The guy I heard debunking it on NPR, I think, was Peter Dazsak. Dazsak certainly knows his bat coronavirus research, including gain of function research:
https://projectreporter.nih.gov/project_info_description....

Here is a paper he published with, among others, Shi Zheng-Li, from the Wuhan Institute:
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature12711

I have also seen strong efforts to debunk it from Professor Edward Holmes, from the University of Sidney, in Australia. Here's a recent article that he co-authored with the virologists from Wuhan:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2169-0

Note that the fact that they published with these people is actually not what makes me suspicious. What makes me suspicious is that in the the process of their efforts to dubunk the "Lab Release" theory, I didn't hear them disclose their ties to the Lab.


Is it common? I don't know, but I certainly hope not. Viruses are effective enough. We don't need to be improving them, thank you very much. Even if we can manage to keep them confined, it's still a bad idea.


Here is an article from NBC talking about a 24 page private report they had obtained that shows no cellpohone activity around the Institute from October 7 to October 24.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/report...
Since NBC didn't indicate much about what was in the report, here is a couple articles from some non-mainstream news sources that go into more detail about what what was supposedly in that report:
https://latest-today-news.com/2020/05/11/mobile-phone-act... /
https://www.blacklistednews.com/article/76995/mobile-phon...
They do mention that NBC's expert indicated that there may have been other explanations for the data, but as I said above, I have yet to see anyone debunking it with a simple explanation, such as "the tower in that area was down" or such.


There may be a consensus in some groups, and a different consensus among other groups. I'm not convinced either way, and consider it an open question. I think that anyone attempting to debunk it should reveal their ties to the Wuhan Institute, or to gain of function research, just in the sake of allowing people to honestly evaluate what they have to say.

If you want to look more deeply into the science, here's an article about the furin cleavage site. While SARS-Cov2 is much like several other coronaviruses, it has an additional feature, a furin cleavage site, which enables it to efficiently infect humans (and other species). The whole debate over whether SARS-COV2 was man-made or natural revolves around this addition.
https://www.virology.ws/2020/02/13/furin-cleavage-site-in... /

There are other coronaviruses with a furin cleavage site, but they are very different from SAVS-COV2, perhaps 30% similar. There are other coronaviruses that are very similar to SARS-COV2, up to 98% similar, but they lack the furin cleavage site. Did someone combine them in a lab? Did the insertion happen naturally? As I understand it, having a gene change here or there is very common, but having an additional sequence inserted is much less common, yet not impossible. Even if the virus did evolve naturally, that still doesn't mean it could not have been collected by the lab, and then escaped from there. On NPR, Peter Daszak, above, said that they didn't have SARS-COV2 in inventory, and now that I know his ties to the lab, I presume he would know.

At the same time, I'm a bit confused by the explanation that the virus came from the Wet Market. Since no bats were sold at that market, is the suggestion that the virus made a jump to another species in the wild, and then spread from that species to humans in the Wet Market? Did they sell Pangolins at the wet market? I don't know.

In the end I reach the conclusion that this is not a question I can answer, and it is not a question that I think most people can answer. Thus, it's a ripe place for opinions to dominate facts, and one where both sides will adamantly claim to be right for years to come.

Okay, so let's agree to stop short of 'debunked' and take this BBC report at its word. That means scientific consensus remains that the most likely case is that the official story is correct and there's unlikely to ever be sufficient evidence to prove the theory that the virus escaped from a Wuhan lab correct.

How does that justify your stance from several weeks ago where you were so confident that the lab did escape from a lab that you felt the left not apologizing to Tom Cotton was indicative of their "true colors" and how they're "harder on Conservatives than Communist China."

By bringing that up, I was trying to get you to apply the same critical thinking to sources you trust to those you don't. When Dr. Fauci is wrong, you view it as an indictment of the "self appointed expert class." When you are wrong, as a direct result of hitching your wagon to the wrong expert, it seems you bear that no mind.

My post wasn't about this at all. It was about how consistently wrong you've been and how you do not hold yourself the the same standard you hold people you view to be members of the "self appointed expert class."

Whether you recognize it or not, completely ignoring specific examples of how off base you've been here in favor of speaking in broad terms about the fallibility of science just further proves how you refuse to examine your own views with any level of rigor. There's a standard for the people you disagree with, and there's a standard for you and everybody else.

