William Fuld

Purposely posting disinformation about the virus should be a bannable offense.

mspmms

This should be interesting, the media do this often with a headline to a story or even with pictures, would posting any of those be a ban-able offence? It could be on purpose (clickbait) or just a mistake - it happens and if you don't believe me...

I have an Audi to sell you the defenders depending on their point of view (this is often political) will not end.

joeblow69

I think the obvious first step would be to remove the disinformation. After that, I suppose a mod could make a judgement over whether the post was a mistake or not.

TomOpus

1st offense: Warning
2nd: Suspend
3rd: Ban stick

IBJoel

Please report any posts you feel are in violation of our rules or pose potential harm.

Keep in mind that we don't have a mod in any forum all the time, so sometimes things will stay up for a little bit in any one forum before they are deleted/users get a warning.

Not for nothing, while I do understand your concern, I hope no one is getting medical advice from DVD Talk.

Noonan

We have (at least) one doctor on DVD Talk. That's one more than the White House task force!

PerryD

Nice, you have just provided a clear example of "COVID Disinformation"

Noonan

Or I made a joke in a non-political forum. You choose

cultshock

Shit, that's been going on here for years.

mspmms

link

DJariya

For starters to help with not passing along bad information, I would recommend not reporting medical stats, opinions that are not from legitimate or credible news outlets or medical outlets. The CDC, Johns Hopkins, CNN, NBC, CBS etc.

No posting links from Dr. Bob from Minnesota's medical blog. Or some other stuff like that.

VinVega

The catch is the "etc." We can't even agree on reality these days. It's going to be a slippery slope as to what to ban and what to leave. There is always the handy dandy ignore list for certain posters. Take control of what you see. I wish I could use it sometimes.

kefrank

This was my thought as I pondered this after reading the OP's post. We are deep into a post-truth society where large factions of people latch onto the sources of information that align best with their team and distrust sources of information that don't. There was a time when organizations like the CDC or World Health Organization were considered reliable, sound sources of information on societal health issues almost unanimously - distrusted only by an extreme minority of insane conspiracy theorists. But that time feels like ancient history right now.

So what constitutes disinformation? Sadly, now more than ever, it depends on who you ask. Now would be a really interesting time to be a social epistemologist.

cultshock

This. There is really no point arguing with people about this shit anymore, it's like yelling at a wall. I've personally given up trying to reason with folks, it's a waste of energy and depressing, the chasm is just way too wide.

Pharoh

What level of subjectivity are you accounting for?

Dan

especially when they're allowed to make generalizations, blatant personal attacks, and completely false statements masked as being "apolitical" without any actual repercussions.

I respect everything the mods do here, but this place is not equipped to deal with COVID disinformation at any kind of scale... Nor should they have to deal with that shit; as IBJoel said, people shouldn't be getting their medical info from a DVD site. But we're lucky it's just a handful of "well-meaning" people taking advantage of the lax rules instead of the onslaught of disinformation that appears in other online places, I guess.
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Pharoh

I am not commenting on bad faith actors. But I still don't understand how you can determine disinformation. Sure, very obvious stuff okay. Bad info like the virus is fake, or masks increase your chance of contracting the virus.

But what about fully opening all schools, and that doing so is safer than staying home?

Or what about hydroxychloroquine? You and I can believe it is not only ineffective and potentially dangerous, but is it disinformation to state otherwise?

Not that any of that excuses bad actors.

Decker

I'd say stuff like schools and reopening shouldn't be considered "disinformation". Even HCQ can be discussed as long as it can be refuted (and I might add, explained -- even in the Non-Political Forum as to WHY it's being touted by certain people outside of the medical community).
I was pretty concerned with the person who was touting nebulized Budesinide as a "Magic Bullet" treatment though as that could cause increase spread and should absolutely NOT be done at this time in any setting besides a negative pressure room.

Dan

So, I'm fairly certain I'm in total agreement with you on this overall point. By which I mean, there are things that are obviously incorrect and harmful to spread, like the examples you provided at the top, and some which are not so clear.

