[zepto]

Exactly.

I live in California, and recently had a conversation with a family member in The Hague.

She was telling me about her frustrations with Anti-Maskers and Covid-deniers she has been arguing with locally.

Apparently these are not just US political issues.

[nopriorarrests]

Honest question -- do you think that without Facebook there will be no tensions between anti-maskers and people who insist on wearing masks everywhere? Is FB really to blame here?

[zepto]

Yes.

I think it’s a huge amplifier of what would otherwise be fringe ideas.

In the absence of FB, there would be tensions, but no battleground.

[HarrisonFisk]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Mask_League_of_San_Franci...

[hkai]

Yes. The progressives were fighting against the mask mandate imposed by the lynching-friendly Republican mayor of SF. They were saying that mask mandates are unscientific, and turned out to be right:

> A study then in 1919 concluded that mandatory mask mandates did not make any difference on epidemic

[ryandrake]

Without Facebook and the self-amplifying validation bubbles it produces, being "anti-mask" would be seen as just as ridiculous as being an anti-vaccine or a flat-earther. There wouldn't be tensions at all because the fringe group wouldn't have any other way to grow to the point where there could be "tensions".

[throwaway2245]

There seems to be a relatively large covid-denial movement in the Netherlands compared to the rest of Europe, and focussed on The Hague in particular. The administrative capital is a good place to protest when the whole country is around an hour by train.

But, the politics is quite different from the US. Some restaurant and bar owners threatened to stage a protest and re-open against the law, giving six weeks notice that they might do this. This has since been defused.

https://nltimes.nl/2020/12/02/restaurants-bars-defy-dutch-ba...