Teen Who Defied Anti-Vax Mom Says She Got False Information From One Source: Facebook (washingtonpost.com) 376
An 18-year-old from Ohio who famously inoculated himself against his mother's wishes in December says he
attributes his mother's anti-vaccine ideology to a single source: Facebook [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source]. From a report: Ethan Lindenberger, a high school senior, testified Tuesday before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, and underscored the importance of "credible" information. In contrast, he said, the false and deep-rooted beliefs his mother held -- that vaccines were dangerous -- were perpetuated by social media. Specifically, he said, she turned to anti-vaccine groups on social media for evidence that supported her point of view. In an interview with The Washington Post on Tuesday, Lindenberger said Facebook, or websites that were linked on Facebook, is really the only source his mother ever relied on for her anti-vaccine information.
I too like to live dangerously (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I too like to live dangerously (Score:5, Funny)
I started to base all my opinions on stuff that I read on 4chan. You wouldn't believe the change in my quality of life.
But where did you manage to find a hose and a rubber chicken at this hour?
Re:I too like to live dangerously (Score:5, Funny)
NARF!
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But where did you manage to find a hose and a rubber chicken at this hour?
Depends. Does it have to have a pulley in the middle, or will a regular one do?
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Please stay 50 feet downwind from me.
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Anti vaccination has occured for as long as vaccination existed.
And it's a sad tendency of some people who are short sighted to see a group of deranged people and then automatically assume they must belong to a disliked political party. It's a vain attempt to brand Favorite Party as always wholesome and good and Hated Party as only attracting deviants and the mentally ill.
If your goal is to score points with people who have the same political stance as you, then you can continue making peurile ad hominem at
Re: I too like to live dangerously (Score:4, Insightful)
No, not really. There will always be some amount of misinformation out there. The problem is actually an evolutionary issue. Humans evolved over the millennia to trust what they can see, and to trust certain trusted individuals to provide information about what they can't. Their friends fall into that second category. And as long as their friends are properly informed, that system works reasonably well.
Historically, the main thing that prevented misinformation from getting broadly distributed to those friends was the cost of publishing it in the first place. Most people with enough money to do that were not complete idiots, so there was a built-in, largely financially motivated bulls**t filter.
With the rise of social media, the cost of distributing information (correct or incorrect) fell through the floor, and as a result, the need for someone at least moderately intelligent to conclude that the message has merit before spreading it far and wide no longer exists. Therefore, the opinions of intellectuals and complete bozos now have equal chance of being distributed far and wide, and the odds of your friends having incorrect information becomes significantly higher. So anyone who tends to trust those friends then goes on to repeat the bad information, and it spreads a lot like the plague.
In the absence of gatekeepers, your only real options are to either believe everything, disbelieve everything, or investigate everything yourself. Most people tend to fall into one of the first two categories, with the majority falling into the first one, leaving only a tiny minority of people constantly posting links to Snopes or whatever in a desperate attempt to stem the tide.
In other words, the real problem is that we haven't taught people enough about how to think critically, and the only viable fix for that is to instill in everyone a sufficiently sophisticated bulls**t meters. Any other solution, like specifically targeting "fake news", is basically just sticking your fingers in the dike as the water level inches closer and closer to going over the top rim.
Wrong (Score:2, Interesting)
Problem is exacerbated... (Score:5, Insightful)
well then (Score:2)
Well, that settles it then. Emmanuel Goldste [wikipedia.org] ... I mean, Facebook, is the source of all evil.
Seriously, what are we supposed to do with this? Lynch Zuckerberg? Set up an office of censorship to make sure that no Moms get false information from anywhere? What, exactly?
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"We should start internet based source validity courses to the elderly."
Try mailing those courses if you actually want to reach the elderly and get AARP to do it.
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Sorry to be the one to break it to you, but it isn't the elderly who are preventing their small children from being immunized.
