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Facebook Becomes 'A Haven For the Anti-Vaccination Movement' (siliconvalley.com)
"As a disturbing number of measles outbreaks crop up around the United States, Facebook is facing challenges combating widespread misinformation about vaccinations on its platform," reported the Washington Post Wednesday, saying Facebook "has become a haven for the anti-vaccination movement" and that "the rise of 'anti-vaxx' Facebook groups is overlapping with a resurgence of measles" in the U.S.
Facebook has publicly declared that fighting misinformation is one of its top priorities. But when it comes to policing misleading content about vaccinations, the site faces a thorny challenge. The bulk of anti-vaccination content doesn't violate Facebook's community guidelines for inciting "real-world harm," according to a spokesperson, and the site's algorithms often promote unscientific pages or posts about the issue...
Wendy Sue Swanson, a pediatrician at Seattle Children's Hospital and spokeswoman for the American Academy of Pediatrics, recently met with Facebook strategists about dealing with public health issues, including misinformation about vaccines, on the platform... "Facebook isn't responsible for changing quacks but they do have an opportunity to change the way information is served up." But Facebook's algorithms often promote anti-vaccination content over widely accepted, scientifically backed posts or pages about vaccinations. A recent investigation from the Guardian found that Facebook search results regarding vaccines were "dominated by anti-vaccination propaganda...." Facebook also accepted advertising revenue from Vax Truther, Anti-Vaxxer, Vaccines Revealed and Michigan for Vaccine Choice, among others, according to another investigation from the Guardian [which found Facebook even offers the ability to target 900,000 users that Facebook has helpfully identified as interested in "vaccine controversies."]
Last month YouTube promised to stop recommending videos that "could misinform users in harmful ways," and later told the Guardian that that would include anti-vaccine videos. The Guardian also noted this week that one anti-vaccination group on Facebook has over 150,000 members. But Facebook told the Post Wednesday that by not deleting the pseudoscience, they're actually giving their users an opportunity to speak up on their own and share factual counter-arguments themselves.
By Thursday Facebook added that it was "exploring" additional steps, including "reducing or removing this type of content from recommendations, including 'Groups You Should Join,' and demoting it in search results, while also ensuring that higher quality and more authoritative information is available."
Wendy Sue Swanson, a pediatrician at Seattle Children's Hospital and spokeswoman for the American Academy of Pediatrics, recently met with Facebook strategists about dealing with public health issues, including misinformation about vaccines, on the platform... "Facebook isn't responsible for changing quacks but they do have an opportunity to change the way information is served up." But Facebook's algorithms often promote anti-vaccination content over widely accepted, scientifically backed posts or pages about vaccinations. A recent investigation from the Guardian found that Facebook search results regarding vaccines were "dominated by anti-vaccination propaganda...." Facebook also accepted advertising revenue from Vax Truther, Anti-Vaxxer, Vaccines Revealed and Michigan for Vaccine Choice, among others, according to another investigation from the Guardian [which found Facebook even offers the ability to target 900,000 users that Facebook has helpfully identified as interested in "vaccine controversies."]
Last month YouTube promised to stop recommending videos that "could misinform users in harmful ways," and later told the Guardian that that would include anti-vaccine videos. The Guardian also noted this week that one anti-vaccination group on Facebook has over 150,000 members. But Facebook told the Post Wednesday that by not deleting the pseudoscience, they're actually giving their users an opportunity to speak up on their own and share factual counter-arguments themselves.
By Thursday Facebook added that it was "exploring" additional steps, including "reducing or removing this type of content from recommendations, including 'Groups You Should Join,' and demoting it in search results, while also ensuring that higher quality and more authoritative information is available."
So you're suggesting that Facebook is some kind of haven for stupid (third-grade education, Faux News addicted) people???
Oh yeah, Facebook and the anti-vax crowd. Two "movements" that go great together.
Can we get them all over there on facebook and then build a wall around facebook?
, according to another investigation from the Guardian [which found Facebook even offers the ability to target 900,000 users that Facebook has helpfully identified as interested in "vaccine controversies."]
If they have already identified the people with "false beliefs", those people can be targetted with public service ads with the "truth". Problem solved.
Why does everyone lose their shit over everything facebook? It is just an ugly website with no compelling reason to use it. Ignore it.
Home of Zuckerber's "dumb fucks", after all.
Letting these tards on the internet was a horrible, horrible mistake. Non-tech people weren't ready for the internet.
They may never be ready.
be doing something to identify and remove "fake news"?
Or are they becoming so desperate for new members they'll accept a group who advocates something stupider than flat earthers?
