Holy Sheet! A SCRIPTED Twilight Zone? (Black Mirror)

[MJ DeMarco]

Wow. Just FN wow. (Both the educational standpoint, and the agenda pushing [or squashing].)

 

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[Bekit]

You're right that I was assuming that the content of the post was indeed truthful, factual, and authentic. I made this assumption based on knowing the character of my friend who attempted to make the original post, and based on the snippet that was visible of what she tried to post. The visible text was, "alcohol. 75% alcohol or chlorine disinfectant can effectively eliminates the coronavirus."

Why call someone a liar when there is no reason to believe there is an intent to mislead?

Fair point. Saying someone is "lying" carries with it the connotation that they have an intent to mislead. This is a less inflammatory version of saying that.

You seemed to have stopped reading after, "Being reported by user," and didn't get to the very next phrase, "AND CHECKED..."

Nobody is saying this is true because it's been reported by a lot of people. They're saying it's true because they've checked.

If you're sending out a WeChat message and you press send, and you immediately get a popup that says, "We've checked, and this message is not factual," to me that doesn't imply that anyone has checked anything, other than that it has passed through some kind of AI filter that flagged it to display this message based on keywords in the message.

Except that the "authority figure" in this instance is likely the more accurate source of information. Appeal to authority is persuasive precisely because the authority is in a position to provide good information. There's no reason to believe the authority in this case is giving bad information. (Unless you know something that we don't.)

When the "authority" is the Chinese government, and when this authority arrested 8 doctors who initially made it known that the virus was spreading, I don't have much confidence that the authority is providing good information.

On the flip side, what would actually be super scary is if they HAVE checked and it IS factual that normal disinfectants don't kill the coronavirus.

If the information being provide really is untruthful, isn't it good that there are consequences for disseminating it? I'm sure you'll point out that that's censorship, and I'll point out that private companies have every right (and in many cases, responsibility) to censor.

Certainly. I just found it extremely odd that a message like this would be flagged for censorship.

This isn't government censorship, or a free speech threat.
Again, reading too much into it.

To me, it seems like precisely that. I'm not sure how this is reading too much into it, but I'm open to hearing how someone could see it a different way.

Out of curiosity, do you have any idea what the message that is being "silenced" actually says or whether it's true or not? You seem to want to believe it's true -- and being censored for some mysterious reason -- but what leads you to that conclusion?

How do you know the rest of the message isn't, "After you mix the alcohol and bleach, drink it."

You may not realize it, but these types of suggestions are making the rounds:

Conspiracy theorists are telling people to drink a dangerous bleach solution to cure or prevent coronavirus

Conspiracy theorists and internet vaccine skeptics are making false claims that a bleach solution called "miracle mineral solution" cures coronavirus.

www.businessinsider.com

Sure. If it was something like, "drink bleach" or "throw your pets out the window," of course I wouldn't have any patience for it.

The reason I thought it was weird was because my friend thought it was weird. There is no reason that I would ever suspect that she would be posting nonsense and getting her hand slapped for it. This is not the only example floating out there of a misinformation campaign. It just happened to be an example from my own personal network.

Providing a warning to users not to forward untruthful information can literally save lives. Unless you have some additional information about what's in that message above that the rest of us don't have, I think it's safe to say that your take on the situation is probably less valid than the warning being provided to the message sender.

I don't know more of the content from the original message that was flagged. For now, I will still hold to my "take" on the situation that (a) it's weird that Wechat is flagging a message about disinfectants as false and (b) There's a lot of elements of persuasion woven into that text.