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Threads blocks searches related to covid and vaccines as cases rise (www.washingtonpost.com)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by geosoco@kbin.social to c/news@lemmy.world

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Meta acknowledged in a statement to The Washington Post that Threads is intentionally blocking the search terms and said that other terms are being blocked, but the company declined to provide a list of them. A search by The Post discovered that the words “sex,” “nude,” “gore,” “porn,” “coronavirus,” “vaccines” and “vaccination” are also among blocked words.

“The search functionality temporarily doesn’t provide results for keywords that may show potentially sensitive content,” the statement said, adding that the company will add search functionality for terms only “once we are confident in the quality of the results.”

Lucky Tran, director of science communication at Columbia University, discovered this himself when he attempted to use Threads to seek out research related to covid, something he says he does every day. “I was excited by search [on Threads],” he said. “When I typed in covid, I came up with no search results.”

Other public health workers criticized the company’s decision and said its timing was especially poor, given the current coronavirus uptick. Hospitalizations jumped nearly 16 percent in the United States last week and have been rising steadily since July, according to CDC data, though they remain less than what they were for the comparable week a year ago. Deaths are less than a quarter of what they were year to year, CDC statistics show.

(OP: Sorry, paywall, can't find another source yet. Someone got an archive?)

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[-] UFODivebomb@programming.dev 23 points 1 year ago

I'm gonna defend meta here so hold with me for a bit.

Moderating bad actors is now impossible. They can, and do, produce so much content that any level of moderation is too expensive; even for meta. The scale of idiots to non idiots is biased heavily towards idiots. A slightly different version of "a lie can travel around the world before the truth gets their pants on".

Meta, Twitter, google, will not save us from the bad actors. Even if they committed millions to the effort. Nor are they willing to risk litigation from the idiots in the GOP. So guess what? The only sustainable practice for them is to block.

The fact that this will prevent dissemination of legit info from the government and professionals is a problem society created by falling into the tolerance "paradox" trap.

[-] gregorum@lemm.ee 12 points 1 year ago

I’d like to believe that Meta is acting in good faith, as you seem to be assuming, but given their history, I just am not willing to put any faith in that. And I’m certainly not alone in feeling that way.

[-] UFODivebomb@programming.dev 5 points 1 year ago

That's fair!

My intention was not to assume good or bad. Their, and other big tech companies, motivations do not matter for the end result to be wrong.

Likewise: Groups of good people, acting in good faith, can still produce bad systems.

[-] gregorum@lemm.ee 0 points 1 year ago

I apologize if it sounded like I was maligning you or implied you were being naive; you were simply stating facts, but Meta’s profit motive, combined with their history, in my opinion, negates any assumption or even a consideration of them acting in good faith until proven otherwise.

[-] FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

Meta, Twitter, google, will not save us from the bad actors. Even if they committed millions to the effort

Because they loose profits- these bad actors generate ad revenue as well as drive engagement and clicks.

They like to pretend their the new public square- it’s well past time to realize they’re not and force them to accountability

[-] UFODivebomb@programming.dev 4 points 1 year ago

In one way this is a great benefit of Twitter going down. Really demonstrated how they cannot be the public square.

[-] FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Yes. But they have no defense for “we can’t moderate”- they created this mess. They allowed it to fester, and it’s past time for them to do something about it… or to get fucked.

But saying the platforms themselves have no blame in this, it’s all those trolls, ignores the fact that they could very easily deal with it.

They don’t because it’s revenue.

[-] rbhfd@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Regardless of their intent, if it means people don't use social media to get their information on topics like this, I'm okay with it.

[-] Coldgoron@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago

Corporations have decided, “No more covid” and it was so.

[-] nao@sh.itjust.works 10 points 1 year ago

anyone still using threads?

[-] Veraticus@lib.lgbt 7 points 1 year ago

What an insane decision. Deciding you won't host adult content on your platform is one thing. Saying "well you can't talk about COVID here" is something else entirely.

[-] NOT_RICK@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago

Sounds like they worried about misinfo popping up from search rather than, you know, actually moderating their platform.

[-] Veraticus@lib.lgbt 4 points 1 year ago

That is probably exactly what it is. Disappointing regardless.

[-] WHYAREWEALLCAPS@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

It's a problem of scale. Places like Threads and X are too large to do any real moderation as we think of it. Hell, Reddit only barely manages it with unpaid volunteers and that is highly uneven in its results. The sheer volume and speed of posting on those platforms would make it an absolute nightmare to try to do.

[-] bobman@unilem.org -1 points 1 year ago

This is why people need to be their own moderators.

Block people who say things you don't want to see. It's a pretty simple concept, but some children legitimately believe that if they don't want to see something, then neither should anyone else.

[-] bobman@unilem.org 2 points 1 year ago

The amount of censorship on these mainstream platforms is a major reason why I don't use them anymore.

These shitbags censor so much without even telling you. It's insane.

this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2023

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