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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/technology@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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[–] sammydee@kbin.social 9 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Good. Folks trying to get info about serious topics from Threads ... shouldn't. Nor from X, nor Facebook, nor Kbin, nor Mastodon. Or tiktok or any other social media platform.

[–] Rhaedas@kbin.social 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

A medium is as good as the content within. I wouldn't throw everything out to try and sanitize the internet. Better to show why some data is worse than others, and how to validate that data. Start with not trusting the first thing you find, and dig deeper. That requires some time and effort, unfortunately, but there's no easy answer to filtering facts and fiction.

[–] jungle@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's a nice idea, but unfortunately it's been proven not to work. Misinformation spreads way faster than facts.

[–] balder1991@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

I have this mindset that in this information era, if something is put in front of you, someone else spent money and effort for that. Most often, that person is benefiting or profiting from it and you’re nothing but a puppet in that war.

Does that mean the news and other media we see are all false? Not really. But it certainly means it makes us worry or pay attention to irrelevant stuff instead of worrying about things that are actually important for us individually.

When you see it from this angle you realize there’s so much more important stuff happening, but news outlets decide to write about some Threads search meddling (which seems nobody uses anyway, but some people apparently feel threatened by it).

[–] sab@kbin.social 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Well, in theory social media platforms could be good. The idea is solid - you follow trustworthy people, they post valuable information, you see it.

I think for example journa.host is an interesting experiment in making social media actually valuable - everyone there is a confirmed journalist of some sort.

Of course, it can never be perfect. But it allows for greater variety of content: I often find myself reading just two or three newspapers regularly, and in the end social media posts are useful supplement that gives me stories I might not otherwise see elsewhere. That said, I have a pretty strictly curated Mastodon feed.

[–] elbarto777@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The idea is solid in theory, but terrible in practice because people suck - just like communism!

[–] unwellsnail@sopuli.xyz 3 points 1 year ago

There's a lot of dis/misinformation on them, but those sites are also useful tools for organizing around issues and getting the correct information in front of people who otherwise would never see it and unfortunately there aren't great alternatives available.