Facebook does the right thing for once: Joins Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Reddit, Twitter, YouTube to clean out dodgy COVID-19 info Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Reddit, Twitter and YouTube have issued a joint statement in which they promise to disinfect their platforms of contagiously incorrect COVID-19 content. “We are working closely together on COVID-19 response efforts," the statement says. "We’re helping millions of people stay connected …
That's very true. I recently was made aware of an active phishing campaign, and the attempt to take it down went like this:
Tuesday morning: Someone tells me about the campaign and sends me a sample.
Tuesday evening: I finish looking at things and send in reports (this isn't my job, so I didn't do much until I got home). The information I have implies that the campaign I'm seeing has been running since Monday.
Wednesday morning: Nothing.
Wednesday afternoon: Nothing.
Thursday morning: Nothing.
Thursday evening: I look at the phisher's website and figure out how to submit login pairs, so I write a bot to send in random ones from Tor. It probably won't really do anything, but I can't think of much else to do.
Friday morning: Nothing.
Friday afternoon: The phisher's domain name is about to end its grace period where they can get refunded for the purchase. They shut down.
Friday evening: Nothing.
Saturday: "Thank you for reporting this content. The content you have reported no longer appears to be available on the site concerned, so we can take no action at this time."
Nice to see they draw the line at plain wrong health information, shame they didn't draw the line at plain wrong political stuff which put populist idiots in charge in the first place who are now unable to respond and do stupid stuff like wind down the pandemic office or say they want to "wait until it's the right time" as an excuse for doing nothing (hint: anyone with half a brain could see what was happening, if you want to see two weeks into the future, look at Italy and one week into the future, look at Spain).
It doesn't really matter as so many people are desperate to believe the whackiest shit available!
I'm just waiting for the moment that usually comes in any large epidemic when something, person or group becomes the scapegoat and the lynch mobs form. People are often depressingly predictable.
It doesn't really matter as so many people are desperate to believe the whackiest shit available!
This. I've already had a stream of emails about implausible Covid-19 facts from otherwise calm and sensible friends. For those in the UK I point them at Full Fact's page on coronavirus. It's a useful resource and more UK oriented than Snopes.
A comment from a foaf: in any other circumstances, "Covid" would be a good name for an open source video conferencing system.
"Nice to see they draw the line at plain wrong health information, shame they didn't draw the line at plain wrong political stuff which put populist idiots in charge in the first place who are now unable to respond and do stupid stuff like wind down the pandemic office or say they want to "wait until it's the right time" as an excuse for doing nothing (hint: anyone with half a brain could see what was happening, if you want to see two weeks into the future, look at Italy and one week into the future, look at Spain)."
At this time, I see 8 up and 8 down, so apparently the populist idiot has convinced enough fools. I thought he would be an excrement tornado, did not realize he would endanger us to the point he has. BTW, ot five FB posts blocked yesterday, Thought it was an attack of the RW trolls, but FB is calling it an "AI malfunction".
Now that they are collectively demonstrating that they can indeed curate their content, they will have a lot of trouble avoiding being taken to task on other issues.
So we are going to be faced with the next problem : who decides what should be curated ?
Oh and, side remark, I've got the feeling that there will be no outcry from the rabid defenders of Free Speech in this case. How curious.
Oh and, side remark, I've got the feeling that there will be no outcry from the rabid defenders of Free Speech in this case. How curious.
Sadly I wouldn't count on that. The pushers of anti-vaxx and general quackery have been using "Medical Freedom"to push their useless quackery for a while and there's a large overlap with anti-government conspiracy theorists.
For a relevant example see Alex Jones selling anti coronavirus toothpaste...
I heard yesterday that that little enterprise had been shut down. Frankly, I think he should be put in jail for that. You have no right to claim something is a medical cure when it is verifiably not. Medical quackery should be a federal crime, especially and more so if it puts people's lives in danger.
Convicted scamvangelist Jimmy Bakker sells a silver solution (only $300 for a box of six bottles) that not only cures coronavirus, but also all venereal diseases AND HIV. The state of Missouri is now suing him to stop it, and the New York attorney general has sent a cease and desist order. How many religious nutjobs have been taken by Bakker?
Now that they are collectively demonstrating that they can indeed curate their content
I'm not convinced they can, at least with any accuracy. What I heard from various people yesterday was that Facebook appeared to be deleting posts more or less at random - things like people mentioning what their kids were doing at home.
It's not quite that serious yet. After all, Facebook have said they're going to do the right thing. Which they do all the time. That's no guarantee that they'll actually do it. When there's always the option of saying you planned to do the right thing but accidentally designed an algorithm that did something totally different instead...
They're going to try to do something. Whether it's the right thing, and whether they succeed, are still very much in doubt.
Personally, I think it unlikely that the social-media giants censoring misinformation will help very much, even if it meets whatever (probably meager) specifications the project may have. It will just drive the people who crave that misinformation to other sites, and fuel conspiracy theories. Driving undesirable expression underground has a poor track record.
They have flagged two of my shares (articles written by an Associate Prof in Microbiology) as spam today. There's some great scicomm on this site, including this explainer about testing: https://thespinoff.co.nz/science/18-03-2020/siouxsie-wiles-how-testing-for-covid-19-works/ but FB has blocked it.
But its okay, cos the antivaxxers and Nazis still have a free pass to post their bull...
Um, even authorities can't get their stories straight. E.g. are masks helpful, or not? One week they are useless for us commoners, the next they are discussing mandating them.
In January, WHO tweeted that there was no evidence of person to person transmission . Should *that* tweet get memory holed? (It's still there.)
The problems with censorship don't go away magically just because we want them to, or because it's important that they should.
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