Society's Child

'Establishment' asked Facebook to 'censor' Covid posts - Zuckerberg

RT
Sat, 10 Jun 2023 19:33 UTC

© Getty Images / Samuel Corum/Getty ImagesFacebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg leaves a meeting with Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) in his office on Capitol Hill on September 19, 2019 in Washington, DC.

The Meta chief admitted that the social media platform removed millions of posts during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Facebook was asked by the scientific "establishment" to remove various posts related to Covid-19 which later proved to be "debatable or true," Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said during a podcast interview this week.

Speaking to the Russian-American interviewer Lex Fridman in a podcast released on Thursday, Zuckerberg said that policing Facebook's attempts to remove mistruths is "really tricky."

"Just take some of the stuff around Covid earlier on in the pandemic," Zuckerberg explained, "Where there were real health implications but there hadn't been time to fully vet a bunch of the scientific assumptions."

He continued: "Unfortunately, I think a lot of the establishment on that kind-of waffled on a bunch of facts."

Zuckerberg said in August 2021, in an interview with CBS during the height of the pandemic, that Facebook takes down content the platform views as "harmful," as it violates the company's policies. He also stated that at the time, Facebook removed around 18 million posts that were judged to have spread misinformation about the virus.

US president Joe Biden was among the critics of Facebook in the summer of 2021, suggesting that it was a vehicle for the distribution of "bad information" on social media which he said was "killing people."

"My hope is that Facebook, instead of taking it personally that somehow I'm saying Facebook is killing people, that they would do something about the misinformation," Biden said in July 2021.

Speaking to Fridman this week, though, Zuckerberg said that the "establishment" had encouraged his platform to endorse various information about Covid-19, but also "asked for a bunch of things to be censored that, in retrospect, ended up being more debatable or true."

In 2022, Attorneys General in the states of Missouri and Louisiana alleged that Facebook was among several Big Tech companies to have coordinated with US infectious diseases chief Dr Anthony Fauci to "discredit and suppress" online debates concerning whether the Covid-19 virus originated from a lab leak in Wuhan, China.

In February, the US Department of Energy concluded with "low confidence" that the virus likely originated from an accidental lab leak in China - a finding whose allegation Beijing has called "baseless."

Comment: See also:

Reader Comments

codis · 2023-06-12T12:13:30Z

Oh, really ?

And it is not that Fakebook was created exactly for that purpose ?

With Zuckerberg as the subservient little alphabet-soup-agency lackey ?

Artex · 2023-06-12T13:37:53Z

codis Facebook was created to help dude-bros get laid at college. What potential was seen and pursued to exploit by the biggest investors is up for debate. But it appears that presently, any sufficiently large social media site is to be co-opted by various deep state apparatuses for propaganda distribution. Any site which doesn't play ball gets the "Parler treatment."

In the history of communication, every invention or innovation which has expanded the means by which information can be disseminated has come under control (or intense scrutiny) of governments. Even the Gutenberg printing press was seen as a threat by contemporary governments of the time, as was something as seemingly useful and obvious as translating the bible into local languages so that people could study it on their own rather than trusting the interpretations of only those educated in Latin and employed by The Church.

codis · 2023-06-12T14:03:48Z

Artex

Facebook was created to help dude-bros get laid at college. What potential was seen and pursued to exploit by the biggest investors is up for debate

To be more precise, I meant when Suckerberg (sic!) entered the scene, and and the company/product were pushed into a monopol position with CIA/NSA money (and Suckerberg as heading straw man). Look up In-Q-Tel, an official CIA front. Some while ago, they still proudly showed off their "startup financing" for Fakebook, Google and Amazon ...

Lemuel Gulliver · 2023-06-12T14:44:22Z

Artex codis The Catholic Church STILL to this day discourages its congregants from reading the Bible. Ask any Catholic how much of the actual Bible they have read. Ninety percent or more of them will say, "none." Try it for yourself. But, on the other hand, ask any Jew how much of the Talmud he has read, and you'll get the same result. They all rely on the priests or the rabbis to tell them what their holy books say, and what it means.

Artex · 2023-06-12T15:15:01Z

Lemuel Gulliver I'd argue that's by accident. Coming from a Catholic household, I can assure you my parents read the bible every single morning before they ate breakfast. And I know a few studious Jews who have read and can recite from memory passages in the old testament. I was encouraged to read the bible by every priest I ever met. That the vast majority of Catholics, Jews, and other "religious" folks don't read their sacred texts says more about the importance of and commitment to one's familial traditions than it does about religious organizations themselves, in my humble opinion. What I observed before I was even confirmed is that most people who attend church are attending because it is expected of them by their family or community. And the percentage of those who take it seriously enough to study what they are participating in is smaller and smaller with each generation.

And for my disclaimer, I am not a "practicing" or "recovered" Catholic. I'm a private practitioner who has interests and reads material deemed heretical by the church, and those studies and interests have gone further in convincing me that One True God (which is not the God taught about in 99% of religions) exists than any church sermon or Sunday school class every could. And so, while I see the value for some people in religion, I also see that many people make assumptions and speak on behalf of their faith communities while having their heads fully engaged with their sphincters.

codis · 2023-06-12T15:36:17Z

Lemuel Gulliver Oh, didn't know that ...

I suppose that disqualifies me from converting to catholicism, because I did.

The Martin Luther translation, to be precise.