Utter bullshit. No degree of "border controls" (except "shoot them all, including citizens returning from vacation abroad, from a large distance and incinerate the bodies immediately") will have any effect here. Learn at least the basics of how things work before spouting utter nonsense.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
... social media site found to contain subdivided groups of people with similar interests, sharing opinions within their own echo chambers.
FB is a haven for nearly every unsavory social movement. After all, one of its primary functions is to put like-minded people in touch with each other.
Don't expect them to crack down on anti-vax, or for that matter.any other movement they can make money from, unless it gets to the point where facilitating them alienates enough customers that they become a liability. So fae, only terrorists and hard core bigots have earned such treatment.
You're a moron. On the Venn diagram of anti-vaxers, generally retarded nitwits like yourself, and crybabies who whine about "the MSM" all day like it's their job, you're not missing anti-vax by a large margin at all.
Go blow a child in a pizza parlor you Breitbart conspiracy dipshit.
And what market-based solution would you suggest to solve the problem?
We can't use the government obviously, because when the government does stuff that's socialism. And the more stuff it does, the socialister it is.
That is all advertising is after all. Even with regulation forcing them to do better, they'll still be fighting an uphill battle.
In the past a person could link and publish their own comments.
That would connect to people with the same views and interests.
The site would be a utility to pass on the content.
Now a site wants to be the publisher of users content and links?
To curate comments and users own speech?
To decide what speech is sinful?
What topics are next for some powerful social media curation?
History? Art? Politics? Comedy? Faith? DRM? Crypto? Unauthorized repair shop using imported parts? Catalonia?
Taiwan as the real China?
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
For the ____________________
See how easy that was to do.
Well of course Facebook promotes this pseudo-science and discredited stuff. Facebook thrives when people argue and engage, and it suits FB to have quackery that people have to rally against or for, vocally. Put false or misleading things online, and watch the clicks roll in.
Not much business or money to be made in supporting the quiet truth of science or accepted facts where no one thinks they're finding out something new, is there? Maybe we need to change the incentives for these companies.
doesn't violate Facebook's community guidelines for inciting "real-world harm"
Well, there are always isolation and quarantine if the vaccination programs fail. And the national guard to enforce them.
Looks like you triggered some of the loyal little globalist puppets. Any hint of securing borders always gets their panties in a ruffle. You're right, of course, not securing borders allows all sorts of vectors for disease to flow in un-checked. Programmed dummies will argue otherwise, but they never have any credible argument. Look at the one post that boils down to "we can't check 100% of people in, so might as well just leave the doors wide open". That's the kind of mentality you're dealing with here.
peer reviewed science shows an expected 100% mortality rate for those that get the measles vaccine, it's just as dangerous as dihydrogen oxide or facebook use
Scarcely surprising that left anti-science rules facebook.
Ergo there are no areas of common opinion?
Let us just beg for re-education camps.
Ignorance disclaimer: I am not on Facebook. I deleted my account in 2009. Yes, actually deleted.
Question: How is this Facebook's problem? Why does this require intervention? If the medical community is unquestionably correct, why aren't there just as many pro-vax as anti-vax posts? I'm seriously asking why I should be concerned? Is this really a fringe group that has fucked the algorithm? If Facebook allows dissidents to buck the norm I might check it out again. If Facebook lets coast to coast alien conspiracies boil until "experts" have to ask them to stop then I can dig it. If Facebook makes them stop then I'm all for whatever it is Facebook stops.
Not all vaccines are created equal, even against the same disease. But lets not get the facts get in the way of virtue signalling and corporate propaganda and profits.
I've been saying it for decades: computers aren't for everyone.
It's called "internet.org free basics". It's also a land grab and an attempt by teh zuck to crown himself king of the intertubes.
Imagine, if you will, all the rurals who're still on dialup or something close to it, getting access to exactly facebook and whatever websites bought themselves some teh zuck friendship trough an "internet.org free basics" consortium membership.
Now imagine all the yokels in all the other backwaters in the world also getting only facebook on their ultra-cheap smartphone. Their first --and likely only!-- taste of "civilisation"? The gospel as spread by facebook via "internet.org free basics", and nothing else.
It's easy to forget for many a slashdot reader, but the world is a big place and there's a lot of people without any sort of science-related education in it. Those make up the bulk of the hundreds of millions signed up for facebook. Well, and bots, of course.
Facebook is a big place. Estimates indicate 2.32 billion active users. That's 2,320,000,000 active users. One group may have 150,000 members, which translates to 150,000/2,320,000,000 - about 0.0065 percent. That's 0.000065 of the total number of active users.
In a city of 1,000,000 do we panic about what a small group of 65 people are doing? Does the opinion of the other 999,935 people in that city not matter? Or do we play with statistics to, once again, control the flow of all information - removing all input and discussion (from the other 999,935 too)?
