Facebook Begins Hiding Anti-Vaccine Misinformation (usatoday.com)

America now has 206 confirmed cases of measles, its highest year-to-date number in over 25 years . Now USA Today reports on how Facebook is responding: In mid-February, Facebook told USA TODAY it had "taken steps" to reduce fake health news and anti-vaxx posts and said it was considering making anti-vaccination content on its site less visible amid a measles outbreak that has reignited a conversation about preventative shots. At the time, Facebook said, "we know we have more to do...." Revealed Thursday: The social network says it will reduce distribution and provide users with "authoritative information" on the topic.

Facebook is following the lead of Pinterest, which has blocked all searches using terms related to vaccines or vaccinations as part of a plan to stop the spread of misinformation related to anti-vaxx posts.... It will reduce the ranking of Facebook groups and Pages that spread misinformation about vaccinations in News Feed and Search. "These groups and Pages will not be included in recommendations or in predictions when you type into Search," Facebook said. When it discovers ads with misinformation about vaccinations, "we will reject them." Facebook said it has removed related targeting options, like "vaccine controversies," in ads.... Additionally, Facebook said it wouldn't show or recommend content that contains misinformation about vaccinations on the Explore section of Facebook-owned Instagram or on its hashtag pages.

Comments

This is the wrong approach

[gweihir]

The problem is that it makes it very easy to hide correct information as well, if the "authorities" do not like it. The right approach would be better education. But that is also something the "authorities" do not like, as better educated citizen may just spot all their various screw-ups, extreme waste and outright evil machinations.

Re:This is the wrong approach

[SirAstral]

This is the real objective. It has always been the objective.

Authorities or people in positions of power have always said, we need to take your liberty/rights away under the guise of protecting you.

Re: This is the wrong approach

[gweihir]

Oh, this case is hiding misinformation. There is no information that would support not getting vaccinated against the measles. There is a large body of lies though that support this stance and a large number of stupid and badly educated people that believe these lies. No, the problem is the precedent, and once such censorship has been used to suppress clearly false information, it will be used in successively less clear cases.

Re:This is the wrong approach

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that it makes it very easy to hide correct information as well, if the "authorities" do not like it.

That the great thing about deplatforming. The authorities don't even need to debate!

Re:This is the wrong approach

[UnknownSoldier]

Agreed, that is a dangerous slipperly slope. Today's justification for censorship is that it for health reasons but who knows if tomorrow it will be for political reasons? One only needs to look at China and how the number 64 is banned since it is a reference to the Tiananmen Square protests. Yes, a fucking number is banned in China. That's where this stupidity ends.

What's that quote by Martin Niemoller ?

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out -- because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out -- because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out -- because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me -- and there was no one left to speak for me.

Maybe it needs to be updated for the modern times?

First, they came for Alex Jones and I did not speak out -- because I didn't believe in stupid Conspiracy Theories
Then they came for the Anti-vaxxers and I did not speak out -- because I didn't believe in anti medicine.
Then they came for "Hate Speech" and I did not speak out -- because anyone with a brain knows speech has no feelings.
Then they came for the ____
Then they came for me -- and there was no one left to speak for me because everyone else had been silenced and afraid to state their opinion for fear of being fired or ostracized.

How is the rest of the narrative going to be written over the next decade?

Re: This is the wrong approach

[SirAstral]

"There is no information that would support not getting vaccinated against the measles."

A statement of pure ignorance. Here even the CDC would like to call you out on that.

https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/v...

Thankfully the side effects are rare in most cases, and the risks of not getting vaccinated are higher than getting vaccinated.

If vaccines were totally safe they would be sold over the counter available for anyone to pick up instead of keeping them locked behind doctors and regulations. Your should have just stopped at your first post, you were doing good until now.

Re:This is the wrong approach

[terrycarlino]

The problem with this is that true information which questions the safety of a particular vaccine or vaccine from a particular vendor will be hidden along with the lies.

The answer to misinformation is always to refute it, not to hide it. When you drive speech underground it always flourishes, and now there is no one to refute the lies.

Re: This is the wrong approach

[c6gunner]

To be fair, it's also possible that he can think, but prefers not to.

Re:This is the wrong approach

[SirAstral]

This would make a great way to do Eugenics.

Just need to make vaccinations mandatory and with the amount of citizen tracking and information we have we can selectively sterilize any group we want.

Hopefully we will start with the group that does want government mandated vaccinations.

We can selectively control entire groups through medication. Heck once DNA editing is in effect we can edit those folks. Heck if we find a way to modify our DNA to live much longer lives we can introduce accidental deaths for those no longer desired by authorities.

We can really go somewhere with this.

Re:This is the wrong approach

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not accurate. Take away their platform and they always wither.

Re:This is the wrong approach

[gweihir]

Indeed.

Re:This is the wrong approach

[gweihir]

Provably wrong, but it does take a bit of knowledge of human history. I guess you are lacking that or have not understood what you were taught.

Re:This is the wrong approach

[Kernel Kurtz]

I briefly wonder how Niemoller and Alex Jones would get along.

I quickly conclude not so well.

Re:This is the wrong approach

[gweihir]

I have. But most were highly educated and smart and pretty disgusted with the rest of their country. The problem with the morons is that they will feel validated on any censorship and go even deeper into fanaticism.

Re:This is the wrong approach

[PopeRatzo]

Maybe it needs to be updated for the modern times?

No, the original suffices. Your "update for modern times" is stupid and tone deaf.

First, they came for Alex Jones and I did not speak out -- because I didn't believe in stupid Conspiracy Theories
Then they came for the Anti-vaxxers and I did not speak out -- because I didn't believe in anti medicine.
Then they came for "Hate Speech" and I did not speak out -- because anyone with a brain knows speech has no feelings.
Then they came for the ____

See, in the original, the groups listed were all those who were actively being hunted, oppressed, and killed. Alex Jones is free to spew garbage, he just doesn't get to force private businesses to spew his garbage. He can print pamphlets and make podcasts all day long. Anti-vaxxers are not being rounded up and gassed. They are free to spew their garbage, they just aren't welcome to spew garbage on certain privately-owned websites.

Stop with this moral equivalence. It does not speak well of your own moral compass.

Re: This is the wrong approach

[jnork]

I am an American, and I approve this message. We are indeed all morons; not a single one among us is capable of critical thinking. Even the immigrants are required to have half their brains removed before they are granted citizenship.

Oh... both my kids had all their shots. And I don't blame that for my younger daughter's autism.

But you're right, I'm a moron. Through and through. Just sayin'.

Re:This is the wrong approach

[epine]

Today's justification for censorship is that it for health reasons but who knows if tomorrow it will be for political reasons?

It's not censorship to shift dubious information to a place where the consumer has to lift two fingers instead of one, just as it wasn't censorship to confine pornography to pornographic magazines, and to make the consumer trudge an entire city block to the nearest newsstand (who was on his way for fresh smokes or a letter stamp to begin with).

