@ducheng
It's particularly insideous because I can no longer trust Fediverse applications to provide a neutral social media network. The application authors feel entitled to "speak for me" through their software, whilst using my platform's voice. Completely dishonest.

If the banner said "don't kill kittens", it would still be dishonest, because it would imply to users that the server admin actively holds that believe. Forwarding a statement from WHO implies I read it enough to know, understand, and believe it is good advice.

I will review what WHO has to say, when I want, and I'll post an announcement if I deem it necessary on *my* platform. I trust you to write code, not editorial stances.

And banners are bloody annoying.

@torresjrjr @ducheng which frontend is this? Mastodon FE?

@NEETzsche @ducheng @torresjrjr Pixelfed?

@NEETzsche @ducheng @torresjrjr looks like Pixelfed allows admins to set their own covid disclaimer to whatever they want, it doesn't have to be WHO page

@mkljczk @ducheng @torresjrjr This code has been around since June 28 when it was committed: https://github.com/pixelfed/pixelfed/commit/f2fb64ecd4b76a3c3ab406e40baca8947eb41ec2

See lines 64 to 74. The message is hardcoded into pixelfed.

@NEETzsche @ducheng @torresjrjr the message itself is hardcoded, but it doesn't have to link to WHO.

@mkljczk @ducheng @torresjrjr Sure, but this kind of hardcoding really doesn’t bode well for pixelfed in the long run. It would be like hardcoding 9/11 shit into a codebase in 2003

@NEETzsche @mkljczk @ducheng
I had voice my concern ages ago.

https://qoto.org/@torresjrjr/105640058318465539

I also remember writing a draft reply to a toot he promptly deleted, though I can't remember what he said, nor prove that that happened.

@torresjrjr

I'd be against this as well, but being optional I would personally give it a pass from a "do i want to host this software" standpoint.

@NEETzsche @mkljczk @ducheng

@freemo @torresjrjr @NEETzsche @mkljczk @ducheng

I just visited the WHO site and right now, Dec. 11, 2021, it recommends that people "Keep physical distance of at least 1 metre from others..." to prevent COVID-19 transmission. For a disease that is airborne and nearly as contagious as the measles, and they're telling people that staying one meter away is going to help?

They are responsible for more deaths than those wacko anti-vaxer/antimaskers because people actually believe what WHO says, especially when sites put up official-looking messages that give then cred.

@Pat @freemo @torresjrjr @NEETzsche @mkljczk @ducheng those categories basically exist as part of anti-discourse shaming psy-ops.

masks have always been exceptionally situational and a lot of the 'science' behind them has been proxied off influenza or garbage (ex. a hospital claiming they did a study that showed they worked, but the study had no control group, but because their outcome matched the WHO narrative all the flaws were handwaved)

most people don't even clean them which means they're just giving each other pneumonia.

@icedquinn That they'll handwave critiques of bad science for the narrative shows that it's totally reasonable to handwave "the science" itself. Academic scientific journals are now just opinion columns.

@mkljczk @Pat @ducheng @freemo @torresjrjr

@NEETzsche

Depends on the journal. There are many great journals, some stink. Journals arent about validating conclusions, they just make sure the data and quotes and citations are all valid. Its up to the scientist reading it to evaluate the weight of the study itself based on the content. The journal just assures the reader that there arent bald face lies.

@icedquinn @mkljczk @ducheng @Pat @torresjrjr

@freemo Yeah but how does one know which ones are robust and which ones are trash? You can’t. Not really. Especially not without reading the content first and not just the abstract. So in the end, most people, including most smart people, make it an issue of trust. In the last decade or so, reason after reason to distrust academia has emerged.

Interesting that starting in 2020, the most extreme demand for trust blasted forth: not only are you required to trust, but you aren’t allowed to question without the right credentials. Comply or lose your job, get ostracized from your friends and family, and basically just see a game over screen. They did this to people with plenty of reason to distrust, and who had guns.

This is a powder keg.

@icedquinn @mkljczk @ducheng @Pat @torresjrjr

@NEETzsche

You are right, you need to read the content and understand it and be trained as a scientist to understand it.

Reading abstracts or otherwise being untrained wont help you. Thats my point, the journals are fine, they arent trash, neither are the studies. What is trash is how those studies are abused and misrepresented to sell an agenda.

@icedquinn @mkljczk @ducheng @Pat @torresjrjr

@freemo The issue isn't that these journals are written for a certain audience -- academic scientists, basically -- the issue is that people are having the expectation that they trust a body of institutions that are notoriously untrustworthy imposed upon them by pain of the destruction of their lives.

Even assuming that these academics are all pure of heart, the expectation that you have to either get a doctorate in virology or have no real say what public policy is ultimately going to be is abusively technocratic. When you take on board the reality that academic journals and universities have a long history of being bribed into just conveniently arriving at the "correct" conclusions or having those conclusions guided by ideology even in cases where money isn't involved, and you combine it with government/corporate policy being based directly on those conclusions, you get outright tyranny. You get Stalin shit.

The fundamental issue of distrust, and the issue of that distrust being completely reasonable, is a bit of context that can't be sidestepped with an appeal to theory land. That's why these conversations getting into the weeds about the size of the virus vs the size of the mask holes, or transmissibility of different variants, etc, are a waste of time; because anybody has intellectual and moral license to just casually blow off any of these details as dubious. From an epistemological perspective, the response to COVID-19 has poisoned the well on academic science for years to come, and shouting "ANTI-VAXXER! BLAGGGHHH!" or just carrying on with these in-the-weeds debates like they mean something won't do anything but exacerbate it.

Academic science has been reduced to the same epistemological weight as an opinion column in a tabloid.

@icedquinn @mkljczk @ducheng @Pat @torresjrjr

@NEETzsche

> the issue is that people are having the expectation that they trust a body of institutions that are notoriously untrustworthy imposed upon them by pain of the destruction of their lives.

Yea largely not true. The academic institutions arent untrustworthy, its the people (media and general public) misinterpreting the studies that is the issue. Everytime someone goes on about this shit and how untrustworthy they are every time its just them completely misunderstanding the material or its purpose.

Its easy to think science is failing when you cant even understand science to begin with.

@icedquinn @mkljczk @ducheng @Pat @torresjrjr

@freemo I have a formal science background. Universities are extremely tainted by money and ideology. Spare everybody this crap about how trustworthy they are.

@icedquinn @mkljczk @ducheng @Pat @torresjrjr

@NEETzsche

After your last multi-day tantrum I really dont put much stock in your ability to objectively evaluate much of anything.

@icedquinn @mkljczk @ducheng @Pat @torresjrjr