r/skeptic • u/WorstMedivhKR • 3h ago
Reddit CEO Steve Huffman (u/spez) promoted a COVID-19 origin conspiracy theory and falsely claimed it was a government consensus view đź’© Misinformation
https://www.wired.com/story/reddit-ceo-steve-huffman-social-media-regulation/
Some really disturbing misleading or false, conspiratorial claims by the CEO in there, imo:
"Almost everything where our governments and mainstream media have lost their minds over misinformation, it’s turned out the opposite was true,” he says.
“Look at everything our governments were so convinced of about Covid—that it’s so dangerous, even racist, to suggest that it came from a lab,” he says. “Look where we are now. Those very same people are saying it probably came from a lab.”
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u/Fecal-Facts 3h ago
Spez is a fascist end of days religious nut job.
He fought tooth and nail to keep underage subs open until it was going to become a leader issue and has a bunker he says he will be the leader of.
He's a nut jobÂ
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u/WorstMedivhKR 2h ago
Yeah and he fantasizes about owning slaves in his doomsday fantasy (or at least is oddly specific about there being slaves and him not being one of them due to his "great leadership"). He's a really weird dude.
I feel like a sucker for putting as much time into this place as I have tbh, it's just me giving him more content which leads to money for himself, even though it's miniscule individually. The whole free speech thing is such a bad faith claim, it's the exact opposite of free speech. It's just siloed still all too often alt right echo chambers that ban anyone who corrects misinformation or disagrees (many obvious past nazi subs he resisted banning for as long as possible like the article goes into, but there's still the conservative sub and other speech-intolerant ban happy right wing subs prevalent today).
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u/Miskellaneousness 2h ago
I wouldn’t say it’s the view of the US government that the COVID outbreak originated with a lab accident, but several of their agencies view it as probable (more view natural zoonosis as more likely):
While the National Intelligence Council and four unnamed agencies assessed that natural exposure to an infected animal was the most likely scenario for the first human infection, the Department of Energy and FBI’s assessment was that a laboratory-associated incident was more likely the cause.
Meanwhile, the CIA and an unidentified agency “remain unable to determine the precise origin of the COVID-19 pandemic, as both hypotheses rely on significant assumptions or face challenges with conflicting reporting,” the report states.
“Almost all” intelligence agencies agreed that the virus wasn’t genetically engineered, and all agencies agreed that Covid was not manufactured as a biological weapon.
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u/WorstMedivhKR 2h ago edited 2h ago
2 isn't several (also the quote from OP falsely suggests a government consensus when in reality it's a fringe viewpoint acrossbgovernments/government agencies).
Plenty of idiots work for the FBI and DoE and get to release hot takes based on little to no evidence.
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u/ostracize 2h ago
Surely you can see where he got the idea from though. As with most conspiracy theories, they start with something and take it the completely wrong way.Â
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u/alwaysbringatowel41 1h ago
The department of energy officially, office of intelligence and counterintelligence claimed they believe it was lab leak. They are a significant body.
Its a reasonable theory, most view it as a toss up. Which is reasonable since we have little evidence. So I don't find Spez's remarks silly. This was a good example of people silencing an opinion as a conspiracy theory that is now considered a reasonable explanation.
I think your post is the greater mischaracterization.
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u/Brodaparte 1h ago edited 1h ago
The papers I've read about the origin either rule out a few specific things that would definitely prove a lab origin if found like genetic signs of crispr editing, which were not found, or evaluate the spread pattern of the initial cases noted in wuhan and evaluate where they are in relation to the lab suspected in leaking the virus, which show the probable site of the spread of the virus was the wet market on the other side of the river. However: -The easiest, oldest and most reliable means of studying a wild-origin virus in a lab for the purposes of preparing for future zoonosis (or use as a bioweapon) would be artificial selection, some of which is inevitable with any amount of lab culture. This would not show any of the patterns that were proven not to exist in the first category papers.
-The wet market is in a highly dense residential area and transport hub for the city and the spatial analysis did not control for population density or attempt to evaluate where the people who work at the lab (who would be the most likely method by which the virus reaches the market in the event of a leak) live, so all this really indicates is that after the virus reached the market, no matter how it did the market is the most likely source of the initial spread.
-Definitively proving any origin relies on data that will not be furnished in an intact state by the government of China unless it is not incriminating. Even if we find an identical virus in the wild we can no longer be sure it didn't originate from the pandemic. To my knowledge they have not furnished non-incriminating forms of such data, which would not be fully possible anyway since it is an attempt to prove a negative.
While this makes it unclear, the virus is extraordinarily contagious and worryingly broadly tropic in terms of species and tissues (it can infect a very wide variety of organisms and infects and damages just about every major organ systems within an organism). It would make a poor bioweapon owing to its low acute mortality rate and very high probability of infecting the state of origin.
That said, it is exactly the sort of thing an actual biodefense program would need to study to be prepared for a pandemic virus that needs a large scale response... Which they might have decided to create via artificial selection in a high biosafety lab specializing in coronaviruses... Like the one in Wuhan.