If you can't even manage two clicks, no fin soup for you.

As it should be.

Similarly, it's not censorship when YouTube demonitizes your channel because it's politically hard-edged, depriving you of a large audience of lazy people who won't make two clicks to express their independent viewing preferences.

In the perfect world, lazy people would face a bland diet, all of the time.

On the other hand, if you're alert enough to look for something that's not already lying at your feet, then you're possibly alert enough to question what you find there. It's at least a good start.

Re:This is the wrong approach

[MightyMartian]

Nothing is stopping you from creating your own antivaxx network. Go to it. Facebook is not obliged to host such content, or at the very least to make it easy to find. Censorship, as a dire tool of tyranny is only used in the context of the State, and so far as I'm aware, no one is proposing the US or other national governments make spreading antivaxx garbage unlawful.

Re:This is the wrong approach

[DCFusor]

Agreed, this way lies totalitarianism, which is (so far always) the endgame of empires that are on the downslope, no matter what "ism" they purport to be based upon. Some create more corpses than others, maybe, but even that is up for grabs.
I worked in the oxymoronically named intelligence community. You may or may not be surprised how much of the stuff that's classified is just to cover for a screwup of some sort.
.

See George Carlin. They don't want critical thinking citizens at all, the the educational system has obviously become one of almost pure indoctrination - many college grads today might not have passed my own sophomore year in High school, and most of us wouldn't have passed High School in the early 1900s - most of us have seen that test.
They want people just smart enough to run the productive stuff and not question why most of their money is taken for "other things". And lots (ever increasing) amounts of their freedom is limited in the name of "safety" - not for thee, but for the Just-us system.
.

Of course, it's better for ME if YOU get vaccinated with a high risk vaccine...because herd immunity....so this is a case where it's easy for anyone running things to make a case it's the best for the most people, even if there ARE flaws in the current vaccines...you still wind up with fewer deaths.
It's still the wrong way to get there from here. "Controlling the narrative" is just too damn dishonest and scary, and no power that exists hasn't been abused.

Re:This is the wrong approach

[MightyMartian]

Jesus Christ. Seek medical help. You need some intense paranoia.

Re: This is the wrong approach

[SirAstral]

"You cannot think." I am not the one spreading lies that were so quickly disproven.

"This information does not support not getting vaccinated."
For the people with known allergies to the drugs involved it does.

The problem here is that you are just plain wrong and cannot accept it and you are using my discussion of "rare" situations to make it appear as though I am talking about the general situation and I am not.

I support getting vaccines, I vaccinate my children, but making equally stupid statements like yours are just as much of a lie as the anti-vaxxers. And do you know what that means? You are fueling their misinformation by making it easy to prove you are lying too!

You are counter productive and since you won't think you are not intelligent enough to figure it out.

Vaccines are not safe, but because the benefits they offer outweigh their risks, its a good idea to get vaccinated, but it does not mean there are no contraindications. For those unlucky enough for a vaccination to not take or have an allergy, they must rely on the principle of herd immunity to be protected.

Re: This is the wrong approach

[gweihir]

Valid argument. I agree.

Re:This is the wrong approach

[MightyMartian]

Before wide use of the Internet, White Supremacists were a fringe group who basically communicated with each other via xeroxed periodicals delivered in brown paper wrapping. Yes, the White Supremacists were there, and yes, the general social censure gave them some sort of a bizarre mystique, but they were basically dying out. Along comes the Internet, and suddenly you have a racist goon driving a car into a crowd, and a pack of Neo-nazis chanting Antisemitic slogans on TV.

I'm sorry, but the fact is that if you make information harder to obtain, it does tend to cause the groups trying to disseminate it a great deal of trouble.

And heck, this is just making it a bit harder for Antivaxxers to spread their nonsense. I couldn't believe on a simple search onf Facebook for the word "vaccine", just how high up the antivaxxer garbage was in the search results.

Re: This is the wrong approach

[gweihir]

Well, of course there are actual medical arguments why some (very few) people cannot get vaccinated. And, of course, I am very obviously not talking about them. That I even need to state this just highlight that your mind is broken and that you have no rationality. I am talking about the scum that chooses to not get vaccinated with not valid medical argument and that endanger those that cannot get vaccinated and those where the vaccination doe not take. That I even need to state this is beyond stupid.

Re:This is the wrong approach

[gweihir]

You wish. But since you lack in education and insight, you cannot actually see how wrong you are. If you should ever get a small glimpse of insight into your true mental capabilities, I recommend starting with reading up on the Dunning-Kruger effect. Yes, that is a serious recommendation.

Re:This is the wrong approach

[gweihir]

Well, that makes you even more dangerous that the anti-vaxxers: You appear to be rational, but are not.

Re:This is the wrong approach

[SirAstral]

Wait... you act like this stuff has never happened before. I guess you do not read history. So do tell, what am I being paranoid about?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://www.cdc.gov/tuskegee/t...

It's not really paranoia. There is always an ebb and flow to government corruption. This year nothing happened, next year there is controversy where someone lied to the government got things done. How many times does government get to murder people before you stop worshiping them? How many Mao's, Hitler's, Stalin's, Pol Pot's, Maduro's, Ill's, and Trump's do you need to see in government to figure out that government is not something you can trust and that government does not care about you as an individual?

Governments, Businesses, and other groups are more than happy to turn you into a slime pool the moment it serves their needs, wants, or desires.

Why is is paranoid to want to take steps from preventing something that HAS ACTUALLY happened? Perhaps you are the on missing a few fries from their happy meal?

Re:This is the wrong approach

[AmiMoJo]

It was the other way around. Hate speech was the first thing they came for. So the haters tried to dress it up as journalism, but eventually Alex Jones got banned too.

Re:This is the wrong approach

[gweihir]

I have no desire to educated the stupid. I just wish I was not on the same planet with them.

Re:This is the wrong approach

[gweihir]

You are very deep into delusion. Nothing of that paranoia you are spouting has any connection to reality. I advise you to seek medical help before you harm yourself or others.

Re:This is the wrong approach

[gweihir]

You seem to never have heard about how totalitarianism and ultimately fascism gets established. You should read up on it, there is a ton of historical precedent.

Re:This is the wrong approach

[gweihir]

That is an exceptionally dangerous path you are advocating there. In principle, I would be thrilled if we could just squash all that anti-science, anti-truth nonsense. But history shows this may have exceptionally bad side-effects.

Re: This is the wrong approach

[SirAstral]

What is the objective of calling them and treating them like SCUM?

I may not be an antivaxxer but I also understand fear. It is an irrational beast and you just like them have irrational fears that make you do stupid stuff too. In fact most people have them. Just because that irrational fear is over vaccines does not make it better or worse than peoples fears of disease, terrorists, crime, fire, or any other fear you can come up with.

I bet you are more understanding with other fears, why have you decided to be less understanding on this one? AND to the point where you feel the need to underplay peoples totally legitimate concerns? Drugs are not safe...
https://www.acsh.org/news/2017...

