Let’s please not pretend that censorship is a tendency of those in the left when the right is currently in charge of the federal government and plenty of state governments. @infoshare
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Censorship is not by governments anymore, it is by Facebook and Twitter and Google/Youtube which are extremely left-leaning and wield complete control over user-posted content through Section 230
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There are many differing opinions about how our government has handled this pandemic: I claim only that the total shutdown of our economy was not particularly well-founded from a strictly scientific perspective, and therefore the actions taken seem to me excessive. That being said, I only state that as an opinion, I don’t claim to KNOW anything and therefore grudgingly follow the rules applied to the general public. I totally accept what you have said above; that for me is not the BIG issue with remarks about ‘elitists’ and ‘authoritarian rule’ . The issue for me is censorship, and Free Speech: publicly questioning the pandemic response, or posting contrary medical/scientific evidence on the internet is met with: censorship, shouting down, banning, and hysteria. To make my point more thoroughly and eloquently I posted a podcast I found today on Twitter: the Adam Garrie podcast makes my point better understood than I can here without having to write a doctoral discertation.
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The ‘elitists’ the ‘authoritarians’ and enemies of Free Speech are disproportionally a Left-wing tendency. So yes, that is exactly what I am saying here: but we can differ on the matter. Reasonable people can agree to disagree - as I dont plan to dive into this subject any deeper. 
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Which is funny because before 2014 they took a more hands off approach to user content and was more focus on building the platform with new users. It was really with ISIS use of social media in later 2013 and 2014 that we saw them start to ban hate speech, but they were heavily criticize for their slow respond to ISIS propaganda. Took until 2016 for social media giants to really get their act together on ISIS, but a new threat raised with misinformation and state sponsor attacks on the U.S.
You say that social media sites are bias against the right, but they didn’t move against them even though some right figures promoted violence and hate speech. Only recently they have been “shutting them down”, but after these groups have managed to spread their extreme beliefs which have lead to a increase in attacks conducted by the far-right. For example the Christchurch attack footage is still being shared by the right on FB and on Twitter.
This is a very complicated issue that social media sites are trying to balance between making profits and having their platforms being used by extreme politic groups. Will by my last post on the issue, but this right here is why I love Yimby. We get to have debates without calling each names or acting like we four. 
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That is a fair point about necessary censorship Revan. Certainly groups like ISIS, or white nationalists, should be addressed.
I just fear that if the cutoff for these companies’ “community standards” is lowered too much, we will suddenly find ourselves a lot less free than we thought we were — and it will be too late to get it back.
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This post ignores the herald wave from 1918. I do think we will have a second wave, but it will not be until October / late September, when population-wide Vitamin D levels plunge.
. In contrast to other regions with a herald 1918 wave during spring-summer outside the regular flu season,10,11,17 the first wave in NYC appears to have begun during a time of year typically suitable for the transmission of influenza. The timing and transmissibility of influenza (including pandemic influenza) may be affected by environmental conditions such as ambient humidity.18–20 Typical low wintertime humidity levels should have created conditions favorable for the spread of influenza, and indeed, historical meteorological records indicate that humidity levels during February and March 1918 were low (data not shown). In fact, humidity levels were lower during the first pandemic wave than during the second and should have been conducive to the rapid transmission of influenza in a fully susceptible population. Yet, despite the presence of a supposedly fully naïve population and favorable humidity conditions, the first wave appears to have been muted.
The first pandemic wave closely followed a seasonal influenza outbreak in NYC. People recently infected with this seasonal influenza would likely have had increased titers of antibodies for this seasonal strain. One possible explanation for the limited extent of the first pandemic wave is that individuals with those high seasonal influenza antibody titers benefitted from partial protection against the pandemic strain, despite any structural dissimilarities among these two influenza viruses. Indeed, short-lived non-strain-specific immunity has been proposed to occur following influenza infection and modify the attack rates of both seasonal and pandemic influenza.21,22 This partial immunity could have afforded protection for the population equivalent to herd immunity. Thus, the first pandemic wave could have been restricted among subpopulations with higher risk of infection, in particular, school-aged children, who have more frequent contact among peers and usually experience earlier and higher attack rates during both influenza epidemics and pandemics.13,14,23,24 Indeed, our analysis indicates that school-aged children had the highest fractional mortality increase during the first wave. As cross-immunity waned in the months following winter,25 population susceptibility to the pandemic strain might have increased substantially so that by the onset of the second wave, an unchecked outbreak with severe morbidity and mortality had been enabled.