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How about trying to educate people to be able to tell when they're being fed bullshit? I know, I know, for the longest time our parties benefited big time from an electorate too stupid to tell when they're being lied to, but I guess it's time to end this for the greater good.
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Lynching anti-vaxxers is a good start
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While I understand your frustration with the stupid, I do believe that "lynching" might be a little extreme. I think we should make them pay for it. You want to be a dumb ass and not vaccinate your spawn, fine. Insurance and government medical don't have to cover your dumb ass for such illnesses. Or insurances get to charge you more for your stupidity.
It wasn't Facebook... it was stupid people. (Score:5, Insightful)
Looks, I'll be the first in line to trash Facebook for all the things they do wrong. But just the same, I prefer to have an honest discussion about root issues. Facebook didn't tell him mom that vaccinations were bad. Stupid people using Facebook did.
If you don't want to use Facebook because they're not cracking down on anti-vaxxer crap, fine, boycott it. I'm surprised all the flaws about Facebook haven't led you to boycott it until now, in fact. But don't suggest that Facebook is at fault. They're not.
- Pacific Bell didn't call in the bomb threat.
- The US Postal Service didn't send someone anthrax.
- Highway 101 didn't stop you from getting to work on time.
These are all networks being used by people to do harmful (or at the very least, stupid) things. Go after them. Regulate them. Do the hard work and propose how we're supposed to, in the realm of free speech and the right to be wrong, regulate stupid people.
Re:It wasn't Facebook... it was stupid people. (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree on that. The solution is, unfortunately, mandatory vaccinations. We need traffic laws, laws that say children have to get some schooling, etc. It seems yet another group of stupid morons has managed to make yet another state-enforced restriction necessary.
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Re:It wasn't Facebook... it was stupid people. (Score:5, Insightful)
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It isn't exactly like that. Unlike USPS, Highway 101 and Pacific Bell, Facebook will "recommend" stuff to users based on what they are interested, creating an echo chamber.
Facebook lets it spread (Score:4, Insightful)
Reinforcement's the big thing. My bro and I were just talking about the Dem primary. Based on his news feeds Kamala Harris is the front runner. Based on mine it's Bernie and Harris is dead in the water. The two of us had to do a mess of googling to get out of our bubbles.
That's because services like YouTube and Facebook are built to keep funneling content to you that your receptive of so they can get more "engagement" (e.g. eye on glass) and more ad impressions. It's real time and designed around sessions. Click a Bernie video and your feed blows up with Bernie. Click a gaming video and suddenly it's gaming. Whatever it takes to keep you clicking one more video.
True story, YouTube decided a buddy was trans. Apparently several of the Warhammer 40k players and painters he subscribed to were, and they'd done videos about the Trans issues they were facing on their 40k channels. I guess that's one way to get out of the Bubble. But baring that you really have to try to step out of it.
Re:It wasn't Facebook... it was stupid people. (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think you're taking a big enough view of the issue if you think Facebook bears no responsibility at all.
If a harmful bacteria randomly lands on your skin, it usually isn't able to do much because your skin is already colonized by beneficial bacteria that work hard to fight off any invaders. Those random encounters are generally harmless. But take that same harmful bacteria and put it in a Petri dish, where it has an ample supply of food and doesn't have to compete against other bacteria, and suddenly it'll thrive.
Likewise, harmful misinformation generally doesn't go very far on its own because it doesn't stand up to the casual scrutiny it receives when it's surrounded by competing ideas grounded in evidence and fact. But take that same misinformation and put it in an echo chamber, where it has an ample supply of susceptible minds in which to grow and doesn't have to compete against confounding facts or evidence that would typically stifle its growth, and suddenly it'll thrive.
