Soooooooon.
(TM)
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Re: [TTDP] That's what I did

Post by cidjen » Sat May 14, 2022 4:41 pm

Yl33 D4 N00b wrote:
Sat May 14, 2022 9:27 am
paarfi wrote:
Fri May 13, 2022 12:33 pm
*frowns at forum and wishes fred would hurry up with the next comic so we'd have something better to talk about*
There is an anime discussion forum here, but it's mostly just me shouting my shittakes in an empty hall....... :roll:
Heh I camp the Fan Works sub and somehow they still tolerate this ;)

Looks like we need a feature like, a pinned thread on every subforum that reposts (or, better, links to) every new post on every subforum as one large megathread :) :idea:
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Translation to polish
and where it happens when I have time to stream

Blessed be those, who, having nothing to say, avoid trying to tell this to the world in their own words - J. Tuwim ( liberally translated )

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Re: [TTDP] That's what I did

Post by Invisigoth » Mon May 16, 2022 10:11 am

tambo wrote:
Fri May 13, 2022 9:22 pm
Invisigoth wrote:
Fri May 13, 2022 1:21 pm
The real problem is the algorithms.
I mean, it's a complex, multidimensional problem. The issues are synergistic - they exacerbate one another - and solving one won't solve the others.

But I agree 100% that the algorithms are indisputably one of the primary issues. The New York Times published a great podcast series called Rabbit Hole that tracked a few people as they descended into QAnon by YouTube recommender systems, and eventually pulled themselves out. Fascinating, but also horrifying.

But that podcast is merely cumulative with our own personal anecdotes about family and friends who've gone down the crazy hole on certain issues. It's as endemic as COVID, and the antidote for misinformation is... much more difficult to administer.
Invisigoth wrote:
Fri May 13, 2022 1:21 pm
This means feeding you clickbait and as an aside the fastest clicks are driven by rage.
Yes, that's a good description of it. But I submit to you that long before the infliction of recommender systems, other parties were playing the same games with humanity.

Alex Jones is a rage factory. So was Rush Limbaugh. So is Tucker Carlson, today. Their shows present an incessant parade of aggrievances that are designed to cultivate persistent rage.
You left out Noam Chomsky

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Re: [TTDP] That's what I did

Post by Ningen 2 » Mon May 16, 2022 3:01 pm

A man who went from generative grammar to generaive spammer.
Image Ningen pity unfortunate individual.

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Re: [TTDP] That's what I did

Post by Teddy-Werebear » Tue May 17, 2022 6:59 pm

:roll:

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Re: [TTDP] That's what I did

Post by S1arburst » Sun May 22, 2022 10:36 pm

Wall of text incoming!
tambo wrote:
Fri May 13, 2022 9:22 pm
I mean, it's a complex, multidimensional problem. The issues are synergistic - they exacerbate one another - and solving one won't solve the others.
That's exactly what I was thinking! Algorithms are certainly a big problem, but there's so many other issues as well.
tambo wrote:
Fri May 13, 2022 11:43 am
The Bill of Rights applies to the government. The government isn't censoring misinformation.

Rather, the censorship is being done by private companies over their own platforms: Facebook decides what goes on Facebook; Twitter decides what goes on Twitter; etc. In general, a private company has the right to decide what content its own service carries.
[snip]
tambo wrote:
Fri May 13, 2022 11:43 am

In that case, "the proper stance" is decided by the U.S. Centers of Disease Control, which is staffed by doctors with decades of experience in epidemiology - i.e., the experts in this field. It wasn't Facebook and YouTube deciding anything about COVID.
First you imply censorship in general is okay if the government isn’t the one doing it, then you say it’s fine for FB to censor doctors who don’t agree with the messages of the CDC, which happens to be a government agency. Legally, I’ll grant you, the Bill of Rights may not cover what a private company does. In practice, I’m not sure if it makes much of a difference whether it’s a private company or the government itself that insists people march to the government’s tune. The question I’m more interested in, is censorship a desirable thing for a company to do, a company that is established in a country that has been an example of freedom in the world?
tambo wrote:
Fri May 13, 2022 11:43 am
Consider Donald Trump. Immediately following the January 6th insurrection, Facebook and Twitter each - independently - decided to ban his accounts. Donald Trump retained the ability to share his message - just not on those platforms. And he has rolled out at least two attempts at his own social network to continue sharing his message. The government is doing nothing to stand in the way of those efforts.
You can’t pretend banning Trump from Facebook and Twitter hasn’t made a difference to Trump’s reach. Earlier you yourself indicated that it was a good thing they weren’t providing him with a platform anymore. The number of daily active users on Facebook is close to 2 billion, of which I was one for many years. Twitter has 229 million. Those are both humongous potential audiences. And those attempts to roll out his own social media have taken a year to get anything close to useful. That’s a year lost in social media communication.

As for the experts at the CDC:
(1) It typically takes at least 11 years of medical training to become a doctor, including completing their residency. I would consider pretty much any doctor to qualify as a medical expert.

