Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
Once upon a time, to be on "thefacebook", you had to be a student at one of the nation's top universities.
Once upon a time.
... 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.
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.
Haha actually anti vaxxers are left wingers who don't watch Faux News
The anti-vax movement is not politically polarized. Instead, it attracts kooks from both the right and left. It is associated with political extremism regardless of direction. Left-wingnuts see vaccines as a corporate conspiracy. Right-wingnuts see vaccines as a government conspiracy. Moderates on both the left and right vaccinate their kids.
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.
Your dad needs to be a rich alumnus in that case, though.
I fully support people not getting a vaccine when they have genuine medical evidence that they are especially vulnerable to side effects. In fact, that is why it is so important to have as many people as possible to be vaccinated -- so that we can protect those who cannot afford to take the risk.
I would take the risk of measles over becoming parapelegic any day of the week.
If you actually had a real risk, that may be correct. But if it is just something you made up to push blame of your mother's hidden but already existing MS on someone, so you can have a fairy tale that you can protect yourself, well, I cannot persuade the purposefully stupid.
Furthermore I would also point out that if you have some extreme autoimmune risk, contracting the real flu is inherently dangerous to you, even if the vaccine might be more dangerous. So, in this scenario, one should think real hard about whether lots of people avoiding vaccines on weakly thought out reasons is a good policy -- since those people not getting vaccinated might literally kill you.
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
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
Where are the stats to back this up? You can't just claim an incendiary partisan point like that without citing sources.
bahaha, conspiracy theorists always make me laugh... wooo, agenda 21 sounds so ominous... BUT WAIT! you've been taken in because mandate 34 wants you to be distracted. Flat earth is warping due to us floating closer to the van allen belt. Soon we'll parallax and the US will shift towards the flat-earth pole and turn into an ice age, while alaska will become warm!
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?"
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.
Leper colony V2.0
Have gnu, will travel.
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.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
A filthy leftist rag told him!
Ezekiel 23:20
Sadly everyone has one in their pocket now.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Two "movements" that go great together.
Bowel movements?
Ezekiel 23:20
Google vagina eggs. Go on ... it'll make an idiot out of you. And then you'll realize, if ye've the grey matter to analyze it, that there are none so damn foolish as those who think they are so damn right.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
Hey, wanna blast from the past regarding paralysis? Google âoeiron lungâ, the machine used to keep people breathing after being paralyzed by polio, before vaccines pretty much wiped it out. Ive had bad effects after getting vaccines, and I wouldnt blame someone with the same for quietly opting out, but people doing public outreach telling others not to take them and raising their own chance of infection are IDIOTS.
-The art of programming is the pursuit of absolute simplicity.
"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...
"You can't just claim an incendiary partisan point like that without citing sources." Your point is valid, but it still won't stop me from shitposting.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
Funny thing about Polio is sanitation made it really bad. Before the 20th century or slightly earlier, everyone was exposed and bad reactions to the virus were relatively rare. Bring in sanitation and large outbreaks became common and affected older people where the affects were usually worse.
Luckily Polio vaccines were discovered/invented that worked well enough though people did get Polio from the live vaccine to the point where as of 2017, there were more cases caused by vaccine then wild Polio.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poliomyelitis#History and the vaccine section.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
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.
So you'd rather have Polio then instead of a vaccination against it.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Vaccination is about protecting the many, if there are random individuals that aren't responding well to vaccination then they would probably suffer even worse from the real disease.
If you don't understand that - then you don't understand how vaccination works.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Unfortunately, it is proven that showing believers the truth just makes them clasp at their beliefs even stronger.
A kind of sunk cost fallacy.
Conspiracy theories live and thrive because the official narrative has flaws or is implausible or if no official narrative has been presented.
Historically, many official narratives have ended up being outright lies. Weapons of mass-destruction in Iraq. We are still over there looking for them. Bound to find them any day. Many wars throughout history started on an official story that was a lie. Many of the people in the civil rights movement thought the government was spying on them. It was not until decades later that this was proved to be true. Their fears were dismissed at the time as conspiracy theories. It is very naive to think that the official story is true about everything. But of course, this should not be carte blanche to make up and spread ridiculous conspiracy theories either. So, if you ask me, conspiracy theories live and flourish because there is ample historical precedent for conspiracies.
In the case of vaccines, the lack of nuance in the messaging of the pro-vaccination crowd leads anti-vaxers to believe that the pro-vax people are just brainwashed robots who have not done any research but instead are parroting the opinions put forth by vaccine makers and public health professionals who make money from vaccines. The anti-vax people think they have taken the red pill while the pro-vaxxers have all taken the blue-pill.
