Make whatever strawman analogies you want, but the fact of the matter is that massive online communication platforms like facebook are increasingly censoring dissenting opinions. One day, an opinion that you hold will become "dangerous", and you'll have to choose between conformity or being excluded from our increasingly digital society.
edit: why do we keep giving these companies the benefit of the doubt when they continue to lie about everything?
Don't try to change the subject. My comment is not about facebook, censorship, corporate-run dystopias, or thought-crime exile.
Move the goalposts all you want but the fact is that all opinions are not equal in merit.
If you do actually want to have a good-faith discussion about how to limit the reach of worse opinions while increasing the reach of better opinions I would be happy to hear your suggestions.
Or if you would prefer to discuss how to find agreement on what we consider a "good" or a "bad" opinion, I would start by offering that I think the opinion "face masks do not prevent the spread of airborne respiratory infections" should be considered significantly less reasonable than the opinion "face masks are effective at preventing the spread of airborne respiratory infection".
Our leaders at the start of 2020 explicitly said to not buy or wear masks [1] in contrast to well established research supporting masks from the 1990s SARs epidemic.
People supporting masks were censored for misinformation.
So you would have been one of those censored at the time, despite being backed by the evidence and correct.
What makes you think such mistakes won't happen again?
I don’t think I’m changing the subject, I am asking you to look at the bigger picture. Your comment may not have been about facebook specifically, but we are in a thread about a new facebook initiative regarding yet another form of censorship. You list an opinion that you say has more merit than another, and fine, let’s say I agree. My problem with looking at things through such a small lens is that “merit” seems pretty subjective, and if we continue to stand by as we let these tech companies decide what merit means, one day they will go too far, and it’ll be too late.
Here’s an example of two opinions that I think are unequal. “the government has the right to confine people who have not broken any laws to their homes” and “the government does not have the right to confine people who have not broken any laws to their homes.” In Australia, the government has decreed that the first opinion has more merit than the second. Should facebook follow suit, and censor anyone in australia who disagrees?
> I am asking you to look at the bigger picture
> My problem with looking at things through such a small lens is that “merit” seems pretty subjective
Ok, the bigger picture with a bigger lens is this: How do you slow the spread of harmful ideas?
You agree that some ideas are "better" than others. I think you would also agree that there is no simple definition over what "better" exactly means. It's complex and often elicits complex discussion.
My point, that you are trying again to skip over, is that presenting any idea as if it is inherently equal in merit to any other idea is fundamentally bad. To be specific, I think this because I believe that good ideas will eventually prove themselves out over time (even if they spread very slowly) while bad ideas will tend to rely on rapid spread to reach critical mass before they are disproven.
Do you just want me to tell you that I think you're right? I don't really see this thread going anywhere productive. You seem to be arguing a purely philosophical position, and if I "changed the subject" to relate your position to TFA, then my bad.
Meanwhile, facebook is using the actions described in TFA to ban anti-lockdown accounts in germany. Just like my hypothetical, but in a different country!
My position remains: opinions do not all have equal merit and because of that should not all be given equal weight. And that there is some level at which an opinion can be so low-merit that comparing it to a conflicting high-merit opinion as if they are equal becomes disingenuous and harmful.
The post that is now flagged was referring to Dr. Fauci's March 8, 2020 statement that "there's no reason to be walking around with a mask." Dr. Fauci made that statement in a context of trying to ensure that enough protective equipment was available for frontline health workers at a time when there were runs on toilet paper in stores.
I believe you are mischaracterizing the argument that was made. Unfortunately, we may no longer view the original post because your opinion has apparently been deemed more correct.
Ok, apparently this is the hill I'm going to die on.
Up through roughly April-May 2020, many, if not most, epidemiologists and virologists believed that masks would not help the situation: they thought respiratory viruses were spread through large droplets produced by symptomatic individuals and that physical separation, sanitation, and behavior would work as well as trying to convince people to were useful masks consistently and correctly. (Earlier today, I walked past a woman wearing a bandana tied around her head. Below her nose. Why!?)
After that time, reports began to appear showing coronavirus could be spread asymptomatically, by normal breathing and speech, in an aerosol form that could stay airborne for long times. Under those situations, masks are the only solution.
The "ensure that enough protective equipment was available for frontline health workers" thing was mostly a response to "but it couldn't hurt" thinking.
"Then there is the infamous mask issue. Epidemiologists have taken a lot of heat on this question in particular. Until well into March 2020, I was skeptical about the benefit of everyone wearing face masks. That skepticism was based on previous scientific research as well as hypotheses about how covid was transmitted that turned out to be wrong. Mask-wearing has been a common practice in Asia for decades, to protect against air pollution and to prevent transmitting infection to others when sick. Mask-wearing for protection against catching an infection became widespread in Asia following the 2003 SARS outbreak, but scientific evidence on the effectiveness of this strategy was limited.
"Before the coronavirus pandemic, most research on face masks for respiratory diseases came from two types of studies: clinical settings with very sick patients, and community settings during normal flu seasons. In clinical settings, it was clear that well-fitting, high-quality face masks, such as the N95 variety, were important protective equipment for doctors and nurses against viruses that can be transmitted via droplets or smaller aerosol particles. But these studies also suggested careful training was required to ensure that masks didn’t get contaminated when surface transmission was possible, as is the case with SARS. Community-level evidence about mask-wearing was much less compelling. Most studies showed little to no benefit to mask-wearing in the case of the flu, for instance. Studies that have suggested a benefit of mask-wearing were generally those in which people with symptoms wore masks — so that was the advice I embraced for the coronavirus, too.
"I also, like many other epidemiologists, overestimated how readily the novel coronavirus would spread on surfaces — and this affected our view of masks. Early data showed that, like SARS, the coronavirus could persist on surfaces for hours to days, and so I was initially concerned that face masks, especially ill-fitting, homemade or carelessly worn coverings could become contaminated with transmissible virus. In fact, I worried that this might mean wearing face masks could be worse than not wearing them. This was wrong. Surface transmission, it emerged, is not that big a problem for covid, but transmission through air via aerosols is a big source of transmission. And so it turns out that face masks do work in this case.
"I changed my mind on masks in March 2020, as testing capacity increased and it became clear how common asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic infection were (since aerosols were the likely vector). I wish that I and others had caught on sooner — and better testing early on might have caused an earlier revision of views — but there was no bad faith involved."
Fauci himself told The Washington Post that mask supply was a motive back in July 2020. So, it was a combination of two factors as you rightly point out. Thank you for correcting my omission.
“We didn’t realize the extent of asymptotic spread…what happened as the weeks and months came by, two things became clear: one, that there wasn’t a shortage of masks, we had plenty of masks and coverings that you could put on that’s plain cloth…so that took care of that problem. Secondly, we fully realized that there are a lot of people who are asymptomatic who are spreading infection. So it became clear that we absolutely should be wearing masks consistently.”
It's funny how we look at opinions as reasonable mostly out of convenience to our own foregone conclusions these days instead of statistics from which we derive evidence that substantiates our conclusions. This guy likes masks, he's one of the good ones. Not one of those baddies who don't. Let's ignore the fact we have almost 2 years of global data pertaining to mandates, transmission, and death rates, and decide who we agree with based on which tribe they hail from. Super reasonable.
ever becomes my chosen way of doing so, I can only hope someone censors me. And takes me to a nice, comfortable assisted living facility where I cannot hurt myself or others.