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…echoing the above post, I think the effect of seasonal weather (more humidity and sunshine = less transmission due to less impactful respiratory symptoms AND increasing Vit D across entire population) are being misattributed to the “policy” of the electeds.
Instead of enjoying summertime, and using the lessons of EVERY SINGLE PREVIOUS PANDEMIC which always occur in springtime herald waves and secondary autumnal waves that are much more severe, we have people warning of a “second wave” when they have no understanding of what that even entails, or why the first wave is actually waning.
The deep anti-intellectualism that has always pervaded the far-right portion of American society is now running rampant across the left as well, and it is a travesty. Instead of preparing for October, we are still running around with no direction from the electeds over what can help stop transmission (Vit D supplementation, exercise, fresh air, and MASKS in indoor areas).
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Well, that point seems to support what I am saying; if ‘feels good’ to speak freely in public - and to be agreed with is icing on the cake. Thanks for ‘sharing’ - and with that I will conclude my engagement with the subject. Going back-to-Jack CEO/C chief executive officer/censor at twitter for now - a battle we must all fight on many fronts.
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Why on earth are people posting on real estate development forums when they’ve solved the global pandemic? Stick to your day jobs.
And another thing. Censorship is something governments do. You cannot expect corporations to respect ‘natural rights’ let alone ‘human rights.’ They will however respect the almighty dollar. And if fools are spreading misinformation, eg about highly contagious deadly viruses, this opens them up to liability.
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some of us don’t have’em so…
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The issue is that these companies (FB, Twitter) get immunity from lawsuits/criminal charges based on content because they classify their businesses under a protocol where essentially they maintain no influence over the user-posted content.
The other option is for them to be able to censor heavily, but also be held accountable for whatever posts are on their platform, or whatever decisions they make.
But they can’t have it both ways. If they are being too hands on, they are less of a social network and more of a curated content system like Medium or Apple News.
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It really wishful thinking that social media companies will protect our freedom when they collect large amounts of data about us and then sell that data to other companies.
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Let’s also not be naive about what sort of speech is promoted on social media. This isn’t some elite technocrat muzzling a town crier in a tricorn hat. Influence is bought and paid for; agendas are pushed; useful idiots are being cultivated. Sovereign nations, sovereign individuals, mafia states, and malign actors are shaping the dialog long before any hamfisted regulation. This speech is literally not free, it’s bankrolled.
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This place has become such a drag lately. I can’t seem to get any respite from politics anywhere. Politics and the state of our country is all I’ve thought about every single day for the past few years. It’s disappointing that it’s becoming more common for threads here to devolve into it—so there’s no way to let my mind take a break from it. Sometimes I just wanna zone out and look at buildings.
What’s even more frustrating is when people just throw words around without considering their actual meaning. When terms reach buzz word levels, they lose their impact. And it’s purposeful. It makes me not want to post anymore frankly.
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Baronson, I agree whole heartedly!
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I think we do a pretty good job of containing politics to this thread and only this thread. If you see it in other threads feel free to flag. I also deleted my post – I am happy to give you a place for respite, although I will use this thread (and only this thread) to vent on occasion.
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Every thread except this one is kept ‘on topic’ and only this thread goes into politics because it is a 'various news…" tread, and will understandably go into politics. The above complaints about ‘politics’ on the YIMBY forums is a completely disingenuous claim that what is being said is “bothering someone” or ‘offensive’ or ‘dangerous disinformation’ . The above posters attempt to POLICE the comments on this thread is how CENSORSHIP is on the rise in social media. I am pleased and surprised that some of the links and comments I posted above have not been deleted: those same links have been deleted from youtube. I will post a link to a C-19 video that has now been deleted from my Twitter account, and Youtube: very informative and about our city because we are all in lockdown here in NYC due to the Covid-19 virus.
This video Banned on Twitter and Youtube: why.
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