harder to use
Mark Pesce Mon 8 Feb 2021 // 07:48 UTC Share
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Column A friend recently texted me in a panic from Florida, where he’d been consoling relatives following a death in the family. Those relatives had returned a positive COVID-19 test, then a negative test. My friend was exposed to them, so got his own test. It came back negative. His relatives were tested again. Negative.
What should he do, he asked me?
Well, I helpfully suggested, why don’t you Google the accuracy of the bog-standard polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test you’ve just had? That’ll give you some error bars and allow you to manage your risks.
Mon, Feb 1st 2021 9:35am
Mike Masnick
There s an idea that pops up every so often among people who are upset about misinformation online but don t actually understand the realities of online communities and the dynamics of how it all works: it s the idea that anonymity is the root cause of many of the internet s problems. We ve spent years debunking this, though it s been nearly a decade since there was a previous focus on this issue and it s now coming back.
Unfortunately, part of the reason it s coming back is because a friend of Techdirt, Andy Kessler (who we ve even published on Techdirt), wrote a piece for the Wall Street Journal calling for the end of anonymity online. I will note, that a large part of the article is correct: the part that accurately notes that