The gray-area things like whether or not it's safe to open schools or stay home; I think there's a line to draw there, too, but it's less obvious of course. Because, despite the heated discussion about it, I am in total agreement with the person who was saying that, putting aside the COVID stuff entirely for a moment, many children (especially those suffering in broken homes of various degrees) are safer spending a full day at school than they are at home with abusive siblings, parents, guardians, or community members. Someone wanted to make it about lazy/irresponsible parents, while I was saying it was a combination of personal responsibility and systemic issues. But regardless of why those families are in those situations, when you add COVID to the mix, it's far less clear what the cost/benefit really is in forcing kids back into classrooms. Because, like it or not, you're putting children at risk of death within weeks (based on people who contract COVID and die from it, of which some kids are victims) or risk of transmitting it to a family member or friend who could die within weeks. This is specifically about a highly communicable disease that, if it kills, does so within weeks, not years. I couldn't imagine the guilt... knowing that I was responsible for someone else's death in that kind of way. Of course, kids appear to be at lower risk (at the moment), but they've also been out of school since March, so the data is still coming together. There's already reports of positive cases in schools that are opening, and one kid was suspended for posting a photo of a crowded hallway where only a fraction of kids were wearing masks.
So on that, I don't think it's "disinformation" to have an opinion one way or the other, but it would cross the line if you're saying things like "Children are basically immune" or "It will just go away by Autumn" or even "kids in other countries are safe, so why aren't ours?" or other statements to push people to make an ill-informed decision.

On HCQ, I would defer to the testing that has been done and pointing to some kind of actual consensus if it exists. I won't re-litigate the whole thing here (that's what the other threads are for), but I'll just say that I do think saying HCQ is effective and not harmful is dangerous and considered disinformation, based on the conflicting studies (one or two showing positive results, but with flaws that prevent it from having any serious backing, vs. more studies that are in alignment, of the type Dr. Fauci described -- double blind placebo something-or-other... I don't remember exactly -- that show no benefit to using HCQ). I think there are folks (not here) who are making bank off of peddling the bad studies as good solutions; look at the demon sperm doctor, among others, and that shouldn't be encouraged here.

But all of this is to say, as I said above... I'm in agreement with you on this. It's damn hard to determine disinformation as it is without taking the time to dig in to the finer points, let alone trying to understand who "decides" what qualifies and doesn't. And I don't expect the mods of this little forum to be able to do that with every contentious thing about this virus. That's why I said this place is not equipped to deal with COVID disinformation at any kind of scale, and nor should it be. I do not intend that to be insulting to anyone, either, so I hope my point is understood. Simply put, this is a DVD forum, not a medical forum. The only medical experts who can reliably suss out the good from the bad are a handful of community members. If Decker, Psi, and Tom Banjo (among others!) are all in agreement about certain narratives, I don't think there's anything wrong with appealing to their expertise/authority in making a determination about disinformation or even less intentional misrepresentation.

So while I appreciate the OPs sentiment, I don't think there's an easy catch-all solution to spotting disinformation and removing it. It would take a concerted effort for relevant parties to agree on what COVID information can genuinely be considered reliable, and identifying (and removing) anything that is disinformation or highly misleading. But by doing so, you'll have the inevitable handful of very loud proclamations of bias against certain points of view. I hate to be bleak, but I just don't see that panning out in a way that benefits factual information.

Groucho

I think the biggest problem with COVID discussions right now is that if 99 doctors and saying one thing, and 1 is saying another folks are quoting that single doctor because it reinforces their pre-conceived viewpoint. But I don't see that as necessarily "disinformation", more like giving equal time to fringe views.

Red Hood

Giving equal time to fringe views is basically disinformation. The demon sex doctor is a perfect case of fringe views that are misinforming the public to the point that social media has banned the video. I don't know if it has happened here yet, but if someone post these video to emphasize their wrong point of view, then that video should be removes and the forum member given a warning.

Nick Danger

There has been that one medical doctor who said that smoking doesn't cause cancer, that one scientist who says that the Earth isn't millions of years old, and that one researcher who says that African races have lower IQ scores than Europeans. At some point it becomes more than a fringe view, it's a lie spread by propagandists.