I provided you with specific examples where you, Cbus cat fan, were wrong. I asked a simple question: why should anybody put any stock in your opinion on this topic after how wrong you've been?

You answered with a long meandering post about the Catholic Church, Enron, and WMDs in Iraq. We're talking about the Covid crisis. A month ago, you lectured people here about how the experts let us down by projecting high levels of death and causing a panic. You were confident they were wrong and there'd be about 50k deaths. You compared this to a typical flu season.

You were incorrect about that. Which, I guess, is why you want to talk about Enron now? Of course, the onus is on you to explain why this is anything at all like Enron. Or the Catholic Church. Or WMDs in Iraq.

The onus is also on you to explain why you were so wrong before and how, after being so wrong, the thesis of your argument still makes any sense at all.

You say things like this all the time. Bill Gates and his cronies are "getting upset. . .", Alex Berenson was "facing the wrath. . ." -- and you never provide evidence of it. Why? Because what you refer to as "getting upset" and "facing the wrath" is actually just debate taking place in the public square. It's two groups of people with differing views doing their best to make the case for why their opinions are the best for the public good.

Again, your own attempts to cite scientific data in this thread have been consistently wrong. Have you considered that it's only because you're completely unwilling to acknowledge that you think the scientific community has tons of egg on their face at the moment?


Breaking: There are crazy Americans. More at 11.

Dr. Fauci's gotten death threats. There's a conspiracy theory developing that Bill Gates is a secret eugenicist who is pushing a plan to kill billions for population control. There's a very popular movie and book out claiming wearing masks "activates" the virus and increases spread.

Dumb people do and say dumb things. There are dumb people of all political persuasions. What does this prove and what value does it add to this conversation beyond that it reinforces your own sense of having been treated unfairly?



You know who else said Georgia was reopening too soon? Donald Trump: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-rever...

When he says that, you don't seem to care. When somebody in the media says it, it's evidence of a grand conspiracy against free thought and a war against Conservatives.

To reiterate, you've been consistently wrong in this thread. You haven't provided any reason for anybody to put any stock in anything you say. When pressed for specifics, you change the subject. You rant about disconnected things. You've insisted the "scientific community" has been wrong, while simultaneously parroting scientific analysis that confirms your existing biases and justifying it by insisting the sources you cite are from "real experts."

You won't address or acknowledge the times you've been wrong. You won't hold your own 'experts' accountable. You'll just keep lecturing everybody else about how unfair it is that people are critical of anybody who continues to believe the things you've been consistently and demonstrably wrong about.

The Daily Beast has a new analysis of the 24 page report. It provides an obvious explanation regarding the lack of cell phone movement and also includes satellite imagery that shows road construction and otherwise normal traffic patterns. The 24 page report also failed to take into account a holiday, which would have reduced traffic.

https://t.co/tUePGlKCfj?amp=1

All in all, the lack of cell phone movement doesn't seem all that compelling. If you're looking to draw the conclusion the virus escaped from the lab, I can see how you might see this as relevant. But the analysis was ultimately pretty lazy. There were two previous months (March and April 2019) with no data, as well.

It's a low traffic area, this data was based in a low volume of traffic, and there's an obvious explanation for the lack of traffic.

Since I have no way to assess what was in the report, nor the accuracy of the rebuttal, I'll keep my comments simple. First, this is exactly the kind of rebuttal I mentioned that I had been unable to find, so thank you. Second, there is some issue with the dates - I thought that the missing traffic was supposed to be October 6-14, but the rebuttal mentions there being vehicles present on October 17. Third, if there was a release, and they wanted to block traffic, I presume they would feign roadwork to explain blocking off the roads. That said, if they roadwork was going on in late September, but completed in early October, that would show that it really was roadwork.

In the end I think this is something where none of us will ever know what really happened. I'm certainly not going to dwell on it, and spend weeks or years delving into conspiracy theories. In the end, the virus is here, and we have to deal with it.

The initial report claims that traffic ceased between October 7th and October 24th, according to the links you sent. They're estimating that the leak may have happened between 10/6 and 10/14, which is why you have those dates in mind, I assume. So the fact that there were regular traffic patterns visible in satellite imagery directly contradicts the 30 page report. The wording in the report is that there is "an 18 day gap in which there were no observable events."

