Corona-zona

  Facebook's parent company Meta is considering easing up on the rules it has banning the distribution of misinformation and disinformation about the pandemic. Because we need more misinformation and disinformation about the pandemic, I guess. In a blog post Meta's President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg says: Meta remains committed to combating COVID-19 misinformation and providing people with reliable information. As the pandemic has evolved, the time is right for us to seek input from the Oversight Board about our measures to address COVID-19 misinformation, including whether those introduced in the early days of an extraordinary global crisis remains the right approach for the months and years ahead.  Rather than banning transmission of false information outright, they're thinking about "labeling or demoting it either directly or through our third-party fact-checking program." So let me get this straight. Meta remains "committed to fighting" misinfor...

I've been doing this blog for just about a year now. The first regular post was January 6, 2021. I'll reflect on that in a few days. Meanwhile, what kind of a media outlet would this be if I didn't do a year-in-review post? Looking back over the year's posts, it's amazing how much has been going on, and how much there potentially is to review. I can't spend all day on a detailed summary.  So I will try to focus on a bird's eye view. Vaccines & Anti-Vaxxers Vaccines have to be the biggest topic on this blog over the past year. Vaccines were very hard to get this time last year. A lot of people wanted them and the distribution was just getting started.  People had to navigate really crappy systems, like one in Arizona , to make reservations. There were " vaccine tourists " who would travel from other states and even countries in an effort to get jabbed.   Then, around March last year, those who wanted the shots had largely gotten them, and incre...

  The avalanche of news about Facebook's misdeeds continues apace. All the stories have a similar form.  One or more employees notice harmful conversations about some topic growing on the platform. They become rightly concerned that if they grow too much there could be harmful social consequences.  They notify their superiors with emails like "surely we're going to do something about this, right?" Their bosses ignore the emails or do next to nothing because doing something could impact the bottom line. This time the same story plays out with regard to vaccine disinformation . Back in March, FB employees noticed that claims that the vaccines are dangerous and ineffective were spreading across the platform.  The reckoned that by adjusting how these posts were ranked by the algorithm, they could curtail their spread. In their place they could promote posts from legit outlets like the CDC and WHO.  Others suggested disabling comments on vaccine-related posts, about ...

  This blog will be off until next weekend as yours truly will be taking a much-needed vacation. But I just can't leave for a week without calling out Facebook (FB) for trying to play the victim the Biden administration's efforts to shame it for spreading anti-vax disinformation. First let us remember that FB has been trying to gaslight us  on this topic for months. They periodically announce new "crackdowns" on anti-vaxxers whenever the political heat gets too high. If any of these "crackdowns" had actually been effective, there would be no need for another one.  And make no mistake: If FB wanted to stop this garbage, they could. They have all the tools—the data, the graph analysis, the natural language processing, the machine learning algorithms, the compute power—to track down the vaccine mis/disinfo and get rid of it.  But FB doesn't want to do this. They want to appear to be doing it while continuing to make money off the traffic that mis/disinfo ...

This morning I was once again treated to a  story  in my news feed about how hard Facebook is working on our behalf to rid it's site of anti-vaxxer disinformation. This time the claim is from Carolyn Everson, VP of Facebook's Global Business Group. They are taking very aggressive measures! It's a top priority for the company! It's a major cultural pivot! What a steaming load of bullshit! I just went on to FB and typed "vaccine" into the search box and filtered the results for groups. The top two items were Vaccines Save Lives and Nurses Who Vaccinate . Good. Then came two groups dedicated to reporting side effects, Report COVID-19 Side Effects  (8400 members, 200 posts a day) and  COVID-19 Vaccine Side Effects (137K members, 1100 posts a day). I had a look at the latter, and it contains a mix of good and bad reports. But it also contains posts like "But a very good friend of mine was rushed to hospital with blood clots, nearly died, that’s not been repor...