Comment by sigmaprimus | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sigmaprimus | Hacker News Reader

24 Hours ago I commented about how it was frustrating that social media giants were censoring the people with concerns or questions about Covid and vaccines.

Here is one of many negative responses I recieved

<i> >You're the one who is asking SOCIAL MEDIA companies (i.e. Facebook and twitter) to educate you more. "I wish the social media giants would just stop all the censorship and allow the discussions to take place."

Maybe that's the issue all along. Shouldn't have random people and nefarious state actors provide your education, but maybe go out there and read reputable sources, read peer reviewed trial data (The Lancet), read about the success of vaccinations in countries such as Israel.

Not Facebook and Twitter. </i>

THIS article elegantly put into words the point I was trying to make, I did recieve many good answers to my questions regarding the vaccines too but did suffer a great deal of negativity, just for asking questions.

What ever happened to there are no stupid questions?

Everything vaccine/ Covid related I get from the BMJ. Which seem more reputable and data-driven than most, and also more sceptical of the beliefs that the average ‘trust the science’ social media advocate takes as being gospel.

I’d also recommend Dr Malcolm Kendrick and Dr Sebastien Rushworth, in this vein also FWIW.

But what do I know? I’m just another stranger on the Internet.

Well after doing as much research and asking questions to the best of my uneducated ability. I decided to go ahead and get my first shot today. So I'm now on team Pfizer, hopefully I made the right decision and if not well it is what it is.

I do not see anything particularly hostile in the suggestion that you should not regard social media as any of authoritative, informed, objective or well-reasoned (though it could have been expressed more felicitously.)

I would add that if the social media giants really are trying to censor people merely for having concerns or questions about Covid and vaccines, they seem to be particularly inept at doing so!

That ignores the fact that the vast majority of people will not read publications or pay for journals. Instead, there has to be a worthwhile discussion with many viewpoints in social media.

I've seen enough WHO sponsored ads like "Stay calm. Trust your government. Don't go to social media.". Very suspicious.

Your first paragraph is a red herring - you don't have to read journal articles to be well-informed. If people choose to be uninformed, then that is what they will be, and not even the article here is going so far as to say that corrupt science is coercing people to be well-informed.

Your second paragraph displays the sort of unfalsifiable 'logic' that we find in conspiracy theories. Nevertheless, there are plenty of people beyond the WHO who are saying don't rely on social media for information, and for good reason.

Whether people realise it or not, what they read repeatedly sticks. So even glancing over false news, they will keep them in mind. There has to be a way to point them out in the moment of posting.

It is not clear what point you are trying to make here. Some people will come to wrong conclusions, so... don't publish anything? Don't publish anything except that which you, personally, judge to be correct? That if one sees a news article and an immediate rebuttal on some social medium, one must conclude that the former is false and the latter is true?

I'm saying that there has to be space for discussion in a discussion-oriented medium. It's in the best interest of the average user.

Well, there is, in general - and it works, so long as a preponderance of the participants are well-intentioned, and at least some of them are reasonably well-informed. The author of TFA is being alarmist.

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