
Pinterest Blocks Vaccination Searches in Move to Control the Conversation - vanderfluge
https://www.wsj.com/articles/next-front-in-tech-firms-war-on-misinformation-bad-medical-advice-11550658601
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nabnob
This is incredibly worrying. I understand that anti-vax conspiracy theories
are dangerous, but I can think of a ton of ways banning "bad medical advice",
as determined by a $10/hr contractor at Pinterest, Facebook, etc. could end up
hurting people with health problems by preventing them from sharing useful
information. I have gender dysphoria and at one point considered getting on
testosterone, but thanks to conversations with transmen and detransitioned
women on social media, I learned about less-commonly discussed side effects
and decided against taking testosterone. This is an area where research is
still developing and there aren't a ton of long-term studies, so it's
incredibly helpful to be able to learn from other people's experiences, even
if they aren't yet confirmed by research.

Likewise, I know people who've had a post or comment removed by Facebook
because it was erroneously interpreted as racist or sexist. Off the top of my
head, I know a friend who was sharing information on ICE raids with friends
who were immigrants and they got banned from Facebook for a couple of hours
(he was unbanned after appealing). I know someone else who was sharing
statistics on domestic violence that was interpreted as discriminatory. The
corporations making these policies don't have a good enough understanding of
political issues to determine whether a statement is hate speech - and hell,
even people who are knowledgeable about politics and history disagree in a lot
of areas.

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msla
> I have gender dysphoria and at one point considered getting on testosterone,
> but thanks to conversations with transmen and detransitioned women on social
> media, I learned about less-commonly discussed side effects and decided
> against taking testosterone. This is an area where research is still
> developing and there aren't a ton of long-term studies, so it's incredibly
> helpful to be able to learn from other people's experiences, even if they
> aren't yet confirmed by research.

I'm sorry for using your actual problem as a jumping-off point, but this is a
real issue:

There are people called TERFs, or Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists, who
think "being trans" doesn't exist, that trans people are all mentally ill
and/or (in the case of transwomen) men trying to invade female spaces to cause
havoc, and who are organized enough to turn being trans into a huge political
clusterfuck.

More than it already is, I mean.

My point is, the project of cleaning up "Bad Medical Information" runs into
politics even quicker than most would imagine, and TERFs are very, very good
at playing the "You're misogynistic!" card early, often, and loudly. How much
courage would a tech company have in the face of _that_ these days?

(They're also good at playing the "TERF is a slur! Cis is a slur!" card.)

~~~
ummonk
TERF is most definitely a slur, and cis is often used as one as well. E.g.
"cis white males!"

~~~
jdietrich
_> TERF is most definitely a slur_

Really? What else should we call self-professed radical feminists whose
definition of a woman excludes trans women?

~~~
ummonk
Radfem. You wouldn’t go around calling pro-choice and pro-life people “anti-
life” and “anti-choice” would you?

~~~
jdietrich
Not all radical feminists are trans-exclusionary, hence the need for the term.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_feminism#Views_on_tran...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_feminism#Views_on_transgender_topics)

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crazygringo
This is a really, really, really thorny issue.

On the one hand, it seems noble/responsible to suppress anti-vax, Russian
influence, conspiracy theories, etc.

On the other hand, for centuries it's been recognized that the best antidote
to "bad speech" isn't censorship, it's _more speech_. Don't ban, convince.

But on the other other hand, that's been exclusively argued in the domain of
_government_ action, that government censorship is ultimately worse than what
it purports to cure.

In this case, tech firms/platforms like Facebook, YouTube and Pinterest _aren
't_ the government or society, they're private actors just like newspapers and
members of the free press in general. Just like it could be irresponsible of
the NYT to publish letters to the editor supporting anti-vax, you can argue
it's equally irresponsible for tech firms to allow the same on their
platforms.

Yet on the other other other hand, we're reaching a point where a great deal
of discourse is concentrated on a few user-content-driven sites, so censorship
on them feels like it's inching closer in spirit to government censorship.

But on the other x 4 hand, mainstream public conversation has always been
driven mainly by merely a handful of newspapers and then news programs with
their own editorial agendas, so a handful of tech actors exercising their own
"responsible" (as self-interpreted) curation and promotion doesn't seem to be
anything new.

In the end, free speech has never been an absolute right (e.g. yelling fire in
a crowded theater, libel, etc.) and it's ultimately a question of finding the
right balance between harms.

~~~
pjc50
Thanks to AI, it's possible to algorithmically generate almost unlimited
amounts of false or meaningless speech to drown out accurate information.