When people have a reason to mistrust institutions then those fears become overriding factors and when you run around offering things that are not true and using well I was not talking about exceptions for those cases then wind up hurting more than helping because they are only going to put you in the mindless zombie group that just believes anything they are told.

Anti-Vaxxers are hardly the only group of people causing us risks because of their ignorance. Lets be less like buttheads and instead just point out the facts as we know them.

Re:This is the wrong approach

[SirAstral]

No, I just don't lie to people like you and tell them, this is all perfectly safe and this will not hurt a bit.

Everything has a risk, vaccinations are the same thing. The entire Medical industry is about weighing the pro's and con's of the medicines they give people.

Right now the information indicates that risks of not getting vaccinated outweigh the risks of getting vaccinated. The fear is stepping into the arena when you fear a bad outcome.

Sure I fear the risk of vaccinations... but I fear things like measles more... and since morons like you are out there I am double or triple motivated to do what I can to protect my children from those like you.

Re: This is the wrong approach

[Antique Geekmeister]

In general, the CDC article is strongly supportive of vaccination, and lays out sound medical reasons to get the vaccine. But it's important to read the entire article, which also says:

> Anyone who has ever had a life-threatening allergic reaction to the antibiotic neomycin, or any other component of MMR vaccine, should not get the vaccine.

Acknowledging the dangerous cases or the exceptions is one of the most reliable signs of good science.

Re:This is the wrong approach

[gweihir]

I worked in the oxymoronically named intelligence community. You may or may not be surprised how much of the stuff that's classified is just to cover for a screwup of some sort.

I actually have some insight into that (without ever having held a clearance, don't ask), and I fully agree. One of the most important reasons to classify things is to hide screw-ups.

See George Carlin.

I love that guy. I am currently trying (and clearly failing) to follow his advice to just "not give a shit".

Of course, it's better for ME if YOU get vaccinated with a high risk vaccine...because herd immunity....so this is a case where it's easy for anyone running things to make a case it's the best for the most people, even if there ARE flaws in the current vaccines...you still wind up with fewer deaths.

Well, Measles is not a "high risk" vaccine. It is however an extremely contagious disease and its potential complications are pretty much "high-risk". So yes, medically it makes sense to vaccinate anybody except for a few special cases. You do end up with fewer people maimed and killed and that is what medicine aims for.

It's still the wrong way to get there from here. "Controlling the narrative" is just too damn dishonest and scary, and no power that exists hasn't been abused.

Indeed. Those in power cannot help themselves. They always abuse the power they have, so giving them more is a very bad idea. Until and unless the human race eventually finds a way to select better leaders, that problem will stay.

Re:This is the wrong approach

[Antique Geekmeister]

This was the theory being spread in Kenya about the tetanus vaccines being provided for young women whose infants are still at risk of tetanus. It's an infamous case, see https://africacheck.org/2016/0... It's also frequently cited by anti-vaxxers as verified proof of deliberate contamination of vaccines, which is simply not true.

Re:This is the wrong approach

[Antique Geekmeister]

> White Supremacists were a fringe group who basically communicated with each other via xeroxed periodicals delivered in brown paper wrapping.

I don't see how you could claim this with so many nations claiming ethnic and racial superiority throughout history. Even the Old Testament had the Hebrews as "the chosen people" with divine favor. If you look more at history, I think you'll find that American "White Supremacy" is simply a more recent version of the racism and tribal loyalties that are found in almost every culture in history, since long before the printed word existed.

Re:This is the wrong approach

[drinkypoo]

I have no desire to educated the stupid. I just wish I was not on the same planet with them.

You can stow away on Musk's rocket to Mars, you can kill yourself, or you can educate the stupid. Any other result is going to leave you sharing the same ball of mud with dumbasses.

Re:This is the wrong approach

[SirAstral]

You mean you have no connection to reality?

These things have been done before, and it is hardly irrational to want to take steps to prevent them from happening again.

Additionally, I know how to use fear to get you and many like you to dig a grave, get into it, pull the dirt over your faces, and even talk great things about me the entire time it is happening.

You see, the only thing that stops things like this from happening is because it takes a lot of time to find out which fears works best to trigger these responses. Take a look at 9/11 and how the world collectively lost it's fucking marbles just because a few terrorists got lucky? The knee-jerk reaction to all of that was only to create more injustice. Never let a bad situation go to waste and there is always a terrible problem around the corner that will occur and give people ammunition to do entire stupid things out of their irrational fears.

It's not a matter of if... its a matter of when! It's just going to happen whether you like it or not... I am just wanting to make it less frequent and you want to make it more frequent.

Re:This is the wrong approach

[MikeMo]

The problem is that no amount of education will change their minds. I know someone like this. NO matter what facts you present, they dismiss them as faked, lies, misinformation from "big pharma". They are exactly like flat-earthers. It's their religion.

In the meantime, while you are trying and failing to present real data, their kids go unvaccinated, putting them and everyone around them in danger.

Re:This is the wrong approach

[MightyMartian]

Since the government isn't chasing antivaxxers around, this is at best a non sequitur, an even by the low standards of that fallacy, a pretty damned tortured one.

Re:This is the wrong approach

[hey!]

I don't think this argument stands up. It's not like Facebook is claiming some kind of novel power over content linked in their site or developing some new technological capability. They already track you to as fare-thee-well. If Facebook wanted to censor mainstream conservative political opinions, they could do it *right now*. They don't need to establish a precedent; as a private corporation they can take any kind of editorial policy they want.

The reason they don't crack down on political opinions they don't like si that they don't care. They make money by keeping user engagement high; rant fests are good for their bottom line. That's why they haven't cracked down on anti-vaxx BS. The reason they're *saying* they're going to do it *now* is that their role in propagating BS that actually harms innocent people is getting public scrutiny.

Facebook is the amoral, conscience-less corporation par excellence. They've been working to accommodate their users to surveillance for years. If in the future posturing about cracking down on some unpopular political opinion is good for the line, expect a lot of hot air and maybe a little action. But don't worry, you're safe for now spreading conspiracy theories on Facebook.

Re:This is the wrong approach

[thegarbz]

The right approach would be better education

False. Education hasn't worked. No sane person would be an anti-vaxxer unless exposed to a horrid echo chamber of lies, a chamber that discredits the very "education" and "science" you propose would fix the issue.

The best we can do is prevent people from finding these toxic environments. Only if we do that do we have any hope of sanity prevailing when presented with education.

Re:This is the wrong approach

[drinkypoo]

It's not censorship to shift dubious information to a place where the consumer has to lift two fingers instead of one, just as it wasn't censorship to confine pornography to pornographic magazines,

No, those two things are wholly different. This is Facebook choosing to take this action. The pornography was forced into little boxes (and forced off of the TV box) by government. One is free speech, the other is censorship.

