Snorkle25 t1_j25okff wrote
Reply to comment by blade944 in Covid-19 Misinformation And Disinformation Remained A Huge Problem On Social Media In 2022 by Wagamaga
Some of the most harmful though is that put forward by "authorized" sources who manufacture consent. US government misinformation over the years is responsible for a lot of death and atrocities in its own right.
The problem with your argument isn't that misinformation is bad, its that it's also being applied to silence opposition to the government and people in power. Which is the very purpose that the concept of free speech was intended to protect and prevent.
When something is new or novel like COVID it's improbable that any hypothesis will prove to be true long term. Hell I saw MSNBC adamantly insisting that the vaccine stops covid transmission and heavly implying it prevents contraction on multiple occasions. They don't have any flags for misinformation. The actual scientists who wrote and signed the Barrington declaration have been flatly mislabeled as "fringe" and maligned by media in coordination with US government officials which is mis and disinformation but thats not flagged or shut down.
This whole process is wrong for 2 reasons. One it's completely at odds with our societies claimed principles of liberty and liberalism, and it's impossible for us to arrive at objective truth when legitimate opposition and contradicting opinions are sweep aside which will negatively affect our ability to function as a society. But second, it's wrong because this same process of sensorship and suppression will be used against you or a cause you care about given enough time. It always is.
blade944 t1_j25qpd6 wrote
Are you seriously bringing up the barrington deceleration? That is so out dated that the language still contains references to future possible vaccines. It was also based strictly on opinion and left a lot to be desired re: their conclusions and methodology. And msnbc is an opinion channel. Not a really good rule stick to measure anything by. True news sources reported what was the best information available at the time. If it turned out to be wrong later , because new discoveries were made , that would not be misinformation. The second one starts with government conspiracies in their response a red flag goes up. At this point one needs to do a deep dive and find out what sources those individuals believe to be trust worthy. You started with the government conspiracy. Red flag.
Snorkle25 t1_j261xtc wrote
I didn't use the word "conspiracy", that was you. However, if governments didn't lie to the public repeatedly throughout history and do things under false pretext there wouldn't need to be an independent media to hold them to account. Watergate, the Church Committee, and the Pentagon Papers are hard documented evidence that such events can and have happened before.
You also miss the whole point. Most research and academic works are flawed and in time proven wrong by superseding work. The falsehood on your assumption is that information that was put forward at the time was the "best". That is something we cannot determine until later, and at the time, there was very little evidence that it was. There is a lot of evidence that it was "official" (ie coming from government bodies and institutions) but those are staffed by people who are just as susceptible to being incorrect, biased, and influenced as anyone else. So to justify misslabeling dissenting and diverging opinions as "misinformation" is a disservice to society as a whole and prevents actual progress at finding the truth. It also invalidates the entire premise that academic inquiry and the scientific method are founded on.
blade944 t1_j2649y0 wrote
I never said it was the best. It was the best available at the time. That’s how science works. The conspiracy part is that you led with government lies and deceit. Most of that is in the realm of conspiracy theories. The thing you seem to be hung up in is the idea of differing opinions. For most of scientific research there is no difference of opinion. There is fact, and not fact. And those that peddle not fact are spreading misinformation. We are at the point that anti vaxers must be taken seriously even though ALL legitimate research proves them wrong. Not everything has two sides that must be given equal consideration. You don’t have flat earthers on the news to give their opinion on the artimus mission. The problem is when that kind of nut job thinking is given legitimacy and spread deliberately in order to create chaos. “News” outlets like fox that pound gear into their viewers and farm outrage while swearing under oath that they don’t believe any of what they say on their shows. That deliberate misinformation in order to keep viewers engaged and outraged. There now is a large part of the country that believes every little piece of misinformation that comes their way because to them it has become a drug. These are the people that believe trump is fighting some secret battle and is actually president. These are the people that think Jan 6th was antifa. These people are now sitting in congress making laws. The ones that didn’t win are being put on the bench as a judge by the GOP. That’s fucking scary. That’s what misinformation does. It gives a really loud voice to the one person in opposition to millions. It makes individuals think that all opinions are equal and deserve equal weight. They don’t.
Snorkle25 t1_j2651l3 wrote
We don't know that it was the best available at the time. That's the whole fucking point.
blade944 t1_j265mii wrote
No. We do know it was the best available at the time because the best people in the field told us so. If a thousand epidemiologists say one thing and one chiropractor on YouTube says another you can safely ignore the chiropractor. The entire point is that organized groups put it in people’s heads, you included, that somehow the experts were wrong, or deliberately fucking us over, and that somehow some fringe crackpots had all the answers. What you do t realize is that you are a victim of these misinformation campaigns and you are still doing their dirty work for them.
Snorkle25 t1_j26828d wrote
Because we didn't have a natural consensus derived from data presented by thousands of experts. We had talking points from a very few select government institutions that was sold as if it had come from thousands of experts.
And the way we know this didn't come from thousands of experts is very clear. There was no large body of scholarly work on which they pointed to any of this information. To the opposite, most of the time we were not provided any evidence, just opinion.
For there to be thousands and thousands of experts to come to a conclusion on something new and novel it takes time and lots of work, and not just from epidemiology. Also biology, medicine, virology, data science and a dozen other inter-related fields.
All you are doing is furthering the propaganda of manufactured consent. And I'm done talking with a peddler of sophistry.
DanielBrian1966 t1_j26xuj0 wrote
"The Great Barrington Declaration: When Arrogance Leads to Recklessness With our knowledge of the novel coronavirus still limited, a recent call by scientists for a novel approach to combating it is ill-advised and arrogant."
https://www.queensu.ca/gazette/stories/5-failings-great-barrington-declaration
DanielBrian1966 t1_j26x0mw wrote
Let's see a source in that MSNBC claim cupcake. We both know Deplorable lowlifes like you never watch real journalism.
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