Will hatred and intolerance of alternate viewpoints in science trump free speech? Some would have it that way.
Via Climate NEXUS, a well funded daily newsletter run by a Madison Avenue PR firm.
Will Facebook Ban Deniers?
Breitbart brought our attention to a petition that calls on Facebook to ban climate change denial pages. With only 3,326 signatories out of a goal of 500,000, it doesn’t seem like the petition is going to accomplish its goal—and probably for good reason.
As bad as climate denial is, shutting them out of Facebook would justify their persecution complex, and might engender more sympathy for their position. Really, who treats Facebook as a place to discuss science? For the most part, we think denier groups are small enough that they pretty much serve as something to point and laugh at, because they’re not likely to be gain many converts when compared to the audience of Murdoch’s media empire.
That said, the petition actually has a point. Facebook doesn’t have too many rules, but the very last one reads that, “Pages must not contain false, misleading, fraudulent or deceptive claims or content.”
The question then, is whether or not claims that say global warming has stopped and an ice age is imminent, that climate scientists are fudging the data, or that Climategate showed wrongdoing would all fall under false, misleading and deceptive claims. We don’t know what else you would call them, so perhaps a ban would be warranted after all.
Though surprising, Facebook wouldn’t be the first social media site to crack down on climate deniers. In 2013, the science page of the social media giant reddit announced that any claims contradicting the consensus on climate change, evolution and vaccines must be supported by a peer-reviewed citation. Given that climate denial is almost never peer-reviewed, this resulted in a de facto ban on posts from climate change deniers.
Will Facebook follow suit? Probably not. But under their rules, it sounds like they could.
Sidenote: in the same Climate NEXUS issue, this is what they claim are “respectful” suggestions for the next Heartland conference
“….They call me a denier
What does it mean?
That I can see colours
Other than green?
I’ve not been radicalised,
I’ve not been indoctrinated?
I’m not fooled by the fear:
Is that why I’m hated?….”
From: http://rhymeafterrhyme.net/they-call-me-a-denier/
Can anyone recall an occasion where sceptics have called for banning orders to suppress opinions of people who hold opposing / challenging views? I can’t. Alarmists desires to suppress opposing views says all anyone needs to know about the ‘strength’ of their position.
Punctuation is important. “Alarmist’s desires” is a single case. “Alarmists’ desires” is a global apostrophe.
“Pages must not contain false, misleading, fraudulent or deceptive claims or content.”
So anyone who called Watts or Curry the D word would have the content removed? After all both believe in Climate Change making the term deceptive or false.
I suspect not.
Seems they’ve changed their target from 500,000 to 100, 000. I suppose it makes the bar look better. I wonder if they’ll change it to 4, 000 and call it a victory?
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffnesbit
Duke University
B.A., Religion
1975 – 1979
Activities and Societies: 1978 ACC long jump champion
If not leading a PR effort to essentially ban the scientific method and speech for people that advocate for such, just what is someone with such a worthless pedigree as Jeff Nesbit qualified to do?
Here’s the page of the rocket surgeon that started the petition.
http://www.climate-change-guide.com/
“If the world fails to take action on this planetary emergency, over 100 million people will die by 2030.”
Okie dokie. 14 1/2 years left, so the climate better get going, lest yet another doomsday countdown be all for naught.
Did you read his “About Us” page? “I was trained by Al Gore to be a Climate-Change Thought Leader. . . ” OMFG . . . .
Did he mean half past eight this evening?
****“If the world fails to take action on this planetary emergency, over 100 million people will die by 2030.”***
That’s nowt. 27 million have rolled a 7 so far this year and it’s only June! Shall we call that c50 million this year? At that rate by 2030 another 750 MILLION souls will have departed this earth. And on that cheery note I’m off to bed!
http://www.worldometers.info/
So does that mean that if “the world fails to take action on this planetary emergency”, only 100 million will die compared to the expected 750 million? Wow – doing nothing will SAVE 650 MILLION LIVES! Quick! We need to keep doing nothing NOW! 😀
Right. He needs to specify “anomalous and excess deaths”. Graphs! We need graphs!
“Pages must not contain false, misleading, fraudulent or deceptive claims or content.”
From the author of the petitions website disclaimer:
“While the information contained within the site is periodically updated, no guarantee is given that the information provided in this website is correct, complete, and/or up-to-date.” http://bit.ly/1Ge42Yi
They post articles from that website to their facebook page. Seems we have another case of projection.
Below is an example of a nonsense renewables related meme being shredded by the superior intellect of Reddit users. The same meme circulated widely amongst gullible believers on facebook with only joyous unquestioning acceptance.