Similarly, it's not censorship when YouTube demonitizes your channel because it's politically hard-edged, depriving you of a large audience of lazy people who won't make two clicks to express their independent viewing preferences.

Right, that's not censorship any more than Facebook kicking their soapbox out from under the anti-vaxxers, because nobody forced them to do it, and the anti-vaxxers are still free to set up PolioTube or whatever and spread their ridiculous views on the internets. The point at which they're denied a domain, or internet service, is the time to worry.

Re: This is the wrong approach

[markass530]

No The CDC website does not have any information that would support not getting vaccinated., maybe go finish middle school and try reading it slower, maybe get the adult in charge of you to help

Re:This is the wrong approach

[Stan42]

Here's an interesting TED talk about that, at least we can still discuss it for now ! http://www.teaching-jobs.org/e...

Re:This is the wrong approach

[gweihir]

No, I just don't lie to people like you and tell them, this is all perfectly safe and this will not hurt a bit.

And that I did do exactly where? Oh, right, I did not. What I said is that for the discussion at hand (Measles) vaccinations are _necessary_ and that not having them (unless there is a sound medical reason) is dangerous and harmful to others. That is a bit different from what you claim I have said.

Re:This is the wrong approach

[DCFusor]

I'm glad we mostly agree on most things. I think we'd be good friends in meatspace.
I think the measles vaccine risk depends somewhat on which study you look at. It's all I actually know; I'm, I guess, lucky I had it as a child and it doesn't matter to me personally anyway. I'm not an anti-vaxxer by any stretch. Western medicine has saved my hide more than once. And also messed me up more than once, but that was lack of skill on an individual's part. I'm a scientist by trade myself, and I kinda believe in the validity of it.
I'm pretty sure that while censorship is almost always bad, that there are worse things yet, as evidenced by some of DARPAs contracts to learn how to "control the narrative". Otherwise known as "how to generate more effective propaganda, or fake news" - a sin of commision on top of the omission one. I find many times when I'm involved in a disagreement of some kind, the other party has been...affected by such techniques. There have been plenty of cases where I'm pretty sure I could believe I knew the truth because I was there...but what was told to everyone else had almost no relation.
.

Reference - they didn't even try to hide it and nope, it has nothing to do with partisanship - they're all guilty, and like Douglas Adams said about Zaphod, they're just there to distract from the actual power.
I guess I can put these in here without disturbing the sleepers, by this time no one else is following this thread anyway, right? https://phys.org/news/2011-10-... I have lots more if you care. I'm rather sick of having to apologize to my friends overseas for being American. We lost control of our government long ago, and apparently have no remedy short of acts no one reasonable wants to contemplate.
Since those in power have made it legal to tell us lies, and even pay to learn to do it better, shutting down dissent is bad, even when that dissent is wrong. We need it if for no other reason than to let crazies self-identify, and promote critical thinking.
But someone else doesn't agree and modded the comment you agreed with down!

Re:This is the wrong approach

[gweihir]

Well, yes. Fanatics are always convinced they have the truth, no matter what and that is pretty much what they are. What education may allow is to prevent others from even considering that these people may be right and it may prevent any laws from going their demented way.

Re:This is the wrong approach

[gweihir]

I am not arguing that this would be ineffective for the problem at hand. I am arguing that the risks of (long term) extreme negative side-effects are too large.

Re:This is the wrong approach

[gweihir]

You are perfectly right that censorship is only part of the threat. I have long suspected that "controlling the narrative" is done on /. as well, probably by TLAs, and certainly by commercial organizations. (Just criticize Linux systemd and then remember that the US military is the largest Red Hats customer with apparently more than half their business to put the reaction into perspective. Right from a playbook, the PyOps/Marketing folks do not even try to come up with any rational arguments. It is all pure emotional manipulation. Although it has gotten weaker recently, probably not considered important enough anymore.) It is really quite repulsive and it gives too much power with too little oversight to those doing it. It is where western society is headed apparently though.

I agree on dissent. It is the point where people should start to ask "yes, they are wrong, but _why_ are they wrong?" Only a society that questions things is resilient to manipulation.

Re:This is the wrong approach

[gweihir]

I agree to all of that. But I think censorship will be even worse in its effects, at least long-term. Bit is there any other solution besides these two? I do at least not see one.

Re:This is the wrong approach

[CrimsonAvenger]

Facebook is not obliged to host such content, or at the very least to make it easy to find.

No, but once they make it clear that they can easily get something off FB if enough people bitch about it, they're opening themselves up to lawsuits every time someone gets offended by something posted on FB.

Re:This is the wrong approach

[Mashiki]

It was the other way around. Hate speech was the first thing they came for. So the haters tried to dress it up as journalism, but eventually Alex Jones got banned too.

Sure explains why all of those progressives and leftists have facebook and twitter accounts, while not being banned, or even given a "time out" for maliciously spreading fake information. Everything from Mike "hands up don't shoot" Brown, to the Covington kids, to actively promoting and endorsing racism against whites. Looks like some types of hate speech are perfectly fine with them.

Give you a tip, go watch the 5hr podcast with Tim Pool on the Joe Rogen experience, and watch as Jack Dorsey and his pet lawyer dance around not banning groups and ideologically aligned left-leaning because they also align in that direction. My favorite part was when Pool asked why they haven't banned antifa groups which to this day openly promote violence against people, and the response was 'well they're not real groups' to loosely paraphrase.

Re: This is the wrong approach

[astrofurter]

Forced-vax nazis sure do love corporate censorship.

Re: This is the wrong approach

[astrofurter]

I know (in person, not online) several self-described conservatives who claim their political posts on Faceboot are frequently censored. I cannot confirm as I refuse to use Faceboot.

Re: This is the wrong approach

[astrofurter]

Forced-vax nazis sure do have little faith in the persuasive power of their own ideas.

Re:This is the wrong approach

[Rockoon]

He misrepresents what you say because he is a dishonest fuck on a mission

Re: This is the wrong approach

[Rockoon]

Now why would fascists like corporations? Oh... wait...

Re:This is the wrong approach

[DrXym]

No, it's absolutely the right approach. Anti vaccine information is dangerous garbage and the propagation of it through social media has had demonstrable results. Countries are reporting measles diagnoses which are 2-3x higher than they were a few years ago. In large part that is because misinformation is allowed to run alongside, or with even greater prominence that factual, evidence based information.

Facebook even plays host to these groups and amplifies their message every time someone searches for information on vaccines. Facebook even took money from antivaxxers for the placement of ads that might have scared parents into putting their children at risk. As bad as this is, it's long overdue for them to fix their platform.

The same goes for other major social media & search engines. The simplest way is to include some evidentiary / science based weighting on search results and watch as all the brain damage sink like a rock. And obviously do not sell placement of antivax ads.

Any talk of this being censorship (Facebook is a private enterprise, not the government), or some nefarious conspiracy by "authorities" as you put is simply horseshit.