By including this sig, the copyright holders of this work or collection unreservedly place it in the public domain.
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?
By including this sig, the copyright holders of this work or collection unreservedly place it in the public domain.
Leftists don't wear MAGA hats. That's proof right? That or superior fashion sense.
Does avoiding Fox News count? (In all seriousness for once, I think an affinity for Fox News certainly indicates something, but not education.)
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.
No. Conspiracy theories thrive because people are emotional and refuse to believe things that go against their interests, and want a justification of why things aren't the way they want. The more complex the explanation is, the more people believe it's a conspiracy.
Take for example Nikola Tesla. There is, especially in Latin America, a huge amount of people who believe in free energy (curiously they call it "energias libres" meaning free as in free speech, when they mean "energias gratis" meaning free as in free beer). For these people, Nikola Tesla was a messiah. He was the person who INVENTED electricity. Then he was stopped by the most evil person in history: Thomas Edison, who only wanted money and didn't know wany science. And because of this, we are now forced to pay for electricity. If only Tesla could have developed his "energy tower", we'd have free electricity for all mankind. But Tesla died, and thus, we can't have free power anymore. There is no other person who could develop this. We're doomed now. Damn Edison!
That's what they honestly believe. It's all a conspiracy of corporations protected by governments (especially the US government), who want to force us to pay for something Tesla demonstrated is free. This is the conspiracy theory and it comes from people who just want to blame high energy costs to other factors, and not the fact that they mostly live in poor countries with low salaries.
The same goes for people who believe in "the car that runs on water and the patent was bought by Big Oil and the inventor killed".
Youtube is full of "free energy" videos of people turning lightbulbs on in thin air and have millions of views and thousands of comments claiming it's not fake, it's real, and thus, this proves everything Tesla said was right. But they're not Tesla, so they can't make it large scale.
There is always the "messiah complex" thing with conspiracy theorists. That things are "invented" by lone wolfes at their houses, and not in university or corporate labs (duh, obviously if they did that, corporations would steal their ideas).
Moon landing conspiracy theorists come up with the wildest explanations of why the moon landing is fake. One of them, I remember, was from a poor country and said "wow, we barely could make TV work at a few kilometers and it was really difficult, expensive, and in black and white, and this was in 1978, but the americans not only sent a rocket to the moon but also transmitted from the moon IN COLOR? It's obviously fake". This person wasn't even aware that "americans" had color TV in 1953, 16 years before people went to the moon. Or that americans sent TV signals to satellites in space in 1962. And those satellites were used to broadcast the moon landing live across the world. No. He lived in a poor country, with poor infrastructure, and he had a poor experience. So it must have been the same way for everyone everywhere.
In short, it's not about "official narrative", it's about people refusing to believe in the evidence presented, because they deeply believe in something.
Oh and the USA being in the middle of it is enough to prove the conspiracy. Russia though, is cool. Russia is our friend. Putin is a nice person but he's demonized by the USA. Venezuela is broke because the USA's sanctions (the country has been broke for years even though the US had no sanctions against them until a less than month ago, and the US is the biggest money supplier, paying Venezuela with actual money, while Russia is getting free oil from interests from loans given by Russia being paid with raw oil, at a rate they "restructure" the debt every few years and keep a continuous supply of free oil)
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...
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 literally just read some news on Facebook about Russia stalking submarine cables. Some nutcase then took the opportunity to spread her bullshit. She claimed "if most communications go through cables, then satellites are FAKE. Why would we keep satellites in space if we have fiber? Submarine cables are the PROOF that men have never been to the moon, and not even space".
These nutcases claim the only thing "up there" are balloons. And that's how communications used to be.
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.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
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.
The difference, as noted above, is that no popular liberal candidates support vagina eggs or anti-vax. But many popular conservative candidates support:
* Anti-vax
* Ain't no global warming 'cause it's snowing now
* Creationism
* Homosexuality is a choice and can be prayed away
and many, many more. Look, if you vote for those guys, don't blame me. And don't try to tell me that the folks I vote for are just as bad. It may make you feel better about your terrible life choices, but it just ain't so.
People aren't antivaxxers they are people who have lost valuable trust in a system that can help itself but to be arrogant, condesending, and foolishly self righteous blowhards.
No.
People are anti-vaxxers because they're stupid enough to believe they know more than all the scientists who've spent their lives researching and learning about highly complex subjects. And because they're stupid enough to believe any drivel that they see in their Facebook feeds, spewed out by dumbfucks with zero training, education, or experience in the subjects they pontificate on.
