Multiple subreddits are acknowledging the misinformation being spread on Reddit

https://old.reddit.com/r/bestof/comments/pbezvi/multiple_subreddits_are_acknowledging_the/

by xqcgrek2 • 5 years ago

46 54 5 years ago

old.reddit.com

The covid heroes are conflating a lot of issues (and subreddits): Yes, there are crazy people that believe the vaccine will start killing everyone in a few years. But the majority of people they are hating on in their primitive sense of doing good, are those who simply disapprove of the new normal. They are against lockdowns, masks, regular vaccine mandates and further symptoms of the ongoing covid hysteria. Those are all valid positions to hold.

This seems to be reddits peak do-gooder echo chamber moment.

foerbert2• 5 years ago

That seems like a very... passive way to describe them. It's one thing to be unhappy with the way things are. Many people are unhappy about many things. Many of these things are fundamentally not changeable. Disliking these immutable things does not give inherent validity to harmful actions.

I can hate gravity all I want, but hurling myself off a freeway overpass in protest is not justified.

If nothing else, the strain on the healthcare system is a substantial harm. This is not a strictly personal freedom issue. Most people seem to understand that bodies flying across the road because of a lack of a seatbelt causes substantial harm to others. I also don't see many people complaining that they are not allowed to burn their suburban house down, despite it being their own property.

That's not to say I'm for this move. I'd rather see reddit be more hands off. I'd rather go back to the days when users banded together to try to stop reddit from reaching their hands out further.

Traubenfuchs3• 5 years ago

Lockdowns, mandated vaccines and masks are not universal forces like gravity. They are laws we can change. They are rules we can follow, or not.

millzlane• 5 years ago

The people spouting about "no new normal" are ignoring facts and history. It's one more place to spread misinformation and be cheered on as only "disapproving of the new normal" and not spreading FUD. Most of them use gotcha's like "Masks don't prevent infections", "The vaccines don't work", or "lockdowns don't prevent the spread". All true statements.... technically. But there is clearly more information and nuance out there that says otherwise.

They aren't pushing back against new norms either. Quarantines, lockdowns, public focus on overcrowding and public health were were popular in the early 1900's when TB AKA Consumption was hitting the US hard. We have always steered clear of sick or contagious people.

The thing that they're (NNN folks) glossing over is their feelings. Their feelings don't dictate the way commerce works. Commerce needs to flow and when a global pandemic threatens that flow. Mountains will move to prevent collapse. When people are afraid of an invisible virus and are unable to tell when you have it or not, and other folks don't care and are actively spreading it or hindering the prevention of spread. You will have Mask mandates, lockdowns, and vaccines mandates by large employers. Because guess what...if a virus threatens their bottom line, you better believe they going to do everything in their power to keep the money coming. And so will every person who wants to continue to participate in a functioning society.

It's as valid of a position as the argument against airbags or seatbelts.

BizarroLand• 5 years ago

Being against lockdowns is not a valid position to hold.

Being against vaccine mandates is not a valid position to hold.

Calling it a "do-gooder echo chamber" is a line from a comic book villain. Please tell me you can see that once it's shown to you.

anm892• 5 years ago

Thank you BizarroLand from The Internet for giving us all the final word on which opinions are valid.

Traubenfuchs3• 5 years ago

Lockdowns caused unspeakable harm to the bodies and minds of people and greatly damaged the economy.

Vaccine mandates are a human rights violation.

belltaco2• 5 years ago

The issue is the rampant misinformation being passed off as facts. Not opinions on trade offs of Covid harms vs lockdowns.

fbhabbed• 5 years ago

The very thread and subreddit where this started is concerning in the opposite way, if you ask me. Where do you draw the line? What is misinformation and what isn't? Who decides?

I read some comments in that very thread and just saying that you had a week of side effects but are glad you got the shot is enough to get an antivax label.

There is a line between wanting to stop the spread of blatant nonsense and bullying people who dare ask questions and pose reasonable doubts.

Not allowing different viewpoints like this and flooding even the reasonable critics with insults and mocking is what concerns me the most

casefields• 5 years ago

It's toe the government line or else...