How about in a smaller town of about 15,500 people - do we start censoring over what a single person does (this too is 0.000065 of 15.5k people)?
"one anti-vaccination group on Facebook has over 150,000 members."
Might as well censor the flat-earthers, astrology and phrenology. We will all miss a good laugh in the process
You've flirted with anti-vaxx as a division issue yourself SuperKendall are you a liberal?:
Superkendall:
"Since we're going into anecdotes I can say I used to get a bit more sick than that, about three times a winter with usually one incredibly bad illness lasting about a week. I stopped drinking soda, and drink water instead, and now I might get one mild cold a winter but sometimes not. I get about the same level of exercise and eat about the same (i.e. whatever the hell I want) with perhaps a touch more vegetables.
That's also all without ever having a flu vaccine shot. You have to wonder if just a few simple lifestyle changes across the U.S. would not totally eclipse any benefit from flu shots. And since I am not getting sick as often, I'm also not getting other people sick as often - the exact same benefit some claim for the vaccine approach. Only my overall health in all other matters is better too, unlike a flu vaccine which prevents only one thing, and temporarily at that (I have nothing against things like polio vaccines which make a ton of sense because they last forever)."
And again flirting with anti-vax as a trolling issue:
Superkendall:
"70% were willing to get vaccinations - so the study was proving them RIGHT. Yet a large number of them changed course AFTER they were told they were right... So it has zero to do with being "corrected". I think it has more to do with he messenger - scientists in general are now nearly despised, because of how they have misled people over decades now. From nutritional advice to the AGW cult, pretty much if a "scientist" tells you something now the population has learned there's an angle, and that angle is not meant for them. So who can blame them from shying away when the thing the scientists are saying is actually true for once?"
Are these people just extremely stupid or what? I mean, are people really that dumb?
they aren't vectors for disease if you're smart enough to get vaccinated. Vaccines will take care of the scary things, you might catch the flu if you're unlucky. You're acting like half of them have ebola and the other half have the plague. Get your vaccines and find some other idiotic reason to support the border wall. You could claim something like the mexicans are known to steal birthday presents and you're afraid because your birthday is coming up... and only libturds want to ruin white people's birthdays because racism.
Values and vaccines Parents who reject vaccination are making a rational choice – they prefer to put their children above the public good
"Tempers are wearing thin. Let's just hope some robot doesn't kill everybody." --Bender
Being white and male was tooooo haaaaard for the sad little sack, that's so depressing to hear they went full nazi victim faggot. How absolutely deplorable. What a true victim of society. Aww.
If anti-vaxers want a truly independent community, without interference from officials, there are several around Chernobyl. Apparently they are not the toxic radioactive hotspots that people think: "Most of the area of the exclusion zone gives rise to lower radiation dose rates than many areas of natural radioactivity worldwide.". And who knows they may be right. Case in point: fluoride in water and toothpaste.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
Breaking laws you find inconvenient like the ACTUAL CONSTITUTIONAL PURSE STRINGS, ARTICLE I, FOR A BULLSHIT INVENTED EMERGENCY that literally, he himself BLURTS OUT he could do differently if he wanted?
You're a moronic criminal apologist and traitor apologist crying about someone who correctly points out that a wall is no actual anti-crime or illegal immigration panacea when most come by plane anyway. It's retarded.
Shutting down the government to bullhead his way into Congress being forced to do that for a MONTH, people got evicted and lost their jobs over that pure bullshit, and now he thinks he can just steal from Veteran's housing programs?
Fucking moron belongs in prison and you can clean his feet there every day ADX Florence allows visitors, which is fuck you.
but the bulk of the left wing will call them out. And the closest thing the left has to an establishment (the late night talk shows and maybe these guys) call the anti-vax crowd out all the time.
The right wing, by comparison, elected an anti-vaxxer to the highest office of the land. I'd say GP is correct here.
The difference is left tries to reason with our kooks. The right is using them to achieve other political ends.
Hell, if I want to take it further that kind of "ends justifies the means" is why the right wing in America can welcome both the anti-Semitic white supremacists with Trump's "Both sides are bad" comment while also being staunch supporters of Israel.
The right has goals rather than principals. Makes them strong, but it also means they let a lot of fucked up shit slide that the left doesn't.
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Article summarized:
Corporate Progressive forced vaccination extremists note that the plebs are using Faceboot to challenge the official Narrative, and demand the iron boot of censorship stomp on the face of those uppity deplorables.
Exactly. We need to start rolling back some of those insane building and code requirements that are preventing people from building affordable housing for themselves. When a crappy little shack on a tiny lot costs over half a million dollars in CA, it is no wonder that there are going to be homeless people shrewn about everywhere.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2018/03/21/as-americans-become-more-educated-the-gop-is-moving-in-the-opposite-direction/
What is worse than government deciding on your behalf what is wrong and what is right?
