I must have missed a beat. Related to Twitter?
I know nothing about Twitter so will bow out. I have read some stories and it seems pre_Musk, Twitter was guilty of blocking users for political reasons.
How can anyone support that? Free speech, or nothing.
I never said it was a harmless exercise of the right of free speech. Freedom of speech is messy, but that doesnât mean itâs not worth having. Thatâs why the Supreme Court was careful to cabin constitutionally permissible limitations to âfire in a crowded theater,â which this clearly is not.
So how many people still think vaccines cause autism? The study that started this belief was years and years and years ago. The data was disproved with the discovery that the researcher fudged the data. That also was a quite a number of years ago and yet the belief is still very prevalent. Good data does not always overcome previously bad info.
Spreading of that information would have always been permissible under Twitterâs old policy (if Twitter had even existed at the time and applied the same policy beyond just covid). The study youâre referring to was in a peer-reviewed journal! Which just goes to show the danger of having some group in charge of what everyone can say. In this case, the experts got it wrong by advancing the paper to publication. We must be able to publicly dispute the experts without being cast out of society. Luckily the experts who approved that paper for publication werenât on Twitterâs censorship board!
As pertains to COVID, âopposing viewsâ in medicine are worked out in double blind clinical trials, in peer reviewed medical journals like Journal of the AMA, or New England Journal of Med. Or The Lancet. Also author conflicts of interest and funding must be disclosed in the papers . There are many specialty journals, like Blood, which covers my wifeâs cancer. If what starts as a ânarrativeâ doesnât survive that gauntlet, then itâs provisionally put on the shelf. No idea ever dies, given enough data, and sometimes multiple tries are needed for success, but shelved ideas like ivermectin, when they get regurgitated into the Interwebs, are harmful quackery. There is a place for untested therapies, itâs called âcompassionate useâ aka " this patient is going to take the dirt nap soon, any Hail Mary they want to try is fine if it provides comfort because itâs a forlorn hope".
But never should journalists airing opposition ânarrativesâ in medicine and science be viewed as real medicine or science. Itâs just journalist BS. Unfortunately our poorly educated public doesnât understand what all goes into making a drug or therapy, so here we are!!!
Science is politically neutral. But public figures defame scientific results they donât like, cherry picking ones they do. This is really harmful to people understanding the facts on the ground. It causes people to argue about what is true and false. Itâs literally fracturing our entire society even within families. Itâs being done to sell advertising and other things⌠Attention, power, influence.
Both sides do it at different times with different topics in different directions. I call it out when I can.
The Bible talks about the gift of discernment. Americans have lost this gift. They get conned by every common street hustler imaginableâŚ
There are limitations on free speech in our country. It is against the law to threaten another person with bodily harm. It is against the law to shout FIRE! in a crowded theater when you know there is no fire. It is against the law to knowingly falsely claim that another person has committed a crime or to defame them with falsehoods. All of these protections could be interpreted by a perpetrator as undue restrictions on the Constitutional right of free speech. They are restrictions put in place to keep people from using a Constitutional right to harm others.
We also have a Constitutional right to keep and bear arms. But we donât have a right to use those arms to kill and injure innocent people and there severe consequences for doing so. The same logic should apply to the irresponsible use of free speech that results in death or injury to others.
Twitter is a giant megaphone, it is a speech amplifier. Itâs not unlike a computer, which is a cognitive amplifier, or a car which is a mobility amplifier. Just as we have laws protecting our citizens from the harmful use of computers, firearms and cars to do harm, we should have protections that apply to the speech amplifiers of social media.
Musk is not doing that for Twitter, in the context of the comparisons above, he has eliminated highway traffic laws and speed limits and allowed gun owners to shoot any direction, any place and at any time they choose, all without any repercussions or responsibility.
And it will result in human suffering and death.
The death of Twitter would be welcomed. Next up, Facebook, Instagram and Tik Tok. HOw many people get their ânewsâ from social media? Those that do are among the most ill informed people in the world.
Unfortunately, so trueâŚ
Iâm not sure it was any better before social media came around. Was it Mark Twain who said âIf you donât read the newspaper, youâre uninformed. If you read the newspaper, youâre misinformedâ?
Itâs a matter of information quantity, quality and availability.
To read a newspaper you must first obtain one. A newspaper is, in todayâs jargon, âpulledâ information. In addition, you had to be able to read the printed word and you couldnât read it while working, eating, driving, etc. The quality of the information was monitored by the publisher and the penalty for printing misinformation was to damage your reputation and thus your bottom line.
With modern media sources the user can tailor the information fed to them in a âpushâ mode. The recipient can listen with little interruption to their daily activities. This phenomena has the effect of reinforcing the things that motivated the listenerâs decisions regarding the filters put in place to deliver the information.
So we end up with an audience listening to news and information sources which reinforce differences and further divide rather than fairly inform. We can all come up with very specific examples of that very process today.
Covid misrepresentation? Thereâs plenty of that on both sides.
Are we allowed to talk about the adverse reactions to the vax? Didnât think so.
Every vaccine ever created has had adverse effects in some individuals. So will the next one. The same goes for every drug. No story hereâŚ
Weâre only at the beginning of this circus. Get back to me in three years and see if thereâs a âstoryâ.
I worked in public health for years. I know that many like to point to VAERS database. I was IT in public health, but even I could access and submit data to the VAERS database. It doesnât check for credentials, itâs pretty much the âhonor systemâ. Before VAERS got politicized, it was a fairly useful tool. But since âyou-know-whatâ it has become illustrative of the adage âgarbage in/garbage outâ
And not just covid itâs the entire anti-vax movement in general which is the problem. People are getting rich sowing fud and selling snake oil. A former coworker was literally feeding his children colloidal silver, which is toxic. Honestly it was child abuse but I wanted to keep my job so I just kept it to myself. He was a big conspiracy adherent and supporter of âhe who cannot be namedâ.
âPeople are getting richââŚLOL! Iâm crying tears over Pfizer/Biontech, J&J, Moderna, Et al. The profits they have lost these last few years. (sarcasm)
Again, no story here. Drug companiesâ product patents ensure they make big money on products they bring to market. (Not arguing whether this is right or wrong, just pointing out again that antipathy to the vaccine doesnât change It from being just another vaccine in a fairly long list of vaccines.) If you want to read an actual documented case of things gone wrong with a vaccine, search Cutter Labs polio vaccine. As serious as that was it had a pretty marginal effect on polio vaccine demand.