As if 2003 and WMDs is ancient history. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

amanaplanacanal• 5 years ago

I may be wrong, but it feels like the same party that was pushing the WMD theory is now pushing the antivax and no mask line.

lostlogin• 5 years ago

As if 2003 and WMDs is ancient history. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

There weren’t good intentions where 2003 and WMDs were concerned.

Buttons840• 5 years ago

Or God forbid you ask for advice on how to help a family member address their concerns. "My dad is worried because <insert complicated issues and good questions>". People may have different educations, even inferior educations, but the basic rules of effective communication still apply. You can't just set up a straw man, mock the straw man, and then expect your message to be effective.

rualca8• 5 years ago

Where do you draw the line? What is misinformation and what isn't? Who decides?

The Reddit posts present clear examples of blatant misinformation, such as:

* Claims that COVID-19 does not exist at all,

* Wearing masks can suffocate you,

* COVID-19 is just a flu,

* COVID-19 is a bioweapon,

* COVID-19 vaccines are not safe and are untested,

* COVID-19 vaccines are a DNA experiment,

* Etc.

Unless you're gunning for a slippery slope argument, we don't need to dig too deep to find subreddits that are a constant stream of these claims, and even worse claims.

Dwelve3• 5 years ago

This is absolutely hilarious. "Blatant misinformation" like "COVID-19 vaccines are not safe". I'd be upset but you're making the best case possible why this entire farce was such a joke

1123581321• 5 years ago

Fascinating. That seems to be a large community organized around unfalsifiable speculation (“we could have been better off months ago.”) It’s understandably hard to take a global view of Covid when every patient one personally knows feels like a deliberate personal attack from a family member, neighbor or Internet stranger.

908B64B197• 5 years ago

Keep in mind that not long ago you could get banned by simply pointing out that the lab escape theory was worth a deeper investigation.

Nothing, other than a certain administration, changed in the meantime. No new evidences. Yet now experts agree it's worth investigating.

_flagged_• 5 years ago

Which subreddits had their administration changed?

mwint• 5 years ago

US Presidential administration.

rualca8• 5 years ago

(...) you could get banned by simply pointing out that the lab escape theory was worth a deeper investigation.

I feel you're heavily distorting facts and misrepresenting them disingenuously.

The blend of remarks that you are referring to weren't based on a newly-found passion for the scientific method and objective thinking.

I'm sure you are fully aware that you are referring instead to baseless accusations fueled by conspiracy theories on how the virus was man-made by China in it's lab.

In some cases these conspiracy nuts go to the point of calling the leak intentional and even accusing it of being a bioweapon attack on the west.

There are also those who for some reason insist that Fauci is the mastermind behind the lab leak and not catering to the conspiracy theorist's demands is proof the US government in general and Fauci in particular is behind the virus.

And these accusations are reiterated in spite of any evidence of statement on the behalf of experts clearly refuting the conspiracy theories.

So no, it's disingenuous to frame what has been happening as being evil censorship attacks on honourable truth-seekers who routinely uncover major conspiracies by doing their own research and thinking independently.

throwawaysea3• 5 years ago

Everything in this comment is the kind of bad faith misrepresentation that was used to attack and censor the lab leak hypothesis, by painting it as something different from what it was. Most people didn’t insist the virus was man made, but that a virus may have leaked. Most of those who suggested a purposefully engineered virus said it is possible and should be investigated, not that it was definite. Most people didn’t suggest Fauci was a “mastermind”, but that he funded foreign GoF research that would be unacceptable in the US. You’re making your adversaries’ arguments into straw-man arguments that you can easily knock down.

rank0• 5 years ago

Honestly this position is pretty backwards. Forums shouldn’t be policing content unless it’s illegal. Why is everyone so desperate for regulated discussion?

snet0• 5 years ago

Forums shouldn't be policing content

Why not?

COGlory• 5 years ago

I'm not sure I agree with the parent that they shouldn't be policing content, but it's undeniable that doing so exacerbates echo chambers.

krapp2• 5 years ago

Why is everyone so desperate for regulated discussion?

No one is desperate, but not everyone wants to be confronted with conspiracy theory nonsense and racist shitposting everywhere they go on the internet just because some people believe "freedom of speech" means every site on the internet has to be run like 4chan.