If Facebook was simply a passive platform on which bad behavior could thrive, you'd be right that we shouldn't blame them any more than we might blame the Petri manufacturer for a mad scientist abusing their dishes. Unfortunately, Facebook is anything but passive. Facebook recognized a long time ago that echo chambers—particularly ones focused on extreme topics—drive user engagement numbers up (i.e. sell more ads), so they built their entire platform around actively steering people into echo chambers that are bereft of contrary facts, evidence, and points of view...the things we as a society have developed as a form of immunity against the spread of misinformation. Put differently, they aren't merely a humble Petri dish manufacturer whose products are being abused: they decided to juice Petri sales by giving away weaponization kits and then dropping immunocompromised individuals in the middle of the contagion zones that inevitably resulted.
You'll excuse me if I think they deserve every bit of blame they get for the fallout that has resulted from them preying on the minds of the weak after purposefully stripping away the natural protections those people should have had.
Facebook is a megaphone (Score:4, Interesting)
Facebook is a megaphone for disinformation. True, there was disinformation around before they existed, before the internet existed, but to spread it you needed a budget. Facebook is like owning a printing press with a built-in distribution system.
If you're disseminating information that harms people, seriously harms them in some instances, where's the accountability?
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Well, if you want to curb that, you first have to stop _all_ religious disinformation, which is all religious publications and advertising.
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And if you have government oversight of what's said in public (and yes, Facebook is a public forum), then you have to first get the First Amendment amended out of the Constitution. Good luck with that.
If you manage that, you have to get the new Public Censors to agree with you in every jot and tittle, or you're going to find yourself banned from saying things in public.
Likewise everyo
The real show here (Score:2)
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So you are saying the anti-vaxxers are guilty of enabling censorship with the evil they preach? Makes sense to me.
Smart people look for facts (Score:5, Insightful)
Morons just look for confirmation of their misconceptions. Ordinarily, I would not mind, but anti-vaxxers inflict serious harm on others, in particular on those that cannot be vaccinated for medical reason and on their own children, which clearly is child-abuse.
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To the tune of 49,000 violent attacks on US citizens a year.
Boy that sounds bad. It's too bad you didn't provide enough context to actually evaluate the number. 'Cause our native-born population commits about 2 million "violent attacks" on US citizens a year. Also, that 2M statistic uses traditional definitions of "violent attacks", as opposed to property crimes that are included in your 49,000 statistic.
Meaning our native population causes violence at a higher rate than the immigrants you want to exclude.
So, when you say everyone should care about the violence o
More are vaccinated in Latin America than US (Score:3)
I remember doing a bit of research and finding that vaccination rates in may Latin American countries (everything south of the US, essentially) is higher than vaccination rates in the USA, at least for measles, which is what I found data on.
I suspect that claims that people from Latin America are a risk to USA disease wise are exaggerated and probably have more to do with racism than fact.
--PeterM
Why is this news? (Score:2, Funny)
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(slow clap)
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Why the fuck is an adult (well, legally anyways) getting all this attention for doing something that adults are expected to do? I just filed my taxes, where's my standing ovation?
Lucky you I don't have mod points to vote your ignorant posting down. Last time I did that though, I didn't get any mod points for a very long time. I'd still risk it here. OK, here's the explanation. There's no requirement for an adult to get vaccinated. So adults aren't "expected to do" this because most adults already did this as kids. He's getting attention because he's standing up to his ignorant parents (seems like this is all mother driven though - dad doesn't seem to care one way or another
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Isn't this how a whole generation or three of kids were raised (Late-X, Millenials and Y?) I showed up! I got a trophy for showing up! Yay me! I'm thpecial! Look at me! Participation awards! I'm a thpecial and unique snowflake!
So, the massive stupidity on your talking point here is that the kids weren't giving themselves trophies. They were kids. The adults were the ones handing out the participation trophies. Because the adults couldn't handle their child not getting recognition.
If you think something is wrong with "the kids these days", you have to remember you raised them.
But "she's not stupid" (Score:2)
He also said his mother wasn't stupid. These two positions are in direct conflict with each other. Regardless, good for him.
On another level, I can't help but feel this anti-vax nonsense is a species response to an unhealthy breeding environment.
