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Comment by lettergram | Hacker News Reader

Interesting... so I wrote a wrote an article on gun violence

https://austingwalters.com/firearms-by-the-numbers/

Guess it contradicts the official position of the current administration (not reality). So will my drive content be removed?

Similarly, I have been monitoring the CDC change the covid19 deaths rate over time.

https://austingwalters.com/changes-in-the-cdc-counts-of-deat...

It appears the CDC had been inaccurately portraying the deaths rate(s) (I assume unintentionally). Particularly, it appears there's a significant number of unexplained deaths. That could be "misleading?" because I regularly collaborate with and we update the data.

"misleading" does not mean not inaccurate. Often the context matters and how is Google going to take this into account? We have multiple theories and discuss them, find more information and put it together.

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> Guess it contradicts the official position of the current administration (not reality). So will my drive content be removed?

Below is the actual policy. What term do you think your blog post violates?

> Do not distribute content that deceives, misleads, or confuses users. This includes:

> Misleading content related to civic and democratic processes: Content that is demonstrably false and could significantly undermine participation or trust in civic or democratic processes. This includes information about public voting procedures, political candidate eligibility based on age / birthplace, election results, or census participation that contradicts official government records. It also includes incorrect claims that a political figure or government official has died, been involved in an accident, or is suffering from a sudden serious illness.

> Misleading content related to harmful health practices: Misleading health or medical content that promotes or encourages others to engage in practices that may lead to serious physical or emotional harm to individuals, or serious public health harm.

> Manipulated media: Media that has been technically manipulated or doctored in a way that misleads users and may pose a serious risk of egregious harm.

> Misleading content may be allowed in an educational, documentary, scientific, or artistic context, but please be mindful to provide enough information to help people understand this context. In some cases, no amount of context will allow this content to remain on our platforms.

I can see how information that contradicts the CDC falls under "Misleading content related to harmful health practices: Misleading health or medical content that promotes or encourages others to engage in practices that may lead to serious physical or emotional harm to individuals, or serious public health harm."

Of course, it wouldn't actually fall under anything since it's not misleading, but such things get interpreted by social media censorship boards as misleading.

Also, the gun violence one may fall under "serious public health harm". There have been plenty of attempts to control guns using public health claims. https://www.apha.org/topics-and-issues/gun-violence

Both interpretations seem like mighty big stretches to find this particular content as noncomplaiant with that policy. IMHO, if the policy gets stretched like that, then the issue isn't with the policy itself.

I mean, you could make similar stretches to hypothetically ban discussion of tax increases, because of the serious emotional harm that would cause to wealthy people fearing the loss of their money.

Honestly, the only issue with the actual text that I see is the reference to "emotional harm," given how subjective that is and how certain ideological propositions can be medicalized via that route. The rest of it is very reasonable, especially the paragraphs about civic processes and manipulated media.

Numerous prominent organizations have called gun control a public health issue including the Biden administration (https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases... , the Center for Disease Control (https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/firearms/fastfact.htm... ), and the American Medical Association (https://www.ama-assn.org/topics/gun-violence ).

It's not a stretch because it's already being done. The reason that it seems absurd that Google would ban discussion of tax increases as a public health issue is that there aren't anti-tax groups who are already (as in right now independently of Google) calling tax increases a public health issue. Calling gun control a public health issue may be absurd, but it's an absurdity which is in active use in the real world.

If the Biden administration put out a press release stating that taxes were a public health issue, there might be more reason to worry that Google would use "public health" to censor "misinformation" about taxes.

"mighty big stretches" are actually fairly common. Ever been in hostile contact with, say, law enforcement?

Marijuana in the US is federally banned because the Supreme Court ruled (in Gonzales vs. Raich [0]) that planting cannabis privately for your own use can have impact on interstate trade and thus is a matter for the Feds. If this isn't a mighty big stretch, then what?

And if SCOTUS can do that, Google can do that as well.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzales_v._Raich

According to the current administration gun violence is a public health crisis:

https://efsgv.org/learn/learn-more-about-gun-violence/public...