Re:This is the wrong approach

[Highdude702]

#RemoveAllWarningLabels -- I think that's a good start to solving the stupid people problem.

Re:This is the wrong approach

[Highdude702]

How the fuck do you abuse free speech? You do know what free speech is right?

Re: This is the wrong approach

[Highdude702]

I was only a moron until I was 25, when I realized I didn't know shit. Now I'm just mostly a moron.

Re:This is the wrong approach

[gweihir]

Yes indeed.

Re: This is the wrong approach

[apoc.famine]

What is the objective of calling them and treating them like SCUM?

Uh, because they are?

Not vaccinating your child is child abuse, if they can be safely vaccinated. You are setting them up to potentially get very sick, and possibly be maimed and die. That is not ok. Back in the day, about 50% of children died before they were 5. To skip vaccinating your kids because you're scared of the vaccines is both illogical and dangerous.

Did you catch the news this week of the kid who spent almost 3 months in the hospital racking up a $700,000 bill because his parents didn't get him a tetanus shot? The same parents who are still refusing to get him one?

$100 worth of shots at the most and that kid wouldn't have almost died, and wouldn't have taken up the time of a bunch of people who had legitimately sick people they could have been taking care of instead. And that life lesson wasn't apparently enough to bring home to them how damn important vaccines are.

That's fucking child abuse by any other name. And child abusers are scum.

For most vaccines to work, we need herd immunity. If you don't want to play your part in that immune herd, you need to get fuck out of it, and go live by yourself. You have no right to put others at risk of getting sick and possibly dying because you think you're smarter than everyone.

And it's not ok for people to be propagating diseases that we could finally rid humanity of. I would go so far as to say that that is a crime against humanity. Polio in particular is a horrific disease, and there is no reason for it to exit in the world at this point in time. Yet it remains, and continues to maim and kill people because of anti-vaxers.

There is so much we could be spending our time and energy on instead of fighting dangerous, stupid people who don't want to vaccinate their kids, and paying for the results of that madness. How many kids have been hospitalized with the measles at this point? From January 1 to February 28, 2019, 206 individual cases of measles have been confirmed in 11 states. We're on track to have the highest number of measles cases in a decade. And given that one in a thousand people get potentially fatal brain swelling from the measles, maybe a fatality or two as well.

All from a disease that should be relatively noncontagious in the US due to herd immunity, because of a bunch of fucking scum who refuse to get their kids vaccinated.

Re:This is the wrong approach

[Mashiki]

So now we see why you hate this: you abuse free speech and the liberals/leftists haven't, so when the abusers are kicked off for abuse, you see it as the fault of the liberals and leftists because they aren't being kicked off.

You mean, when leftists are engaging in a pattern of behavior that would get anyone else kicked off and they're not being kicked off?

Ever thought that the fault is yours for abusing free speech? Or is personal responsiblity another thing that the right wing insist is real but is fake when it comes to reality?

Did you bother to pause and think before you put that out? Let me give you an example: Progressive goes and publishes a direct threat and nothing happens. Conservative or libertarian quotes their direct threat, and is banned or forced to delete the offending comment. Plenty of examples, why don't you go look a few of them up. I mean, you can even find large numbers of progressives who are still running harassment campaigns against the covington kids and some that are verified no less.

Re:This is the wrong approach

[drinkypoo]

The reason they don't crack down on political opinions they don't like si that they don't care. They make money by keeping user engagement high; rant fests are good for their bottom line.

But enough about Slashdot...

Re:This is the wrong approach

[MightyMartian]

Anecdotal evidence is worse than useless. Sorry mate, your belief is a false one. You are just plain wrong.

Re: This is the wrong approach

[e3m4n]

Because the flu vaccine is incubated in eggs, or was, the risk of getting GBS was real. People elect not to get the flu vaccine all the time. I did get both pnemonia vaccines. I often skip the flu vax because it never seemed to keep me from getting the flu. Instead i just make sure that i always have mucinex-d on hand as well as a nebulizer with albuterol. I got the neb online w/o a script and my doc wrote me a script for albuterol after explaining its first aid usefulness. The health risk from the flu is entirely respiratory. Keeping your airway open is flu first aid 101.

Re:This is the wrong approach

[dave420]

If we accept that education is the solution, how do we stem the tide of deaths in the mean-time as we wait for the education to take hold? Or do we not, and just accept that scores of people will die needless deaths?

Re:What idiots still use Facebook?

[gweihir]

As there are plenty of idiots, plenty of people use Facebook. Since you seem to think that vaccination is not an important topic, I must conclude you are one of the non-Facebook using idiots though.

So it's Now Facebook Settles Science ?

[Crashmarik]

This is just what I want, somebody who got a degree in gender studies couldn't get the only job that it qualifies someone for (teaching gender studies), now working in a job that's one step away from being offshored to any country with an english speaking population, deciding the scientific merits of a topic.

Bravo that's real progress.

Re:So it's Now Facebook Settles Science ?

[gweihir]

And fail. A scientific consensus is not a consensus in the ordinary sense. I get the people like you are not equipped to understand that, but to all others, "scientific consensus" means that nobody has come up with a valid counterclaim based on actual science. A normal consensus is that nobody has a different _opinion_ and that is something so much weaker it is not even of the same nature.

Re:So it's Now Facebook Settles Science ?

[MightyMartian]

- Misrepresentation of the term "scientific consensus" - Check
- Exaggeration of incorrect science - Check
- Post-modernist blather essentially making all opinions equal because of above "point" - Check

I'd say that's enough to either label you a pointless contrarian, or a complete moron, or worst of all, someone who wants to defend the spreading of dangerous lies about vaccines. So what is it? Are you just a miserable SOB, a fucking idiot, or actually outright evil?

Re:So it's Now Facebook Settles Science ?

[dgatwood]

In fact it has always been this way and you see that clearly from the "there is a scientific consensus" people. A consensus does not make anything fact or fiction. Heck since science is more often wrong than right and the fact that most studies cannot be reproduced, it makes it very bad to stifle any information, no matter how obscene it sounds.

Although it is true that even when there is consensus that something is correct, it can occasionally be proven incorrect (or, more typically, incomplete), when there is mass consensus that something is incorrect, it is essentially never later proven to be correct.

In modern science, there are two broad classes of studies: studies that use the scientific method and statistics correctly, and thus have a prayer of being reproduced, and studies that are so full of statistical cherry picking and data dredging that even an amateur with no experience in the field can point out the flaws. The former are usually paid for by public funding sources. The latter are usually paid for by companies that stand to benefit financially from the untruths portrayed in the studies.

The supposed studies that claim to "prove" that vaccines are harmful invariably fall into that second group. They are published in non-peer-reviewed journals or, at best, journals for completely unrelated fields. They are invariably absolute crap science, and can be trivially proven to be garbage by anyone with even the most basic knowledge of the field. And studies like that are harmful because they misuse science and statistics in a fashion that can only be described as fraud, reducing public trust in science by pulling stunts like picking and choosing from larger data sets looking for correlations and performing no broader studies to show whether those correlations are real or just random chance.