Human nature (Score:3)
For once, human nature serves humanity. The teen urge to rebel against their parents is remarkably constructive in the face of the rampant stupidity of the anti-vaxxers. Now all we need is for this guy to produce a Vaccination Challenge video and stick it on Youtube and ten thousand teens will sneak behind their parents' backs to seek out a medical professional.
You can't make this shit up.
Facebook doesnt... (Score:2)
Facebook doesn't stop vaccinations, parents do.
A man thinking for himself (Score:4, Interesting)
... is like a dog walking on its hind legs. You can train him to do it, but it will never come naturally.
People are social animals; prisoners who are put in solitary confinement for extended periods come out with serious psychological disturbances, even if you do nothing more inhumane than make them sit by themselves for months. In a less extreme version of this, it will always feel uncomfortable to hold an opinion without supporters, even if you know you're right. On the flip side it's all too easy to go along with apparently popular ideas you disagree with. Eventually you'll believe those ideas.
Don't get me wrong. Groupthink is mankind's killer evolutionary advantage. If you disagree with *everyone* around you, chances are you're wrong, although of course that varies depending on you and the people around you. But social media is unlike anything humans have ever experienced before. If you designed an operant conditioning experiment with the aim of producing group think on an unprecedentedly vast, society-wide scale, social media is exactly what you'd end up with.
It's like sugar. Favoring sweet foods is good for you if you're a member of a small band of hunter-gatherers. A sweet tooth is not so good for you if you live in a society that boasts a sugar industry. A bias toward consensus is good for you if you're human living in a small group. It's bad for you if you live in a society with a groupthink industry.
The real issue (Score:2)
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Because then they start whining about their "god given rights" to be stupid. Which is another pet peeve of mine. There is no such thing as "god given rights." But anyway, just let them be stupid, just make sure they can't affect any one else.
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You have no "natural rights" ether. There is no such thing as natural, god given, odin given, zeus, or lucifer given rights. Any rights that you think you have that you think came from god(s) can be taken away from you with the stroke of a pen. All rights that you have come from government and society and are subject to the whims of that society.
Bullshit (Score:2)
FB has not been around 18 years.
He's 18... (Score:2)
So...follow the money? (Score:3)
Lawsuits and concerns about Russian trolling to sway elections are causing pressure to curate the postings. Won't this coincidentally end the safe harbor provisions for copyright violations, currently limited to DMCA takedowns in a timely manner?
For if they filter, they can filter for copyright, and thus can be sued immediately because now they are a publisher?
Re:So...what's the point? (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, who cares? People are going to pick and choose their sources to support their views. The implication of this "story" is more "wrong think" suppression, and that is far more dangerous than a few idiots not vaccinating.
It is interesting. If this is a common pattern (and I think it is), that means Facebook is the best place for an education campaign. This is a democracy with free speech (more or less) and we're not meant to solve problems of ignorance through government force or corporate censorship, but by winning in the marketplace of ideas.
Actually being right is a huge advantage in convincing people that you're right. The budget needed to drown Facebook in pro-Vax truth is tiny by government standards, especially if Facebook decides to give some free "air time" to the cause.
Re:So...what's the point? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Actually being right is a huge advantage in convincing people that you're right."
That isn't my experience. Because it isn't enough to be right for the wrong reasons. You win people over with a strawman oversimplified version of the truth and then they very quickly get swayed by a slightly more informed person with the opposing view. The truth is usually complicated and grey and full of thousands of concessions to the other sides talking points that are crippling in SOUNDING right but essential to actually being right.
Very few people actually want to be right, they just want the people they are impressed with to be impressed with them and pretend that means they are right.
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You arguing that being right is no substitute for being a good debater. I agree. But it's still loads easier when you're actually right. Much like it's easier to keep your story straight when you're telling the truth.
Re:So...what's the point? (Score:5, Insightful)
Much like it's easier to keep your story straight when you're telling the truth.
