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Comment by rybosworld | Hacker News Reader

Right-leaning users were banned more often than left-leaning users.

The reason is that Conservative/Republican users of Twitter also tended to break the rules more often. Particularly in regards to sharing misinformation.

Depending on which side of the aisle you lean, it's very easy to spin this one way vs the other.

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Misinformation is in the eyes of the beholder and the best way to dismiss misinformation is to let it shine under the light of scrutiny.

By banning it entirely, you let it fester which is where we're at today.

No, misinformation is objective, and allowing it to propagate lets it fester.

The belief that wearing general purpose masks would prevent the spread of COVID 19 was misinformation that festered for quite some time.

Okay buddy. Masks absolutely help reduce the spread of particulates but you can pretend that’s not true if you want.

Masks do reduce the spread of particulates by some amount. Reducing the spread of particulates by some amount has a negligible impact on the spread of COVID 19 and other respiratory viruses. To believe otherwise is, again, misinformation.

https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseas...

That link reaffirms that masks reduce particulates by some amount and offers no evidence this impacts the spread of respiratory illnesses.

lol it literally says that masks reduce the spread of COVID. By all means, provide some evidence to the contrary

The most obvious and trivial answer is that countries implementing mask mandates have seen COVID become endemic. That masks provide 'some' impact is obvious. That said impact is negligible is also obvious. We are still waiting, years and years latter, for that curve to finally be flattened.

So no data, cool. I will no longer believe Johns Hopkins and will instead defer to you for medical advice because obviously you’ve made a seriously compelling argument.

Curve flattening was about trying not to overwhelm the hospitals.

You're making a basic logic error that I've seen so many times from your camp: "if it doesn't work 100% it doesn't work at all". Why do you think this is a logical requirement?

> That said impact is negligible is also obvious

No, it's not obvious in any way. Please show us.

Your statement and opinion are why Elon Musk owns Twitter now.

Huh? What are you saying?

No they aren’t. He owns it because he couldn’t back out of his Internet Troll-joke offer.

Let’s try to be at least slightly honest about reality, here.

And I don't think he cares because he has more money than sense at this point. Like I said elsewhere, you can now pretty much say whatever you want on Twitter within reason.

So tell me, who's winning now?

Mark Zuckerberg?

I’m not clear what this has to do with your parent comment being disingenuous.

Does Musk “winning” make you feel better about things?

> the best way to dismiss misinformation is to let it shine under the light of scrutiny

That has been tried many times and it does not work at scale. Generating and distributing information is orders of magnitude easier, faster, and cheaper than generating and distributing refutations of that misinformation.

The bullshit asymmetry principle:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law

This isn't a law. This is an opinion by someone who can't stand being told that something he might think is correct isn't and when pushed on it can't argue in good faith because his position isnt as good as he thought.

Also considering who came up with it, it's another prime example of someone who is an expert in one area assuming he has expertise in another that he has zero expertise in.

I mean it took you probably 20 seconds to type that out very assertively and aggressively.

And yet here we are where you can post pretty much whatever you want within reason on Twitter. You tell me, who is winning?

Agreed. lol.

"refute" is more than just saying "I don't think it's true". You have to provide evidence, or I suppose in some cases an incredibly solid justification to refute.

I say "desantis is actually running for president to sell off Texas to the Mexicans".

Took me about 4 seconds to write that. You have an order of magnitude to refute it - about 40 seconds. God speed.

[citation needed]

I'll take down votes all day.

Information wants to be free. I can't believe I have to say this on a site like this.

I'm glad Elon bought Twitter because it allows for disinformation to be exposed and discussed.

The more you suppress it, the more people seek it out.

The petty tyrants out there with opinions like yours deserve the freedom of speech they get because it shows that some stuff you think is valid isn't actually as valid as you think it is.

> Information wants to be free...I'm glad Elon bought Twitter because it allows for disinformation to be exposed and discussed.

Is this the same Elon who disallowed links to competitor sites? Who announced that the term "cisgender" would be classified as hate speech? Who suspended accounts for criticizing him? Who closed the site so it could be viewed by logged-in users only?

I understand advocating for free speech, but seeing that vision realized in Elon's management of Twitter requires willful blindness.

> Information wants to be free. I can't believe I have to say this on a site like this.

This is a tech-startup website that exists to monetize SV-style start-ups. The whole point is to make as much money as possible, and any FOSS love is wholly incidental.

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