People knew that it would come to this, where corporations are the final arbiters of the truth value of information, driven by people who loudly demand to shut down anything that doesn't conform to their world view.
People demanded we steer into the iceberg while staring at it.
It was a huge mistake for them to do this in the first place. Youtube similarly took down videos which were scientifically valid, but not mainstream. Yet, realistically, this was always a plausible hypothesis, there just wasn't evidence to decide one way or another.
"In light of ongoing investigations into Hussein's regime and in consultation with Department of Defense experts, we will no longer remove the claim that Iraq does not have weapons of mass destruction."
Now to put warning signs on Facebook's fact checking warning signs: "The reported fact-checking is potentially false"
An early, pre-emptive ban shapes a narrative; a late change in policy does little to undo the effects of that decision.
To highlight how easily this clumsy, "fact checker" based censorship regime can be manipulated, look at this article, which essentially lays out how the initial "debunking" was spearheaded by scientists with direct conflicts of interest:
https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-peop...
Lets be real - the reason Facebook and other networks were banning these opinions wasn't because they were scientifically unviable, it was because they were right-wing talking points.
They were trying to tamp down on the QAnon stuff and this got caught in the net.
But boy, censoring some opinion and then having it turn out to possibly be true looks BAD!
Seriously though, my boomer parents believe literally every single thing they see passed around on Facebook, no matter how outrageously improbable. Is there any balanced, non-censorship way to curb the spread of stupid bullshit that doesn’t trample on people’s rights and occasionally flag a true fact as a lie?
I’m seriously asking, because I don’t know the answer.
So nice of the great and powerful Oz to let us speak our minds -- on this particular point.
Costed me 457 days of Facebook ban for citing numerous medical whitepapers on COVID
Most were appealed.
Thank u master zucc, now please take my data as an offering.
Related WaPo article on the global shift in responses to the lab-leak theory: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/05/25/timeline-...
In a nutshell, currently, most scientists (specifically, virologists) say that the lab leak theory is the most plausible, given that the Wuhan lab was studying two bat viruses that are (were?) genetically close to SARS2, and a number of lab workers reported symptoms similar to SARS2 in the fall of 2019, when the outbreak is now assumed to have begun.
Virologists currently differ on whether the changes to the virus were natural evolution, man-made, or the result of contamination/poor safety procedures resulting in cross-species mutations. The argument against it being man-made is that currently as far as we know, we don't actually have the proper tools to get the changes that exist in SARS2; the changes are too efficient to have been man-made. The counter to this is that the released version of SARS2 may have been an evolved strain descending from a (less-efficient) man-made virus.
The social media companies need to be treated as common carriers.
I hope this leads to stripping Section 230 protections from social media companies.
so they still continue their "fact checking", even though now it's clear all the fact checkers were wrong on this one. just call it what it is then, censoring.
What if Facebook decides to orient its user with these kind of bans and lift bans?
"It's not censorship! It's not a free-speech issue! It has nothing to do with the first amendment or freedom! They're a private company! If you don't like it just don't use Facebook (or Twitter, or Youtube, or Google, or Gmail, or...)"
Do you get it now? Are you starting to understand? This was always going to be the end result. A world of information controlled by the powerful, where encyclopedias, dictionaries, and history books flex and bend with each new re-writing of reality that becomes necessary to protect their interests. Yesterday, we were never at war with Oceania, and claiming we were would get you banned. Today we have always been at war with Oceania, and saying so is perfectly fine. What new reality will we wake to tomorrow? And why is anyone who isn't obscenely wealthy still defending these people?
FB (and YT and Twitter) should never have been arbiters of discussion. They became privatized Ministries of Truth.
It’s necessary for people to be able to discuss topics even if wrong or uncomfortable in pursuit of truth. Yes, there will be bad faith actors, but they are better than a MoT setting truth.
This was totally idiotic and ideologically driven.
I hope a lesson was learned, but I fear it wasn’t and this will repeat itself because people can’t help but want to drive agendas.