They also claimed a conference set to be hosted at the lab in early November was cancelled. It wasn't. There are photos of attendees on Facebook.

To me, it seems pretty clear that there's nothing here. The theory existed before the evidence and now those with interests in doing so are trying to back-fill the explanation.

The mere fact that Pompeo is backing off of this already says a ton. The administration has plenty of motivation to be able to shift as much blame as possible to China on this, so even if the evidence available was still ambiguous, I'd expect Pompeo not to back off.

I suspect we see more and more disproving this over the next couple of weeks.

The only possibilities I can think of are:
1. It was a natural virus that escaped from a bat in the Wuhan Market
2. It was a bat virus that had moved to some other species (pangolin?) that was sold at the Wuhan market
3. It was a bat virus that occurred naturally, and was found in the wild and being researched at the Virus Institute, but escaped
4. It was a man-made virus created by inserting a furin cleavage site, which escaped from the Virus Institute

My assumptions:
1. There is no way to look at a virus and know from the virus itself whether it was man-made or not, and especially not after it has further mutated in nature
2. No one is going to tell us what happened
3. The first 3 cases had no connection to the Wuhan market
4. While single gene mutations are much more common, it is possible, but rare, for additional gene sequences to be inserted naturally

Possibility number one has been ruled out since bats weren't sold at the Wuhan Market. The "wet market" videos we saw earlier which showed bats being sold were actually from Malaysia. As for the other three, I don't see how any of them can be proven definitively. Had the cell phone theory had substance, that would would have strongly supported an escape from the Wuhan Institute, but with it ruled out, you are back to square one. The only new data that I can think of that might occur in the next few weeks would be if it was revealed that pangolins weren't sold at the wet market, either. Even in that case, though, it will just be proposed that there was a different intermediate species, such as a snake, so even that wouldn't change much.

Thus, I expect more of the same. The people who worked with the Virus Institute, and who have a vested interest in the continuation of bat virus research will say "it came from the wet market", and conspiracy theorists will say "it came from the lab".

As I posted above, in the end it doesn't change anything. The virus is here, and we have to deal with it. I do think there will be one lasting impact to bat virus research, one way or the other. I don't expect to see grant requests seeking to do "gain of function" research granted anymore, and I think that's a good thing.

Saw this in yesterday's Dispatch written by a fellow Attacker.

https://www.dispatch.com/opinion/20200527/letter-supporti...

What we see so far is a mix of new stuff:
"Scientists say COVID-19 may have been cooked up in lab"
https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/coronavirus/scientists-...

"Here’s How Scientists Know Coronavirus Was NOT Cooked Up In A Lab"
https://www.dailywire.com/news/heres-how-scientists-know-...

"The case is building that covid had a lab origin"
https://www.independentsciencenews.org/health/the-case-is... /

In other news, Peter Daszak, who I mentioned in a prior post as a debunker in the lab escape theory, and a bat virus researcher who had partnered with the Wuhan lab, has had his funding yanked.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-administration-coronav... /
CBS strongly supports the continuation of gain of function research on bat coronaviruses:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nih-cancelled-coronavirus-re... /

And another article featuring Peter Daszak, arguing for more gain-of-function bat research, not less:
https://undark.org/2020/06/08/for-experts-who-study-coron...

The article simply asserts that the allegation that the virus might have been released accidentally is "...an allegation that’s been broadly discredited". It admits that the bats which harbor the many varieties of Coronavirus are in a cave 500 miles away, in Yunnan Province, and gives no insight about how a virus might have gotten to Wuhan, and how it suddenly mutated to add the furin cleavage site, which isn't found in any other coronvirus, but which makes it incredibly infectious.

Here's a most curious article:
https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=e...

According to this article, they were able to detect RNA from SARS-Cov2 in sewage samples in Catalona from March 12, 2019. Previously the earliest cases in Europe that were even suspected was that participants to the World Military Games, which were held in Wuhan in October, 2019, reported symptoms consistent with Covid19 when they returned. Since there was no test for Covid, it's not known of those were genuine Covid cases, or were something similar.

