Twitter removes two Bolsonaro tweets questioning virus quarantine

https://today.rtl.lu/news/world/a/1492491.html

by chki • 6 years ago

68 97 6 years ago

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rbanffy9• 6 years ago

I wonder how much it takes for him to get his account suspended.

A positive aspect of the coronavirus is that it allows you to determine which politicians are sociopaths and which aren't.

AnthonBerg3• 6 years ago

Or rather, confirm what you know in order to help publicise the understanding.

thu21114• 6 years ago

Because putting entire nations under forced house arrest based on the output of computer simulations isn't even slightly sociopathic? It's literally got "social" in the word.

Argue that it's the right choice by all means. To argue that politicians caring about the economy - that thing that also keeps us alive - is "sociopathic", just shows a complete loss of perspective.

jonathanstrange3• 6 years ago

Ordering quarantine is quite obviously not sociopathic to anyone who understands exponential growth and can do basic calculations.

To argue that politicians caring about the economy - that thing that also keeps us alive - is "sociopathic", just shows a complete loss of perspective.

It's hard to see how someone who directly weighs deaths against economic benefits in such a situation (before the pandemic has even peaked) could not be a sociopath, and by "sociopath" I really mean the personality disorder, not some subjective sentiment. It's a hypothesis, but one that would be easy to confirm empirically with standard personality tests.

You have to bear in mind that politicians in those positions have good scientific advisors. They were attempting to delay measures in order for the economy of their country (or their personal stocks) to come out better in the end. They were willing to risk this gamble, even though they knew that this results in many more deaths, because no country's health care system can deal with so many patients at once. Except for Bolsonaro, all of these sociopaths have backed off by now, because most sociopaths are also narcissists and they realized the many deaths would make them look bad.

That's the sad truth, whether you like it or not. The good news is that there are less sociopathic heads of states than one might think and the vast majority of all decision makers have reacted wisely. Let's not forget that.

Traster2• 6 years ago

Is it not a little bit patronising that American companies think they can regulate political speech in Brazil? It's quite clear they don't think they can regulate political speech in the US. What exactly is the difference?

truculent• 6 years ago

If you're shocked by this, just wait until you find out what the US government has been up to in Central and South America over the past 50 years

Traster2• 6 years ago

I think there's a vast difference between the US government doing something, and private companies doing something like this. I'm not saying the US is right in its interventions, but atleast they're a democratically elected government with some form of legitimacy.

hrktb3• 6 years ago

We could try the glass half full angle: perhaps it's a baby step towards doing something about life threatening tweets in the US.

randomanon• 6 years ago

"It's quite clear they don't think they can regulate political speech in the US."

Think again, they DO censor political speech in the US, specifically one side's political speech. This is especially clear for Twitter but also present on many other social media channels.

rbanffy9• 6 years ago

That's not censorship. That's protecting the public good.

Joeri• 6 years ago

They are not regulating speech in brazil, they are regulating speech on their platform. Bolsonaro can still say whatever he wants in brazil, he just can’t do it on twitter.

juusto2• 6 years ago

I guess the question is: why don't they censor Trump / Pelosi / etc for example?

lodovic• 6 years ago

Many people look on Twitter first. Brazil could therefore argue Twitter is interfering with government communication in a time of national emergency. That carries a very high penalty in many countries. Besides, this is like the phone company refusing you service because you swore on a call.

rumanator3• 6 years ago

Is it not a little bit patronising that American companies think they can regulate political speech in Brazil?

I'm sure the President of Brazil can manage to find a way to convey his message other than Twitter. Thus it's not like Bolsonaro was placed under a gag order.

If you want to use a third-party service then you comply with the end user agreement presented by the third party. If you don't agree then that's ok, just get one that you're ok with.

_-___________-_6• 6 years ago

You could make this argument about virtually any censorship.

dntbnmpls2• 6 years ago

Something so orwellian about a tech company censoring the speech of an elected president of a major country.

Political speech should not be censored. Especially of elected officials. It should be regarded as part of the historical record at the very least.

hrktb3• 6 years ago

Wouldn't it be Orwellian if it was the elected president censoring/redacting people's tweet ?

I'd be on board with Twitter on this one, hoping they use it as a precedent for dealing with the other living policy infringements they have on their platform.

swebs• 6 years ago

No, they're both Orwellian. Censorship doesn't magically become OK just because it's done by a global megacorp instead of a govermnent.

krick• 6 years ago

This is not really news. I think what's really notable about all this... situation — is that a lot of stuff that was not ok only a short while ago, is perceived quite calmly by people, because.. well, "it's different", right? This is a serious thing. It's dangerous. You don't want to be dead, right?

