WelshBluebird
Established Member
- Joined
- 14 Jan 2010
- Messages
- 4,923
Or the "masks give you covid", or "covid doesn't exist", or "covid is no worse than the normal flu", or "flu is being purposefully misdiagnosed as covid to boost the numbers", or "mass testing is being increased specifically so that the government can rely on the false positive rate to justify more restrictions" or the previously mentioned "5g causes covid". See both of us can do that.I do think we have to worry a little about fake science, anyone remember the 'masks are 95% effective infographics circulating on Facebook? Or the 'herd immunity is eugenics' drivel?
Again - if the person is questioning in good faith then fine.The right way to deal with this is to demonstrate with evidence that these claims are false. Arbitrarily violating people's democratic right to question things is not a civilised way to behave.
But many are questioning in bad faith, and no amount of evidence is going to convince them otherwise (and interacting with them just means the social media algorithms spread that content even further as they see it as content that lots of people interact with).
As for it being a "democratic right" - in person via a protest you are absolutely right.
But on an online platform that a private company runs and manages? I'm not so in agreement.
Moderation of content on online platforms is as old as the internet itself, and indeed is something that happens on this forum too. To suggest that practice is anti democratic is just not true at all.
I've asked this before, but few people give a direct answer. If you are so against online platforms moderating content, would you support the likes of Anjem Choudary and ISIS being allowed to freely spread their bile on social media? Or do you agree with most of the country that in some cases, banning certain people or moderating certain content is acceptable?
I think we have to remember we are still in a pandemic and there is still a rush to get the vaccine to as many people as possible, especially those who are at a higher risk of dying (which has mostly been complete now, but still a few left, generally those younger but with conditions that make them vulnerable) and those who at a higher risk of needing serious hospital treatment (of which we are now starting to get through). Once all of that is complete and it calms down a bit, I don't see any reason why it won't be able to be treated more like any other vaccine where it is available on the NHS for some people and privately for others.Because if the hysteria continues as it has been, if vaccines are reformulated to be more effective against the latest set of common mutations, there will be calls from some to distribute such more effective vaccine to the entire population in priority order, from most to least vulnerable; and an argument will be made that “saving lives” is more important than “enabling travel”.
Hopefully I’m wrong there, and I’m glad to see you don’t think it’s likely!
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