~~~
crazygringo
Thanks to AI can't we also do the opposite?

E.g. detect conspiracy theory speech and automatically provide relevant
links/warnings to relevant curated sources?

~~~
jdietrich
The list of things that are true is orders of magnitude smaller than the list
of things that appear true. Randomly generating plausible-looking bullshit is
a thing we can do now, but ascertaining the validity of a factual statement is
tantamount to solving the AGI problem.

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raphlinus
This isn't their first rodeo. In 2008 Google launched Knol, which was a fairly
major initiative to provide a service like Wikipedia, but without Wikipedia's
problems around unattributed content. The idea was that authors would post
with their professional affiliation, and get compensated with ad revenue. They
hoped to attract actual medical professionals, as medicine was one of the
areas where you want to be able to rely on the information.

It failed miserably. The incentives were favorable to spammers but not to
actual professionals. No real expert would invest their time into the
platform, putting their reputation on the line, for a few paltry ad dollars.
But there were some people who mastered cranking out low quality content.

I'm not making any claims about the new effort, just pointing out that
identifying a problem and putting resources behind a solution is often not
enough.

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kennbutler
I still feel like large tech companies don't understand the amount of power
they wield beyond it's capacity to influence buying decisions. I personally
believe that YouTube (pre-2009) was the early breeding ground for conspiracy
theorists, and Facebook groups/pages was the enriched gasoline added to the
fire.

~~~
tdb7893
My father in law is a conspiracy theorist and it came a lot more from Fox News
and talk radio than YouTube. They were pretty mainstream well before YouTube

~~~
sandworm101
The difference was that 1990s conspiracies were all about secret government
agencies doing secret stuff in secret places. Modern conspiracies are out in
public. Pizzagate, still belived by many, is different than area 51. This
visibility means belief is constantly reenforced.

~~~
tdb7893
Most of the people I've talked to aren't crazy alien conspiracy theorists so I
can't really comment on that brand of conspiracy theorist. Honestly my main
experience is the standard 9/11, global warming, and Obama conspiracy theories
(which were incredibly racist) from the early to mid 2000s and those were all
pretty similar to modern theories and at least for my father in law and his
friends were definitely from Fox News and talk radio.

Edit: a good example to me was the start of the birther movement, which is a
quinessential modern conspiracy theory to me, and I remember that as talk
radio and Fox News.

~~~
sandworm101
Global warming and birtherism were a turning point. It was then than
condpiracy theories were directly applicable to politics. Managing them then
became a practical political weapon.

~~~
EamonnMR
The John Birch Society predates both, and was a similar movement by similar
people towards similar ends.

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duxup
Some firms are more on top of it than others.

Netflix's deal with Goop is not encouraging, Goop just a "lifestyle brand"
that is selling snake oil.

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maxxxxx
In the end they will always go for more money despite all the talk about
values.

~~~
abakker
Well, I feel like it is also worth pointing out that all money starts to be a
lot more persuasive when your business model is "lose other people's money
until a miracle occurs". Honestly, if we have a system which
permits/encourages sky-high valuations and seemingly interesting businesses to
expand well beyond their user's desires or ability to pay, this is precisely
what we get.

If you monetize on ads, you need damn expensive ads. If you want to have
expensive ads, you gotta do something to actually make them work.

if sustainability vs valuation was a goal, then there might be more incentive
to avoid these kinds of odd, consumer hostile behaviors. Users may not be the
product, but, they're not the direct revenue source either. As long as ads can
trick people into clicking, there is an incentive to charge for those ads.

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darkerside
The cure for bad information is usually more information.

~~~
darkerside
Expanding on my own post... why is it any tech company's responsibility to
protect people from their own bad decisions?

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pixl97
Are you serious? Because as of so far, in the US, the law demands it. Look at
every product you buy "Don't do X dangerous thing with said device". We
regulate countless things that can be physically harmful to individuals. I
can't go to the store and by dynamite because I can harm myself and others
with it.

So should information be regulated if it can cause physical harm to oneself
and others. This is not an easy question to answer.

~~~
darkerside
So law should dictate what we're able to say? There was a time when that was
counter to the entire point.

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existentialhalt
When the medical system actually starts curing people then they can claim
their advice is the best. Otherwise it's just opinion. If you can't cure a
disease you don't understand it.

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oxymoran
Can they finish their other wars first?