At the amateur level, maybe. A well-thought-out and practiced lie, however, can easier to keep straight than the truth. Reality tends to be messy, and when people aren't deliberately trying to keep their story straight the details tend to get blurred. Stories that fit together unusually well often contain a fair bit of fiction—either deliberate deception or simple subconscious editing and rationalization.
It does help to have solid evidence on your side, if the people you're trying to convince are the type to be persuaded by the evidence. If not, your skills as a debater will matter far more than whether you're right or wrong.
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"Reality tends to be messy, and when people aren't deliberately trying to keep their story straight the details tend to get blurred."
Which of course will also be useful for a practiced liar. An inexperienced liar will be trying to keep every detail straight and terrified is something contradictory creeps in. An master liar will ride the chaos because they know it is present all over the place when people are telling the truth as well.
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>Actually being right is a huge advantage in convincing people that you're right.
Unfortunately there are many studies that show otherwise. There's a reason cult de-programmers use strong appeal to emotion instead of logic, you can't 'logic' someone out of something they didn't 'logic' themselves into to begin with.
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Exactly why you don't bring your own research to your doctor, he took decades to be wrong, you took months to be right.
Re: So...what's the point? (Score:5, Insightful)
However, some opinions have resulted in us being able to converse about this nonsense over the internet at about the speed of light, while half a planet may be between us.
Don't you think these are a bit more desirable than those opinions that, to use one other extreme as an example, caused genocides?
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Fuck the marketplace of ideas. If that concept had any merit, why is this the state of affairs in the Western world after practicing it for so many decades? Actually being right does not do much to convince the Average Joe that you're right, especially after they've sought out and indoctrinated themselves with beliefs that are wrong. We have disproved the marketplace of ideas through experiment, and our reality is the aftermath.
We need to use our freedoms to reduce the exposure of factually wrong and morall
Re: So...what's the point? (Score:4)
Re: So...what's the point? (Score:4, Interesting)
Funny, the ownership class uses their freedoms to limit our freedoms and nobody has ever accused them of being fascists. Let's admit that "freedom" by itself is a word that's vague to the point of uselessness and be more specific:
Let's exercise our civil liberties and private property rights a way to reduce the exposure of factually wrong and morally toxic ideas to the public rather than to perpetuate their debate in the mistaken belief that it might achieve the same end.
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If that concept had any merit, why is this the state of affairs in the Western world after practicing it for so many decades?
Quality of life seems to track directly with amount of freedom of speech, so I'm not sure what you're going on about?
I think you're upset that what makes most people happy isn't what makes you happy, and you want to force everyone else to change. Thing about dictatorships: you don't get to be the dictator. So what alternative do you propose? An autocratic system where you're banned from arguing against any position taken by the autocracy? You do realize those won't be positions that you like, right?
We need to use our freedoms to reduce the exposure of factually wrong and morally toxic ideas to the public
That
Re:So...what's the point? (Score:5, Interesting)
The "marketplace of ideas" does not equal free speech, they're different things. The "marketplace of ideas" is the concept that it's beneficial (or at least harmless) to expose the public to a debate of terrible ideas and falsehoods. "Invite the nazi to speak at the college, we'll curb-stomp him with facts and reason and show everyone how wrong his ideas are, thus making the audience less supportive of nazi ideas" - that's the "marketplace of ideas."
I don't propose any government censorship, I propose that we realize that debating these ideas spreads them to vulnerable people who aren't swayed by logic, and that citizens should use their civil liberties and private property rights to deny these debates a venue, forcing them into smaller and more obscure venues where less people would be exposed to them. Don't let the nazi speak at your college, don't allow anti-vax content on your social media platform, etc.