My favorite goto argument for this is that once upon a time "everyone thought the earth was flat, the center of the universe, and that the sun orbited earth." AND they often wanted to kill, or harm, or jail anyone that said otherwise! These kinds of people still exist, and you know who they are when they start trash talking anyone that does not agree with every little thing they say.

There was nothing like what we would consider actual modern science involved in that belief, though. It was largely a religious belief based on a literal interpretation of the Bible, and even to the extent it was based on study of the motion of stars and planets, it could best be described as an exercise in curve matching, finding mathematical ways to approximately explain the motion of celestial bodies based purely on observation, with no attempt to explain why the pattern of motion was what it was. The Galilean model was the first model that plausibly explained how and why (gravity), and even then, it took further refinement by Kepler, Brahe, and Newton before the how and why were actually understood. Somewhere in there was when planetary orbits actually started to resemble what we would consider science today. Up to that point, it was just observation, which is only the beginning of science, not the end.

In much the same way, anti-vaccination beliefs are borderline religious, based on no actual science, relying on scientific fallacies. They are literally the modern equivalent of Ptolemaic epicycles, incorrectly claiming that correlation is causation without providing any plausible means of causation. They are not science, and they should not be treated as science. At best, they should be described as applied mathematics, pointing out areas where actual research might be warranted, knowing that the overwhelming majority of the time, the apparent patterns regress to the mean when studied with a nontrivial sample size.

The danger occurs when people point to those "studies", if you can even call them that, as "proof" of something, rather than as mere observations that are the very first ste

Re:Vaccination = Homeopathy

[gweihir]

No. Not even a small chance. Unless you believe the earth is flat as well?

Up next: Conservative opinions

[scsirob]

.. and then anything not in line with SJW / PC guidelines, anything 'micro agression', anything incompatible with intersectional thinking, LGBTQIWTF+/- and so on. Do I hear an ultra-left echo chamber there?
So glad I cut the FB madness several years ago. I'd like to form my own opinion, thank you.

Re:Up next: Conservative opinions

[AmiMoJo]

Seems like if they were going after conservatives they would start with the Nazis on Facebook. Even less controversial than vaccination.

Re:Up next: Conservative opinions

[DCFusor]

What a time to be out of mod points. ^^^^^^

Re: Up next: Conservative opinions

[Anonymous Coward]

Honestly all I hear are people like you complaining about some other side to a debate I didn't know existed. I hear people like you throwing around terms like SJW and just being anti-something with a bug up your ass. I don't hear an "ultra left" advocating for vaccinations or running amok online, or running to safe spaces. I work in a fairly conservative organization and we respect common decency, fairness, each other, and recruiting and supporting underrepresented people in our workforce. I see people that say things like SJW with some obviously deep insecurities lashing out at some invisible fight.

I can't read slashdot for ten fucking minutes without finding an anti-SJW, anti-feminist, anti-something that should NOT bother a grown ass man, posting about his next boogeyman. Please go away, or grow up.

Re: Up next: Conservative opinions

[DogDude]

This is a great response to the "anti-SJW" stuff that I'm reading all of the time on Slashdot. I agree completely.

Re:Up next: Conservative opinions

[thegarbz]

Your logical fallacy is: the Slippery Slope

Re:Up next: Conservative opinions

[blindseer]

Maybe I've been living under a rock for the last 90 years so...

What does Nazism have to do with conservatism?

Yes, it would be less controversial to filter out Nazism. What that does though is remove the premise that Facebook is merely a communications conduit. As soon as they start filtering out information that they do not agree with then they should lose any protections similar to those granted to phone companies. A phone company cannot be held liable for communications they transmit because the phone companies aren't trying to correct misinformation translated down their wires. If they did then they could be held liable for the misinformation that got through.

If FaceBook wants to be a conduit for information then they need to stay out of the editorializing on what is said. If they do want to get in that game then they need to publish clear rules on what is acceptable and what is not.

Re:Up next: Conservative opinions

[Undead Waffle]

Not every slippery slope argument is a logical fallacy.

Re:Up next: Conservative opinions

[meglon]

Yes yes, you'd think they'd publish clear rules on what is acceptable and what is not... perhaps taking on the form of something like this: https://www.facebook.com/terms...

I mean, seriously? That is your argument? They are a private company, and they are not forced into hosting anything they don't want to.

Re:Up next: Conservative opinions

[Rockoon]

AmiMoJo is still repeating the lie that Nazi's were conservatives, a whole fucking decade after everyone but those in tiny bubbles gave up trying to sell it.

This is the information age. Hitlers campaign speeches are seconds away. Everyone is seconds away from seeing that Hitler said the same shit the american left now says: The rich are evil, we are here for the working class, the state should provide healthcare, fuck the russians, gotta get rid of guns, etc, etc, etc... the list isnt endless but it goes on and on ...

And now we see the american left here, defending a corporation for censorship.

The left isnt liberal. We became liberal long ago. It is conservative to want to maintain our liberalism. It is leftist to want to destroy it.

Re:Up next: Conservative opinions

[Rockoon]

Lets also note that elsewhere on the internet, such as youtube, "deboosting" is also happening.

Joe Rogan just put out a video that so far has got 10 million views in 10 days, and not once was the video listed as trending or in any other way made easily discoverable by youtube.

These leftist censorship fucks dont give a fuck.

Re:Up next: Conservative opinions

[dgatwood]

AmiMoJo is still repeating the lie that Nazi's were conservatives, a whole fucking decade after everyone but those in tiny bubbles gave up trying to sell it.

Nazis weren't conservative. However, a striking number of Nazi positions have been adopted by the leader of America's so-called "conservative" party, from President Trump's anti-immigrant rhetoric to his anti-news-media rhetoric to his anti-Muslim rhetoric to the populist drivel that he spews on a near constant basis. Pretty much anyone who actually paid attention in world history class should recognize the rather alarming parallels between President Trump's rhetoric and that of Hitler.

This is the information age. Hitlers campaign speeches are seconds away. Everyone is seconds away from seeing that Hitler said the same shit the american left now says: The rich are evil, we are here for the working class, the state should provide healthcare, fuck the russians, gotta get rid of guns, etc, etc, etc... the list isnt endless but it goes on and on ...

Yeah, no, that's not accurate, for two reasons. First, the American left says none of those things outside of the right-wing propaganda echo chamber, with the sole exception being the bit about the state providing healthcare. Not coincidentally, pretty much every civilized country except the United States already does that, so what you're basically saying by trying to draw equivalence there is that the Nazis have taken over the entire world, and the United States is the only remaining non-Nazi country. When you look at it that way, your entire argument just sounds silly.

