This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Twitter Files 10
Another thread, another author writing for the Twitter Files. Link
David Zweig writes the following.
Twitter and other important internet platforms (Google, Facebook, etc.) were in meetings with the Trump WH since the start of the pandemic to help combat misinformation. The Trump WH was concerned with 5G conspiracies, "runs on grocery stores", and "panic buying".
The Biden WH on the other hand was concerned about Covid. They wanted high-profile anti-vaxx accounts taken offline, noting people like Alex Berenson. The justification was that Covid misinformation was killing lots of people.
Twitter did not immediately capitulate, they were internally hesitant and debating as to whether to suppress people spouting arguments that went against government positions on the topic. But this does not mean that they didn't suppress people.
Twitter's moderation, as you might expect, consists of machine-learning bots at the first layer, then contracted moderators from the Phillipines, and lastly review by "higher level employees" (implied American, or familiar with the culture).
Twitter took the establishment position on Covid, sure, but this went far beyond just applying the "misinformation" tag to people saying vaccines don't work or that Covid is a hoax. It went as far as slapping that label on anyone saying anything that contradicted the mainstream CDC position on anything Covid-related or Covid-narrative-related. In most cases, the same message was seen ("Misleading: Learn why health officials recommend the vaccine for most people") and could no longer be interacted with. Some examples:
Dr. Martin Kulldorff, an epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School, argued that not everyone needed to take a vaccine, and that it was good for old people and their caretakers, but children and people with natural immunity were fine.
@KellyKGA cited CDC statistics to argue that Covid was not the leading cause of child deaths from disease.
@_euzebiusz_ cited a study which argued that mRNA vaccines were associated with cardiac arrests.
I have to say, if there was ever a case that reeked of TDS to me, it would be Jim Baker complaining and asking why Donald Trump saying "Don't be afraid of Covid" wasn't a violation of the company's Covid policies, to which Yoel Roth reminded him that it was a "broad, optimistic statement". Or maybe Baker just had a day of Covid-brain, who knows?
In any case, I'm really annoyed that Zweig doesn't talk at all about the Trump WH and what Twitter did or did not do during that time, or about any other requests the Biden WH might have made. Yeah, it's Covid and all that, but are you seriously telling me the Biden WH didn't ask about other topics? At least tell us if so. Tell us about how many requests were made, percentages of fulfilled requests, etc. You could very much do that here and make a stronger, more principled point.
As for what was said, I don't really think it's new. Even if you didn't have the Twitter Files, you could look at the cases that are given as examples and come to the same conclusion - Twitter was suppressing anything that was against establishment narratives on Covid.
P.S: whoever got him his evidence/screenshots should be fired, who uses Twitter even semi-professionally and posts pictures of a computer monitor instead of screenshots?
Notes from Trump-land: the cognitive dissonance of the Trump fandom being against the Trump vaccines is resolved in pre-pandemic reports that Trump is a germophobe, that he’s a man who trusts the American medical establishment including big pharma. It’s only natural that one man (no matter how smart and big-league clever) couldn’t be absolutely right on everything.
Also, he had Mike Pence (out of the fandom’s good graces since saying he wouldn’t halt or delay the tally on 1/6) run the Federal task force on the coronavirus. So, if fans can’t swallow the idea that Trump was fooled by Big Pharma, at least they can find solace in swamp Pence being in with the conspiracy. (“We should have trusted the fly all along.”)
Easier path to resolution from my (admittedly tiny) corner of Trump-land - expedited development of vaccines was a good idea, was executed better than could reasonably be expected with the American federal government obstacles, and the vaccines represented an honest best effort to handle COVID-19. They may have even worked fairly well against vanilla COVID, although that's not entirely clear and became irrelevant in short order. There was no grand conspiracy, the vaccines aren't particularly dangerous, they're just incredibly disappointing when it comes to stopping variant transmission. Trump did approximately nothing wrong with regard to executive action on the vaccines.
The sins around vaccination have nothing to do with development and everything to do with the mandates (both the ones that survived challenges and the ones that were eventually struck down). These mandates were policies of the Biden administration and/or other entities following the federal lead on the topic. With regard to vaccines, the simple resolution to this set of claims rounds to Trump Good, Biden Bad.
deleted
Is that really the argument? Seems odd, since that has been standard procedure for vaccines since the creation of the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program in 1986.
COVID vaccines did not fall under the NVIC; the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act put COVID countermeasures as a whole under the sole jurisdiction of the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program. There are valid reasons for that. some other anti-pandemic measures are similarly separated, but does impact a number of traits. I don't think it should change the responsibility calculus too heavily, but I've had no small number of people (including coworkers!) that saw the VICP as a rubber-stamp fund and the CICP as largely focused on minimizing outlays (I was never able to get good numbers on either assumption).
This was not helped further that the CICP took forever to start releasing compensation.
More options
Context Copy link
deleted
Just FYI, this isn't how you mention people here. You would use "@" instead of "/u/".
More options
Context Copy link
Can we at least give some of the due necessary to the reasonable arguments for waving liability? In the middle of an ongoing pandemic that threatens million of lives you actually do have a pretty good case that a potentially dangerous vaccine is more useful than no vaccine at all and that is realistically your alternative if pharma companies feel as though they need enough rounds of testing to mitigate this additional liability. If they were only give to the very high risk populations and had some huge greater than 10% chance of complications that might still be a good play. The calculous is much different when forced on everyone but that's a different objection.
Just FYI, this isn't how you mention people here. You would use "@" instead of "/u/".
Did you mean to reply to someone else?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I don't think it's possible to separate that objection -- if you're going to force the vaccine on literally everyone over 12 and heavily market it (using government resources to boot) for toddlers on up (did they ever get it approved for infants? even worse if so), then the vaccine had better be awfully damned safe -- and if it's not, skin in the game would be helpful.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
How many people would have even known that?
There's far too many cases where people just lack the historical knowledge to understand why/how normal something may be that seems odd from the outside looking in.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
A lot of that is coming from conservative people in heavily-blue states or cities, where there really were attempts to make not getting the shots seriously harmful to careers and ability to be in society, and where any suspicion was treated as socially unspeakable.
More options
Context Copy link
A lot of military-adjacent older people (not saying conservative) also have inspiration from the military's previous Anthrax vaccine, which had a variety of pretty nasty effects and lead to some pretty severe paranoia. Combined with the weird behavior around the CICP (possibly just a combination of delays and higher standards of proof than the unofficial-autistic-baby-fund for other vaccines?) and sometimes ridiculous pressure being brought against critics of the mandates, it's not too hard to come up with Red Tribe motivations.
In net, I think the paranoia was wrong (modulo younger kids and the heart risk, albeit more b/c COVID risks are so low for that group anyway rather than the risk being clear), but the Blue Tribe assumptions that it was solely motivated by foundationless reasoning bugs me.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link