It is 9/11 of sorts. Maybe even worse, since you are specifically "not allowed" to question this, because doubting is assumed to be spreading dangerous misinformation. And it's not hard to sell censoring something that supposedly puts lives of your relatives in danger.

verytrivial• 6 years ago

Read much about how the Rwandan genocide started?

osobo• 6 years ago

If they delete tweets like that, Twitter gets shit for censoring foreign officials. If they don't delete tweets like that, they get shit for not intervening when the public is obviously put in harm's way. I think they chose the lesser of the two evils. Now, on to censor that umpalumpa you call president.

dntbnmpls2• 6 years ago

If they don't delete tweets like that, they get shit for not intervening when the public is obviously put in harm's way.

Nobody voted for twitter to be the protector of the public. That's the job of the elected official. That's why we have elections. If the public suffers, the fault lies with the official, not twitter.

Why bother having elections, democracy, etc. Why not just let twitter and the tech elites rule over us? Zuckerburg, Wojcicki and Dorsey should form a triumvirate and rule over us. Tell us what to think, how to think, when to think, etc.

Legogris• 6 years ago

I also think there's something to be said for not putting Twitter - or any other company - in that position in the first place. We need to put more concerted resources into building decentralized alternatives.

https://scuttlebutt.nz/ is one such initiative.

There are no unsolved theoretical fundamentals here - we "just" need to build product and make it scale.

rbanffy9• 6 years ago

Nobody voted for twitter to be the protector of the public.

And Twitter owns the platform he uses to spread dangerous disinformation to further his own political agenda. A car rental company has every right to ban you from their fleet if you repeatedly kill pedestrians with their cars.

evgen• 6 years ago

They vote for Twitter to keep doing what it is doing every second of every day in numbers far greater than participate in any national election.

Don't like it? Well, last I checked no one is forcing you to use Twitter, so I am sure you can find the door all by yourself.

dreen• 6 years ago

They put themselves in this situation by not evolving their platform into one managed by its community. Instead, they are the gatekeepers of everything with full responsibility but also full access to their users data and therefore ad money.

sambe• 6 years ago

It's worse than that. He's making a reasonable argument that the public will be put in the way of greater harm by letting the economy collapse. I'd find it pretty hard to say whether he's right or wrong.

However, even if you think he's wrong, this is not an argument being made in bad faith. Censorship is a simply bad way to handle it.

mantap2• 6 years ago

Is it reasonable? In Italy and Spain they have so many bodies that they are running out of space to put them. These people are not dying of economic effects.

choutos• 6 years ago

I just don't buy that argument of "let's let people die" to save the economy. That's evil.

DyslexicAtheist• 6 years ago

He's making a reasonable argument that the public will be put in the way of greater harm

best argument I have heard so far that counters this is from John Oliver last night: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElIf2DBrWzU

Kaze404• 6 years ago

One thing everyone seems to be missing in this thread is that these tweets aren't in isolation. Last week he came on national TV to beg people to go back to work, saying the virus is just "a little flu" and, while he's a senior citizen, he would be fine because of his "athletic history" (which is interesting, since he can't do a single push up).

If you feel like the economy argument makes sense, fine, but let's not give this complete moron more credit than he's due.

ipython5• 6 years ago

The truth is, the leaders who advocate for this approach aren’t doing this analysis. They’re just being lazy and hoping the problem goes away on its own. That works with a lot of “human” scale problems - however you can’t ignore exponential growth.

xfitm3• 6 years ago

Twitter should not be censoring anything, period.

poilcn• 6 years ago

When organizations like WHO, CDC spread dangerous disinformation like "it's just a flu" or "masks don't help", should Twitter ban these texts as well? Should they ban people saying things that are obviously true (or proven to be true in the future), but go contrary to the statements by these organizations? What if they change their stance every week?

enitihas• 6 years ago

Is there a world where twitter can remove any of the Trump tweets?

rbanffy9• 6 years ago

This one. They just don't want to.

AnthonBerg3• 6 years ago

We must help them want to, as a matter of life and death.

bobcostas55• 6 years ago

Will they eventually come for the WHO/CDC/Surgeon General anti-mask tweets? That's the most interesting case for me, when the expert authorities disagree with the facts (and in a very dangerous way) how does twitter decide?

Twitter removes two Bolsonaro tweets questioning virus quarantine

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