(2) Scientific disagreement sparks growth. In general, science is not settled, and that is certainly true of medicine. Daily low-dose aspirin used to be recommended for everyone over 60 to help prevent heart attack. Just in the last several months, that guidance has been scrapped, as data shows that the risks of bleeding outweigh the benefits of heart attack prevention. Vaccine schedules for young children are revised as more is learned about immune response in children. I was in a conversation recently with a doctor still in her residency about childhood vaccinations, and she had to look up the vaccine schedules for the discussion, because they’d *already* changed from when she was in medical school. It used to be accepted wisdom that milkfat is bad for your heart, avoid butter, too much cheese will give you heart attacks. Now, a new study I read in 2021 indicates that dairy fat is good for your heart, eat all the milkfat you want. I was recently reading in Wikipedia that the Spanish Inquisition list of banned books was mostly to prevent the uneducated from misinterpreting potentially confusing material. Startling, if true, but from what I gather, the Inquisition’s activities such as banning books left Spain intellectually behind in the Renaissance. If there’s a doctor that disagrees with the official government agency position, that’s not a reason to silence them.

(3) Covid is a new disease, particularly when it was first striking the US in 2020. There *can’t* be a settled method of treatment when we’re learning new things about the disease all the time. The fight against misinformation started right at the beginning of lockdowns, and made no logical sense. The examples of revisions to medical recommendations I just listed were for things that have been studied over and over. Covid was new. One example of disinformation that was fought against was using hydroxychloroquine.

Now I’m not an expert at internet searches. It doesn’t look like the CDC was involved in discouraging the use of that drug, but the NIH did ban an emergency authorization to use it for Covid after some faulty studies seemed to show that it caused harm. Even before that though, the media was sounding an alarm about how it was an unsafe drug. False. It’s been used for prophylaxis of malaria for decades. Any drug that’s used before you even have a disease has to have some of the lowest rates of dangerous side effects in existence for the benefits to outweigh the risk. Later it was shown that hydroxychloroquine is indeed helpful in the early stages of Covid. https://www.realclearpolitics.com/artic ... 43875.html Facebook participated in deleting posts by doctors speaking of possible benefits of hydroxychloroquine I think that both the NIH and Facebook should just let doctors be doctors, use their knowledge of medicine and what they observe from treatments they try to figure out more effective treatments. Especially with new diseases.

(4) The epidemiologists were wrong about Covid recommendations. The CDC was constantly changing guidelines. First masks wouldn’t help and shouldn’t be used. Then masks must be used at all times. Then what do you know? The science has shown that masks don’t provide useful protection against Covid. At least not the ones most of the general public uses, or even N95 masks after they get moist. With that and other recommendations the CDC could scarcely keep its guidelines straight for two weeks in a row. Then there was the universal adoption of lockdowns. It wasn’t just in the US, it was worldwide, and it didn’t help against Covid. https://www.newsweek.com/covid-lockdown ... ws-1561656
https://gript.ie/stanford-lockdowns-public-health/
All or most those countries that locked down must have had epidemiologists advising them. I haven’t had as much medical education as a doctor, only 4 years for a B.S. in nursing, but as soon as I read about how contagious Covid was, I knew that lockdowns weren’t going to work to stop the disease. Slow it for a few weeks to give hospitals time to gear up, okay. As a long term treatment, no. I used to be very excited about epidemiology and impressed by epidemiologists. Now I fear that as a group they’ve lost my respect. I’m not in favor of censoring people based on the advice of “experts”.
tambo wrote:
Fri May 13, 2022 11:43 am
And we're not just talking about people having different opinions. According to this study by the Kaiser Family Foundation, 234,000 people in the U.S. have died of COVID-19 in the past year who wouldn't have died if they had been vaccinated. That's 234,000 people killed (so far) by misinformation. There are real and massive costs, in terms of human lives, to antivaxx misinformation.
…That’s not what I’d call a study. It’s using publicly available data for Covid deaths, vaccination rates, and vaccine efficacy rates, and using fairly straightforward math to estimate how many Covid deaths could have been saved if the unvaccinated were vaccinated, with a lot of stated assumptions thrown in. The calculation doesn’t address in the slightest how many of those people were unvaccinated because of misinformation. The calculation also uses an estimate from the CDC that the unvaccinated are at least 10 times as likely to die from COVID as the unvaccinated. I question whether that number takes those who have natural immunity into account.

Perhaps it would help if you gave me some examples of vaccine misinformation. To me it’s an open question how many people are not vaccinated because of misinformation, and how many made a legitimate decision. Some people have heath issues where they’ve been warned by their doctors to be very cautious about taking ANY vaccines. Some young people decide that the risks of dying from Covid are small enough, and the side effects of the vaccine are nasty enough, that they’d rather not. It’s quite true that young healthy people have a very low risk of death, and that the short-term side effects of the Covid vaccine are unpleasant. Some people have a religious objection to using vaccines developed from fetal cell lines. Some people would rather not take a new vaccine, using new technology, until it’s been around for a while and they’ve seen its long-term safety proven. It’s true that it is a new vaccine, and it’s true that it uses a new method compared to past vaccines. I sincerely doubt that misinformation causes serious harm.
Just call me prissywings

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