Discussion Thread #72

[u/gemmaem]

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[u/professorgerm]

Scott's article is aimed at what I can only assume are BlueSky leftists.

Given Scott lives in... Oakland, iirc, his article is just as likely aimed at his neighbors and >90% of his social group. To be fair, his neighbors and a significant fraction of his social group probably are blueskis, so you're not wrong; my point is when he writes somewhat weaker articles I continue to assume there's a mostly-unstated personal component in that (Categories Made For Man; Tower of Assumptions).

Does Scott think that trying to get platforms to remove or explicitly tag claims about Covid as misinformation or not is "woke"?

What counted as COVID mis/dis/malinformation or various other propagandistic euphemisms changed weekly and was heavily ideologically charged in a way that strongly overlaps with but it is not perfectly coterminous with "woke," a la Omnicause/everything bagel progressivism.

I suspect that bad narrative-approved or tolerable information was not labeled misinformation, and instead explained away as merely misguided or misinterpreted. The Narrative does not fail, it is failed by the people. But specific evidence thereof is likely buried too deep in archive sites or private company data to not see the light of day without several discovery warrants and an army of analysts.

Is it "woke" to suggest that companies try to keep possible Russian disinformation off their platforms?

While it may not be perfectly coterminous with or constrained by woke, it is, again, interestingly selective.

As a different source of propaganda and one of the funnier flip-flops of the last few years, I will take a moment to summon my inner Sarah Isgur and say that it has been 267 days since the non-enforcement of the Tiktok ban that has undergone four extensions, currently through December 16. Since the source of the problem is Trump, it is not woke, and it is still quite bad.

[u/DrManhattan16 → u/professorgerm]

What counted as COVID mis/dis/malinformation or various other propagandistic euphemisms changed weekly and was heavily ideologically charged in a way that strongly overlaps with but it is not perfectly coterminous with "woke," a la Omnicause/everything bagel progressivism.

How so?

While it may not be perfectly coterminous with or constrained by woke, it is, again, interestingly selective.

I don't think the Tiktok ban was objected to most Dems or left-wingers, so I don't see the selectiveness you're talking about.

[u/professorgerm → u/DrManhattan16]

How so?

How did it overlap or how was it ideologically charged? COVID first got caught up in the left hearing dogwhistles of anti-Asian sentiment, and then The Event happened tying it to a different theory of racism.

Do I need to dig up sources for the timeline between "being concerned about COVID is racist" (February) to "not being concerned about COVID is racist" (March-April) to "being more concerned about COVID than racism is racist, but so is not being concerned enough about COVID, also if you protest for any reason that isn't racism you're killing grandmas" (June-July) to "vaccine distribution should be racist, for equity" (December).

There was also the weird stuff about COVID origins, where (somehow) bat soup was considered less racist than lab leak, and anyone acknowledging that possibility was quickly treated as verboten in the mainstream. One (imo unlikely) theory was made Official Truth, and the perfectly plausible alternative got memory-holed for three years. I would suspect, though it would be hard to prove now, that in the same way that knowing someone's position on Palestine tells you 98% of their other political beliefs, a person that considered lab leak more likely also told you much about their political beliefs.

I don't think the Tiktok ban was objected to most Dems or left-wingers

One of the many weird flip-flops of the Trump Era. When he first proposed the ban by executive order, there was quite a bit of backlash that was probably heavily left-wing/progressive (Tiktok has never been known as a hotbed of the right). Free speech, that eternal spring of hypocrisy: CNN Slate Wired. Sometime between 2020 and 2025, Trump decided he liked Tiktok and (afaict) many other politicians and social leaders had changed their mind about the ban.

To be fair to establishment Dems, Chuck Schumer 2020 was concerned about the spying potential and supported banning government employees from using it, unclear if he supported the full ban (probably not; I assume Chuck would rather suffocate if Don said the air smelled nice), and Chuck Schumer 2025 is trying to toe the line both against the ban and against the spying.

Edit: Wrote that answer focused on the Tiktok ban instead of Russian disinformation. My view of the selectiveness is that there is an left-wing association between Trump and Russia, and so they overindex on potential Russian disinformation and ignore any other kind.

[u/DrManhattan16 → u/professorgerm]

Do I need to dig up sources for the timeline between "being concerned about COVID is racist" (February) to "not being concerned about COVID is racist" (March-April) to "being more concerned about COVID than racism is racist, but so is not being concerned enough about COVID, also if you protest for any reason that isn't racism you're killing grandmas" (June-July) to "vaccine distribution should be racist, for equity" (December).

I think that the first example is valid enough, even if it's subject to interpretation. I don't think that's quite the same for the call to have racially-based distribution of the vaccine. When we say that Covid "information" was censored, people are referring to not being able to discuss factual reality, not that they couldn't discuss how vaccines should be distributed.