I present arguments that could be considered "misleading" based on the administrations official position. Personally, I'd like to actually fix the issues, to do so, we need to discuss the issues. With that, I wrote something we can use as a framework to discuss the issues.

----

I simply deep dive into the data and found interesting results that differ (this is just a random selection):

(1) There doesn't appear to be a correlation between firearm access and homicides (if anything it's slightly reverse) https://austingwalters.com/firearms-by-the-numbers/#Firearms...

(2) White, Hispanic, Asian populations have one of the lowest firearm homicide rates in the world. In contrast, the black population has one of the highest firearm homicide rates are very high, which pushes the U.S. average up. (which arguably could support the systemic racism theory, but is a fact) https://austingwalters.com/firearms-by-the-numbers/#Comparin...

(3) The CDC & FBI crime statistics show that <0.5% of the population is murdered by firearms in a given year (~1-1.5% if you include suicides).

(4) Self-defense homicides are included in the data

(5) Gangs don't appear to be the reason for a high firearm homicide rate https://austingwalters.com/firearms-by-the-numbers/#Gang_Dem...

(6) Homicides per firearm are very low https://austingwalters.com/firearms-by-the-numbers/#Homicide...

(7) You're more likely to be beat to death or stabbed than shot (arguably guns would save you from this) https://austingwalters.com/firearms-by-the-numbers/#_Circums...

Sorry but your content is misleading. Take for example the following quote, from Amnesty International, which cite in your article:

> governments [with] poor regulation of the possession and use of guns lead to violence and that they must tackle this now through strict controls on guns and effective interventions in communities suffering high levels of gun violence.

From this say the following:

> The key statement is:

Guns lead to violence

The statement above implies a couple of things:

1. Gun volume and violence are correlated

2. As the number of guns increase, violence increases

—————

This is a blatant distortion of what that quote from Amnesty is saying.

That are clearly saying that _poor regulation of the possession and use of guns_ leads to violence.

You are quite obviously engaging in bad faith arguments.

edit: formatting

So his blog post should be banned then, right?

No, it should be ignored.

I think you’re splitting hairs, and this is my point — you pulled one quote out of a many thousand word document. Not only that, you suggest dismissing all the actual data based on this quote. This is an introductory quote that has no bearing on literally _anything_ presented. The framing of the discussion, perhaps, but not the data or conclusions.

In terms of why I thought this was interesting, the key statement is:

> poor regulation of the possession and use of guns

Meaning, the regulation of possession (I.e. reduced number of guns in peoples hands, particularly of certain classes of people) and use of guns, i.e. when they can be used (open carry vs conceal vs home only, etc).

There’s no bad faith, this is literally what they said. I then expand and look at factors that should have correlations to the above.

What I did is look at the data we had. The data actually indicates the places with the strictest gun laws in the US have the highest firearm related homicides. This implies regulations aren’t the issue (enforcement perhaps?). Regardless, the rest of the thousands of words explain and explore the topic.

> It also includes incorrect claims that a political figure or government official has died, been involved in an accident, or is suffering from a sudden serious illness.

In other words, it bans correct claims that Hillary Clinton had health problems, and that Joe Biden has dementia.

>> It also includes incorrect claims that a political figure or government official has died, been involved in an accident, or is suffering from a sudden serious illness.

> In other words, it bans correct claims...that Joe Biden has dementia.

Do you have a source for that that isn't blatant uninformed speculation, hopes and wishes, or a doctored video [1]? Preferably one that is well known and has enough credibility to not be banned from Wikipedia.

Also, which of these is dementia?

1. death

2. an accident

3. a sudden, serious illness

[1] IIRC, during the election there was one pushed by the Trump campaign that was misleadingly edited and slowed down to create the false impression that Biden had dementia.

Why don’t you ask Joe Biden the next time he takes unscripted questions.

> Why don’t you ask Joe Biden the next time he takes unscripted questions.

That's not the response of someone who can confidently prove or even support their claim. You're basically admitting it was baseless.

(The guy can’t talk to the press.)

Joe Biden has dementia?

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