Second, even if we completely ignore that bit of reality, arguing that any of the things you listed were the bad parts of the Nazi platform requires some serious reality distortion. In the minds of most sane people, it was the whole mass extermination of anyone who wasn't part of the so-called "master race" that made the Nazis evil. The other bits were just popular political opinions at the time, which the Nazis adopted to try to balance out the monstrous evil in the other parts of their platform. By the same standard, you could argue that the interstate highway system is evil, because the Nazis built a similar system of roads, and I'm pretty sure nobody remotely sane would actually try to argue that point.

What's notable, though, is that the actual evil parts of the Nazi platform have been adopted by the American far right, all the while trying to use false equivalence to somehow "prove" that the left is behaving like Nazis. Don't fall for their lies.

I disagree

[rsilvergun]

Facebook is an advertising platform. Left alone they will effectively advertise anti-vaxxer nonsense to the detriment of kids like this.

The trouble with a purely algorithmic news source is that it's going to serve you up more and more of whatever it is you're clicking on. That's because the algorithms aren't really that complex. There's no magic, it's just "People who clicked this video also clicked this video". Without someone stepping in it becomes an endless echo chamber. One that also tends to push the worst ideas up to the surface because extreme, visceral ideas get the most reactions and most clicks.

The problem is that the current ad supported Internet exists to increase engagement. They want to keep you on the page longer, clicking more and seeing more ads. This is a hyperactive version of what happened in the 80s when News shows figured out that fear sells and they all started running terrifying news stories about pedophiles and gang bangers.

My mom saw those and locked me up in my room, never mind that most pedophiles are family members or authority figures like priests and the gang bangers stayed in their own little neck of the wood because if they didn't the cops came round and busted heads. It was all lies, but it had a huge impact on my life when I spent the better half of my teenage years in constant conflict because I wasn't allowed to go anywhere or do anything. It sucked.

And yeah, she was an anti-vaxxer too. Give people like that something to be afraid of and they will. Instead, cut it the fuck out and replace it with reality.

Re:I disagree

[gweihir]

Well, yes. That is indeed a problem. But how do you make sure this will not be the initial push for widespread censorship in the current climate of raising authoritarianism?

Re:I disagree

[drinkypoo]

But how do you make sure this will not be the initial push for widespread censorship in the current climate of raising authoritarianism?

Nobody is forcing them to do this. The only thing the government's even made noises about forcing them to do is to take better control of political messaging.

Re:I disagree

[shilly]

You make sure that Facebook is not part of the government. Because governments can be totalitarian, but Facebook doesn't have an army or a police force or jails.

Oh look, we've succeeded!

Re:I disagree

[e3m4n]

The problem is justifyjng censorship. If you justify it for any reason then it can easily be justified for all reasons. Facebook wants to pretend that they are not a media company. They sell ad space. In my opinion that squarely puts them in the media business. That means that they should probably have disclaimers saying “the views expressed in this video do not necessarily reflect the views of the station and yada yada yada”. Instead of hiding the search results, they were apparently good at identifying the kind of content already, why don’t they just produce a mixed bag of both sides of the issue? That solves the echo chamber problem without resulting to flat out censorship. If somebody was on the fence then showing all sides of an argument is the best thing you can do. For those that had already made up their mind what difference does it make whether they see an echo chamber or not they already bought the bag of goods.

Sorry to hear about your childhood. My wife was teaching during the weeks following 9/11. Many children were led to believe that hundreds of buildings were being struck by planes because the frequency of the footage being shown. The reason people call these media companies ‘fake news’ is precisely because of this sort of paychological manipulation that has no business in reporting the news. It is no cooincidense that CNN is running a special on the nixon years right now. Deliberate warfare technique of softening the target. Its not so subtle and they think we dont see through it. So not only are they trying to play us like puppets, they insult our intelligence by thinking we are too stupid to notice.

I noticed this yesterday

[jrumney]

I noticed yesterday that my feed had become flooded with misinformation, but none of it was antivax. So it seems their strategy to hide the antivax misinformation is to bury it with an avalanche of other misinformation. Every time they tweak their fake news algorithms like this, I need to click on the menu to hide more fake news publishers so I can use facebook to keep up with what my friends are posting, as facebook was originally intended.

They do

[rsilvergun]

You have the right to drive. The right to drive 100mph was taken from you to protect you and everyone around you. We all give up freedoms in exchange for order because order isn't just nice, it fucking rocks. Order is why my water is clean. It's why I just finished lunch. And it's why I didn't get my head bashed in by angry bandits (and no, nobody on /. is going to make it in a dog eat dog world, we spend too much time posting and not enough time lifting weights and combat training).

You don't have the right to put everyone around you in danger (google "herd immunity") because you're too dense to go read the actual science around vaccines. Period.

Re:They do

[gweihir]

Indeed. While I do not like the term "order" (it is too close to "law" and law is a very dangerous construct that can easily be abused for fascism and worse) society requires some level of sacrifice (which must be carefully limited to sacrifices that actually make sense), and provides huge advantages in return. Anybody not willing to make the rational sacrifices has no place in society and should be removed from it.

Re: They do

[drinkypoo]

What does importing tens of millions of illegals from third-world countries with no healthcare to speak of do to "herd immunity"?

That depends on whether you give them medical care or not, and also whether you force them to get vaccinated or not. I'll take your comment as an endorsement of giving them medical care, as well as supporting vaccination.

Re:What idiots still use Facebook?

[gweihir]

Oh? Then explain the "who cares" in detail, please.

Re:You mean

[gweihir]

Indeed. While I would applaud any anti-vaxxer self-extermination, for every of the 3% or so of _vaccinated_ people were it just does not take and that gets sick, I would support shooting 10 anti-vaxxers at random as a recognition of their positive contribution to safety and health of society.

Legitimizes FB as a "source of good information"

[WoodstockJeff]

Whenever people cheer that FB is blocking "bad things", that makes it more tempting to thing, "If it is allowed on FB, it must be good!"

If people cultivate the idea that FB is a source of "information" that may or may not be correct, they'll be a bit less likely to fall for the next "As Seen On FB" craze, be it medical, political, or religious.

Re:Vaccination = Homeopathy

[MightyMartian]

The most successful series of public health initiatives since soap and in-door plumbing is a "real health scare". You should be lucky. I had a teacher in school who had polio as a child, and carried the scars the rest of his life. There are enough pictures of kids in iron lungs, kids damaged by measles outbreaks, and the like, to demonstrate that vaccines really are among the most successful medical interventions every created. There are millions of people whose lives have been saved outright, or have never had to suffer the long-term, often permanent ravages, of these diseases, and it's because of that that idiots like yourself seem so willing to be cavalier with both the truth and the health of millions of people.

Grow up. You do not possess some secret knowledge. You're just an ignorant fool.

Re:You dumb.

[gweihir]

Funny. Does not say anything good about you, but funny nonetheless. Confirms my evaluation of you nicely though. And you know, you are posting as a coward, so I am probably naive to expect even a bit of decency or insight from you.

