> Blocking people who are harassing you seems like a reasonable balance to free speech.
We're not talking about private people or private enterprise. We're talking about appointed, elected and employed government officials acting in their capacity as a government official. Far too often, public officials believe anything negative is abuse, and I for one want them to hear the wingnut who is angry because their kid was beat up by the cops or the kook who is still mad because they lost his paperwork.
We certainly want to hear reasoned opposition, but I think a lot of people in this thread are ducking the elephant in the room, which is unreasoned spam. I don't think that 1000x posts of 'fuck joe biden' or 'dump= cheeto hitler' advance public deabte. Never mind whether the politicians feel offended by such remarks; consider the position of the people who want to engage with politicians in good faith (regardless of whether it's for support or opposition) but are drowned by the endless tide of low-IQ/bot spam from both supporters and opponents.
There was a whole bunch of mass shooting last weekend, as you probably know. But policy discourse is almost impossible on social media, because one side just endlessly spams 'it's the guns' and the other side endlessly spams 'shall not be infringed'. The people attempting to address the issue substantively can't make headway because the zone is continually flooded with shit.
I grumbled long ago that the very short-format of services like Twitter was going to end up making discourse dumber because it favored slogans and bumper-sticker cliches, and sadly that level of stupid has become the norm now.
I don't disagree, but I don't see any solution that can fairly define what is harassment and what isn't - it is clearly in the eye of the beholder - and without a doubt, if a govt official can simply declare something harassment in order to censor it, you can be 100% sure, all of a sudden every criticism will be labeled harassment.
> Just because it’s written, doesn’t mean you have to read it.
Sure but you have to read it to know if it goes too far no? If these people use the accounts for official business they might want to read the comments to know what their constituents say. If every time you ask a question you have one person constantly berating you and insulting you in bad faith, i could understand wanting to block him. Constantly reading these messages can take a huge toll on people.
Especially because these people do not see one or two messages. They have thousands of followers. The amount of hate message these people get dwarfs anything a normal person sees.
If the SCOTUS rules that they cannot block people then they will need to employee somebody to filter the messages. Otherwise you will destroy your mental just reading the toxic messages.
> Ignore enough of the people you presumably represent, and that gets shown through elections.
I mean until the moment you're a minority which is something elected officials have continually had issues with, especially in the south, here in the US.
If an elected official is using a private channel as a means of 'public' information dissemination things get messy.
If I'm at a bar and want to settle something lighthearted between friends, Wikipedia is the source of choice. If it's worth delving deeper, we'll go deeper, but for a quick answer I trust Wikipedia more than saying "Hey Google, which network was the first iPhone exclusive to?"
Perhaps irrefutable is too strong a word, but if I'm looking for an answer (instead of researching a topic) and want a quick, single source, Wikipedia is my go-to.
Wow. Wonder what Alan Einstein is advising the leadership on the effectiveness of this approach. You should work hard to minimize all of your taxes if this is how they are going to waste it.
I currently look at Twitter as a destination for socially approved statements.
Twitter is a place where you are either celebrated for having approved perspectives or risk professional destruction.
New users can only be craven popularity chasers. Old users either conform or quit. Why would anyone play in that sandbox if you have any respect for diverse opinions?
Yet the difference between socially approved on Twitter and in the real world is massive.
I imagine that quite a few Twitter-socially approved statements would raise a lot of eyebrows in the real world. for being plain weird, nonsensical, or the listener simply not able to understand it at all.
I imagine a subset of things said on Twitter and/or tactics used will make you wake up in the hospital when applied to the real world.
This is why hardcore Twitter users tend to be so shocked when the election results come in and learn that a vast majority of people do not support their view.
The weird culture around social justice and systemic racism gets treated with the same respect as Jehova’s witnesses, Mormons and Scientologists where I live. What’s commonly accepted as progressive online seems to be widely perceived as rehabilitating race-based discrimination here.
Yes, but I should add that I'm from the Netherlands.
Let's for the sake of simplicity use the word "woke" for the type of politics we're talking about.
We have it too, but it's far smaller. Most of our media is more left than the actual population it broadcasts to. However, our left is more traditional left, not woke left. So it's marginal.
Politically, we're a very different country. We have tons of parties, and therefore are a coalition country. Extremism has no place in such society as it can't produce a working coalition. Hence, dutch society moves between a narrow band from centre-right / center / center-left.
In practice, usually centre-right as the disconnect between left wing ideas and what the population actually wants is stunningly large.
The absolute dumbest thing left wing movements have ever done, and this is an international thing, is to abandon white workers. In white-dominant countries.
Anyway, the dutch are extremely sober, based, down to earth. We immediately reject anything that makes no sense.
So to finally answer your question (sorry): wokism has no place in general society here. You can't speak it at a birthday party, it will be the last one you're invited to.
In the mobile industry at the very beginning of the introduction of iPhone/android devices, we referred to “feature” phones (e.g Symbian), “smartphones” (e.g Android and windows phone)and “super phones” or “the hero device” which was exclusively the iPhone. I always thought Hero was an odd reference, but maybe there is a connection to Oshima’s request.
