Maybe this is what's needed to loosen the virtual monopoly YouTube has.
What other players are going to emerge in the market?
YouTube bans coronavirus-related content that directly contradicts WHO advice
471–480 of 1001 posts
Re: YouTube bans coronavirus-related content that directly contradicts WHO advice
#472Earlier 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…
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…
So far as I can tell, your extremely confident, categorical interpretations of your own citations are basically mistaken, across the board. As I read [0] it is not, in fact, a blanket declaration about transmissibility. As I read [1] it is not in any way an inaccurate statement (see [3]). When read [2] it's clear that it is not a blanket declaration not to wear masks.
Meanwhile Youtube is going to take down videos claiming 5g caused the coronavirus, which are obviously wrong and obviously causing harm. And instead of looking at cases of obvious misinformation the policy targets, you would rather we go down a rabbit hole of idiosyncratic disputes about the the meaning of WHO statements, all while keeping up blatantly inaccurate misinformation.
Tying ourselves up in that frivolous debate would let misinformation flourish.
[3] https://www.vox.com/2020/1/23/21078325/wuhan-china-coronavir...
Re: YouTube bans coronavirus-related content that directly contradicts WHO advice
#473I'm surprised at how upset people are about this. The amount of garbage on the internet now is immense. Invoking free speech, more and more of the internet has slowly become 4chan and I don't understand why more people aren't sick of it.
Re: YouTube bans coronavirus-related content that directly contradicts WHO advice
#474Earlier 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…
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…
> The WHO has been spreading misinformation from the start, including claims that covid does not spread from human to human
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 that it can’t be transmitted, and they absolutely never said that people should do nothing about COVID-19. They were urging nations to act for months before they actually did.
Re: YouTube bans coronavirus-related content that directly contradicts WHO advice
#475Earlier 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…
Let the market sort them out then, right?
We can't wait for markets to sort themselves out while a few executives and their well connected friends control and decide the information we get to see and hear. The stakes are too high to wait for a market solution here.
Re: YouTube bans coronavirus-related content that directly contradicts WHO advice
#476Earlier quoted context omitted.
because it is true, the N95 mask don't protect you from the virus completely, and the masks that city advocate to use (non N95) don't do anything to protect you, they are there to protect others from you. If you sneeze or talk those masks will restrict most of the droplets from traveling far.
> because it is true I don't have an opinion on whether it's true or not myself. I’m not qualified to say. I just know that reputable authorities disagree on it. So how can you enforce a truth here?
This is the heart of the issue. Just because legitimate and identifiably bad advice exists doesn't mean this is suddenly widely applicable to all health information. Youtube isn't banning content that the WHO is "absolutely certain is true" either, they are using any of the (frequently changing) general advice coming out of WHO.
There's always tons of grey area on what is true or good advice. No matter how much 'science' is thrown around, or credentialism ("they have a PhD!"), or credibility some international organization has, that does not make this any less true. Especially when it comes the speech of the general public - not some advice via some formal expert forum or government body.
Even Snopes.com is littered with incorrect and politicized positions, and unlike the WHO, their actual stated goal is trying to determine what is true or not. WHO has a million different incentives beyond this.
What is useful advice for governments to disseminate, given tons of competing interests (which is what WHO specializes in), doesn't automatically translate to what regular people should be allowed or not allowed to discuss in an open forum.
Additionally, we're not being asked to just trust WHO to have good advice and good intentions, Youtube is telling everyone to trust WHO information proxied via an Youtube moderation teams interpretation of it, via an opaque no-appeals process.
Anyone who has used any major platform before (Reddit, Paypal, etc) knows how stupid moderation teams can be. And the vast majority of moderation teams haven't been stupid enough to try to determine what is 'true' or not. Because that's crazy.
The only way I might support this is if it helps bring about the demise of Youtube.
Re: YouTube bans coronavirus-related content that directly contradicts WHO advice
#477Earlier quoted context omitted.
Let the market sort them out then, right?
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...
Applying US law for the rest of the countries is another problem.
Re: YouTube bans coronavirus-related content that directly contradicts WHO advice
#478Earlier 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.
The WHO denied human-to-human transmission even after Taiwan told them about it, and they dug their heels on calling the outbreak a pandemic for weeks. I think it depends how youtube draws the line. If they’re removing stuff like “use colloidial silver” or “no need to wash your hands” then sure. But the WHO is not gospel.
> The WHO denied human-to-human transmission
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 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 that it can’t be transmitted, and they absolutely never said that people should do nothing about COVID-19. They were urging nations to act for months before they actually did.
Re: YouTube bans coronavirus-related content that directly contradicts WHO advice
#479Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's not a denial. It's a we have yet to confirm.
That’s totally true, but I don’t think it should be controversial to say that the WHO lied by omission, and that their statement was intentionally intended to convince countries _not_ to lock down.
"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.
Re: YouTube bans coronavirus-related content that directly contradicts WHO advice
#480Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
So far as I can tell, your extremely confident, categorical interpretations of your own citations are basically mistaken, across the board. As I read [0] it is not, in fact, a blanket declaration about transmissibility. As I read [1] it is not in any way an inaccurate statement (see [3]). When read [2] it's clear that it is not a blanket declaration not to wear masks. Meanwhile Youtube is going to take down videos cl…
Is it appropriate to flag HN comments that are so blatantly wrong like the one you replied to? If YouTube is taking down misinformation, is HN doing the same?