Was this a contaminated sample? Or, is Covid really the Catalona flu, perhaps carried to Wuhan at the Military games, rather than brought home to Europe from the Military games?

The virus origin debate rages on:
China says that while it didn't come from a lab, it didn't come from the Wuhan wet market, either:
https://www.tweaktown.com/news/72819/china-switches-up-co...

New report says most likely explanation is that it come from a lab:
https://www.tweaktown.com/news/73021/new-report-claims-co...

Virologists vigorously debunk that it came from a lab, saying that is 100% impossible because to do so "would require insight into [viral] pathogenesis and protein engineering that does not exist".:
https://abcnews.go.com/Health/virologists-vigorously-debu...

Probably the best thing for resolving the debate is if they can find a virus substantially similar to this in the wild. As contagious as it is, it should be out there, in animals, somewhere, if it evolved in the wild.

Not trying to call you out or anything, but I'm genuinely not familiar with Tweaktown. Is that a reputable source? That the article debunking this is from ABC News, and the other two come from Tweaktown raises flags for me. But again, not familiar with the source, so I dunno.

I'm also not sure I'm seeing the direct connection between the Norwegian study they link to here (https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-cor... ) and the claim that the virus was manufactured in a lab. That paper does not make those claims, unless I'm missing something.

Apparently an earlier version did, but didn't make it through peer review: https://fullfact.org/health/richard-dearlove-coronavirus-... /

I don't know Tweaktown, either. They apparently specialize in gaming news. I had just heard about the Norwegian virologist and his paper, and did a search for an article about it, and that was what the search engine found. From that link you gave, it appears that his paper has been split in half. The first half was primarily related to vaccine considerations, made it through peer review after being re-written to remove references about non-natural insertions, has now been published. The second half, related to his theory that it was man-made, has not been published, and I suspect it will be squelched.

Bangladesh study shows 100% recovery rate for patients taking Ivermectin:
https://www.trialsitenews.com/ivermectin-study-reveals-fa... /

It's a small study, however, involving only 116 patients with mild to moderate Covid19. All had oxygen saturation over 95% when they began treatment. The patients were divided into two groups, half with Ivermectin, half with HCQ, and there was no control group that got "standard care". 96% of the HCQ group also recovered. Recovery was faster for Ivermectin, at 5.93 days average, versus 5.99 days for HCQ.

The original retrospecting study that showed outstanding results for Ivermectin was withdrawn as it used the same, flawed database that resulted in the HCQ study being withdrawn. This is the first study I've seen on Ivermectin since then. Unfortunately it is too small to be really useful, but it shows that further studies are justified.

We do need safe, effective treatments, and hopefully Ivermectin will ultimately prove to be exactly that, but more research is needed. Remember, never self-medicate with any treatment. Obviously, do not take aquarium cleaner (Chloroguine), and do not take horse worming pills (Ivermectin). They are the wrong grade, and the wrong dose, and not safe for human consumption.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/11934870/sick-amazon-evange... /

A non-scientific comparison of the CFR in countries that have used no HCQ, countries that sometimes use HCQ, and countries that never use HCQ:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Conservative/comments/ht22bs/cou... /

Here's a summary of the status of HCQ research in the US:
https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19/87601

It appears that there are some studies underway where they are enrolling people early in the infection. It seems clear that there is no benefit to HCQ in people with advanced cases.

Another anti-viral trying to get in the mix, has a catchy, easy to remember name, EIDD-2801, and is in clinical trials:
https://news.emory.edu/stories/2020/04/covid_eidd2801_fda...

Here's a couple more links related to the "man-made" issue. First, a Nature Article debunking that theory:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9
Note that one of the authors is Professor Holmes. It seems that every article I see debunking the man-made theory includes one of three people, Peter Dazsak, Professor Holmes, or Robert Baric. All have worked with the Wuhan Viral Institute. Oddly, though, this is never disclosed in the process. I would think that should be listed in the Ethics Declarations section, though there is a link to his publications.

And, here's another that reaches the opposite conclusion:
https://medium.com/@yurideigin/lab-made-cov2-genealogy-through-the-lens-of-gain-of-function-research-f96dd7413748
Note that since it goes against the mainstream, it gets tagged with a warning that they "don't fact check every story".