Every forum since the beginning of time has been policing content for reasons other then strict legality. You're on a forum that polices tone and quality, relentlessly downvotes and flags anything for any reason, considers all politics and mainstream content categorically off topic (even though, strictly speaking, it isn't) and treats humor like the plague.

Laissez-faire hands-off general discussion forums have their place, just not everywhere. That's not fascism, or tyranny, or Orwellian dystopia, it's simply the result of the fact that servers and websites are private property, oftentimes services granted to users under certain and specific terms. Like it or not, all discussion on the internet has always been regulated to some degree.

jlawson• 5 years ago

If it's about 'not being confronted' with something you personally don't like, this can be handled at the subreddit level. Different subreddits can make their own censorship policies and you can join the one that censors the things you don't want to see.

But we are talking about censorship on the sitewide level at Reddit, which affects all communities, even ones you have no interest in. This isn't about protecting yourself from content you'd dislike, it is, as always, about preventing others from talking amongst themselves in ways you dislike, even when you're not around.

elzbardico2• 5 years ago

Tl;dr?

belltaco2• 5 years ago

Forums shouldn’t be policing content unless it’s illegal. Why is everyone so desperate for regulated discussion?

So I guess you're advocating for /r/jailbait to be brought back?

antiquark• 5 years ago

Is anyone else troubled that the sticked comment from the moderator refers to a group of people as "plague rats", not once, but three times?

This definitely hearkens back to WW2 propaganda literature.

footlose_3815• 5 years ago

Those antivaxx / altright trolls are here, too.

anm892• 5 years ago

Someone is wrong on the internet!

Not sure why in this particular instance this is newsworthy.

Because in this case the users who disagree belong to the same website that has 100s of millions of users?

jfengel• 5 years ago

It's unusual for the misinformation to have quite such direct consequences. If you believe that the earth is flat or Avril Lavigne was replaced by a duplicate, it's hard to connect that to any immediate harm.

But when the misinformation results in the spread of a deadly disease, it becomes noteworthy.

throwawaysea3• 5 years ago

This isn’t purely “multiple subreddits”. Many of these subreddits share common sets of moderators, who are using the size of their subreddit to bolster this complaint in a misleading way, implying that they represent all those users who are subscribed to their subreddit. Recall that 92 of the top 500 subreddits are controlled by the same 5 people (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23173018). There is a small social circle of people that control a massive firehose of information based on their personal rules and whims, and this same group is now demanding further censorship that fits their worldview.

Personally I’ve noticed increasingly aggressive censorship site wide, which is very upsetting given how pro free speech Reddit once was. Cofounder Aaron Swartz was famously against any censorship but now Reddit has gone so far as to omit him from their pages (https://reclaimthenet.org/aaron-swartz-reddit-founder/). Reddit’s leadership was “taken over” and its original mission was slowly corrupted in favor of censorship.

I used to not care about this issue until it came to affect me directly. Mods aggressively shape opinion. I was banned in one subreddit early in the pandemic for advocating for masking, and then banned elsewhere for supporting the lab leak hypothesis. With the Jan 6 Capitol riot I was banned in one subreddit for drawing comparisons against past incidents at the Capitol and rioting from 2020. I was banned elsewhere for claiming Trump’s election complaints should be investigated by authorities rather than tried in the court of public opinion. Each subreddit has its own special flavor of echo chamber cultivated by aggressive mods, through a mix of their rules and mod actions undertaken with little transparency. The division in our society feels fueled by such social media, since no one is allowed to freely and authentically interact anymore, which is white depressing.

I really wish there was a way for better products to compete against the network effects of incumbents like Reddit. There is a long list of alternatives (https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/oioeot/...) but I don’t see any having much of a chance. The only ones that did have a chance, Gab and Parler, were attacked and banned in a coordinated manner from app stores and elsewhere. They also carried their own biases from what I’ve read. Is there a way to avoid ending up with a Balkanized internet of echo chambers?

carnitas• 5 years ago

I can’t think of a reason why you are so highly downvoted for speaking the truth. Sad state of affairs.

thunkshift1• 5 years ago

Is this really surprising? I thought it was common knowledge

Multiple subreddits are acknowledging the misinformation being spread on Reddit

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