Facebook Suppressed Report That Made It Look Bad (theverge.com) 69
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: On Wednesday, Facebook released a report about what content was most viewed by people in the US last quarter. It was the first time it had released such a report. But according to The New York Times, Facebook was working on a similar report for the first quarter of 2021 that it opted not to share because it might have reflected poorly on the company. The New York Times, which obtained a copy of the report, says that the most-viewed link in the first quarter had a headline that could promote COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy, which has been an issue on the social media platform. The headline read, "A 'healthy' doctor died two weeks after getting a COVID-19 vaccine; CDC is investigating why." The article was published by The South Florida Sun Sentinel and republished by The Chicago Tribune, The New York Times says.
Facebook was working on releasing this report, but executives, including Alex Schultz, Facebook's CMO and VP of analytics, apparently "debated whether it would cause a public relations problem, according to the internal emails" and ultimately decided not to publish it, The New York Times reported. "We considered making the report public earlier but since we knew the attention it would garner, exactly as we saw this week, there were fixes to the system we wanted to make," Facebook spokesman Andy Stone said in a statement. Stone also clarified Schultz's opinion on if Facebook should release the report, saying that Schultz "advocated for putting out the report."
UPDATE: Later Saturday Facebook relented and released the report online.
Facebook was working on releasing this report, but executives, including Alex Schultz, Facebook's CMO and VP of analytics, apparently "debated whether it would cause a public relations problem, according to the internal emails" and ultimately decided not to publish it, The New York Times reported. "We considered making the report public earlier but since we knew the attention it would garner, exactly as we saw this week, there were fixes to the system we wanted to make," Facebook spokesman Andy Stone said in a statement. Stone also clarified Schultz's opinion on if Facebook should release the report, saying that Schultz "advocated for putting out the report."
UPDATE: Later Saturday Facebook relented and released the report online.
Re:Vaccine hesitancy (Score:4, Insightful)
There's a nearly infinite number of possible causes, yet the headline opts for the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy by implying the cause was a COVID-19 vaccine.
And even if the cause was the vaccine, there's again a nearly infinite number of possibilities of what went wrong there exactly.
The problem here is that stupid people do not tend to ask for the details that are required to make an informed decision. Hence a person that was vaccinate the other day and then dies in a car crash the next day -> "person dies after being vaccinated" is all the evidence they need. So no point in reading past the headline and checking out the source material.
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
A hallmark of a stupid person.
You must be (Score:3)
new to Slashdot?
Re: Vaccine hesitancy (Score:4)
Re: (Score:3)
Reports of death after COVID-19 vaccination are rare. More than 357 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines were administered in the United States from December 14, 2020, through August 16, 2021. During this time, VAERS received 6,789 reports of death (0.0019%) among people who received a COVID-19 vaccine. FDA requires healthcare providers to report any death after COVID-19 vaccination to VAERS, even if it’s unclear whether the vaccine was the cause. Reports of adverse events to VAERS following vaccination, including deaths, do not necessarily mean that a vaccine caused a health problem.
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Your post is motivated reasoning.
Re:Vaccine hesitancy (Score:5, Informative)
No, over 7,000 people have died after being vaccinated. Because we especially want very old people to get vaccinated, and about 190 million Americans have gotten at least one shot, vaccinated people are going to die of any number of causes. Your misinterpretation was already rebutted [nebraskamed.com] in May.
The number of deaths attributed to vaccine reactions is currently three [cdc.gov], all from the J&J vaccine. You can compare that to the number of deaths attributed to being unvaccinated [apnews.com] if you like.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
One one hand I agree with you that news should be straight up facts.
On the other hand, remember that most of the population is made up of uneducated idiots who don't know how things work and blindly follow whatever they're said or just straight up deny facts they're not capable of understanding.
That's why we are having problems during pandemics, because recommendations change according to new findings but it confuses the idiots who were told to follow different guidelines the month before and so their react
Re: Vaccine hesitancy (Score:3)
If you donâ(TM)t think there are scientific means at doctorsâ(TM) disposal to determine cause of death, perhaps your lack of success is due to something other than bad luck.
Re: Vaccine hesitancy (Score:2)
You dont see how a headline like that can lead a reader to a specific conclusion? And can you not conceive that might be intentional? Iâ(TM)m also going to guess that there was no follow-up front page story âoeVaccine not cause of doctorâ(TM)s deathâ.
The totality of these things forms a narrative that a reasonable person can find suspect. At the very least its bad journalism.
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Need all Relevant Facts (Score:2)
One one hand I agree with you that news should be straight up facts.
That's not enough - it must be all relevant facts. Given that people die all the time for a variety of reasons and sometimes with no prior warning it is always going to be true that some number of healthy people will die a few weeks after any event.
However, if you just report on the people who die, do not mention the expected death rate from random incidents nor the millions who do not die then your selected facts can give a very different picture of reality even to reasonably educated people despite yo
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On the other hand, remember that most of the population is made up of uneducated idiots who don't know how things work and blindly follow whatever they're said or just straight up deny facts they're not capable of understanding.
"Most people who aren't me are idiots!"
