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YouTube removes interview with professor of medicine on Covid stats and policy

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Re: YouTube removes interview with professor of medicine on Covid stats and policy

#11

Post by wodenokoto »

antpls wrote: post #7
mchusma wrote: post #5

I don't really care the content at all, but I really wish these platforms took the "phone company" approach, in which they considered themselves neutral carriers of information. In the US, I don't know an obvious issue besides legislative change to enforce this. However, once they consider themselves as "curators" of information with near-monopoly status, I hope they are litigated against successfully.

YT, FB and other platforms would like too. For them, more content = more viewers = more ads. The current situation is because governments passed laws to regulate the type of content they are allowed to show. The "phone company" is not the right analogy. They are more like mass media (TV, news papers, etc), which is the rational for censoring them

No they would not like to be the phone company that pipes data around.

For example: They could easily - but actively choose not to - host pornography.

They do not want to host everything that is legal.

Re: YouTube removes interview with professor of medicine on Covid stats and policy

#12

Post by jasode »

mchusma wrote: post #5

I don't really care the content at all, but I really wish these platforms took the "phone company" approach, in which they considered themselves neutral carriers of information. In the US, I don't know an obvious issue besides legislative change to enforce this. However, once they consider themselves as "curators" of information with near-monopoly status, I hope they are litigated against successfully.

>, but I really wish these platforms took the "phone company" approach, in which they considered themselves neutral carriers of information.

This suggestion (and the comparison to phone companies) comes up repeatedly but Youtube can't _be_ a neutral carrier if they are funded by advertising. That's because the businesses' choice to pay for advertising is not a neutral choice. See "advertiser friendly content"[1] and Adpocalypse[2][3].

Land line phones and cell phones are funded by subscriptions and they are also point-to-point communication between 2 private individuals. Phones (barring small-scale exceptions such as conference calls) are not a "broadcasting" medium.

There is no broadcasting medium in the world that acts as a neutral carrier. Not newspapers. And not tv like NBC/CBS/ABC. Even the government funded broadcasters like American PBS or UK BBC are not neutral carriers.

Ok, let's say you this ambitious idealism to create a new broadcasting website that allows anything except for child pornography. How are you going to fund it? Advertising?!? That's just recreating the Youtube "ad friendly" dilemma. Subscriptions? Most people don't want to pay a subscription fee for user-generated-content. Yes some die-hard web surfers pay for Youtube Red/Premium to avoid ads but they are a small minority that's not enough to pay for the entire Youtube infrastructure. So far, only funding based on advertising seems to be viable.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_by_Google#Advertise...

[2] https://www.google.com/search?q=biggest+advertisers+abandon+...

[3] https://www.tubefilter.com/2018/04/20/pg-resumes-youtube-spe...

Re: YouTube removes interview with professor of medicine on Covid stats and policy

#13

Post by coldtea »

jasode wrote: post #12
mchusma wrote: post #5

I don't really care the content at all, but I really wish these platforms took the "phone company" approach, in which they considered themselves neutral carriers of information. In the US, I don't know an obvious issue besides legislative change to enforce this. However, once they consider themselves as "curators" of information with near-monopoly status, I hope they are litigated against successfully.

>, but I really wish these platforms took the "phone company" approach, in which they considered themselves neutral carriers of information. This suggestion (and the comparison to phone companies) comes up repeatedly but Youtube can't _be_ a neutral carrier if they are funded by advertising . That's because the businesses' choice to pay for advertising is not a neutral choice . See "advertiser friendly content"[1] an…

>This suggestion (and the comparison to phone companies) comes up repeatedly but Youtube can't _be_ a neutral carrier if they are funded by advertising. That's because the businesses' choice to pay for advertising is not a neutral choice.

It should be as well.

Disallow advertising companies from paying for ads on specific content only.

They should have a blanket agreement to show N ads, to user demographics, interests, etc. But not the ability to not have their ads shown on particular channels/videos. That just gives the ad companies censorship power.

>How are you going to fund it? Advertising?!? That's just recreating the Youtube "ad friendly" dilemma

Ban by law "a la cart content/ad choice" across all platforms. Customers/Ad companies either sign to show their ads the platform or they don't. No selection of channels/videos they'll be shown on (except if they have a deal with a specific channel as sponsors). If that's the case for all platforms by law, they can't go to another platform to have it cater to their demands...

That way a platform doesn't have to cater for specific "ad friendly" content. Just to have popular content, that draws ads in general.