Private transnational company doing that.
The harm that acceptance of this kind of "filtering" could do far outweighs anything uneducated conspiracy theorists could.
It is hard to imagine, impossible actually, this conversation happening 50 years ago. Circa 1950-1970, parents knew all too well the terror of polio from their childhood years, and the non-trivial, often major risks of measles and rubella, tetanus and diphtheria. If a few unfortunate people had severe side effects of a vaccine, it was of course very sad for that person or family, but a handful of adverse reactions was accepted and respected to protect tens or hundreds of thousands or even millions of other lives.
It is easy to dismiss the non-vaxers as just kooks and idiots, as they probably are, but today, without large epidemics of those diseases to keep everyone just a little terrified, the issue becomes out-of-sight-out-of-mind. It is easy then for the herd to forget why we vaccinate, and what the price is for failing to do so. Of course, we have to decide if we castigate and chastise versus dismiss and forgive, those anti-vaxers who place their fear of a one-in-a-million complication above a sense of communal responsibility, participation, and shared risk.
A situation like this is ultimately self-correcting over a cycle of maybe 50 to a 100 years. If too many people fail to vaccinate for whatever reason, and epidemics of deadly disease flareup, then eventually enough people will get scared enough to make enough noise for government to step in or act responsibly as the voice of the overly vocal anti-vaxers die down or start singing the opposite tune. It will just take one loud mouthed or well connected anti-vaxer to have their precious Johnny or Janey die from measles or tetanus or be crippled by polio to start singing a different tune. Unfortunately, public perception and stupidity or governmental cowardice and ineptitude create propagation delays and phase lags in the response to such large social issues, first too slow to act, then too far of an overshoot, such that an even keel steady-as-she goes balance cannot be maintained. Sadly, un-moderated un-referreed adult-free Lord-of-the Flies platforms like Facebook make it all too easy for the kooks to have too much influence.
There is though a simple and elegant solution. If you choose to eschew the common good and fail to participate in the general welfare, so be it. But, if you make your own rules, you must live by those rules. Don't want to vaccinate - fine. But, if your poor Johnny and Janey gets sick with the measles or any such preventable disease, tough, no insurance for you. It's like the Little Red Hen. If you don't want to participate in making the bread, you don't get to eat the bread. Want to save poor little Johnny's life, or spend years rehabilitating him for paralysis or hearing loss or months on a ventilator? Well, sad for the poor kid, but the parents got what they bargained for, and they have to pay for it all themselves, no dipping into the societal funds available to help those who acted responsibly in the interests of the greater good. No vaccination, no problem, but if you get sick from that, No insurance for you - so sayeth Yev Kassem.
The antivaxxers I know are batshit crazy uneducated libertarians. It's a lack of education and tendency towards extremism that creates antivaxxers.
Crybaby Libertarian whines incoherently online as if the most important thing his life has to offer, right now. Sadder news at 11, we promise.
effing weirdos not vaccinating their children
Hell. You don't even need to send them anywhere miserable or radioactive. One of the islands in Hawaii is a former leper colony. Since leprosy can actually be treated and cured nowadays, there's hardly a need for its former purpose. We could just exile the unvaccinated to that island. And they couldn't even make any claim that they were being mistreated. "Wait... so I don't have to be vaccinated; AND I get to live in Hawaii???" The only problem I can see is that some people might actually become anti-vaxers just for the relocation to Hawaii.
Imagine all the people...
Let them die!
Facebook is a total shitshow. Half the people think it needs to do more to prevent spread of certain (possibly false) information. The other half hate it because they think it is censoring the truth and has a bias.
I feel like Facebook (the platform, not necessarily the company) is basically the AOL of the 2010's, and destined for the same fate. A lot of sane people are walking away from facebook. Soon it will just be old people who are uncomfortable with technology (like AOL).
By including this sig, the copyright holders of this work or collection unreservedly place it in the public domain.
It's not the immigrants, trust us.
This is the result of freedom of speech. It's a Good Thing. Sure, go ahead and make laws that outlaw incitement to illegal activities, but you'd better not make a law against telling people what to believe.
If you think that having people be unvaccinated is such a danger to public health, then go ahead and make vaccination a legal requirement. Banning people from even advocating against vaccination is a more extreme step than that.
Yes, I get it: we're not talking about all free speech here, only speech via Facebook. They can restrict speech much more than can the government via corporate policies. But I'm sure they don't want to moderate postings more than they have to, just for cost reasons, and do you really want some opaque and unaccountable Facebook system deciding what we're allowed to read?
The solution is for people to learn how to distinguish good reporting from propaganda. Not everyone's going to be able to do this, or even want to, but having some percentage of people fall for lies is better than trying to filter what everyone reads.