Given that it is the most commonly posted sentiment, and thus the least original thing one could post on the Internet, I feel you have missed an opportunity to provide evidence for this self-claimed superior intellect
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Even if you think you are in the middle of the dumbest and the smartest people on the planet, it still means 50% of people are dumber than you.
Re:Vaccine hesitancy - educated? (Score:2)
'Educated' is a content free word.
Educated doesn't mean they are intelligent
Educated doesn't mean they have common-sense
Educated doesn't mean they have real-world experience.
How 'educated' is a person who takes out a huge loan for a college degree that has little or no value after graduation?
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True enough, "The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination." - Albert Einstein
The real problem is that people twist facts and falsehoods to fit what they already believe, from cold scientists to religious fanatics, which brings me back again to the old Futurama joke "I choose to believe what I was programmed to believe".
On top of that, not everyone can handle changing what they think when they're presented with new conflicting facts.
And let's not forget the usual resistance to change, wher
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Well said sir!
Why, we just had a President who espoused all three of your postulates at once! Quite a feat!
Actually, given the questions about said President's academic record, I'd add a fourth:
Educated doesn't mean they learned anything in school
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Re: How i got a 24 hr ban on facebook (Score:2)
Also: vaccine hesitancy is highest in black and Hispanic communities. So, you suggested racist genocide, as well.
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Like a lot of things the world isn't simple. [motherjones.com] The distrust of institutions is a real biggie, regardless of political leanings. Slashdot alone demonstrates that every single day with practically every story. And yet everyone who's gotten a jab trusted someone or something.
Re: How i got a 24 hr ban on facebook (Score:1)
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And now he knows:
A) You can't educate the dead, just as one can't bring back a suicide.
B) People can and do change, and can change others.
C) People do have legitimate reasons for their beliefs (institutional failure)
D) The best way towards change isn't violence, as the Taliban [motherjones.com] will soon find out.
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OK, martyr!
Re:How i got a 24 hr ban on facebook (Score:4, Informative)
I don't see the other 64% of African Americans holding anti mask and anti vaccine rallies. Here take a look. https://www.spokesman.com/stor... [spokesman.com]
That crowd is white as snow.
Antivaxxers have killed so many innocent people... (Score:5, Informative)
Anti-Vaxxers deserve to die, but the victims of their misinformation deserve better information.
These people are just doing the best they can to learn and protect themselves. When president Trump instructed the country to inject disinfectants like bleach we had to stop and find our own information on this deadly treatment plan.
So we are all ultimately browsing the internet looking for valid information on how to protect ourselves from Covid 19.
Look at the interviews of unvaccinated people dying in the hospital of Covid-19. They thought they were protecting themselves from Covid-19 and now they are dead, or permanently incapacitated...
Unlike anti-vaxxers they weren't willing to kill people to prop up their own ego. The people who died from vaccine misinformation were just doing the best with the information they had in front of them.
They were killed by Facebook, the anti-vaxx brigade, and the republican party.
Re:Antivaxxers have killed so many innocent people (Score:5, Informative)
The numbers you quote match up almost exactly with those groups' access to primary care physicians and regular medical care.
In my state the republican governor blocked medicaid expansion, killing and bankrupting thousands of Texans by that one decision. The same decision that keeps blacks and hispanics from getting regular medical care.
My primary care physician explained to me that vaccines are safe. She was more credible and convincing than all the anti-vax propagandists killing Americans in their pajamas.
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you sure like to bring up the race card in discussions that were not even talking about it
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When president Trump instructed the country to inject disinfectants like bleach
You lie.
Some of us remember (in Winston Smith fashion) that he didn't do that at all. You and your lot said that he said that, but he didn't. You LIE.
Here's a radical idea (Score:1)
Maybe Facebook shouldn't be in the business of editing the "news". Gossips gonna gossip and people are going to believe what they want to believe.
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https://pics.me.me/antivaxers-... [pics.me.me]
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Isn't every forum that accept comments in the "editing" business? Why do you think they go to the trouble of having moderation?
Re: Here's a radical idea (Score:2)
Re: Here's a radical idea (Score:1)
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Evidence has shown this hope to be clearly false.
From "The spread of true and false news online", by Soroush Vosoughi, Deb Roy, Sinan Aral, Science 09 Mar 2018 : 1146-1151 [sciencemag.org]:
Lies spread faster than the truth
There is worldwide concern over false news and the possibility that it can influence political, economic, and social well-being. To understand how false news spreads, Vosoughi et al. used a data set of rumor cascades on Twitter from 2006 to 2017. About 126,000 rumors were spread by 3 million people. False news reached more people than the truth; the top 1% of false news cascades diffused to between 1000 and 100,000 people, whereas the truth rarely diffused to more than 1000 people. Falsehood also diffused faster than the truth. The degree of novelty and the emotional reactions of recipients may be responsible for the differences observed.
Re: Here's a radical idea (Score:1)
Re: Here's a radical idea (Score:2)
Are you sure? I heard bleach was the way to go.
The most terrifying words (Score:2)
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"Sometimes governments do dumb things. Therefore corporations are better." There's a name for this fallacy.
Mmmh (Score:2)
So they have to suppress ALL reports?