Boots & Sabers

The blogging will continue until morale improves...

Owen

Everything but tech support.
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2237, 05 Aug 20

Twitter and Facebook Are Actively Campaigning

They have been for some time, but now they aren’t even pretending. Since these platforms have taken ownership of the content submitted by their users by actively curating it, I’m all in favor of removing their legal protections.

For the first time, Facebook has taken down a post from Donald Trump’s personal page on Wednesday for making false claims about the coronavirus.

Trump had uploaded a video of an interview he gave to Fox News earlier Wednesday, in which he falsely stated that children are ‘almost immune’ from COVID-19.

‘They have much stronger immune system than [adults],’ Trump said in the video, which the official account for his presidential campaign also tweeted.

In a statement, a spokesperson for Facebook said the president’s post was removed for violating the social media platform’s ‘policies around harmful COVID misinformation.’

Twitter followed suit a short while after, ordering Trump’s campaign account, @TeamTrump, to remove its ‘misleading’ post featuring the same video and banning it from tweeting again until it agreed to do so.

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2237, 05 August 2020

16 Comments

  1. Kevin Scheunemann

    Looks like awful liberal election interference to me.

  2. Jason

    They are biased as they do not remove all the posts saying that masks are effective against the spread of Covid 19. http://www.bootsandsabers.com/2020/08/03/dont-play-politics-with-masks/#comment-40922

    There are many more studies from organizations like the CDC, scientific, peer reviewed, and ignored. Its “patriotic to wear a mask” just like its “patriotic to ignore inconvenient science”.

  3. jonnyv

    The president said a completely factually incorrect statement in regards to COVID and children. Facebook and Twitter have stated they will remove this type of statement. They did. I have seen this with many accounts in my feeds lately. This isn’t “playing politics” just because it affected the President. He is susceptible to the site’s terms of service as anyone else.

  4. Jason

    People saying “wearing masks will stop the spread” are also posting factually unproven, and in studies I have posted, incorrect statements. Even jjf’s weak rebuttal in another thread has an expert saying …

    >The available data is incomplete and more studies need to be done to better understand whether masks are effective at reducing community transmission or not

    They need to remove those as well.

  5. jonnyv

    Jason, you are factually incorrect.
    https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/10/20-0948_article

    “One study tested medical masks and several household materials for the ability to block bacterial and viral aerosols. Participants made masks from different materials, and all masks tested showed some ability to block the microbial aerosol challenges although less than that of medical masks (11).”

  6. Tuerqas

    I don’t know if I would call it campaigning to take down Trump’s tripe, especially the blatantly false ones.  However, accepting/promoting the scientific world’s popular PC conjecture of the moment is usually what the Dem party clings to so maybe it is campaigning after all.

  7. Randall Flagg

    I find it ironic that conservatives:

    1)  Complain about Facebook on Facebook (and twitter on twitter)

    2)  Have not been able to create a competitor to either.   If they are as bad as conservatives complain, it should be easy.  Rather than using that free market they crow about as a solution, conservatves try to silence successful companies.

    Hmmmmmm…..

  8. Kevin Scheunemann

    Randall,

    There is a difference between conducting trade and RESTRAINING trade, which is what big teams is doing on ideas.

    Liberals bitch all the time when companies get too big without restraining trade…why does big tech get a pass from Marxists here?

  9. Tuerqas

    Randal,

    1) I haven’t complained about Facebook or twitter, but I do have a complaint.  I don’t like how lies from Facebook are too easily and quickly acted upon as fact.  Then because everything on Facebook is one big emotional blur, people don’t even remember (much less apologize) for destroying the reputation of a person or business.  It seems like taking down lies would be the priority (even for a liberal business, since you insist on putting it that way), not taking down opinions on a platform that is supposed to be for everyone.  Go ahead and call it ‘Democrat Facebook’ and lose about 40% of your subscribers for ‘the cause’, but taking down the posts of people who you disagree with is wrong if you are really a platform for everyone.  I don’t see any line of reasoning that defends it.