Actually Epicycles Beat Early Heliocentric Theory

[Crashmarik]

And had much better predictions for the observed positions of the planets in the sky due to the fact that the early heliocentric theory used circular orbits and actual orbits are elliptical. So yes the earth at the center of the universe was a scientific consensus and had experimental backing.

Re:Actually Epicycles Beat Early Heliocentric Theo

[MightyMartian]

There was barely a thing called science when Copernicus and Galileo came up with their models. In many ways, they were the first sciences. But really this misrepresents even them. Science didn't replace heliocentrism. Planets do orbit the sun. The model was updated with better observations and with more planets to test premises against. Heliocentrism wasn't disproven, it was improved. When you have to go back half a millennium to show how unreliable science is, I think even you know your argument is pretty specious.

Re:The vast majority are from Ultra-Othodox Jews

[drinkypoo]

But these Jews are just a minority in that, the problem is far, far larger and it is not caused by religion.

It's caused by bullshit magical thinking, so it's not caused by religion, but by the same force that permits religion.

Re:You dumb.

[MightyMartian]

This is what happens when you let eight year olds on the Internet without supervision.

Re:Censorship is the wrong approach

[shanen]

You left the key word out of your comment. It's censorship and the key question is why Facebook gets to play gawd.

I've actually seen some evidence that makes me think Facebook is actually playing a broad game against many categories of political activity. I'm inclined to agree when the sources are professional trolls, even if they're not working for Putin, but the collateral damage counts, too. The trolls actually have the strongest motivation to game the system and push the limits, whereas the innocent people with opinions (even opinions I agree with) are more likely to get mowed down like grass.

Wonderful news!

[Slugster]

Now there is two ways to delete your facebook account:

1. Proclaim yourself to be a Nazi, who advocates -- well, I don't know really. I think just saying that you are a Nazi might be enough? And a swastika picture I guess. (-how do you make that ASCII swastika again?-)

2. Proclaim yourself to suspect medical vaccines may sometimes be of questionable usefulness.

Incomprehensible

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Anti-vaxxers are incomprehensible to me- do they think these diseases just disappeared on their own? Diseases like polio, diphtheria, pertussis, measles, mumps, and rubella more or less disappeared because vaccines kept them from spreading and persisting.

Anti-vaxxers are just as idiotic as flat-earthers or chemtrail whackos, or the people who believe that Reptilians control a secret shadow government.

Re:Incomprehensible

[meglon]

.... or the people who believe that Reptilians control a secret shadow government.

That whole reptilian thing is just a smoke screen by house cats... who actually do control everything (not just government). Go ahead, ask any cat person.... they know.

Re:Legitimizes FB as a "source of good information

[swillden]

Whenever people cheer that FB is blocking "bad things", that makes it more tempting to thing, "If it is allowed on FB, it must be good!"

The slippery slope fallacy is called a fallacy for very good reason.

Re:You dumb.

[gweihir]

Yeah, looks like it.

Given the enourmous amount of bad press

[rsilvergun]

FB regularly receives I don't think you've got much chance of that being a problem.

But if you're really that worried about it there's an easy enough solution: More Education. In particular more liberal arts. Why the liberal arts? Because yes, you can teach critical thinking, but no, you can't do it with Math. Math is too hard, and there's no value in being half right.

Ever wonder why even to this day the rich and powerful insist on a well rounded education for their little spawnlings? Because that's the only way they can be sure at least a _little_ bit of critical thinking is pounded into their skulls no matter how dumb they are.

So educate your populace and you won't have this problem. And yeah, that means proper funding for schools, no more of this shit were we fund our schools with property taxes so the rich have nice ones with free supplies and the poor have crap ones where the parents and teachers have to scrounge for pencils.

will they hide other information?

[cascadingstylesheet]

Will they hide other anti-science information, such as "human embryos aren't really human", or "human gender is whatever you feel like it is", or "brains aren't biological and are not affected by genetics"?

What's that? No?

If they really cared...

[zawarski]

Facebook would close the whole operation.

better education useless

[aepervius]

You (mostly) can't be rationalized out of a position you came to with belief or emotional way. If you could easily be rationalized out of such a position, there would not be many theist left in the world, and the US would massively agree that global warming is of anthropogenic origins, and "evolution by selection" is indeed a thing. You can't even get that in the US, with roughly 20% of the US population disbelieving the theory of evolution by natural selection, and what was the stats about the world being 6000 year old ? I don't want to get depressed AGAIN so I won't bother checking. And you think education will have any effect on vaccination uptake ? Ha ! People get the "don't vaccinate" by their inner circle, people they trust and get the pro vaccinate education by mostly people they don't know or trust or at least not part of their inner circle. Good luck with that one. I don't care of people have weird belief and think a god exists, but as soon as they become dangerous for us all, and yes indeed not vaccinating against lethal disease is one way this happens, then I am all for actively going what they see as their right to refuse vaccination. Simplest solution : tell republican to go fuck themselves, and remove the freedom to refuse vaccination for philosophy reason : make vaccination mandatory for anybody not having an independently verifiable disease making vaccination dangerous.

Re:better education useless

[Highdude702]

Its cute you try to bring political affiliation into the conversation. This is a stupid person problem, they exist on both sides. Stupid liberals exist just as much as Stupid republicans. You're just helping divide the country and make the stupid dig their feet in deeper. This kind of thing does not help anybody. Please take your partisan bullshit and go home. Thank you.

And you are completely faking that claim

[Anonymous Coward]

The CDC DOES say that not everyone gets vaccinaed, but "we know best" is what you're advocating, WITH THE CHERRY PICK INFO YOU PREFER. Because the rest of it is that the fact that it dosn't always work or cannot be used on everyone
a) is why everyone who CAN SHOULD, see herd immunity
b) is why you risk other people's lives, not your own, even in the case when you aren't forcing "your" children to do what YOU want because "we know best".

What was that about how bad "we know best" was? How come parents get to choose for others, even children that they birthed, let alone other people who cannot get vaccinated?

You cherry pick what you want because you want reality to comport to your ideology, not change your ideology to reflect reality.

Read AGAIN

[aepervius]

And read my posting history. I am well aware that both side of the political spectrum don't vaccinate. But to my knowledge there are only 3 reasons you can refuse : medical exemption, religious exemption and philosophical exemption. To my knowledge all state enacted the first one (medical), the crushing majority the second (religious) and for the few state I know of which enacted the third one it was enacted under republican legislature. But does it matter anyway in the end ? When it comes under public health and putting other at risk, there are only 2 philosophy :
* allowing all kind of freedom even if it hurts other indirectly
* limiting some freedom if they are bound to hurt other

Many state seem to hang on the first type , I think it should be a matter of state to use its power to enable the second when it comes to vaccination. The dumb fucks which endanger other which cannot vaccinate due to medical reason, should be forced to vaccinate their kids.

Re:Vaccination = Homeopathy

[drinkypoo]

Name calling means you have a weak argument.

What does it mean when you ignore the argument, and whine about the name calling?