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We also know that exposing people to these concepts will cause them to be sympathetic to them, although I we don't fully understand the scale. In the US, exposing people to Nazi propaganda seems to create a ~9% supportive effect[1], while in Germany in the 20s and 30s it was far higher. The truth
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"Free speech" means "you're free to say anything without being charged with a crime." And there are limits to that even in the US - incitements to violence, for example. Very different from the "marketplace of ideas" concept which has nothing to do with criminality:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Everyone you disagree with is a "Nazi" these days, so you're saying "don't let people you disagree with speak at a government-funded school. I don't see any daylight between that and government censorship.
It may amount to government censorship at a public school. However most colleges are privately funded so there's no issue.
Censorship by effective monopolies that dominate public debate is nearly as bad as censorship by governments.
Nearly as bad in your opinion, but legally worlds apart. Again, the alternatives are enfor
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Participating in it? Not intentionally. It certainly doesn't mean I support the concept. Learn what it means:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
The marketplace of ideas holds that the truth will emerge from the competition of ideas in free, transparent public discourse and concludes that ideas and ideologies will be culled according to their superiority or inferiority and widespread acceptance among the population.
That central tenet is demonstrably false. We would not live in a world of viral fake news and large subcultures who believe in clear falsehoods if it were true. Exposing the public to falsehoods for the purpose of debate was not harmless or, on balance, beneficial.
Re:So...what's the point? (Score:5, Interesting)
It is interesting. If this is a common pattern (and I think it is), that means Facebook is the best place for an education campaign. This is a democracy with free speech (more or less) and we're not meant to solve problems of ignorance through government force or corporate censorship, but by winning in the marketplace of ideas.
Actually being right is a huge advantage in convincing people that you're right. The budget needed to drown Facebook in pro-Vax truth is tiny by government standards, especially if Facebook decides to give some free "air time" to the cause.
That' a nice idea but there is a body of research that shows exposing people to counter arguments, however factual, just hardens their viewpoint rather than changing it.
https://www.theatlantic.com/sc... [theatlantic.com]
https://www.scientificamerican... [scientificamerican.com]
They also tend to change the argument to avoid facing inconvenient facts.
https://www.scientificamerican... [scientificamerican.com]
Re:So...what's the point? (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't worry too much about changing the minds of specific individuals. Instead, think about the drift of ideas between generations (the old definition of "memes" pre-2000). That is where the difference is made. You can't e.g. convince someone not to be racist, but you can change the statistical likelyhood of their kids being racist.
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there is a body of research that shows exposing people to counter arguments, however factual, just hardens their viewpoint rather than changing it.
It is almost as if what you need is a counter-conspiracy-theory that generates a new revelation about the old conspiracy without ever directly arguing with it.
Re:So...what's the point? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:So...what's the point? (Score:5, Insightful)
What do Anti-vaxers, flat earthers, Anti-gmo crusaders, and a certain branch of one of our main political parties all have in common? They get their information from Facebook.
All of these movements predate Facebook, sometimes by centuries.
There was strong resistance to smallpox inoculation in Britain, that was only somewhat reduced when the children of the royal family were inoculated in 1722.
Throughout the 19th century, there was religious opposition to vaccinations, and resistance to vaccinations today is strongest in muslim countries such as Pakistan where Facebook is not so pervasive.
The anti-GMO movement started in the 1990s, long before social media became common. Facebook was started in 2004.
Believe it or not, political extremism also predates Facebook. Seriously.
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Re:So...what's the point? (Score:4, Interesting)
The point of this story is that people are unable to tell fact from fiction and fabrication. It's not about "wrong think" it's about believing bullshit and not being able to tell when you're fed bullshit.
People lack the ability to identify when they're being lied to. That in turn is mostly due to them having a crappy education level that doesn't even allow them to question what they're told because they have no information to rely on as a gauge to test new information. They have been taught by schools that put more emphasis on believing what an authority tells them, rote learning that leaves you completely unable to learn anything but what you are force fed and a system that rewards conformity rather than questioning.
So when they start "questioning", it usually takes the form of "The elites/illuminati/big pharma/boogeyman-du-jour have told me A, so I will instead blindly believe B instead because B must be true since it is the opposite of what (insert boogeyman here) says".