    2)  Silence successful companies?  Who, where?  Petitioning (complaining, bitching, whatever word you like) for equal treatment on a public forum is about as free market as you get.  In a free market they wouldn’t have ‘protections’ in the first place.

  10. Tuerqas

    Sorry, bad proof job:
    Randall,
    1) I haven’t complained about Facebook or twitter, but I do have a complaint.  I don’t like how lies from Facebook are too easily and quickly acted upon as fact.  Then because everything on Facebook is one big emotional blur, people don’t even remember (much less apologize) for destroying the reputation of a person or business that later turns out to be innocent of the alleged fault.  It seems like taking down lies would be the priority (even for a liberal business, since you insist on putting it that way), not taking down opinions on a platform that is supposed to be for everyone.  Go ahead and call it ‘Democrat Facebook’ and lose about 40% of your subscribers for ‘the cause’, but taking down the posts of people who you disagree with is wrong if you are really a platform for everyone.  I don’t see any line of reasoning that defends it.
    2)  Silence successful companies?  Who, where?  Petitioning (complaining, bitching, whatever word you like) for equal treatment on a public forum is about as free market as you get.  In a free market they wouldn’t have ‘protections’ in the first place.

  11. Randall Flagg

    tuerqas:

    I would expand on #1 and say I don’t like how lies everywhere are quickly acted upon as fact.  I would offer pizzagate as an example that was not Facebook related.   I agree they should nto take down opinions but again, if they are so bad, why has a competitor not risen up?

    For #2 see Trump’s executive order on TikTok.  Nothing has changed, yet now he suddenly wants to ban it when there are videos critical of him?  I don’t buy his security reason for a second.

  12. Randall Flagg

    Kevin:

    They are not restraining ideas.  You can post any idea you want on the internet.  Don’t like what Facebook is doing?   Create your own blog like Owen has or your own social media app.

  13. Jason

    >Jason, you are factually incorrect.

    And yet from that same article you linked, shows me to be factually correct, Johnny.  Try to keep up, you’re slipping.  Emphasis mine to highlight my correctness!

    >In 2015, we conducted a randomized controlled trial to compare the efficacy of cloth masks with that of medical masks and controls (standard practice) among healthcare workers in Vietnam (4). Rates of infection were consistently higher among those in the cloth mask group than in the medical mask and control groups. This finding suggests that risk for infection was higher for those wearing cloth masks.

     

  14. Tuerqas

    I would expand on #1 and say I don’t like how lies everywhere are quickly acted upon as fact.  I would offer pizzagate as an example that was not Facebook related.   I agree they should nto take down opinions but again, if they are so bad, why has a competitor not risen up?
    For #2 see Trump’s executive order on TikTok.  Nothing has changed, yet now he suddenly wants to ban it when there are videos critical of him?  I don’t buy his security reason for a second.

    No problem with expansion.  I would love for it to be expanded to include mainstream media.  Fox and CNN et al would go right out of business.  As far as competitors, until recently they did not have a significant bias and it is still very much in the news.  If conservative voices feel they are silenced, a new platform may very well emerge.  And wouldn’t that be grand, one more platform where the divided country would not even have to talk to each other.

    Huh, on TikTok.  Never even heard of it.  If he believes it a real threat, I have no problem with the order for Government employees, based on the words in the order.  Personally, I don’t buy it either, but I equally don’t buy your assertion that he is only doing it ‘now that there are negative videos about him’.  You are suggesting that a Chinese company had been posting positive videos about him until recently?  That I do not buy either.

  15. Randall Flagg

    You are suggesting that a Chinese company had been posting positive videos about him until recently?  That I do not buy either.

    No the content is user-supplied, and there have been more and more users posting videos critical of Trump.    It must have hurt his ego.

  16. Tuerqas

    No the content is user-supplied

    Then I still have the same same comment except change out ‘Chinese Company’ with ‘the users’.  If they really had been positive or even just less critical than ‘before’, it just means there had been a site that Republicans had preferred to facebook until more liberals came:).

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