I guess a combination of how little side-effects they've had at scale, and of how effective the data shows they are at preventing the first virus and the earlier variants, which is what it was designed for.
I think the uptick expected is with regards to unvaccinated people, and to new variants for the most part. You should also still see a 5% to 10% of cases in vaccinated people, as the vaccines show a range of effectiveness only around the 90%, so an uptick will still occur, but the overall numbers should be much lower in vaccinated people.
To conclude, success is not on our fight against Covid, though you can say it definitely helped a lot, but the vaccine technology has definitely shown success here.
Before hundreds of millions of people were vaccinated, the agreed on success was from the initial clinical trials, which saw virtually no infections in the vaccinated group, and hundreds in the unvaccinated. Now, with so many people vaccinated, more than 90% of new cases are in people who are unvaccinated (and virtually no COVID-related deaths).
Even if humanity wasn't able to manufacture 12b vaccination doses in time for the winter (success of the vaccination program), mRNA still undoubtedly proved itself as a technology (success of mRNA as a vaccination platform). mRNA vaccinations were faster to develop, easier to modify for new strains, and probably more effective than alternatives.
That data explicitly says it is not to be used directly for causal analysis of health effects after vaccination.
> What is VEARS? [0][1]
> VAERS is not designed to determine if a vaccine caused a health problem
> Limitations of VAERS: [2]
> * It is generally not possible to find out from VAERS data if a vaccine caused the adverse event
> Are all adverse events reported to VAERS caused by vaccines? [2]
> No. Some adverse events might be caused by vaccination and others might be coincidental and not related to vaccination. Just because an adverse event happened after a person received a vaccine does not mean the vaccine caused the adverse event.
> VAERS accepts reports of adverse events following vaccination without judging the cause or seriousness of the event. VAERS is not designed to determine if a vaccine caused an adverse event, but it is good at detecting unusual or unexpected patterns of reporting that might indicate possible safety problems that need a closer look.
While it could be presented better, I think this point is fair. We seem to mostly be happy to write-off the downsides because 'but the alternative is worse.'
Sure, but let's not stop applying a critical eye and measured caution with things that are still in trial phase with inconclusive evidence for long term success.
If he wrote instead of “does it prevents death? Perhaps.” actual estimated numbers, I think the question would be clearer: “is 300000 bigger than 6000? Perhaps.”
But that “Perhaps” seems to be doing a lot of work there, which would normally be done by words such as “So far quite well”
Has any of their claims ever happened before? Random internet dude would benefit from offering some links to past examples, or his questions sound like he hasn’t done any honest attempt at research, but just made them up like a fairy tale villain.
I think misrepresenting data that explicitly states it can not be used to make this conclusion, to come to this conclusion is not a fair point and works to propagate vaccine conspiracy theories. See my other reponse with details from VAERS about not using this data to directly determine vaccine cause of adverse effects.
sssh!, we cannot speak about "adverse" deadly reaction to experimental rna treatments :P
Blood clots does non exist! And if healthy people dies, these are "collateral deaths, very rare". Until you are one of the very rare death, who in 95% of case get covid whith-out any symptoms...
>Does it prevent deaths? Perhaps. It appears to cause deaths too.
That data doesn't necessarily establish a causal link between the vaccine and death.
Visiting a health care facility for instance already puts you at increased risk of a bacterial infection. Which is why I always take a long shower after.
If there is a direct connection with the vaccine how many of those people had a preexisting health condition that should've made them ineligible to receive it?
It’s been almost 20 years since Bill Gates committed to giving away his money, and somehow he is worth more now than when he made that public commitment.
The man deserves recognition for the scale of his lie, and he is hoisted up as some reliable resource on vaccination and global pandemics. Serious topics deserve credible spokespeople.
Here's the tact that I take on HN: If you disagree with me but you don't tell me why then I automatically assume that you have nothing good to say because my argumentation is unassailable. Therefore, it's a win for me.
Not everyone can deal with reality, so they have to camouflage those comments for lower minds.
Downvotes can mean that your position is unassailable. More often, though, it means that we think your position is stupid, but it's not worth the time it would take to explain why. Other times it means that we think you're being a jerk, whether or not your position is correct.
"Unassailable"? "Not everyone can deal with reality"? "Lower minds"? As Jane Austin said, "You tell yourself that if it gives you comfort."
Yes, unassailable is a word. It means indisputable, unable to be attacked, questioned, or defeated. As a programmer, I like knowing as many words as possible.
As for the rest, if you take offense at a little bit of undirected glib hyperbole, then perhaps seeking comfort would benefit you the most.
> More often, though, it means that we think your position is stupid, but it's not worth the time it would take to explain why.
Where did you get your stats? I'd like to see them please.
I know what unassailable means. I'm just pointing out the absurdity of you thinking that the word applies to your posts because you're receiving downvotes.
First you tried stating that "Most often" it meant that "we" thought my position was stupid. Who is we and how often is often though?
Then you quoted some words that I had used and made your opinion about them known. Not a great argument...
I'm left wondering what's so absurd? Feel free to go through my comment history, pick out something random and tell me how stupid my position is. I'll wait.
Just because you are saying things doesn’t mean another citizen has to listen to them.