Re: YouTube removes interview with professor of medicine on Covid stats and policy

#14

Post by SeanLuke »

> professor of medicine

According to this guy's Wikipedia page, he has claimed many times to be a professor of oncology at Imperial College: but he is not, and Imperial College has sought legal options to stop him from making this claim.

The page is full of other fairly astonishing stuff, not the least of which is apparent fraud connected with the Lockerbie Bombing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karol_Sikora

I get the feeling that there's more to this story than this article suggests.

Re: YouTube removes interview with professor of medicine on Covid stats and policy

#16

Post by xhkkffbf »

benjaminwootton wrote: post #2

Wow that’s dangerous. The interviewee is an ex director at the WHO with over 50 years experience as an Oncologist. He's being deplatformed for even slightly questioning the conventional wisdom. Wow! These tech companies hold way too much power. https://mobile.twitter.com/ProfKarolSikora

Even if he's a raving insane person, he should be left online.

Indeed, they probably don't censor the people who are truly insane because that's obvious to any viewer. They only censor the people who say things they don't like.

Re: YouTube removes interview with professor of medicine on Covid stats and policy

#17

Post by xhkkffbf »

antpls wrote: post #7
mchusma wrote: post #5

I don't really care the content at all, but I really wish these platforms took the "phone company" approach, in which they considered themselves neutral carriers of information. In the US, I don't know an obvious issue besides legislative change to enforce this. However, once they consider themselves as "curators" of information with near-monopoly status, I hope they are litigated against successfully.

YT, FB and other platforms would like too. For them, more content = more viewers = more ads. The current situation is because governments passed laws to regulate the type of content they are allowed to show. The "phone company" is not the right analogy. They are more like mass media (TV, news papers, etc), which is the rational for censoring them

The phone company was regulated by the government to be strictly neutral. We should aim for the same here.

Re: YouTube removes interview with professor of medicine on Covid stats and policy

#18

Post by DanBC »

> The serology results around the world (and forthcoming in Britain) don’t necessarily reveal the percentage of people who have had the disease

> He estimates 25-30% of the UK population has had Covid-19, and higher in the group that is most susceptible

Here's the Office for National Statistics household survey results. This is only people living in households. (It doesn't include hospital patients, or people living in care or nursing homes).

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthan...

> Our latest estimates indicate that at any given time during the two weeks from 4 May to 17 May 2020, an average of 137,000 people in England had the coronavirus (COVID-19) (95% confidence interval: 85,000 to 208,000). This equates to 0.25% (95% confidence interval: 0.16% to 0.38%) of the population in England. This estimate is based on tests performed on 14,599 people in 7,054 households.

Frustratingly they haven't said yet how many people in total they think have ever had covid-19, but it's not going to be anywhere near 15million people in the UK.

Re: YouTube removes interview with professor of medicine on Covid stats and policy

#19

Post by alexpetralia »

SeanLuke wrote: post #14

> professor of medicine According to this guy's Wikipedia page, he has claimed many times to be a professor of oncology at Imperial College: but he is not, and Imperial College has sought legal options to stop him from making this claim. The page is full of other fairly astonishing stuff, not the least of which is apparent fraud connected with the Lockerbie Bombing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karol_Sikora I get th…

This is the quote from Wikipedia:

"Sikora told The Guardian that he did not know he would be used in the ad campaign, and that he agreed with Obama about the American health care system. In the attack ad, Sikora was referred to as professor of oncology at Imperial College. This led Imperial to seek legal advice to stop Sikora from claiming to be a professor of cancer medicine at Imperial; a claim that he was understood to have made repeatedly over the previous five years."

.

Here is The Guardian source: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2009/may/22/karol-sikora...

"Although the US advert did not state a link to Imperial, at the end of piece written by Sikora on the day it was first aired, 12 May, for UnionLeader.com, he was described as professor of cancer medicine at Imperial College school of medicine, London.

...

"I'm very careful not to involve either my NHS contract with Hammersmith or Imperial in anything that's political," he said. "I'm a consultant at Hammersmith hospital, nobody would dispute that. It's true I can't call myself professor of cancer medicine at Imperial, but I can at Buckingham. The trouble is when I get quoted somewhere, they just use the old stuff."

However, on 29 January, Sikora gave evidence to the Commons health select committee. Introducing himself, he said: "I am Karol Sikora, professor of oncology at Imperial College for 22 years.""

.

I believe it is possible the advertisement made this association without his consent; however I agree it is problematic if he represented to the Commons health select committee that he is a professor at Imperial. Personally, I don't find this damning evidence enough to eradicate his credibility.

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