These anti vaxx folks are stupid. Yes, they are stupid. Quite stupid to be honest. There is no law against it and it is also infinite. It is the only source of perpetual motion in the universe.

Sure they can censor their applications. But this will reenforce the stupid position.

People have been dying from stupid since the dawn of time.

People will continue to die from stupid until the end of time.

Stupid is the single most powerful force in the universe. It is not up to twitter or facebook to be responsible to conquer, nor will they be successful at eliminating stupid.

I appreciate it. My POV is that it's a private entity, and, as such, it should work to keep the spread of conspiracy nonsense at bay. There are many positives to the Internet, but one negative is the spread of conspiracies and pseudoscience beliefs without a check. People are vulnerable because we haven't educated them. We can improve education, but many people will remain without that part of the equation, and the belief aspect becomes very strong once they're pulled in. To me, it's an ethical thing to not give free reign to absolute hooey.

People talk in all sorts of public, yet privately-owned places, about all sorts of things. Twitter, FaceBook, Coffee Shop, Concerts, Parks, Sporting Events, Restaurants, Bars, etc...

Should it be the mission statement of all private entities where there is public discussion to work to keep the spread of conspiracy nonsense at bay?

Why does DU have a creative speculation group? Should Skinner trash that as well?

Risk assessment matters. The Internet has clearly allowed conspiracy and pseudoscience to spread in a manner it could not before. We shouldn't just pretend otherwise, IMO.

A quote out-of-context, cherry-picked, and without rationale.

Classic.

Facebook is just the networking of personal contact pages ( originally yearbook pages) with the added functionality of being able to make comments. Later Zuckerberg added the capability of making assocated topical pages, playing games, and running ads. It's a public space. People choose freely who to friend and block who they don't want to see.

You don't block people's contact info from a public space. They are free to associate and talk about what they want unless they are commiting a crime. Geez.

Vaxxing is the one topic that will be used to smuggle in seriously totalitarian ideas into normal political discourse. Be on guard.

Ethics matter. And anti-vaxers are not the only conspiracy nuts who are pushing their harmful disinformation via Facebook.

Imagine if Hitler had FB.

In each of the organizations I mentioned in the subject line, there are groups of people who want to prevent speech that they don't like. The 1st Amendment only constrains the government, but not DU and not Facebook. But that in no way means that liberals should be pushing to prevent people from speaking solely because they don't like what they're hearing. I want no part of that.

The "whistleblower" nonsense has been shown to be a non issue.

And "Health Impact News" is an anti-vaccine, anti-science outfit.

You are showing why Facebook should not allow such nonsense to proliferate.

It's a private entity, and it has ethical responsibilities that the general free speech arena does not.

When people work to harm others with bad information, it's not a legitimate response to say that it always just "about free speech." If you haven't educated the populace to fight off disinformation, you are letting the populace be scammed by unethical scam artists. There is no way to justify that, as a human.

Sid

Unfortunately, DU does not appear ready to even bother with its worst offenders, much less make it a policy.