YouTube bans coronavirus-related content that directly contradicts WHO advice • Hacker News Board

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

#401

Post by 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 11:09 PM UTC

throwaway2048 wrote: post #375

3fe9a03ccd14ca5 wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The devil is always in the details. What does “denial of X” even mean? Can you dispute certain facts, like numbers and dates? Who gets to decide the ultimate truth? It takes a long time for the details of history to settle. For example, nobody knew most dinosaurs had feathers until the last decade.

Truth exists, sorry for those who like to pretend it dosen't.

So would you support banning everyone on YouTube who went against WHO’s tweet[1] saying there’s no evidence of human to human transmission? That was only in January.

https://nypost.com/2020/03/20/who-haunted-by-old-tweet-sayin...

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

#402

Post by guscost » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 11:09 PM UTC

judge2020 wrote: post #374

guscost wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The market won't sort them out, but the courts will. Wait until they are deemed a publisher, and no longer exempt from liability[0] for all of the content that they publish. Unfortunately they hire a lot of lobbyists so it might be a long wait. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communicati...

Revoking 230 won't make the executives at YouTube go "gosh darn, guess we'll have to start taking a loss by employing hundreds of thousands of moderators to literally watch every video uploaded", they'll constrain and limit the platform in any way which still guarantees similar or greater ad revenue. That is, if there isn't any legal loophole like requiring creators sign legal paperwork which makes creators their own…

They'll probably cull everything that doesn't earn them ad revenue, to minimize the fallout. The content will trend toward sanitized garbage and the viewers will start leaking to somewhere else.

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

#403

Post by jtgeibel » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 11:10 PM UTC

sneak wrote: post #350

knzhou wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"No clear evidence" uncovered in a "preliminary investigation" was a completely true statement. They never ever said "okay, this definitely isn't transmissible, everybody can ignore it". They said in the early stages that it was too soon to be sure. All the other tweets from this period are saying the same thing: something might be coming, so countries should prepare.

You can constrain your statements to only objectively true things and still be confusing and ambiguous. This is a perfect example of that. It warrants criticism.

I've probably seen this tweet 50 times now in the last week. Before that, not even once. It's easy to criticize now with 3 months of additional information and to cherry pick an instance of a few hundred characters out of all the statements the WHO has made. 99% of the criticism of this tweet that I've seen so far comes nowhere near the nuanced criticism you make here. In aggregate, the level of criticism this tweet has received has not been warranted.

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

#404

Post by takeda » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 11:11 PM UTC

eqdw wrote: post #263

Prior to March 3rd, the official position of the WHO was that "The flu is worse" I don't expect the WHO to be infalliable, and I don't think this reflects malice or incompetence (they updated as information became available) but that's kind of my point. The WHO is not infalliable. The things they say are not gospel truth. Categorically banning discussion of anything that contradicts what they say is a horrendous meas…

> Prior to March 3rd, the official position of the WHO was that "The flu is worse"

That wasn't their position, in fact they instructed other nations to prepare. The R0 and mortality rate they provided in the statement[1] is also much higher than of flu, so please don't spread misinformation.

[1] https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/23-01-2020-statement-on...

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

#405

Post by judge2020 » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 11:11 PM UTC

autokad wrote: post #397

glenstein wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Where we live, due to local laws, we are now obliged to wear a mask to go shopping. Can one discuss that on YouTube, or would one be contradicting the WHO? Examples like these are frivolous. There's a heartland of obvious, flagrant misinformation that is indisputably worth banning and for which a moral case exists to ban immediately: '5g caused corona, this home remedy will cure it!' etc. The go-to move of internet…

do you think someone at google is saying: 'hmmm, I analyzed all the points and did fact checking and this video should be flagged'. They'll have some lazily built ML algorithm that flags the whole channel with a video that mention 'corona' and demonitize them so they can collect money and benefit from the videos but not have to do any payout.

Your scenario has already been playing out for about two months, except it's completely per-video and just a mention of corona seems to no longer cause a demonetization.

> so they can collect money and benefit from the videos but not have to do any payout.

No ads show on demonetized videos.

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

#406

Post by phs318u » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 11:12 PM UTC

fzeroracer wrote: post #366

ken47 wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who gets to decide what is nonsense. What happens when society thinks YOU are the one with nonsensical beliefs? "Galileo agreed not to teach the heresy anymore and spent the rest of his life under house arrest. It took more than 300 years for the Church to admit that Galileo was right and to clear his name of heresy." https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/galileo-is-convi...