My opinion is the Big Pharma has been fleecing the public and government medical tax dollars for years and are strong supporters of the Democrats who promote their products and the FDA as the 500lb gorilla to enforce it.
Immunizations work - mostly. But a parent has to be smart about it.
When we took my 4 year old to the doctors after having lived abroad in Australia which has decent health policy, they said we needed to catch her up on her shots - here are 23 shots she needs today. I said no. Just give her the basics like MMR and we'll be back in 6 months for another set. I have no regrets spacing them out after reading of infants dying in the parking lot outside of clinics after receiving too many shots at once.
Flu shots I'm suspicious of. Last flu shot I got really sick. After that year to year I might get a minor inconvenience of feeling down for a week or so and maybe a few days off work. But I also don't work with children or the elderly. If anyone in our family is sick, the visit to grandpa can wait a week.
"But Facebook told the Post Wednesday that by not deleting the pseudoscience, they're actually giving their users an opportunity to speak up on their own and share factual counter-arguments themselves. "
Yeah, that's like saying you won't ban poisonous vipers from the airline because they might proved the antivenom themselves...
Well the anti-vax people scream that it's their right not to vaccinate their spawn. Our mistake is we continue to pretend their rights matter. We remove children from unfit parents every day. I see no reason that this shouldn't be another reason to do so.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
Separating children from their parents as a punishment for the parent is barbaric. I know you mean well, but please take a little time to envision the actual separation event. Also, what is the logical rationale for separating them as opposed to just vaccinating the kid involuntarily (which is also barbaric, but at least accomplishes the objective of vaccinating the kid without separating them from parents). What if your job was to go around to anti-vaxxer homes and force vaccinate kids while police restrain the parents? Would you feel good about yourself at the end of the day?
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Either freedom of speech is total, or it isn't freedom of speech at all.
That said, antivax is idiot just like homeopathy and any non-scientific statement about scientific topics.
Nonetheless, I wand those morons to be free to tell (or write) whatever they want.
For the sake of freedom.
Facebook, the internet, computers and smartphones all work because of technological applications from SCIENCE and the SCIENTIFIC METHODOLOGY.
If you really-really want to ditch them, then please turn off all of your technological devices and services before starting.
Otherwise your credibility and reliability will suffer.
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
Always amazes me to see the Slashdotters ignorance on vaccines and their malice to those that disagree with them!
> The one thing that all anti-vaccine people have in common is that they're woefully ignorant.
> Well the anti-vax people scream that it's their right not to vaccinate their spawn. Our mistake is we continue to pretend their rights matter.
I'd suggest folks read the following:
https://theconversation.com/anti-vaxxers-admitting-that-vaccinology-is-an-imperfect-science-may-be-a-better-way-to-defeat-sceptics-111794
which suggests a bit more humility given the imperfect record of vaccine science.
Here are some well supported facts:
1. Lower rates of vaccination are often found in professional-class neighborhoods (so much for ignorance of anti-vaxxers)
2. Many anti-vaxxers are actually ex-vaxxers who have had a child of themselves or friends and family harmed by vaccines.
3. The law of the USA says that "vaccines are unavoidablly unsafe", so much so they are the only product for which the makers have no product liability
4. While there is extensive scientific literature and historical evidence supporting that *most* vaccines do effectively suppress their target diseases:
4.1.: the Flu vaccine and the HPV vaccines are not among them, and
4.2: their is also extensive scientific literature describing the mechanisms for harmful side-effects of vaccines
5. The medical marvels of the 20th century are good sewerage and clean water, contributing an order of magnitude more to reduction in deaths than vaccines.
The science of the effectiveness of (most) vaccines but also unfortunately the science showing potential for harm from vaccines to some people are both substantial. Governments over the world have claimed for decades that Roundup and Glyphosate are perfectly safe, and just now its coming out that they promote cancer. Earlier, we where told the same about smoking cigarettes.
Internet is a media for dissent. When government tells its people outright lies, they resort to Internet to find the information and then to organize.
Americans lauded Arab Spring, now even better, they can have a few springs right at home.
Antivaxxing has a point! The corruption of the US government by Big Pharma is apparent and the number of diseases they do vaccinate against is crazy and keeps growing. There should be a check to that.
Sadly the anti vax people don't bother to remember the terrible out breaks and deaths that required science to create a vaccination in the first place. They worry about the very few instead of the many it will save. Do we have to repeat the horrible past because idiots can't remember it?
I used to play tennis at a tennis club near Palm Springs, California. An older couple of snowbirds from Canada were in my doubles group one day. The man started telling me what was wrong with California! He said the worst thing was the law California passed requiring children to get vaccinated. He claimed that he is a chiropractor, and that neither he nor any of his five children have ever been vaccinated, and that they are all fine. I tried to argue with him, that his "sample size" of six is by no means statistically indicative of anything. But it was no use.