Facebook is the perfect platform for promotion of laughable frauds, since it is only possible to “like” an item. There is no “dislike” or “thumbs down” feature. And making a negative comment on a post simply serves to express interest (to the FB post profiling algorithm) and hence raise the visibility of the bullshit in question.
Facebook seems to be a fraudsters dream.
On top of which, the platform seems to function primarily as an extension of people’s desperate desire to be popular.
It seems that if a person wishes to be widely popular in the 21st century then it is mandatory that they also appear cool, lovable, engaging, open-minded and positive.
This requires a person to respond to increasingly dippy, impossible or mindblowingly dumb bullcrap with a “YES, we can dream the impossible dream, for the children” grinning gullibility.
It’s the reason why Bjorn Lomborg is so widely unpopular amongst dippy leftists.
Because he does this irritating thing called thinking.
Rational analysis of any sort is definitely a route to facebook defriending (and unfriending in most social and political spheres).
I angered several seemingly intelligent people on facebook by attempting to explain to them that a wind turbine generator is already operating at 90%+ efficiency, and therefore alterations to the construction of the generator cannot increase the efficiency by 1000 times.
I also made the mistake of finding the precise figures for current existing machines and a couple of substantial existing papers on the merits of installing superconducting generators in wind turbines.
None of this was well received. Most people are not interested in discussing reality.
People really would prefer to discuss their hopes, dreams and fantasies.
That’s where Bjorn Lomborg went wrong, see. Even the title for his book, “The Skeptical Environmentalist” was far too negative, already.
He should have called it, “Dream the Impossible Dream”.
Or how about, “The Audacity of Hope”.
Here’s that Reddit page, where they dismantle the facebook wind turbine hype:
http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/2nkkv9
Because of this capability, this equipment is mainly used in drainage cleaning where solids have already mixed in with the fluids.
Their payloads are spread out over the entire dump body in order to maintain the weight
requirements of the federal bridge laws. In fact, there
would be plenty of surplus water to irrigate the garden or sell to other consumers.
“Pages must not contain false, misleading, fraudulent or deceptive claims or content.”
So when little Susie posts on Facebook that “some head cheerleader who shall remain nameless” is doing the entire football team, will that also be banned?
LOL!!!!
I’m not the most scientific person out there, but I do keep up on the stuff. I find it very interesting that the article about says that no climate deniers research is ever peer reviewed, I find that very hard to believe. Anybody think I’m wrong?
Amazing how they want Facebook to be able to do this, how the had to how they actually looked the terms of use to find away they could justify doing it, how they had to search for a way any way it could be justified, I am fairly sure that what FB has in mind with the terms of use are pages that are commercial in nature and say things like “I make $100 an hour reading google, you can too.” I doubt they are talking about opinions about climate change, the big bang, string theory. I doubt they even care if you claimed to enjoy having your cousins spend Thanksgiving weekend with you, if you really hated every second of it. At any rate I don’t make any claims on FB about global warming without linking to a source. Not necessarily a peer review source, but a source. The arbitrator of all truth is not necessarily found via peer review.
Curious George June 22, 2015 at 9:25 am
Truth is irrelevant. We need consensus, for the sake of diversity.
Harry Passfield June 22, 2015 at 10:40 am
Curious:
We need consensus, for the sake of diversity
And we need uniformity to get consensus.
Thanks you! My chuckle for the day (after the bad news of discovering I need to tear down my nearly completed engine rebuild because I forgot the front crankshaft oil slinger.) Damn! I needed a laugh!
This is convenient – Dr Curry’s Climate Etc, and Roger Pielke Jr’s blog both depend on Twitterheads and Freakbook user accounts for authentication. My how Orwellian the social media has become. Not to mention that authentication front-end makes the Twitterati and Freakbook overlords the gate keepers of what was once open discussion while limiting the population of commenters to that subset of humanity that has little regard for privacy and free speech.
Social media is the seventh hound of hell.
Facebook is where I have most of my discussions on climate change. I look forward to being censored and banished for being a proud “denier”.
They’ve gathered 3200 signatures and that seems like not a lot but, you see, that’s raw data. According to my petition forecasting model, which uses properly adjusted data, it’s more like, 300 billion. So, yeah. Who’s losing the argument now?