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I don't really care what's happening as long as it's detrimental to Facebook.
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I think the big point that Facebook which is a popular widely used source (much like broadcast TV a generation ago) is being used to tout misinformation, which people who have such views, can more widely get a hold of and strengthen their resolve, even if they are fully in the wrong.
The problem is that too many people are getting news from Facebook, and a lot of it very fake and dangerous. (Like, yelling fire in an auditorium type of dangerous which could be outside of First Amendment Speech ) And Facebook
Re:So...what's the point? (Score:5, Insightful)
What right is being taken away here? The right to be wrong? The right to believe any bullshit no matter how insane? The right to be an utter moron that's easily convinced because he's too stupid to tell when he's being bullshitted?
Re:So...what's the point? (Score:5, Insightful)
The Right of stupid people to say what they like? Yeah, I think that that fits. Note that once you've decided that stopping stupid people from saying whatever they like, it's pretty easy to expand the definition (gradually, mind you!) of "stupid people" till the government is restricting anything they don't want to hear in public.
And remember, you may agree with the gov at first, but sooner or later, their definition of "stupid people saying the wrong thing(s) in public" will include things YOU want to say in public....
No, I'm not anti-vax. I wish that measles had been available when *I* was an infant. Alas, I was four or five before it was developed, much less available to the general public, much less mandatory.
Nor am I pro-stupid-people. I am, however, rather fond of the First Amendment. And restricting speech I disagree with isn't one of the exceptions listed in the First....
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Re:So...what's the point? (Score:4, Insightful)
The Right of stupid people to say what they like? Yeah, I think that that fits. Note that once you've decided that stopping stupid people from saying whatever they like, it's pretty easy to expand the definition (gradually, mind you!) of "stupid people" till the government is restricting anything they don't want to hear in public.
And remember, you may agree with the gov at first, but sooner or later, their definition of "stupid people saying the wrong thing(s) in public" will include things YOU want to say in public....
No, I'm not anti-vax. I wish that measles had been available when *I* was an infant. Alas, I was four or five before it was developed, much less available to the general public, much less mandatory.
Nor am I pro-stupid-people. I am, however, rather fond of the First Amendment. And restricting speech I disagree with isn't one of the exceptions listed in the First....
However restricting speech that represents a clear and present danger has never been part of the first amendment... though I'm not about to claim to be smart (dumb?) enough to try to apply that outside of the most blindingly obvious examples.
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I think we're in "Fire in a theater" territory (Score:3)
Basically, through their algorithms spreading false information that is itself a product for Facebook. It should be regulated as such.
Re:So...what's the point? (Score:4, Funny)
The right to contribute to both your children's and society's collective vulnerability to potentially deadly disease outbreaks?
Re:So...what's the point? (Score:5, Insightful)
It would only be fairly mitigated if homeschooling meant keeping non-vaccinated children quarantined from society, which it doesn't.
And how did free speech get into this? There's been no talk of governments criminalizing anti-vaccine speech.
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Where, exactly? There are several States that allow exemptions from vaccination for "personal reasons" or "religious belief". Those States allow unvaccinated children to attend public school.
The most aggressive States in requiring vaccination are, I believe, Mississippi and West Virginia. The only exemptions accepted are from a medical doctor who testifies that the child is allergic to the vaccine itself.
Mississippi ran a campaign for medical professionals called "If you get 'em, stick 'em." to encourage un
Re: So...what's the point? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So...what's the point? (Score:4, Interesting)
Insert your villian here: Terrorists, Child molesters, Gun Owners, Anti Vaxers, Russian bots, Hate speech....
Or to some the favorite villains could be: minorities moving to my neighborhood, minorities wanting to vote, gays wanting to get married, people choosing the wrong religion, all reasons to motivate some to try and restrict rights.