Lemuel Gulliver · 2023-06-12T20:37:35Z

Artex You are a Gnostic, as I am also. The God worshiped by most religions is not the prime Source Creator, but an entity which used the power bestowed upon it by the Prime Source to bring the physical universe into existence. This universe operates on duality, which means both good and evil must exist. Souls are enticed to enter the material creation and once here, gradually lose their connection to Source and become enslaved by the God of the religions, which created and manages the physical universe. However, this trapping of souls in this material plane of consciousness is all according to the wishes of Source, which is exploring for its own enjoyment the meaning and experience of life in the physical. Source has also created an escape mechanism, which is Gnosis or Knowledge of the Truth. Once Truth is experienced, and thus known, the physical existence becomes transcended and the soul is liberated from birth and death in this physical realm. Does that all make sense?

Artex · 2023-06-12T20:51:49Z

Lemuel Gulliver Does it make sense? Yes indeed. I have experienced Truth, but with assistance. And now I strive to experience truth without assistance. I'm familiar with Gnosticism, but I kind of stay away from the religious aspects of it so as not to queer my search for truth. I see people online get as caught up in the mythology (and hierarchies) of Gnosticism as some do with mainstream religion. I see the same thing with various esoteric practices where the goal is to transcend ego, yet you run into some of the biggest egos you can imagine who revel in the idea that they are enlightened and the rest of us are all fools.

Lemuel Gulliver · 2023-06-12T21:09:31Z

Artex Pride is perhaps one of the most insidious weaknesses of this experience. One can even become proud of one's humility.

Gnostics keep silent for the most part, because Gnostics recognize that spiritual experiences cannot be verbally transmitted to others, they must be experienced for oneself. For that reason, most of what you read about Gnosticism is written by its enemies, the religions, which are human associations in which a psychopathic priestly class gets a charge out of dominating others. Religion is re-binding into human-created chains, while Gnosticism is freedom from those chains.

And yes, people who want to exploit and dominate others will turn anything, even Gnosticism, into a religion. One may advise others to beware, but if it is in their mental condition to join a religion, even one masquerading as Gnosticism, they will do what they are prompted internally to do. Free Will is the Prime Directive of the Universe. Not my job to influence them. That is the job of Source, when Source is ready to do so.

Artex · 2023-06-13T13:33:23Z

Lemuel Gulliver

One can even become proud of one's humility.

Reminds me of something the Dalai Lama has said: "Altruism is the highest form of selfishness."

Gnostics recognize that spiritual experiences cannot be verbally transmitted to others, they must be experienced for oneself.

I have come to recognize this myself. I was raised Catholic, but started having serious doubts about religion generally sometime in high school. My faith in my own religious community was at an all time low by the time my parents volunteered me to teach Sunday school at our church when I was a senior. When 5th graders started asking me some pretty smart questions I and the materials provided me for teaching couldn't answer, I was ready to leave it all behind. Ironically, I had also spent a good amount of time considering whether I wanted to enter seminary school to become a deacon (because the one thing I was certain about was that I wanted to have a family, and deacons can marry).

I don't know if there was one final straw that broke the camel's back, but I spent the early part of my 20s as a militant atheist. Then I started working in healthcare and many of my coworkers were Tibetan and Buddhist. There was one white female patient we had though who was a Buddhist and was able to explain things to me in a way I understood better than my Tibetan coworkers, and I became a practicing Buddhist for a time.

Over the next few years as I learned the similarities between Buddha and Christ and how Buddhist practices were similar to the mystical practices in Christianity and Judaism, I broadened my search to essentially study comparative religion. I've also had an interest in "phenomena" broadly since I was a child. When I really dug deep, I could see the thread from present day spreading backwards through myriad religions and cults and esoteric practices, and then converging again on a common source. I haven't identified that source (and I suspect those who know keep that information secret), but I can clearly see every single spiritual practice that exists has a common root.

Maybe all the hierarchies and archons and stuff are real, but the details aren't the point. Details lead to ritual, and rituals are seldom understood as what they are, which are different methods of focus to put the mind in a state which facilitates communion to achieve a goal. The irony is that every deeper faith practice begins with meditation, and if you practice and become meditative in your daily life then you are ahead of 99% of earnest faith practitioners. And the only thing that makes meditation difficult is present day life and the commodification of humans, which relies one garnering as much of one's attention as possible in hope we "consumers" buy the thing being marketed.

Castaneda might say "To meet God, expand your cloak of awareness until everything separate becomes whole again."

Anyway, the point I was building up to is that I just gave a brief and relatively shallow explanation of my experiences that have led me here. I can't convey those experiences in a meaningful way which would confer my sense of spirituality to someone else. And in the instance I had communion with God, and God told me not to get the Covid vaccination unless a gun was pointed at my head, God also conveyed that the message was for me, and not something I should work to convince others of.

So I endeavor to lead by example rather than preach, even though I think I'd make a fantastic priest in the more general and anachronistic sense of the role.

ReRan · 2023-06-13T13:07:22Z

Interesting comments! Thanks, all.

Exactly!! Most of all, where was dad when boy was a toddler??? The sins of the father/mother will be paid by his sons/daughters for 7 generations....

LindaMay

A REAL TEST Fats [Link] 100 🥑 Avocados in 10 days [Link]

LindaMay

“"It really, really hurts," Neely's father, Andre Zachary, said after the verdict. "I had enough of this. The system is rigged."” Why and how is...

JohnDukes

A sketchy "viral infection" leading to a raaaare condition, yet the "cause" of death is cardiac arrest? Riiight.

Richer

Scientists don't know why this happens, ... Of course they don't know. Because there is no such thing as "nutritional science". There are no valid...

codis

Society's Child

'Establishment' asked Facebook to 'censor' Covid posts - Zuckerberg

Reader Comments

Latest News

Picture of the Day

Quote of the Day

Recent Comments

Quantum Quirk