Anti-vaxxers are very similar to climate-change-deniers. They all deny science when it does not comport to their "beliefs". Trying to argue things like facts and reasoning with them is of no use.
Not to make you look any stupider than you do on your own, but Seattle is in King County.
Clark County, the county with this outbreak was a 50/50 split in the 2016 election.
The world will be a much better place after America falls...
/quote>
Actually, no:
https://www.economist.com/euro...
Only an idot would use Facebook and only an idiot would not vaccinate their kids.
A couple of days ago, I was participating happily in a group on Facebook related to one of my interests - not going to say which for reasons which should be obvious - when someone made a post which I'm still not sure was or wasn't a troll (admittedly, that's the best kind of troll) in which the poster claimed his wife had told him it was "time" to move to a state which was "pro-life" and anti-vax. I found it in its nascent stages, and was able to get a couple of good jabs in before it asploded, like "state of being single", before the anti-vaxxers showed up in larger numbers with their abject lack of logic. I soldiered on good-naturedly with muh facts for some time (skipping the pro-choice debate, letting the women have that one) and remaining on my best (expletive-light) behavior before the conversation was nuked, probably by admin for political content.
Thankfully, the antis were severely in the minority. They'd whine about live virus vaccine vax shedding, then refuse to comprehend herd immunity and that the very reason that we need widespread immunization is to protect their immunocompromised snowflakes. They'd then cry about thimerosal and adjuvants, ignoring that even if these substances remain in the body, the quantities are miniscule (and thimerosal is scarce to begin with.) Hell, they even tried to go with "measles isn't serious", easily countered with the recent report about how getting measles makes one susceptible to several other diseases. They'd finally fall back on the "personal choice" argument, as if any harm to others could be justified on that basis. And I'm proud to say that the community skewered their arguments each and every time. We came together to reject them as a group.
What's amusingly ironic is that they don't understand that their willful anti-vaxxer ignorance behaves just like a disease. It hides in communities that reject the vaccine (information) and then attempts to infect others. And if those others don't have a strong immune system, then they can easily be infected as well. We got done with them in a couple of hours total, including the repeat outbreak in which one of them posted a poll with only a bunch of insulting options which tried to make the antis out to be victims.
Did we convince any of those people that they were wrong? I assure you, we did not. But we denied them unchallenged floor space, and shared our immunities with others, making them more resistant to unscientific propaganda spread by the McCarthys of the world. And that's more important than anything that Facebook can or will do about the problem. Facebook shouldn't do one single thing to these communities directly. If it has any role in combating anti-vaxxers, it is to continue to exist. Those people will go anywhere they can have a voice. If they're on Facebook, then they're easily contained. It's a platform they don't control. If they infect one group you care about, you can start two more where you're in control. And since they are sharply in the minority, both there and everywhere else, they are easily countered. If we were still using Usenet, they'd be able to crap up a much higher percentage of sub-communities, but on Facebook, moderated groups are overwhelmingly the norm and not the exception. The immune system is much stronger. And this level of moderation is feasible because the groups tend to be smaller, and the moderation system more nuanced. Groups can be moderated in the same fashion (posts require pre-approval) and/or after the fact, users can be banned entirely, etc. For once, Facebook's method of operation is a boon, not a bane.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I'm saying that the left actively suppress and argues with their anti-vaxxers. The right actively encourages them. Again, could you imagine the Democrats running an anti-vaxxer candidate for president? Could you imagine that candidate _winning_?
Anti-vaxxers aren't woefully ignorant, they're _willfully_ ignorant. I think that's a huge part of the problem. It's the same as flat earthers and cultists in general. There's a community there that feels like they're under siege. Folks like that accept all comers. That means if you're the kind of kook that gets kicked out of most communities you're still welcome.
Trump questions vaccines because that got him in with that community with very little effort and virtually no cost. Trump's modus operandi is to say everything, see what he gets away with, and drop anything that doesn't go over well and act like he never said it. Folks forget that Trump is very, very well educated. He's rich, after all. Now, he sucks at everything he does, but that's not stupidity per-se. Stupidity is the complete inability to process information beyond a certain level. Trump's not incapable, he's unwilling because, thanks to his dad's money, he doesn't have to.
Bottom line, to the right wing the anti-vaxxers are useful idiots. To the left they're unfortunate fools to be pitied and educated so they don't kill themselves or others.
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People did not get evicted and they did not ‘lose their job’. Some may have saught emplyment elsewhere but no federal employee was fired because of a government shutdown. No landlord is going to evict because they were 30 days past due. The eviction process takes longer. Its one thing to disagree, it is entirely another to make up a fake crisis while attacking anothers fake crisis. It makes you the same. Guess you and trump have a lot more in common than you realized.
