YouTube bans coronavirus-related content that directly contradicts WHO advice

I guess if this were the 1500s YouTube would only have us post videos that confirm that witches and heretics should be burned at the stake. Maybe it would be okay to talk about a few more crusades.

Mankind improves because systems become big, rigid, and unable to evolve. People come along and point that out, suggesting various theories about how those systems got that way, the reasons why they are wrong, and offering suggestions for improvement.

It needs to be said that 99% of the time, these people are wrong. They're emotionally ill, they don't understand the situation, they have perhaps virulent and insidious ideologies that blind them to reality. These are exactly the people you want in the public square. They teach the youth about critical thinking and how to reason about your view of the world. They let the rest of us keep an eye on them in case they get violent. Plus, many of them are just happy to yell into the void; without that, there would be a lot more violence than there would be otherwise.

But every 1% of the time, those folks are actually right. Slowly they convince the rest of us. Our species improves.

YouTube can't do this. Whatever their intentions, they are directly acting against the health of our species by creating a new orthodoxy. They have to be stopped, whether broken up, taxed, or banned. It's not that the WHO is wrong here. They're probably right. It's that YouTube is making it so that the WHO can never be wrong, ie, we can never have a public discussion about their policies. Worse still, history has shown us that when you start going down this route you are actually acting against your society's interest. People treated as if they can't think for themselves turn into a population that can't think for itself. The WHO is fine, it's YouTube that has become the real enemy to public health by doing this.

nitpick: it's been about 40 years. E.g., the US officially switched recognition to PRC in 1979.

> The WHO advised against the public wearing masks

Nope. Your article is actually about the UK's government's advice and lumps in the WHO. Here's a WHO publication from 30th of January 2020 [0] that advises all sick with "flu-like symptoms" be provided a mask (as well as healthcare workers).

The WHO, like every national government, have recommended prioritizing masks to the sick and healthcare workers since the start of the year. Canada didn't contradict that and still doesn't as far as I've read.

Giving masks to asymptomatic members of the public only makes sense when there's a large enough supply to do so without starving essential services or known carriers.

> and advised against travel restrictions.

Your own link contradicts this claim.

> However, in certain circumstances, measures that restrict the movement of people may prove temporarily useful, such as in settings with few international connections and limited response capacities.

> Travel measures that significantly interfere with international traffic may only be justified at the beginning of an outbreak, as they may allow countries to gain time, even if only a few days, to rapidly implement effective preparedness measures. Such restrictions must be based on a careful risk assessment, be proportionate to the public health risk, be short in duration, and be reconsidered regularly as the situation evolves.

They then go on to essentially say that it won't work (and spoilers: It didn't work, they were 100% correct).

It also fails to show how Canada acted against the WHO advice? That was the core claim above, and your response doesn't even attempt to show that.

In fact Canada has been in lock-step with the WHO since the beginning and still is. Even according to your links.

[0] https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/risk-co...

> Anyone who's a minor doesnt get to see this "unsafe" content.

Even that is an authoritarian nightmare. We already have laws that restrict minors from participating in certain activities.

You're saying you want YouTube to be the parental guardian of children based on their current whims. They should bar content from minors where the law requires it. Let the legislatures battle the people over whether the law-of-land should include barring minors from information that "contradicts" the WHO.

How easily we drop our freedom and liberty for a tiny bit of supposed safety. Unbelievable.

The concept of 'fake news' was invented to bring power back into the hands of large media companies and the corporations which control them by discrediting all alternative news sources.

I don't believe in fake news or conspiracy theories, but I do read conspiracy media and articles from 'fake news' outlets because it helps to get perspective.

There is definitely a grain of truth in many conspiracy theories and 'fake news' articles... And unfortunately this grain of truth is often never mentioned at all on mainstream media.

For example, some scientists found that covid-19 shared some non-trivial segment of RNA with the HIV virus. This is a fact but mainstream media does not mention it at all because they don't want to invite conspiracy theories that the virus could be man-made. Of course they could mention this and also add that this particular RNA sequence is also shared by many other viruses and not just HIV. But mainstream media will avoid the topic entirely because of political and financial pressures. They prefer to turn any scientist who mentions this fact into a social pariah rather than admit that there is an element of truth to it and that it could deserve further scrutiny.

Also, mainstream media would never dare to point out just how grotesquely massive the recent bailouts by the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States are. The amount of fiat dollars which will be injected into the economy is so alarming that even the billionaire fund manager Ray Dalio hinted that it would usher in a "new world order" (in an economic sense) but the gravity of the situation is not conveyed at all by the mainstream media.

Consuming conspiracy and 'fake news' media is mind-opening if you consume it in small quantities alongside mainstream media.

If you hate how divisive the world has become, then it's your moral duty to expose yourself to the other side's perspective. Mainstream media is becoming complacent and just like 'fake news' media, it's loaded with political and economic agendas. The only way to see past the agendas is to consume both.