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Comment by rocqua | Hacker News Reader

Thing is, if the idea is to stop wrong conspiracy theories from veing talked about, it makes sense to ban legitimate science that points in the direction of the conspiracy. If you want to do propaganda, then misinformation is useful. But even using only good-faith articles as sources, you can still make your propaganda, it will just be harder.

Especially with covid it seems like social media has decided to counter propaganda rather than misinformation. I can see why, but I think it is wrong. Especially if the argument is 'this is false'.

To me, this shows once again that content moderation against misinformation does not fit with private parties.

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> But even using only good-faith articles as sources, you can still make your propaganda, it will just be harder.

That's what, at their best, most of the media are doing. Presenting well-researched, balanced, truthful stories, carefully selected to promote their own ideology. Forget journalism - this even happens in peer-reviewed science:

Ceci et al. (1985) found a similar pattern. Research proposals hypothesizing either "reverse discrimination" (i.e., against White males) or conventional discrimination (i.e., against ethnic minorities) were submitted to 150 Internal Review Boards. Everything else about the proposals was held constant. The "reverse discrimination" proposals were approved less often than the conventional discrimination proposals. - https://jsis.washington.edu/global/wp-content/uploads/sites/...

Using an article critical of the pfizer trials in a well balanced truthful way is one thing. Using that same article to argue that e.g. the government is trying to poison us (or microchip us) is another thing entirely.

I think we need to work against the latter. I don't think censoring good-faith articles that are often abused is the way to do that.

Spot on, the question is, do you trust BMJ?

I think BMJ has a pretty convincing reputation. So how can ANY fact checker flag an article from them without really good arguments?

There is a serious flaw in the way schools teach people about propaganda, that leaves people believing that propaganda is synonymous with lying, and if a claim is factual then it isn't propaganda. Propaganda is any communication that is calculated to further an agenda. Propaganda uses truth, lies, everything in-between, and everything else (claims that don't lay on the truth-lie continuum at all; e.g. subjective values.)

That definition would forbid any kind of "call to action" communication, would it?

Debates are all and good, but at some point, a decision has to be reached. Especially for a problem like the current pandemic, this unfortunately involves calls for every individual to radically change their behaviour. That fits the definition of "agenda" pretty well.

So if any "any communication that is calculated to further an agenda" is forbidden, how would you fight the pandemic?

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