The SCRA, an updated version of the Soldiers and Sailors Act, protects from eviction, reposession, and forclosures. This is in the process of being expanded to include federal employees during government furlough. Any court challenge to an eviction would fair poorly for the landlord trying to evict.
I take it you arent tracking this new disease the CDC is baffled by. It acts like polio but a polio vaccine does nothing to stop it. It isnt the ones we have vaccines for that worry me. I have more vaccines than most anyone. During the first gulf war I was vaccinated and medicated with shit I still dont know what it is. I do know that we were all instructed to never donate blood. First it was 5years, but then a nee shot was administered in 1993 and that got upgraded to ‘never donate blood as long as you live’. I am faitly certain only a few can lay claim to that level of vaccination.
Ebola actually works too fast for it to go pandemic. Modifying it to have a 3 week incubation period would likely wipe out the planet.
Anti-Vaxxers are notoriously mostly liberal.
Bullshit. The vast majority of ant-vaxxers are right-wing or 'libertarian', whatever that means.
Many Fox News viewers in Seattle are there?
Yes, there are. For example, Snohomish county, just north of Seattle, leans strongly to the right. Clark county is about half and half, so yeah, there are indeed lots of Fox News viewers in WA state- including in and around Seattle. I worked with plenty of them at places like Microsoft, AT&T, Boeing, etc etc.
Do you see anti-vaxxers in Texas? Being near the border you see realists who vaccinate kids as soon as they can.
Yes, there are plenty of anti-vaxxers in Texas. Are you seriously trying to convince us that Texas is some sort of enlightened liberal enclave?
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Just go back to a family email list and be done with it.
So once again facebook is being used by stupid people to espouse a position that has no merit. Our society isn't ready for the internet. Far too many people think they have something to say that the whole world should pay attention to, and they're wrong.
Europe doesn't have a gun vaccine.
Separating children from their parents as a punishment for the parent is barbaric.
Agreed, and we should never do this (including at the US southern border). Separating children from their parents as protection for the children, however, is an important tool. It should never be a common or an easy tool, but it must sometimes be done, usually when the parent is actively endangering the kids.
I agree that mandatory vaccination is a better path. While anti-vaxxers are endangering their children, it's not a huge or immediate danger. It's more a danger to everyone.
would have kept us from getting to the moon or even launching satellites.
The Green New Deal as it stands is a non binding resolution. It's there to get the ball rolling. Step out of the Fox News bubble and you'll learn that
That said, we're going to have to go to renewables at some point. And unless you're a climate change denier then it's either going to be soon or we're gonna have famine and war from the disruption to our food supply.
More immediately Automation is coming for about 20% of the jobs in the next 20 years. That's an optimistic outlook. Again, we either find something for all those out of work coal miners, truck drivers and cashiers to do or they'll do the same thing large, abandoned populations have done for centuries: find somebody to organize them into a mob, then an army, and then come and kill you and take your stuff.
Sure, a lot of them will die, but I seem to remember somebody telling them "What have you got to lose?"...
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Put you ear close to your computer because I am going to have to whisper.
All these diseases that are popping up are coming from illegal aliens.
I don't get it, why is it not a crime to tell people not to vaccinate? No "real-world harm"? Seriously? People are dying. And it would be fine if just people who chose to not vaccinate (well, OK, their parents - sorry kids), but there's a part of the population who cannot vaccinate even if they want to and they rely on herd immunity.
Why was Wakefield never prosecuted? He is responsible for more deaths than most serial killers and instead he is allowed to continue making anti-vaxx documentaries!
Urging people not to vaccinate should be a crime, and un-vaccinated kids should not be allowed in public schools. No need to go back to the middle ages...
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
... in large red font ON THE LANDING PAGE:
Facebook's content is not science or journalism. We excel at cat videos, selfies, and pictures of food. Anything else is pure bullshit.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
During the first gulf war I was vaccinated and medicated with shit I still dont know what it is
It's a crying shame that enlisted give up their right to know what's put into their body when they enlist, but that's how it is...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
If some group of people have decided to advocate something stupid (or not stupid, for that matter) we all should have the same rights to use whatever medium is available to everyone for that discussion. More and more often, a group of do-gooders like the ones cited here pops up demanding that people be protected from things that they believe to be untrue. People have the right to be wrong, and if we attempt to curtail others' thought in public forums, then we are becoming exactly the society described in Orwell's 1984. Do you really want the government to hobble the communication of people with views that oppose the currently-held government position on something?
Wait ... Moron Gardens contains morons ???
