Article: Disentangling Disinformation: Not As Easy As It Looks

A topic that has extra relevance given Shepherd's expulsion from the NICE committee and weaponizing the monitoring of online content in favor of a political narrative (and also let's say it clearly: for self-interest). This is related mainly to discussions in certain governments, prominently the US, about how to deal with disinformation about the pandemic given its very real impact on public health.

Part of that discussion is to change the provisions for online content that would place a burden on platforms to monitor content (which they already do but only for criminal content). But of course any content monitoring comes with judgment, the kind of judgment that may just find that any discussion of Long Covid, or chronic illness following infectious diseases, is disinformation since it contradicts the popular narrative in medicine and "endangers public health".


https://www.techdirt.com/articles/2...-disinformation-not-as-easy-as-it-looks.shtml


The relevant part:

In the United States, it was only a few decades ago that the medical community deemed homosexuality a mental illness. It took serious activism and societal debate for the medical community to come to an understanding that it was not. Had Facebook been around—and had we allowed it to be arbiter of truth—that debate might not have flourished.

Here’s a more recent example: There is much debate amongst the contemporary medical community as to the causes of ME/CFS, a chronic illness for which a definitive cause has not been determined—and which, just a few years ago, was thought by many not to be real. The Centers for Disease Control notes this and acknowledges that some healthcare providers may not take the illness seriously. Many sufferers of ME/CFS use platforms like Facebook and Twitter to discuss their illness and find community. If those platforms were to crack down on that discussion, relying on the views of the providers that deny the gravity of the illness, those who suffer from it would suffer more greatly.​

I am pretty sick of the other narrative that until a few years ago it wasn't taken seriously when it still isn't. Stop counting chickens before they hatch, dammit.

 

Agree: "Stop counting chickens before they hatch, dammit."