> In addition to down-ranking sites associated with disinformation, we also often place news modules and information boxes at the top of DuckDuckGo search results (where they are seen and clicked the most) to highlight quality information for rapidly unfolding topics.
> destruction of evidence that is relevant to a case .. or an inference that such evidence can be unfavorable. ... victim of the spoliation [the state] must prove that the destruction was intentional [it was] and also the destroyed evidence was relevant to the issue ...
Literally what Google is doing, if Google deleted location data of all the J6 rioters this wouldn't even be a question if they deleted evidence, because its abortion, everyones ok with it, double standards.
> in democratic countries the best vaccine for the job was chosen.
thats a bit of a white washing job, there was 1000's of posts about the risk/effectiveness of Astrazeneca and the JnJ vaccine that were removed from social media, labeled as misinformation (but were accurate).
The biggest message was "the best vaccine is the first one available", so while we eventually gravitated to Pfizer/Moderna ... it was based on supply and not "the science".
I don't doubt China is hiding info, but America was not exactly a light in the darkness as you're painting it to be.
The best vaccine is the first one available. The thing that protects you is aggregate herd immunity, not the individual personal effectiveness (so long as the first vaccine available has a breakthrough rate under 1-1/r0).
The first vaccine available is not guaranteed to be the best one forever, breakthrough rates and effiacy rates are important.
China cannot change their vaccine of choice (Sinovac) due to political constraints, which is why they are stuck with COVID issues and most of the world have moved on.
The table in this article illustrates it very clearly. At this point in time Pfizer or Moderna are the best choices, unless you want to prolong COVID efforts.
It was Ottawa, and Trudeau used all same rhetoric Putin is using now, calling them Nazis[1], denying the leaders bail[2], charged with mischief, and pushing propaganda thru state media.
Like the story of truckers attempting to burn down an apartment building[3], that turned out to be completely false, but used to prove violence and justify the emergencies act.
> MIT told him it was canceling the lecture to “avoid controversy” after students and recent alumni demanded he be uninvited because he’d recently argued academic evaluations should be based on merit.
Damn, I assumed he said something racist maybe, but this is what the issue was about, I just lost all respect for MIT.
I think that may be an over-simplification; the following paragraphs from the article clarify they are talking about admissions:
> He and Stanford University professor Ivan Marinovic had argued in a Newsweek op-ed published in August that current diversity efforts — known as Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion — at universities violated equal treatment.
> Instead, they proposed a framework called Merit, Fairness, and Equality where "university applicants are treated as individuals and evaluated through a rigorous and unbiased process based on their merit and qualifications alone."
In my opinion, the current system is put in place to try to address inequalities that the applicants outside of the educational institution had faced.
It's not a perfect solution, but I think that not having it in place may result in a student roster that would be increasingly conformed by the children of those who have benefited the most from economic inequality.
If you think that the issue is economic inequality impeding their development, this sort of fix is at best a hack that draws fire in other ways, especially from those with egalitarian values.
An enforced racial criteria is the definition of systemic racism. It's literally a system around judging people on their race and doling out advantages on that race.
> There is this weird notion floating around the "identity politics" crowd that says that relying on merit is racist and prejudicial.
No, that's not the idea.
The idea is that things some people characterize as “focussing on merit” actually focus on the outputs of processes influenced substantially by (direct and structural) racism and other non-merit biases as well as merit.
And yet it was over eight years ago that GitHub removed their meritocracy rug. It's not weird, or new, nor limited to a fringe crowd, but embedded for years within Silicon Valley tech companies and YC startups.
This is race related in the same way that saying "All Lives Matter" is racist. It's not about the words that are stated, it's about the context as well.
When people are protesting about racial injustice toward some minorities, saying "All Lives Matter" is dismissing their concerns. It's like when someone goes to the police department saying "You need to protect me from a murderer" and an officer goes "Yeah, we need to protect everyone from murderers." Yes, that's true, but that's not a very helpful response to someone asking for help.
Likewise, the whole academic evaluation based on merit dismisses the idea that our current "objective" means of academic evaluation may not be as objective as they should be when considering race. Yes, we should evaluate students based on "merit" but we need to reconsider whether our current methods measure "merit" accurately.
So I'm trying to navigate the personal cognitive dissonance I'm facing after reading your comment.
Would you agree that "All Lives Matter" is racist because it's derisive of "Black Lives Matter" the proper noun? The sentiment that all lives are important is not racist, and it's also not mutually exclusive from BLM's message. If anything, they align right?
BLM is saying Black lives matter just as much as any other life. Black people should not be treated as second class citizens. They're not claiming Black lives matter _more_ than others.. that _would_ be racist.
A true merit based evaluation would be.. just that - based on merit and not racial background, sexuality, age, political affiliation, the clothes you wear, the food you eat, or even the schooling you've received. To give any group preferential treatment would be not based on merit.
They 100% did, an article from 2011/2013 about the government distributing low cost appliances[1] and free houses[2]. They were getting tons of free and cheap stuff and the people were celebrating it.
> ... AfD didn't have enough engaged supporters, so they were open to hire ... Flyerservice Hahn, a fictitious company.
> @politicalbeauty set up a fictitious website, without registering a company ... created fake Linkedin ... contacting regional offices of the AfD with very low ball offers to hand out fliers
> Close to the election they slowly realized that no flyers were handed out, but @politicalbeauty kept stalling them
---
I don't know the German system, but in many countries this would be fraud, and possibly election interference since the goal was political suppression.
In Germany too, at least if the ZPS had signed a contract, sent an invoice or accepted payment from the AfD. But AIUI, the ZPS didn't carry out its duties under an agreement that still hasn't been signed.
My guess is that if this comes in front of a judge, the judge will say "de nihilis" and call it a day.
