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YouTube bans coronavirus-related content that directly contradicts WHO advice

bbc.com

171–180 of 1001 posts

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus-related content that directly contradicts WHO advice

#171
post #148

Some people say the WHO denied human to human transmission, and denied that masks work. Do these people think the following two statements are equivalent: 1. There's no clear evidence of God 2. God does not exist

FTR, The WHO's stance on masks was criticized by a post on the British Medical Journal blog[1], which called it "confusing".

[1] https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2020/03/11/whos-confusing-guidance...

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus-related content that directly contradicts WHO advice

#172
post #91
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, censoring that content including videos is NOT the role of a hosting platform. Huh? If I ran a hosting platform and people were putting absolute BS on there, I'd remove it too. People who run hosting platforms want to have integrity.

Advertisers don’t want their ads on fringe content.

If that was the reason, why ban instead of just demonetizing those videos, like YouTube already does with tons of other videos that are not "advertiser-friendly"?

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus-related content that directly contradicts WHO advice

#173

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. WHO is a political organization with medical leanings just like Fox News is an entertainment channel that covers newslike topics. Yes, there's a lot of information out there about SARS-COV2 and COVID-19 infections out there that are downright misleading at best and life threatening at worst. No, censoring that content including videos is NOT the role of a hosting platfo…

I think tech moved too quickly and in some ways, due to power being left on the table by government, tech became responsible; much like how businesses have taken up the responsibility of American healthcare due to the issue being under-addressed by government.

Now that YouTube is used by people of all ages, Google has to make social and political decisions about what kind of content is appropriate for different ages.

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus-related content that directly contradicts WHO advice

#174
post #152
post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Misinformation is killing people. Given that, who should YouTube use as a source of truth? The US government? Bill Nye the Science Guy? Or should they let 4chan tell your grandma to drink bleach to fight the Rona?

None. There is no single source of truth. Maybe they should just have a disclaimer on every video: "Watch this with a critical eye and a grain of salt. Perhaps a truckload of salt. Use your brain."

That leads to free thinking and that is _exactly_ what they don't want.

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus-related content that directly contradicts WHO advice

#175
post #111

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. WHO is a political organization with medical leanings just like Fox News is an entertainment channel that covers newslike topics. Yes, there's a lot of information out there about SARS-COV2 and COVID-19 infections out there that are downright misleading at best and life threatening at worst. No, censoring that content including videos is NOT the role of a hosting platfo…

Misinformation is killing people. Given that, who should YouTube use as a source of truth? The US government? Bill Nye the Science Guy? Or should they let 4chan tell your grandma to drink bleach to fight the Rona?

>Given that, who should YouTube use as a source of truth?

Why are we expecting a private company to provide "a source of truth"? What happened to the whole idea of the Internet being about the free flow of information?

>Or should they let 4chan tell your grandma to drink bleach to fight the Rona?

Why don't we have parental controls for our parents yet? Why are we applying blanket bans on parts of the Internet when it's clearly a specific subset of the population that needs hand-holding to not injure themselves or others?

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus-related content that directly contradicts WHO advice

#176
post #122
post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Misinformation is killing people. Given that, who should YouTube use as a source of truth? The US government? Bill Nye the Science Guy? Or should they let 4chan tell your grandma to drink bleach to fight the Rona?

4chan was taking the virus seriously back in January, when the WHO was denying the need for travel lockdowns. The misinformation coming out of the WHO is what killed people, not the early warning that 4chan gave us. Edit: note that in both replies to my comment, none of the specific facts I mentioned were responded to. The response of the countries is being blamed, the date I mentioned is being ignored; but I am comp…

Do you really believe that? Check archive.org. The WHO published info on CV including technical guidance for the health ministries of nation states, at least as early as January 24. It’s safe to assume that national delegates would have been in discussions with WHO ahead of this. Remember, there’s only one WHO and yet we have many different responses and outcomes in different countries. The only logical conclusion is that those nations who’s responses led to poor outcomes should look to their own interpretation of WHO advice and the decisions they themselves made, as the cause of poor outcomes.

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus-related content that directly contradicts WHO advice

#177
post #122
post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Misinformation is killing people. Given that, who should YouTube use as a source of truth? The US government? Bill Nye the Science Guy? Or should they let 4chan tell your grandma to drink bleach to fight the Rona?

4chan was taking the virus seriously back in January, when the WHO was denying the need for travel lockdowns. The misinformation coming out of the WHO is what killed people, not the early warning that 4chan gave us. Edit: note that in both replies to my comment, none of the specific facts I mentioned were responded to. The response of the countries is being blamed, the date I mentioned is being ignored; but I am comp…

This is a hilariously revisionist take people are trotting out.

Forget the WHO for a second (which remember was politically cast adrift by the US when they refused to participate in it.)

The news coming out of Europe/Iran/China had lay people in the US concerned by late February -- yet the American Government did everything it could to belittle or otherwise diminish the threat. Now it wants to turn around and suggest that it's actions are to be blamed by the WHO? What happened to self-responsibility?

Give me a break.

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus-related content that directly contradicts WHO advice

#178
post #141

Pick any politician and you will likely find some egregiously false statements about Covid-19...but I have to say the WHO, maybe acting on the best info at the time or acting as puppet for China, had put out some seriously dangerous false statements, including: On January 14, the WHO stated that there was “no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus.”

This is one of those completely false things that people only believe is true by repetition. Go back and actually read the full set of WHO statements in mid-January. They have a bunch of statements saying there probably is person-to-person transmission, and a bunch saying that specific studies haven’t yet found hard evidence for person-to-person transmission (because at that point most of the cases they’d managed to…

>This is one of those completely false things that people only believe is true by repetition. Go back and actually read the full set of WHO statements in mid-January.

You say it is "completely false" that people only believe is true by repetition, well WHO has a twitter account and their whole tweet is:

Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in #Wuhan, #China

https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152

An wouldn't you know the WHOs completely false tweet was repeated 20k times.

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus-related content that directly contradicts WHO advice

#179
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The WHO never denied human-to-human transmission. This is a blatant lie.

"Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in #Wuhan, #China," https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152?s=20

That's not a denial. It's a we have yet to confirm.

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus-related content that directly contradicts WHO advice

#180
post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Misinformation is killing people. Given that, who should YouTube use as a source of truth? The US government? Bill Nye the Science Guy? Or should they let 4chan tell your grandma to drink bleach to fight the Rona?

They could remove only obvious errors/lies like "drink bleach" rather than subscribe to a single authoritative source of truth. As another commenter noted, wearing a mask contradicts WHO advice.

It frightens me think that anyone would seriously drink bleach to fight a disease.
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