Threads blocks searches related to covid and vaccines as cases rise

Technology@beehaw.org – 123 points – 10 months ago

Public health experts denounced the platform’s moderation policies, which they say restrict access to critical health information

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https://ghostarchive.org/archive/Mukqc

they were met with a blank screen that showed no search results and a pop-up linking to the website of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Preventing finding misinformation and sending to a trusted source sounds good to me. Social media being used as a source is why idiots were eating horse dewormer.

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.”

Yes. It's better than showing misinformation. SNS is notoriously bad at helping "doing your own research".

Blocking search terms is not a substitute for proper content moderation.

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.

I said it's better than showing missinformation.

I mean I guess it's better than amplifying misinformation, but it's still a cop-out to get out of moderating the topic. Mildly curious just how many topics Threads censors search results for.

Honestly, credit where credit's due, I think this is likely the best possible solution the Twitter team can implement, hamstrung as it is. Would I prefer that verified experts get to talk freely while conspiracy nutjobs get censored? Absolutely. But with verification gutted and likely a lack of manpower on the content moderation team, auto-redirecting to a credible source seems like the best option.

What… This is good news because info on Covid should not be from social networks.

If someone needs those info they should check the gov website..

Well that's not good but also not unexpected. Does anyone still use threads though?