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YouTube bans coronavirus-related content that directly contradicts WHO advice

bbc.com

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

#431

Post by glenstein »

OrderlyTiamat wrote: post #417
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…

I agree with the conclusion that you should be clear about what percentage of content is on the side of reasonable, and which is not. Let me however disagree strongly with your claims that this concerns 99.99999% of cases, and that the other commenter was talking about "what ifs" and "hypotheticals". That last claim seems to me to just be untrue: we know in fact that local laws, for example several american states, c…

The 99.99999% case scenario concerns videos that are saying '5g caused coronavirus', and meanwhile you're trying to tie up everybodies attention with special cases that don't represent the majority of cases. People get disoriented with special cases and trick questions.

Let me put it this way. If you're not just pointing to the mask example as a tentative, academic exercise, and sincerely believe that they constitute some non-trivial percentage of videos that will really get taken down, you should come out and say so. And if you don't want to commit to that, I have a hard time understanding what, other than frivolous internet contrarianism, motivates you to emphasize those examples.

>do you really think that a discussion about edge cases is so unnecessary?

Yes.

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

#432

Post by ElCapitanMarkla »

brlewis wrote: post #364
mmazing wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the age of misinformation, how do we better equip our society to know (or even desire to know) what is accurate information? I think it's easy to think of censorship as the answer, and it's easy to think that in this extreme circumstance that it's the answer. Maybe it is a slippery slope. It is a problem though. People aren't doing a very good job of handling it on their own, either. So what's the answer? Genuinel…

Concise statements, concise pro arguments, concise con arguments, each pro/con having its own pro/con arguments behind it via hypertext. Make it easier to explore the tree of evidence.

If that worked, antivaxers wouldn’t be a thing.

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

#433

Post by cm2187 »

cm2187 wrote: post #407
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…

Also treatments evolve. We were told that ventilators were absolute critical and it appears now that there may better solutions [1]. My point is you can’t enforce a single truth on a topic like that where our understanding of the virus and what to do is changing. And this understanding drives policy.

[1] https://news.sky.com/story/amp/coronavirus-hospital-cuts-cov...

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

#434

Post by bad_user »

grawprog wrote: post #392
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…

Since when am I beholden to the WHO? I don't remember voting for any of them or agreeing for them to represent me in any way. They are not my elected government, why should I give the slightest fuck what they tell me to do?

WHO currently represents the scientific consensus.

No, they don't tell you what to do, it is your government that does that, or in this case a private entity.

But anybody with a brain would go for the scientific consensus.

(Even though, just to be clear, I don't agree with what YouTube is doing here)

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

#435

Post by BickNowstrom »

knzhou wrote: post #264
topoftheforts wrote: post #2

Is this the beginning of the end for YouTube? As someone who deeply hates how much fake news have been spreading in the past few years, I still find this very worrying, especially since the WHO has been very inconsistent with their messaging during this pandemic [1] and sometimes plain wrong [2]. [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-health-who/who-chie... [2] https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152

> [2] https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152 Go back and actually read the full set of WHO statements in mid-January. They have a bunch of statements saying that nations should get prepared, one 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 find were tied to the market). The WHO never, ever said tha…

> Wojcicki: "So people saying, ‘Take vitamin C, take turmeric, we’ll cure you,’ those are the examples of things that would be a violation of our policy

> Who: Fact. There is no scientific evidence that lemon/turmeric prevents COVID-19. In general, however, WHO recommends consuming adequate fruit and vegetables as part of a healthy diet.

> Potential Youtuber early January: There is news going around of a new SARS-like pneumonia outbreak in Wuhan on Chinese Social Media. SARS was very contagious, so if this is SARS we should be very worried of a pandemic, especially with our interconnected world.

> WHO: Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus

> WHO: Not a pandemic

> WHO: China is transparent and setting new standard for outbreak control

> WHO: Advice members not to ban travel from China

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

#436

Post by Noumenon72 »

slavik81 wrote: post #367
zionic wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The above comment being [dead] seriously concerns me.

Why? You can turn on showdead in your profile and see for yourself that it's a duplicate post. Here's an index of them: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22961683

If YouTube had a showdead feature I would be greatly assuaged. I can't think of a reasonable way they could implement vouching, though.

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

#437

Post by [deleted] »

OrderlyTiamat wrote: post #417
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…

I agree with the conclusion that you should be clear about what percentage of content is on the side of reasonable, and which is not. Let me however disagree strongly with your claims that this concerns 99.99999% of cases, and that the other commenter was talking about "what ifs" and "hypotheticals". That last claim seems to me to just be untrue: we know in fact that local laws, for example several american states, c…

[deleted]

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

#438

Post by austhrow743 »

robrenaud wrote: post #311
stcredzero wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fear there isn't "one truth" out there, despite the content providers' and fact-checkers' attempts :( The idea is: "We are the decent, good, people who know the truth. Now we control the platforms, so it's only well and good we control the information, and we tell the deplorable others what they can and can't say." Almost everyone in the history books as a horrible oppressor has told themselves that narrative. Many…

Germany bans holocaust denial. That seems fine.

Nah its oppression.

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

#440

Post by bobcostas55 »

glenstein wrote: post #381
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…

>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…

The WHO has been spreading misinformation from the start, including claims that covid does not spread from human to human after it was abundantly clear that it does[0], claims that travel bans would be unnecessary to halt its spread[1], and claims that people should not wear masks[2].

These are not mere edge cases. We have structured our public organizations in a way that gives credentialed "experts" enormous amounts of power, but without making sure they are _actually good at what they do_. This move by youtube further enshrines credentials on top of the grave of competence. This is how you end up with the FDA banning covid tests for more than a month, how you end up with a completely ineffective CDC, or (to return to the topic at hand) the WHO spreading nonsense.

The fact of the matter is that the twitter shitposters I follow were far ahead of all the major health organizations on this topic, but if they mention covid in a tweet they'll get their account suspended now. This censorship is not about censoring bad info, it's about censoring any "non-official" info regardless of its veracity.

[0]: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EUN7LIXUMAY_2DI.jpg

[1]: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EVCIDfoWAAc-mq0.jpg

[2]: https://www.who.int/images/default-source/health-topics/coro...

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