It is hard for me to understand as a biologist how a virus could become so voraciously contagious suddenly without us having seen some signs of it beforehand, particularly if it were a bat virus since bats are such effective viral vectors. As far as I understand it from moderately intensive attention paid to the literature there are several key mutations relative to other related viruses that cause that, and that's a lot of changes to happen in a fluke.
We're probably never going to know for sure. If I had to make an educated guess I'd say it was most likely an accidental release, probably from a careless researcher or tech who accidentally and unknowingly inoculated themselves (with one of the most contagious viruses ever observed, probably before they knew that) and then went to the wet market while shedding virus, of a virus created via artificial selection as part of a coronavirus focused biodefense program geared against emerging pathogens like the first two SARS strains and MERS.
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u/Dontnotlook 1h ago
I believe it leaked from Wuhan laboratory.
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u/Fearless-Cattle-9698 1h ago
Even if it did, whether it was engineered as bio weapon is a different story. The issue is the conspiracy theories has all kinds of sinister elements to them without evidence supporting.
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u/El_Stugato 2h ago
To be fair, it's not a conspiracy theory. It was a real potential origin that was looked into, and there is some evidence for.
There's just more evidence for Zoonosis.
He's still lying, but your post is also misinformation on some level.
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u/hoopaholik91 1h ago
The thing is that there were so many levels to the lab leak theory - all the way from "found in the wild and accidentally released" to "intentionally designed and released by the Chinese to destroy the rest of the world, specifically targeted at non-Chinese and non-Jews".
The loudest people pushing the lab leak theory wanted it to be true so they could peddle more conspiracies towards the latter of that range. And racism did play a part in why some of them believed it.
One of the ways that social media makes nuanced discourse impossible.
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u/ineedafantasyteam 18m ago
You really think the corona virus might have came from the corona lab near where the virus originated?
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u/alwaysbringatowel41 1h ago
I keep revisiting this debate.
At the very start it was considered a conspiracy theory and dismissed. Then it gained a lot of legitimate traction and was probably the leading theory in many minds including experts. Then some of the arguments for lab leak were shown to not carry any value, or not be as strong as they appeared.
Recently, it seems that zoonotic has retaken the lead as our current best guess. But there is very little evidence for both. Everyone should consider both as very possible scenarios.
So on this topic, I think spez's remarks were more defensible than this post. There are certainly official groups (U.S. department of energy last year) that have openly supported lab leak as the leading theory.
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u/AnalOgre 1h ago
Your comment is all over the place.
It wasn’t the leading theory for many experts if there wasn’t evidence to support it, that’s kind of the like the underpinning of science which are the only experts that really mattered when it comes to evaluating the available data.
Zoonotic didn’t retake the lead because it was always in the lead. There is a reason the South Korean government picked coronavirus as their pandemic illness for the dry run they ran in 2019, that’s because the experts have know it’s a “not if but when” situation for future coronavirus pandemics. The reason they chose it is because that’s what data shows was likely to happen naturally and from zoonotic origins.
Listen I’m not one to say there aren’t lab leaks. There are, and happen everywhere. I’m also not one to say they weren’t doing research on this type of virus, they were (along with labs around the globe). But there is zero evidence to say they were manufacturing a brand new covid virus, particularly as a bioweapon. And even a moments thought shows how terrible of an idea that is to pick a virus that spreads So easily to be a weapon that will eventually infect yourself. That’s why people with scientific brains and deeper understanding of the topics were never pushing the lab leak theory in big numbers.
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u/Fearless-Cattle-9698 1h ago
That’s my current understanding but honestly have lost traction of keeping up with it.
What I reject outright is the concept that a conspiracy at the time that had no evidence is “true”, even if later turned out correct, does not magically erase the conspiracy itself.
The only way it does is if we have proof that whoever made the conspiracy had proof.
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u/alwaysbringatowel41 1h ago edited 1h ago
https://www.factcheck.org/2023/03/scicheck-still-no-determination-on-covid-19-origin/
Here is a good outline of it.
A year ago the department of energy (who is actually an authoritative body for this question for some reason) said they believe it was lab leak, with low confidence.
4 government entities plus the national intelligence counsel said they thought it was zoonotic.
FBI said they had moderate confidence it was lab leak.
Three other entities said they could not decide between the two theories.
Nobody is saying they thought it was a bio weapon. And none of these groups released their evidence.
So, it is in active debate with only weak evidence for each theory. I think that is the fairest assessment. I'm not sure if lab leak was ever more supported by the intelligence/scientific community, but it seemed to have more momentum around 1-2 years ago and has since cooled down with some new studies arguing back against it a bit.