Time to bump an old thread, I think, as the plot is thickening (or sickening, depending on your perception of the what the truth might be). Here are some interesting recent articles:

https://www.newsweek.com/exclusive-how-amateur-sleuths-br...

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-intelligence-sifts-evide...

https://science.thewire.in/the-sciences/origins-of-covid-... /

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-growing-scrutin... /

https://www.smh.com.au/national/where-did-covid-come-from...

In other news related to this thread, a few countries have gone against the mainstream and adopted the approach of giving everyone ivermectin as soon as they had a positive test, including Mexico, and more recently, some provinces of India, and they saw an immediate and dramatic drop in both cases and fatalities. It's mind-boggling that in a year and a half, the scientific community never made any effort to test it, and the only credible tests were done in places like Peru, Bangladesh, and Eqypt, but that's kind of water under the bridge now.

I've been following this story, though admitedly not particularly closely, and agree that the tide's turned and it's looking increasingly likely that the source of the virus was the Wuhan lab. The circumstantial evidence is piling up in a way that is hard to ignore. Reading Nicholson Baker's piece in New York was was changed my perspective, even if his novels are super f'in weird.

I think I can best explain my prior skepticism as akin to the 'boy who cried wolf' -- there's been a lot of focus on how mainstream media missed this, but little thought given to the track record of the sources that were pushing this theory early on. Once Trump touted the theory in one of his press conferences, it became even easier to dismiss. He has a long track record (and continues) to push baseless conspiracies. And then as soon as he supported it, so did the rest of the conservative media machine -- which also has a less than stellar track record. These are the same sources who insisted in March that Covid was just a political hoax to damage the President, that it was linked to 5G, that it was developed by China as a biological weapon, etc. So, essentially, they cried wolf a bunch and then when a wolf showed up, I didn't buy it.

To your credit though, you were on top of this and spoke to the credibility and likelihood. I made the mistake of lumping this in with other, very wrong theories other folks here touted at the time. That was a mistake.

As I posted last year, what set off my alarm bells was the very vigorous ongoing defense of the Wuhan lab by both Peter Daszak and Edward Holmes, and yet, in defending the lab, I was not seeing a disclosure of their ties to the lab. I thought it was highly suspicious and inappropriate.

It's sad that the media did as you did, discounted it solely because Trump mentioned it. It's downright scary that tech powers such as Google, Facebook, and Reddit, and perhaps Twitter, blocked discussion of it, and banned accounts that mentioned it.

(Thankfully, BA didn't ban me for mentioning it as a possibility. That gives BA a leg up compared to Facebook.)

+1

The same media that dismissed this has now done two things: 1) stopped dismissing it and 2) written thousands upon thousands of words reflecting on how they got this wrong.

Meanwhile, Trump lied over and over and over about issues big and small. He continues to lie about the election being stolen. Conservative media carries his water.

Are you seeing any similar self-reflection about why so many people reflectively dismiss the things published by right wing media and pushed by the most powerful man in the world?

I have not. Liars get treated like liars. That damages their credibility. These are lessons we learn as toddlers. It's a simple, core truth.

If Trump didn't lie constantly, the things he says would be taken seriously.

I'd be much more scared by handing over control of private companies to the government for them to make decisions about what can and can't be posted. They fucked this up. Companies fuck things up sometimes. Turning Reddit into a public utility seems like a huge step in the wrong direction, if the objective is the free exchange of ideas.

And this is a good thing. Maybe they will learn from it.


I certainly won't defend Trump, but he's not the point. The point is actually that he is irrelevant. Just as no one should take something he (or any other politician for that matter) says as truth, it is just as wrong to take everything he says as a lie just because he said it.

In my discussion a year ago, I simply raised questions. I never once used Trump as a source. I initially believed that it came from the Wuhan Market, like everyone else, but, as additional facts came out, I considered it an open question worthy of additional investigation. What is concerning here is that, among the thousands, or hundreds of thousands of reporters, none, or almost none even considered investigating it, and that, when a few did, the big tech companies erected roadblocks to obtaining information.


Again, this has nothing to do with Trump. I don't care if he is taken seriously. As facts came out, there were obvious discrepancies between the "Wuhan Wet Market" story, and the new facts. The earliest cases were not tied to the wet market, and the wet market did not sell bats. So, someone should have been inspired to investigate.


