FluTrackers withdraws from Twitter - September 16, 2020 - Updated

[sharon sanders]

FluTrackers withdraws from Twitter.

Upon careful consideration FluTrackers is withdrawing from Twitter for the following reasons:

1) The climate on Twitter has significantly changed since 2009. It was once a mostly benign social media platform. Now the platform is a "Flame War" site. FluTrackers does not engage in these types of sites.There are copious amounts of negative dialogue on Twitter which could be characterized as extreme bashing. We have never allowed bashing on FluTrackers. We insist all conversation is civil. We respect human dignity - even when we disagree . In addition, I have seen instances where many participants on Twitter will pursue someone in real life: try to ruin them financially, get them fired, etc. I have seen this comment more than once: "Twitter, you know what to do", as a rallying cry to identify someone from a video posted on the site. Some of these people reported receiving death threats after being outed.

2) The amount of censorship on the Twitter site, which was originally marketed as a general platform for a free exchange of ideas on many topics, has exponentially increased. It appears that accounts are suspended for posting a tweet that is considered "fake news" by Twitter censors. It appears Twitter is a rubber stamp of some official government and main stream media accounts. Any tweet that does not conform appears to put the account at risk.

3) Moving forward we do not want to be worried about any of our tweets. We are in a pandemic and there is no time for any foolishness.


We want to thank all of our Twitter followers. Please bookmark our site and click on LATEST POSTS a couple times a day. If you would like to tweet any post you can use the "Tweet" button on the left side in each post.

Always use at least two sources for news. Be critical of everything. Use your common sense.

We are with you.

[gsgs]

so, which of 1.),2.),3.) are we improving by leaving twitter ?

we could also block users, Ithis seems to be common recently

e.g. we're blocked by Daszak and ersaflavinkins, presumably because each one thinks, we were
in the other camp ;-)

they should change twitter into a forum
H5N1 was better than COVID , forum-wise
best was USENET before 2003, should be revived

are we still on facebook

[Emily]

We'd probably settle for any improvement. There are a lot of paid lobbyists signing on now for the election. That's why it's so rough. The censorship on top of that is just too much.
Speaking of lobbyists, imagine being paid over $300,000 of US taxpayer money to sit on twitter and block people.

https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=5090

[sharon sanders]

so, which of 1.),2.),3.) are we improving by leaving twitter ?

we could also block users, Ithis seems to be common recently

e.g. we're blocked by Daszak and ersaflavinkins, presumably because each one thinks, we were
in the other camp ;-)

they should change twitter into a forum
H5N1 was better than COVID , forum-wise
best was USENET before 2003, should be revived

are we still on facebook

Just to clarify - gsgs is speaking about his own personal account being blocked.

The FluTrackers is only blocked by HealthMap. Always follow the $.

Also please see:

There is no more FluTrackers on Facebook - January 3, 2019

[sharon sanders]

I have seen nothing from today's Senate hearings interviewing the CEOs of facebook and twitter that encourages me to make any effort to reinstate our participation on either of those platforms. I would also like some "follow up" regarding the allegations in the hearing that facebook, twitter, and google may coordinate content moderation efforts, either formally or informally.

There are many videos of these hearings to watch on youtube.

[sharon sanders]

I just noticed via the analytics function on the FluTrackers twitter account that the Chief Technology Officer of twitter has followed us in November. Since we are not tweeting I am wondering why he followed our account.





Thank you for following Parag. Please return to your original format.

[sharon sanders]

Apparently there are many leaving Twitter. Some are going to something called Gab. FluTrackers is not on this platform. I have tried to access Gab out of curiosity but, apparently, so many are joining that the site is overwhelmed. We still have our account at Twitter but are not providing any content. We are not cancelling our account. We are down a net 300 followers in the last day from what I assume are people cancelling their accounts. Since we do not fund raise it does not matter how many followers we have on any platform. But it is interesting.

It appears Parler has been deplatformed. i.e. Their server company kicked them off. Also, the app stores have cancelled their app. We do not have an account on this platform.

FluTrackers has no plans to join any social media at this time. We will run our own sites until further notice.


Published January 10

Gab gaining 10,000 users per hour, CEO claims, after Trump's permanent Twitter suspension

“The traffic just keeps growing," CEO Andrew Torba says

https://www.foxbusiness.com/technolo...ter-suspension

[Treyfish]

Yes, you were ahead of the game!

[bertrand789]

He's very American, he seems to want his own thing. He found out by using other people's tips. There, he seems to want his or hers.

Technically, it is feasible and legally it could be much easier for legislators and lawyers ...

At most a candidate, it will be a TV channel, a newspaper, a mailbox, etc.

Except that the economic model will be really profitable in use?

I say this because if the legal liability of these entities is engaged by the content, it could be quite a blow.

At this stage, the responsibility is by message and by author, but, if we consider that the owner entity is responsible for everything, this could imply that these entities must monitor, at their cost, the whole. content, of course if we consider that even if they can be encrypted and visible, that for some, the justice branch of the state, must have its right of inspection ...

[Emily]

I read that Parler's server provider is Amazon. Their investment in that area is apparently much bigger than their warehouse/shipping/media business.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-01/amazon-is-laying-the-groundwork-for-its-own-quantum-computer

https://arxiv.org/abs/1908.08553

Simulation of Quantum Many-Body Systems on Amazon Cloud


As such they are an infrastructure provider. I'm not comfortable with political censorship at that level. So far they have provided no evidence of claims the website did anything wrong legally. I don't belong to the site so can't investigate myself.