When people are directly threatening people because they are even slightly linked to 5G towers, or they're peddling nonsense like 'drinking bleach will cure you of corona', then I think it's fair to draw a line in the sand and say those are dangerous, nonsensical beliefs.

But to be fair to the person you’re responding to, you still haven’t answered his actual question - who gets to decide?

The example you gave is only “obvious” because the majority think so. However we’re increasingly living in an environment where people are “fleeing the centre”. People have abandoned authority, and are increasingly abandoning science, even to the point of doubting or reinterpreting their own lived experience.

The key to “common sense” is “common”. When very little is held in common, where do you find common sense?

This is precisely why, in my view, the single greatest danger to mankind is - a “meta-danger” perhaps - is the explosion in deliberate attempts (irrespective of motive - lulz, commercial profit, political influence or psychological warfare) to misinform, sow discord, and erode trust. It is an absolute scourge and is already starting to bite us in the collective arse, by limiting our ability to act collectively for objective common good.

I have no idea at all how we fight this threat.

EDITED: SP. collect > collectively

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

#407

Post by cm2187 » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 11:14 PM UTC

logifail wrote: post #121

Current WHO advice: "If you are healthy, you only need to wear a mask if you are taking care of a person with COVID-19." [0] Where we live, due to local laws , we are now obliged to wear a mask to go shopping. Can one discuss that on YouTube, or would one be contradicting the WHO? I fear there isn't "one truth" out there, despite the content providers' and fact-checkers' attempts :( We keep trying to encourage our ki…

Not the only position that changed radically over time. Head of WHO in early March:

> First, COVID-19 does not transmit as efficiently as influenza, from the data we have so far.

> With influenza, people who are infected but not yet sick are major drivers of transmission, which does not appear to be the case for COVID-19.

> Evidence from China is that only 1% of reported cases do not have symptoms, and most of those cases develop symptoms within 2 days.

https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/who-director-general-...

Also for a long time the medias were quoting 5-10% death rates when we have now evidence that it will be well under 1%, which infectious disease specialists were saying all along.

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

#408

Post by esejf » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 11:16 PM UTC

dijit wrote: post #88

hartator wrote: post #84

Not even mentioning they are playing a dangerous censorhip game, it's very weird that they pick the WHO over the CDC after all the WHO controversies. (Taiwan, slow COVID-19 response, alignment with China lines, head of WHO was part of the corrupt Ethiopian government, $200M in business class travel, and probably more scandals.) CDC has also a way bigger budget than the WHO. $11.1B vs $4.2B. Ref: - https://en.wikipedi…

The majority of WHO controversies are made up, the WHO are not a political entity so they do not want to comment at all on political issues; and whatever you want to say about Taiwan it is a very heated political situation. That's also the evidence of "alignment with china": because we in the west see a failure to recognise taiwan as siding with china. Which is odd because the USA doesn't officially recognise Taiwan…

what planet do you live on?

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

#409

Post by alexis_fr » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 11:18 PM UTC

judge2020 wrote: post #405

autokad wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

do you think someone at google is saying: 'hmmm, I analyzed all the points and did fact checking and this video should be flagged'. They'll have some lazily built ML algorithm that flags the whole channel with a video that mention 'corona' and demonitize them so they can collect money and benefit from the videos but not have to do any payout.

Your scenario has already been playing out for about two months, except it's completely per-video and just a mention of corona seems to no longer cause a demonetization. > so they can collect money and benefit from the videos but not have to do any payout. No ads show on demonetized videos.

Youtube still profits from free content.

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

#410

Post by bjourne » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 11:18 PM UTC

xupybd wrote: post #81

Barrin92 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither does the US. Taiwan is only recognised by IIRC 12 natinos, mostly small island states. This has become another weird internet talking point as international recognition pretty much unanmiously switched to the PRC in the 1970s.

It's the awkward way they one representative handled a question on Taiwan. Pretending he didn't hear the question. I think it speaks more to the unwillingness of a world health organisation to even discuss politically dangerous topics.

The mandate of the WHO is to improve world health. Thus avoiding politically sensitive issues is correct if that helps the organization to reach its goals.