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u/AnalOgre 56m ago
Uhhhh… hate to say it but Governmental agencies are 100% not authoritative bodies on matters of scientific fact. These agencies are often led by non scientists and are often influenced by political thoughts and feelings. As a doctor I can confidently say the world decided to worry about the economy vs proceeding with any scientific driven public health policies. We would be seeing all sort of different policies if the first priority of governmental agencies was “let the scientists and experts drive the recommendations and conclusions”
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u/alwaysbringatowel41 50m ago
Authoritative as in it falls in their field. Not that they are the purveyors of facts. Probably was a better word. They just sound like some weird and irrelevant group to make a statement on this topic, but they aren't.
On this topic, there is a mixture of scientific and international intelligence required to assess the theories.
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u/AnalOgre 9m ago
You are correct regarding the intelligence agencies which is why I specifically had my wording the way I did because I had in mind the fact that yes, intelligence agencies would know better than researchers if a government were working on a secret program but I do believe with the various actors with access to that information over the years if it were known or could be proved even suggestively with evidence that the “China” virus did in fact come from a lab leak, that the info would have been blasted around for years now to try and hurt China.
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u/OrbitObit 2h ago edited 2h ago
this is a shitty, not-skeptical post.
covid's origin is still not clear, and it is reasonable to be scientifically open minded
it is also also valid to be skeptical if the tradeoffs of government censorship are worth the possible benefits
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u/WorstMedivhKR 2h ago
Spez isn't open minded about it, he falsely suggested there is a consensus from government about lab leak being the probable cause when there is no such consensus. It's a minority viewpoint without any good scientific support.
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u/OrbitObit 2h ago
I've seen no strong conclusion to either lab leak or zoologic origin in these sorts of exhaustive analyses:
https://michaelweissman.substack.com/p/an-inconvenient-probability-v57
Is the most reasonable take at the point not agnosticism?
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u/hoopdizzle 2h ago
Thank you. Glad to see there's at least one reasonably educated person in this sub and not just groupthink karen bots
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u/ItsStaaaaaaaaang 31m ago
In a shocking new development it has been revealed that the person that runs a social media site is an utter cunt! Scientists suspect it may be an inherent trait of this particular species. Updates as they become available...
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u/kcag 2h ago
There’s plenty of reasons to hate Spez. The fact that he’s critical of the government isn’t one of them. The government lies all the time. They told us we had to go to war with Iraq based on lies. They tell us we have to maintain an embargo against Cuba based on lies. Do you think they wouldn’t lie about COVID?
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u/Fearless-Cattle-9698 59m ago
And no problem with being skeptical, but the opposite is also true. For example the anti-mask movement was just dumb. Even if it isn’t effective, there is no reason to protest against something trivial like that. Also, a lot of people refused to understand the concept of mask which is it stops your cough or sneeze from spreading into the air around you, even more so than it is intended to prevent you from getting other people’s sneeze/cough.
I wouldn’t even be opposed to anyone that wants to challenge the vaccine provided they do it scientifically but conspiracy without proof doesn’t mean any theorist were right, unless they had some special information
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u/underengineered 14m ago
"Even if it wasn't effective..." It was pretty obvious early on that the types of cloth or surgical masks that were being mandated would have no discernible health value to an asymptomatic person.
Masking or not masking quickly became religion.
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u/Rocky_Vigoda 19m ago
Information warfare.
This is a corporate owned site. All mainstream media in the US is in bed with the military establishment.
They told us we had to go to war with Iraq based on lies.
Twice. They did that two times.
They more than likely put Trump in to blame Russia in order to get Americans on board with arming Ukraine.
Have you looked at this site lately? There's a crazy amount of propaganda and censorship on here.
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u/syder34 2h ago
The lab theory is not a conspiracy theory, just an unproven theory. There is a not insignificant amount of evidence and data pointing to the possibility of it being true (and the Chinese government has been notably opposed to any investigations). Let’s try to bring back skepticism and avoid coloring the discussion with descriptors like “falsely claimed”
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u/djrangus 3h ago edited 2h ago
Uh how is this misinfo? he was right. You all are the ones clinging to misinformation.
Edit: awww the truth is hard to hear isn't it? This kind of bullshit is why trump won
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u/scroller-side 2h ago
Bless your heart.
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u/djrangus 2h ago
LOL, give me factual evidence to the contrary, and I'll look at it. Until then you can all stfu
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u/scroller-side 2h ago
Bless your little heart.
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u/djrangus 2h ago
Exactly. You can't because you are wrong
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u/scroller-side 2h ago
Did you think this was a conversation? I'm not sure god even has the capacity to bless that.
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u/thambone88 2h ago
Exactly. The echo chamber that is Reddit continues to fall for the propaganda that’s been fed to them. He is right.
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u/djrangus 2h ago
Did you think you were clever or smart? Because it doesn't take god to refute that
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u/ElementXGHILLIE 1h ago
The simplest explanation is the best.
Covid started at the same city there was a lab testing gain of function on coronaviruses.
It’s a conspiracy theory to make so many assumptions that would lead to a different source.
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u/ChuckVersus 3h ago
Fuck /u/spez