[sharon sanders]

We are down another 100 net followers for a total of a loss of about 400 in the last few days. We now have 25,300 followers which is pretty good for not tweeting since September! lol

[Emily]

https://en.mercopress.com/2021/01/12/germany-and-france-blast-the-digital-oligarchy-for-shutting-out-trump-from-social-media-platforms

Germany and France blast the “digital oligarchy” for shutting out Trump from social media platforms
Tuesday, January 12th 2021 - 09:10 UTC

[sharon sanders]

It's your Twitter anniversary! Celebrate with a special Tweet created just for you

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I have never seen this before (since 2009). Maybe they are trying to pump up the remaining accounts. lol

[Shiloh]

Social-Media Algorithms Rule How We See the World. Good Luck Trying to Stop Them.
What you see in your feeds isn’t up to you. What’s at stake is no longer just missing a birthday. It’s your sanity—and world peace.
By Joanna Stern
Jan. 17, 2021 7:00 am ET

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when we lost control of what we see, read—and even think—to the biggest social-media companies.

I put it right around 2016. That was the year Twitter and Instagram joined Facebook and YouTube in the algorithmic future. Ruled by robots programmed to keep our attention as long as possible, they promoted stuff we’d most likely tap, share or heart—and buried everything else.

Bye-bye, feeds that showed everything and everyone we followed in an unending, chronologically ordered river. Hello, high-energy feeds that popped with must-clicks.

At around the same time, Facebook—whose News Feed has been driven by algorithms since 2009—hid the setting to switch back to “Most Recent.”

No big deal, you probably thought, if you thought about it at all. Except these opaque algorithms didn’t only maximize news of T. Swift’s latest album drops. They also maximized the reach of the incendiary—the attacks, the misinformation, the conspiracy theories. They pushed us further into our own hyperpolarized filter bubbles.

“There are bad people doing bad things on the internet—QAnon, white supremacists—it’s not that Facebook, YouTube and other social-media
sites allow it on their platform. It’s that they amplify it,” says Hany Farid, a computer science professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

The worst-case scenarios are no longer just hypothetical. People are shown things that appeal most to them, they click, they read, they watch, they fall into rabbit holes that reinforce their thoughts and ideas, they connect with like-minded people. They end up in their own personalized version of reality. They end up inside the U.S. Capitol.

Certainly social media isn’t alone to blame. And when the blame does fall on social media, the robots aren’t the only ones culpable. The silencing of President Trump’s Facebook and Twitter accounts revealed the opposite: The humans running these companies still have final say over what does—and doesn’t—appear. (And last I checked, we can still opt out of using social media at all.)

But at the heart of it all, this is still a gigantic technology problem: Computers are in charge of what we see and they’re operating without transparency...

Read more: https://www.wsj.com/articles/social-...em-11610884800

[sharon sanders]

Wow...desperate times....the best thing to do when you are in a hole is to stop digging....


Twitter is exploring a subscription option called 'super follows'

The potential feature, which is still in development and may not launch, would allow users to solicit tips or charge money for exclusive content.

more..

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/twitter-exploring-subscription-option-called-super-follows-rcna314

[sharon sanders]

It appears that google has extremely prioritized acceptable media in their search engine results. It appears that government sources are first, then followed by acceptable main stream media, followed by lessor main stream media, then random main stream media. Anything "flublogia" is hard to find. For example using the search terms: H5N1 avian flu. Crof's H5N1 blog was on the first page of google search with these terms since about 15 years. Same with Avian Flu Diary. I specifically did not pick COVID-19 terms because that topic is saturated.

Page 1:








Michael Coston's blog Avian Flu Diary finally appears on page 14 of a google search with the following seven year old post despite the fact that he is a leader in the world on the latest H5N6 news for 2021:

PNAS: H5N1 Propagation Via Migratory Birds - Avian Flu Diary

https://afludiary.blogspot.com › 2014/12 › pnas-h5n1-...
Dec 24, 2014 — Covering Pandemic and Seasonal Flu, H5N1 `Bird Flu, Emerging Infectious Diseases, public health, community & Individual preparedness, ...


Vincent Racaniello's Virology Blog appears also on page 14 with an 8 year old post:


A single amino acid change switches avian influenza H5N1 ...

https://www.virology.ws › 2013/06/11 › a-single-amino...
Jun 11, 2013 — Influenza virus initiates infection by attaching to the cell surface, a process mediated by binding of the viral hemagglutinin protein (HA) to ...


No H5N1 blog by page 15. I give up. What is happening here? Has google search engine re-calibrated search result priorities so that only government mantra sites are found in the first few pages? If so, this is really counterproductive. As far as I can tell H5N1 blog and Virology blog are highly COVID-19 pro-vaccine. Has google has swept the internet with a broad brush to eliminate COVID-19 "misinformation"?

As for FluTrackers - we provide information. Our continuing recommendation is for people to consult their medical practitioner for all medical questions. We have a scientific library that is loaded with vaccine information including trials, prospective candidates, problems, efficacy, side effects, etc.

So if the google search engine is selecting whole classes of internet formats and pushing them to the back of the line - I would like to remind google executives that you too will be called to the post COVID-19 tribunals.

As a result of this observation, reluctantly, I am going to test our traffic from twitter this week to see what is going on there.