In other words, people like you.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Part of the issue is that for many people, protecting others is not important. They even have a whole philosophy (objectivism) which has selfishness as its central tenet. (It's amazing how many of these people also claim to revere Jesus Christ who is the complete opposite, but that's a side issue.)
So helping the few (myself) at the cost of the many is a feature, not a bug. It's all about me me me me me!
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...
Enjoy your rat poison
Fluoridated water has been one of the most successful public health initiatives ever implemented. Ask any dentist and they'll tell you that cavities are almost unheard of in children now. Every kid I knew growing up had a mouthful of them, whereas most children these days just don't get them.
Go ahead, ask a dentist about it and they'll tell you. You won't believe them, but your willful ignorance won't make it any less true.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Most people aren't accessing these services though a computer these days.
Really? How are they accessing the internet, then?
I shouldn't have to say this, but your phone is a computer. Who knew, right?
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
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?"...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
... 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?
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.
No, you are 100% wrong.
I am only asking they show evidence that their risk is actually significantly larger than the completely miniscule normal risk.
I am not asking anyone to prove anything. Only show that there is a real reason to believe the normal broad population statistics may not apply to them.
If they cannot step over such a low bar, then their opinions do not matter, and I feel no sympathy, no.
I am only asking people show an actual reason based on some kind of evidence. If they can do that, I will likely be very supportive of their position.
But, of course, being reasonable is too much to ask. So best to change the subject and finger point at unnamed arrogant people for being the root of their own problem.
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
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.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
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...
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.
So you DO think degrees in garbage majors have value? How would calling out useless majors prove that vapid point?
Thus, the finding that Republicans are less trusting of mainstream sources does not explain why they were worse at discerning between real (mainstream) and fake news in previous work. Instead, the parallel findings that Republicans are worse at both discerning between fake and real news headlines and fake and real news sources are complementary, and together paint a clear picture of a partisan asymmetry in media truth discernment.
I don't agree with you that they're garbage majors. Nor does the massive system we call the global economy.
Beyond that, they are such a tiny fraction of majors that I'm forced to conclude you're either full of shit, or too fucking stupid to come up with a cogent argument to support your boneheaded belief system.
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.'"
"Yeah you probably also believe that you shouldn't wash your hands ever because washing them removes dirt and dirt is what your immune system needs to be strong. Right!?"
Wrong. In this context, saying "you probably also believe", is a sign a conclusion that doesn't follow is coming along with of an attempt at denigration.
"C'mon read up on why people have a life expectancy well over 60 *everywhere* where there is proper hygene and sanitation, with country after country reaching 85 to 90 *on average*. Those are facts."
Yes, but he's not arguing those facts, and implying otherwise is more denigration and artifice.
That's is pretty much my opinion as well. Vaccination should be a personal choice, not dictated by the government. Government can and should popularize vaccination and organizers of anti-vaxx campaigns should face public backlash. But people like myself who keep quiet about themselves not getting vaccinated for various reasons should not be ostracized en masse. There are whole spectrum of legit reasons from not taking vaccines from outright bad effects from taking vaccines to personal discomfort from getting one.
All we need is 80% vaccination to prevent epidemics. We also need to stop treating small outbreaks as something deserving national headlines. 30 people sick and no fatalities is not a cause for panic. It's just one county in one state that is particularly full of anti-vaxx fools. It went beyond 78% that's how they got they outbreak.
In most places it is well above 80% and forcing people to go beyond that just to achieve higher stats is just unjustified violence and persecution of majority against minority. A stupid SJW dictatorship, nothing less.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
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.
By including this sig, the copyright holders of this work or collection unreservedly place it in the public domain.
How about eradicating diseases? Isn't that also a laudable goal? That requires much higher than 80% compliance. Further, another goal of vaccination is to reduce the overall burden of disease, not just prevent epidemics. To that end, they have failed, because over 50 people experienced a vaccine-preventable disease0.
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.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
You're serious? You really think the floods of pointless majors oozing out of the humanities are of any use? What use? Examples? Fine job of you jumping right to the ad hominem instead of pointing out how the modern equivalent of underwater basket weaving is of any use.
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.
>Further, another goal of vaccination is to reduce the overall burden of disease, not just prevent epidemics
After 80% that's the personal problem of unvaccinated.
>That requires much higher than 80% compliance
Do you have a reference that goes with that?
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Yes, I'm serious. "floods". Yes.
Just like the invasion to the south.
Ad hominem? I'd call it a hypothesis for your failure to ground your argument in reality. If you have to make shit up to make a point, your point is probably invalid.