One day my mother is saying how we must protect the freedom of religion and get rid of government intrusion. The next day we drive past a mosque and she says "that shouldn't be allowed". The human brain is perfectly capable of believing in to contrary ideas simultaneously. Freedom for me, but restrictions for you!
Re:This is a self-correcting problem (Score:5, Insightful)
So why the moral panic?
Because people who don't get vaccines don't just kill/maim themselves, they also can lead to people who are allergic to vaccines, or otherwise cannot be vaccinated, to be infected with these controllable diseases?
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Re:This is a self-correcting problem (Score:5, Informative)
What I don't understand is how so many people in the pro-vaccine camp lose their goddamn minds over the incredibly tiny risk to people who can't get vaccinated. We're talking about an incredibly small number of people,
That's not how it works. Most vaccines aren't 100% effective. However, if almost all of the population is vaccinated, an outbreak is still unlikely to obtain critical mass to spread even if the vaccine is only, for example, 80% effective.
However, if a bunch of people refuse to vaccinate, then it can add enough susceptible people to get critical mass for an widespread outbreak. In this example, that could cause harm to the 20% of the population that vaccine failed to fully protect.
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What I don't understand is how so many people in the pro-vaccine camp lose their goddamn minds over the incredibly tiny risk to people who can't get vaccinated.
I'm in the "pro-vaccine camp." I don't lose my goddamn mind over the issue you've cited - I lose my goddamn mind over two other things:
1) The fact that parents who don't vaccinate their kids are putting their own little kids at risk of unnecessary suffering. I know a lot of Slashdotters would say "Let them suffer" as if its the kids' fault for
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Let's take measles as an example. Measles is so contagious that in order for herd immunity to be effective, at least 95% of the population needs to be immune. Now consider that the measles vaccine currently in use is 98% effective. So what percentage of the population needs to be given the vaccine in order to get to that 95% immune level? If you do the math, at least 97% of the population needs to be given the vaccine. Now consider that there are some people who should NOT receive the measles vaccine due to
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That "incredibly small number" includes all children under ab out a year old, where measles is concerned. It also includes pretty much everybody over a certain age, too.
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they also can lead to people who are allergic to vaccines, or otherwise cannot be vaccinated, to be infected with these controllable diseases?
It may seem heartless, but from a Darwinian perspective, this is also a self correcting problem.
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they also can lead to people who are allergic to vaccines, or otherwise cannot be vaccinated, to be infected with these controllable diseases?
It may seem heartless, but from a Darwinian perspective, this is also a self correcting problem.
I suppose so, slowly killing off the population that cannot be vaccinated? Though I question the value of Darwin in modern days. A person's contribution to the future is not always in genes these days but in knowledge added to humanity. Of course it can be argued this is also weakening the gene pool. I guess only the future will tell what is the right perspective.
Not fast enough (Score:2)
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It is not. Non-vaccinated people primarily harm others. Sure, they get sick themselves, but the main harm they do is that a) they infect people that cannot get vaccinated for medical reasons and b) most vaccinations are not 100% so they increase the risk to people that actually got vaccinated.
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Because the idiots then seek medical aid for preventable diseases and I get to foot the bill.
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It's important to add this qualification: multiple *independent* sources of information. It's a well-known tactic for propaganda to use multiple mouthpieces. When you see a bunch of people taking *exactly the same position* (often in the same words) it's really just one source of information.
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The problem with identifying independent sources is that this requires common sense. Most people do not have much of that and the anti-vaxxers clearly have none.
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Probably the biggest source of misinformation when I was younger was email forwards. There was no quick way to verify the information, it was written to sound compelling, and it was very easy to share with your friends and relatives. Snopes became huge by becoming the de facto source to check on the validity of a forwarded email.
Before that, it was actually faxes. I'm not old enough to have worked in an office before email really replaced it, but people used to forward hoaxes, chain letters, and all the
Re: Anti-vaxers are stupid, but people who think F (Score:2)
That was supposed to read "...people who think Facebook needs to fix it are evil."