I’m old enough to remember when those self-identified as ‘Liberals’ had the saving grace being strong on free speech. Now it seems that so many of them are magnanimous in their willingness to tolerate any viewpoint that agrees with theirs. Ayaan Hirsi, whose political economic views are on the ‘left’ by the way, finds support and protection amongst conservatives. You see it in the mass hysteria that Fox News provokes. How dare a network not be a loudspeaker for the progressives? And now you see a push in certain circles to effectively criminalize anything but the CAGW narrative (David Suzuki comes to mind.)
Oh, they are still strong on “free speech” as long as they are the only ones that are heard.
For those “liberals” who now support fascist repression of “dissent” I always remind them of the past:
– OK, so surely you supported the Vietnam War to save the US from godless communism? Remember, those war resistors who were spat upon and forced to flee to Canada? But “the science was settled” and the war was necessary according to all the best and brightest.
– Going further back, surely you supported the nuclear arms race and the testing of atomic bombs in the atmosphere? All the authorities said it was necessary to save our way of life. (one of my neighbors sailed his boat into a testing zone to call attention to the problem and was branded a traitor)
– All the authorities were 95% certain that Iraq has WMDs. So I guess you were totally behind the invasion and support the War on Terror?
I find it alarming (not to say amusing) how some liberal friends are willing to do whatever is necessary to suppress skeptical views of AGW, holding science out in front of them like a shield, swinging their mighty sword, Ad Hominem, smiting deniers right and left, serving their political/religious ends, justified by their righteous virtue in bringing civilization to its knees – Stop the world, I want to get off.
Hypocrisy is alive and well and its name is AGW.
As facts clearly triumph over the hyperbolized nonsense of global warming, its advocates, supporters, enthusiasts, and pushers are becoming more shrill and demanding. Now they are resorting to ending any discussion through banning, muzzling, and/or jailing skeptics.
The FB rules is a bizarre document in its structure. The above clause is separate from the promotions, offers and advertising sections, where it would be most applicable, instead making it applicable to all content.
However saying your ex-girlfriend is a fat loser, or Obama is a crook, or Hollywood movies are not worth the price of admission, or evolution is fake, George Clooney had plastic surgery, etc. could be tagged by Facebook as “false, misleading, fraudulent, or deceptive” but it is not tagged because if Facebook limited people to talking only about peer reviewed papers, statements take under oath, depositions, sworn affidavits, college textbooks, and notarized documents then the Facebook population would plummet as quickly as it’s stock value.
The issue is not Facebook with its screwy terms of use document, (I guess they don’t make lawyers like they used to), the issue is the idea that totalitarianism is what is needed to create a progressive society. Progressives infected with this peculiar belief system believe their role is to be the new thought police. Thought police totalitarians attempt to win a debate by eliminating any thoughts other than their own. To engage with someone who has a different opinion is in their eyes to admit defeat.
This behavior is poison to a free society but has unfortunately infected science as well as other areas of our culture.
When I first learned about the mixing of science and environmental nonsense, I had the feeling that science as I knew it was finished. And its been downhill for science since that time.
To silence criticism is to silence freedom- Sidney Hook. Don’t we all just love the way skeptics are labelled “deniers” as a deliberate slur. Now we are to have our freedom of speech denied to us by the true “deniers.”
Straight out of Dr Goebells – make the lie big, make it simple, repeat it frequently and people will come to believe it. The situation is the EXACT opposite of the truth-the real deniers are those who refuse to accept the pause and have to do fiddling of data to “make” their case.
“Pages must not contain false, misleading, fraudulent or deceptive claims or content.”
That would exclude 99% of their advertising.
They need not worry about me I’ve self banned.
I do not feel the need to associate with total morons.
I simply do not understand the point of Facebook, but perhaps that is because I know very little about it. As far as I know, you post a picture of yourself and submit your personal details. Then a bunch of total strangers declare themselves your friends, while Mossad downloads all the data and uses it for fake passports.
And I don’t see any point to it.
Some people use it that way. Others use it to only communicate with people they actually know. It’s pretty good for that. I have an account but am rarely on, and I have met, in person, all the people on my friends list.
Communicate? Isn’t that what email and the Post Office are for?
Are those the only two ways you communicate? Which is easier, make 10 copies of photos, write 10 letters, mail them, wait a few weeks, and maybe someone replies; or post some photos of little Jimmy’s ball game on FB for your family only, and they can see all of them instantly?
I phone, as well. And I certainly don’t need ten copies of anything.
But that is what can be done with facebook?
If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter. George Washington
Facebook isn’t the government. They are a private company. They can limit as much speech as they wish on their site. They’ll have to deal with the consequences, but they are allowed to do it.
No interface between corporates and governments? What a quaint, naive idea.