Who cares about punishing the parents? I'm talking about removing a child from unfit parents. Some of the diseases we can vaccinate against can cripple a child for life, polio, or kill it. This can be prevented with a simple vaccination. We are doing nothing more than removing children from unfit parents.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
Bullshit - ALL of the most public anti-tax proponents are liberal Hollywood elite.
No coincidence that besides ultra-liberal Seattle, another place having measles outbreaks in Hollywood itself.
You can yammer all you want but how do you explain only liberal areas having these issues? As I said, Texas (and other strongly conservative states) do not.
I have a lot of evidence showing what I say is true - you have nothing but hot air and a mind hell-bent on ignorance.
The first step of solving any problem is admitting you have one - you can't even do that much to save kids. Sick dude.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Imagine you go, for one day, visiting parents who had a child who could not be vaccinated (allergy, vaccine unavailable, whatever) and who lost that child to the matching infection. That infection would probably not have happened with herd immunity.
How would you feel at the end of that day?
Smart phones are thin client (to the corporate cloud).
Computer must mean a thick client, or it doesn't mean anything at all.
Bullshit. As a supposed pro-vaxxer you should know that it's not about stopping every single case of a disease, it's about lowering the percentage of susceptible people in the population so that on average, a statistical sick person transmits the disease to less than one (vulnerable) person. The famous R01.
So, requiring certificate of vaccination for all people entering is certainly a good strategy. But of course (speaking from the other side of the pond here) with our own immigration problem, we have a few million immigrants from countries where the vaccination rate is something like 60%, and yet, the recent measles outbreaks get blamed on the few thousand anti-vaxxers we have, and not on the masses of unvaccinated immigrants. And somehow, when Europeans do get forcibly vaccinated it's good for us and we should be kissing the ground in front of our masters in gratitude, but when someone suggests doing the same forced vaccination of immigrants (just the same as we Europeans go through) it becomes a violation of human rights, fascism, nazizm, thoughtcrime and so on. Good for me but not for thee? You know, I'm a pro-vaxxer, but looking at that I find it hard to blame anti-vaxxers for believing what they do believe.
It doesn't matter. Big Pharma will reap benefits. People will always complain and those who won't get vaccines will get them once a big disease wipes out the nonners.
The anti-vaxxers are loud but having them on the Internet means they have access to the truth. For example, google "Are vaccines safe" and you'll find several pages of pro-vaccine literature. Same with "Do vaccines cause autism".
Also, the Internet means that the next generation is going to grow up in a world where the default is having lots of information. That generation is about to hit the workforce in mass in about 2-5 years (give or take). Same for voting.
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Bullshit - ALL of the most public anti-tax proponents are liberal Hollywood elite.
I stopped reading after the bit about those evil old "liberal Hollywood elite", your language has outed you.
Yes, it's all those "liberal Hollywood elites" to blame for everything, whatever you say. Cool story bro.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Opinion discarded, phone peasant.
Filthy phone peasants shouldn't be allowed to post in the same spaces as PC master race.
The Measles are not the result of immigrants coming into the country. They are the result of citizens not being immunized. Stop pushing propaganda lies.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Homeless come to California both of their own accord, and because others literally send them here. But where else do they go? Certainly not into the polar vortex to be flash-frozen.
This is the real federal emergency. AOC's proposed non-binding resolution aside, some have long agitated for a "green new deal" that would focus on restoration of damaged ecosystems whose health is necessary for the maintenance of our way of life. Granted, some homeless want to be homeless, but the majority want what everyone else wants - their own little piece of the American dream, with a home and a job, and food, and medical care. Give them restoration jobs and we all benefit. But California can't afford to do that for all the nation's homeless without help.
We must hang together, or we will certainly all be screwed.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I would feel awful. But I am also not an anti-vaxxer. I just can't believe the over-heated rhetoric I am getting from some pro-vaxxers. To me, they literally sound like they have lost their minds and lost all sense of humanity. Maybe they are just virtue signalling. I don't know.
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I assume you mean morally, not "would you rather program computers or help". And yes, of course. You're saving children's lives. Their parents are asshats.
I mean, it would be emotionally draining, but so would dealing with all kinds of horrific things that, for example, the police have to. I wouldn't want to be a judge who had to sentence people to jail either, but I'm glad they exist.
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Centralization of the common forum results in lots more people encountering information they don’t agree with. It used to be that people went to their own email chains or forums to discuss stuff with people who were of their ilk. Then this newfangled thing called Facebook came out, and it was originally exclusively for college kids, so everyone else thought it was cool. And it was great to get online and reach out to people you hadn’t seen in ages, and share photos with family members. And since everyone is on it, you can guarantee being able to find lost connections. And make groups for people to meet up and share their ideas.
But this also creates a herd. Herds can be guided. Sometimes off of a cliff.