I don't claim to know the answer here, only that the whole Covid situation shows the flaws in the current system. These are private companies, and the Constitution therefore does not apply to them, and they have no obligation to tolerate free speech. Yet, somehow, some way, there is needs to be a way for free speech to thrive, and for independent journalism to thrive, and to not fall into group-think. Is the answer more government control? Certainly not. Is it more competition? Maybe. Yet, if the competition is Google versus Facebook versus Twitter, and they are all censoring the same things, that isn't helping.

I disagree that Trump's irrelevant. I don't think there's a single person in the entire world who better represents how the shifting media landscape (to include social media platforms like Reddit, Facebook, Twitter) has led to the wide proliferation of a huge volume of misinformation. The entire strategy -- as clearly articulate by Steve Bannon -- is to "flood the zone with bullshit." The constant barrage of that bullshit is a strategy to make it impossible for traditional media outlets to keep up, and manage the narrative. The lies are a stated strategy to keep the media -- who Trumpists consider to be an enemy of the state -- off-balance.

The point's to force the media not to treat the lies he states as lies, and thus lend them credence by keeping them in the 'national conversation.'

Look at the lies that are still being pushed about the election. There's no supporting evidence. It's just conservatives flooding the zone with sh*t to keep it on people's mind, and increase the percentage of suckers they can convince to believe it for their own political gain.



Yes, absolutely. To be very clear, I'm not suggesting you were swayed in any way by Trump. You clearly did your own diligence and deserve credit for that. I (and I'm sure others) have found your Covid contributions on BA to be level-headed and rational. Didn't intend to imply that you viewed Trump as a source.



You may not personally care. I just don't see how you can have a conversation about the modern media universe without an analysis of how the world's most powerful man (at one point) was a clear product of that environment.

That is, actually, what happened here. It just happened on a long timeline. Independent journalism and independently actors -- using infrastructure provided by the very platforms you're referencing -- got to the bottom of this. And when they did, mainstream media didn't deny the story. They reported it. It was on the cover of New York mag months ago, for instance. That's a super-liberal publication.

This, honestly, was just bad journalism. I don't think it's some nefarious plot. To the extent that it's an indictment on 'modern journalism', I think the blame has to do with the incentive structure in modern journalism. There's just more money in blame and 'dunking' on the other side than there is in good, strong investigative journalism.

It's sad, but it's true.


Here's where I get confused about the Google/Facebook/Twitter thing: yes, they do make editorial decisions about what they allow on their platforms. But every media property does the same, and the driving component is what they can sell to advertisers, which is how they fund their entire organizations. Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter are also funded by ads. They're answering to the exact same market. I'm unclear on how you impose on them that they must act as a public square, when their monetary incentive is harmed by doing so. For comparison's sake, how much ad revenue are any of the Chan's pulling in? They take free speech to it's logical extreme. Unilever isn't knocking down their door to advertise Axe Body Spray on 8chan. Unilever is almost certainly spending tens of millions of dollars a year on Reddit, YouTube, and Facebook though.

If you're Reddit, YouTube or Facebook, how do you respond when Unilever says they don't want their ads appearing on any pages that include content that's racist. Or sexist. Or promotes theories that Hilary Clinton eats babies?

How do you monitor it? You do it with people. And people make mistakes, like this one.

I think you get into very iffy territory as soon as you try and police these private companies too closely.

Well, I don't disagree that Trump has followed the "book" on how to overthrow a Democracy, and that step 1 is to discredit the media, and thus to drive people to "alternative" sources for news. Nevertheless, the media played into his hands, by taking an oppositional stance at every turn, which in turn reinforced Trump's message that they were biased. This situation is a perfect example of what can happen if the media is too busy being oppositional.

When I say that Trump was irrelevant, I don't mean on all issues; I mean only on this specific one. Yes, he repeated the "lab escape" story, but so what? That neither made it more likely to be true, nor less likely. The press should have looked at the issue on its own merit.


I agree here. Trump did not cause the environment. The environment has become progressively worse for the last 40 years, and the inevitable result was someone like Trump. My fear is that it will continue to get worse. We certainly aren't making any changes that are likely the lessen the divisions.


If you look at the article I posted that talked about the research to uncover much information, the normal platforms hindered them. The research had to be done by going around Google, and could not be shared on Reddit, Facebook, etc. No doubt, Google, Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter will learn from this. What will they learn, though? Will they learn to be more tolerant of opinions? Or, will they learn that they need to improve their methods of preventing discourse?

I don't think it's a nefarious plot. I think it's a misguided effort to "do the right thing" by preventing the spreading of conspiracy theories and misinformation. The problem is that, in order to determine what is misinformation, they have to know what is truth. Thus, by trying to squelch theories like the lab leak, they placed themselves in the position of being the one who determins what is "truth" and what is "misinformation".

By the way, the lab leak theory is not the only situation where they were wrong about what is "truth" in the covid crisis. Early on, if someone posted a video to YouTube that suggested that taking Vitamin D might improve Covid outcomes, the video was immediately removed, and the poster had his account demonitized, and perhaps closed. That applied even when medical doctors posted information supported by clinical research. Later on, when the research that showed the benefit of Vitamin D was undeniable, the videos were reinstated.


As I have said, I don't have an answer, only questions. That said, if you "impose" some rule on them, it will be "imposed" equally on others. Advertisers would not have some other alternative to advertise on.

A solution of breaking them up is not really viable, as a solution, either. Once upon a time there was MySpace, and other places for congregating. Facebook has taken over the space. If you somehow split Facebook in half, one half or the other would become dominant, and you'd be back where you are now. I personally would like to see some alternatives, say Parler and Gab, gaining support, so there would be alternatives, but everyone likes to be in the busy places, so I don't see either of those becoming threats to the leaders.

I understand how you've concluded this, but I'm not sure I (fully) agree. For instance, it doesn't seem that Twitter belongs on that list. The Newsweek article you posted, for instance, specifically states that DRASTIC's was shared throughout the year on Twitter, and that Twitter was the main channel through which the group communicated.

That article also points to research by Yuri Deigin as a turning point. His research was published on Medium, a company founded by Evan Williams, co-founder of Twitter. That's the first instance of Shi Zhengli's paper being examined.

I'm also not seeing the evidence to suggest that the research "had to be done by going around Google." I'm not seeing anything in the article suggesting (or even implying) censorship by Google. Yes, some of the key documents were found in a Chinese database that wasn't indexed by Google, but I see nothing suggesting the Google was suppressing that information. Google itself estimates that it's only able to index 4% of the internet. There's a lot of information that's not available on Google for reasons that have nothing to do with censorship.




A couple of things on this:

1) I'd need to see much more supporting evidence before I'd be willing to conclude that social networks "tried to squelch" the lab leak theory. The Newsweek article mentioned Reddit banning an account. What other supporting evidence is there? The same article strongly implies that Twitter and Medium were key to the dissemination of the facts that changed minds.

2) Media organizations have always taken on the role of determining what is truth and what is misinformation. Is there danger in that? Yes. But I have no idea the solution, because imposing on these companies that they cannot control the content on their own platforms imposes serious restrictions on their privately run businesses.




I'm honestly not sure what to say about this. What you're describing sounds like an organization trying very hard to monitor content about a global pandemic during a time in which information about said pandemic was in constant flux. And eventually getting to the right place.

Every minute 500 hours of YouTube videos are uploaded. Those videos cover every topic imaginable, in every language on earth. Monitoring that is, frankly, an impossible task. I'm not sure how you do it. As a result, I'm not inclined to view mistakes like the one you outline above as some sort of crisis or attack on free speech. Google has every right to attempt to determine how it's platform is used. And they're going to make a ton of mistakes. To me, the barometer that matters is that they seem to be trying, genuinely, to get it right. I'd expect mistakes along the way a lot, because they are monitoring content in real-time, at a massive scale. They only get to examine the content after the fact.

By the way, if this is of concern for you, things may well get much worse before they get better. There's currently a bipartisan push to repeal section 230. Section 230 shields social media companies from facing legal consequences based on the content posted by their users.

The moment that's repealed, those companies will have no choice but to remove far more content. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me at all if they were forced to implement a review process for content before it's posted. And if the law doesn't shield them from liability, they'll be as risk averse as any other publisher.