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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

#131

Post by _vertigo »

root_axis wrote: post #109
acituan wrote: post #51

I don’t agree with the interview contents, nor think professorship alone gives sufficient credibility in the face of a novel pandemic, data of which is in the process of emerging. That said, I don’t want youtube to be in charge of deciding what is credible or not. They don’t have in-house experts on these domains, they don’t have a magic epistemology machine that spits out the “facts”. They are good at writing web se…

> I don’t want youtube to be in charge of deciding what is credible or not This point is often repeated during discussions on these topics but I believe this is an inaccurate characterization. YouTube is not "in charge of deciding what is credible" in the fashion that kind of phrasing suggests; they are moderating the content on their platform with respect to their business process and company values, those decisions…

> they are moderating the content on their platform with respect to their business process and company values, those decisions are not a reflection of credibility. YouTube is a corporate product

This is such a tired argument. YouTube is ubiquitous - it is the primary (read: effectively only) platform for video hosting, which today comprises a large proportion of all information transfer between humans. Companies like Facebook and YouTube are central to social discourse, at least in the west. When a medium of communication is that ubiquitous, the fact that it is owned by a private company is not an excuse to throw up one's hands and say "Well, I guess they own it - they can censor what they want".

The fact that it is so widely used and owns such a significant share of the "ways to spread information" market outweighs the fact that the company is private.

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

#132

Post by ApolloFortyNine »

kerkeslager wrote: post #40

There are two separate issues here: 1. Non-science: calling Karol Sikora a "professor of medicine" hides the fact that he's an oncologist; if he ever had any expertise it was in cancer, not epidemics, and he has no business speaking outside his field. Sikora is also a fellow of The Princes Foundation For Integrated Health and a professional member of the generically-named College Of Medicine. Both of these organizati…

>Sakora isn't a martyr: he's either an insane person or an amoral profiteering liar who doesn't care if his lies get people killed. But I don't think censorship is the answer to lies. Truth is the answer to lies.

> Non-science: calling Karol Sikora a "professor of medicine" hides the fact that he's an oncologist; if he ever had any expertise it was in cancer, not epidemics, and he has no business speaking outside his field.

Can you provide us with an image of your degree and job experience to prove you have the expertise to tell us "he's either an insane person or an amoral profiteering liar who doesn't care if his lies get people killed."? Or at least admit you're being hypocritical.

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

#133

Post by KCUOJJQJ »

I hope YouTube only removes a little bit. It seems so to me. A lot of similar information is still available.

Also, the videos that should be deleted before any others are the videos about the claim that it's better to be too afraid than too little, for instance. If people deliberately increase their fear, they become irrational like Francis E. Dec, who believed in the "Mad Deadly Worldwide Communist Gangster Computer God". The difference is that Dec had no doubts, and didn't choose to ignore doubts and to deliberately be afraid the most.

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

#134

Post by ksk »

drunkpotato wrote: post #124

YouTube consistently followed their policy of removing videos which promote misinformation, disinformation, and policy proposals that contradict the World Health Organization's official guidelines during an emergency pandemic. I have my problems with YouTube, but this isn't censorship, and it isn't a conspiracy to silence anyone. It's an effort to be responsible to public health and safety. The hysteria I see here is…

An advertising company deciding what is credible or not is scary.

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

#135

Post by mensetmanusman »

otikik wrote: post #4

Is it this Karol Sikora? > Promotion of alternative medicine > Sikora and the School of Medicine at Buckingham have in the past been supportive of alternative medicine. For a short time, Buckingham offered a diploma in "integrated medicine" (a relatively recent euphemism for alternative medicine). Sikora was a Foundation Fellow of Prince Charles' now-defunct alternative medicine lobby group The Prince's Foundation fo…

With this reasoning, all food videos showing desserts with high calories and high sugar content should be banned, since obesity is an epidemic that kills and is harmful.

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

#136

Post by ksk »

kerkeslager wrote: post #115
gruglife wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> calling Karol Sikora a "professor of medicine" hides the fact that he's an oncologist; if he ever had any expertise it was in cancer, not epidemics, and he has no business speaking outside his field. Then why is Bill Gates the de facto lead on curing covid?

In a "determining what's true about Covid" sense, he isn't the leader on Covid. He pays experts to take that leadership. It's my general impression that if Gates says something about Covid, he's just repeating what experts said.

Your own comment says "if he ever had any expertise it was in cancer, not epidemics, and he has no business speaking outside his field."

Why doesn't that disqualify Bill Gates according to your own reasoning?

>It's my general impression that if Gates says something about Covid, he's just repeating what experts said.

And who determines if he is or isn't repeating experts? Also, who decides who is or isn't an expert? An advertising company? Sorry, but that is a scary path.

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

#137

Post by chimprich »

DiffEq wrote: post #50
alabaster_punt wrote: post #39

Hardly surprising that a video full of dangerous misinformation has been pulled. It would be worth reading about this particular professor on Wikipedia, particularly his support for alternative medicine, his false claim to have been a professor at Imperial college, and his claim that the UK's NHS is "the last bastion of communism". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karol_Sikora

So what is so dangerous about it? Perhaps you need to consult a dictionary as to what danger really is. I don't know these people that made the video and I don't subscribe to magic crystals or whatever they are pushing/saying but I do know what Epidemiologist Neil Ferguson from Imperial college created in his flawed modeling - a world wide panic. That is what has been dangerous. Google is a private company I suppose…

> what Epidemiologist Neil Ferguson from Imperial college created in his flawed modeling

Why do you say that? The reputation of the Imperial College team seems to have become a lightning rod for disgruntled right-wingers but the team is one of the world's most respected.

Imperial is one of the world's top universities. That's probably why Sikora falsely claimed on multiple occasions to be employed there.

There's nothing in the Imperial report that caused the UK government to change course that has been shown to be false. The prediction from the report was that the UK would suffer 20,000 deaths from the virus if extensive distancing measures were employed. The current total is 36,000 confirmed, so if anything the report was too optimistic.

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

#139

Post by 60secz »

_vertigo wrote: post #131
root_axis wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don’t want youtube to be in charge of deciding what is credible or not This point is often repeated during discussions on these topics but I believe this is an inaccurate characterization. YouTube is not "in charge of deciding what is credible" in the fashion that kind of phrasing suggests; they are moderating the content on their platform with respect to their business process and company values, those decisions…

> they are moderating the content on their platform with respect to their business process and company values, those decisions are not a reflection of credibility. YouTube is a corporate product This is such a tired argument. YouTube is ubiquitous - it is the primary (read: effectively only) platform for video hosting, which today comprises a large proportion of all information transfer between humans. Companies like…

> The fact that it is so widely used and owns such a significant share of the "ways to spread information" market outweighs the fact that the company is private.

That argument seems a slippery slope towards reverse privitization. Who determines what companies are allowed to censor? Who censors the censors? Companies censor content because they are primarily afraid of liability (legal, political, cultural). There are other video sites out there. Just because youtube is popular doesn't prevent people from hosting content on other platforms.

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

#140

Post by mullingitover »

_vertigo wrote: post #131
root_axis wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don’t want youtube to be in charge of deciding what is credible or not This point is often repeated during discussions on these topics but I believe this is an inaccurate characterization. YouTube is not "in charge of deciding what is credible" in the fashion that kind of phrasing suggests; they are moderating the content on their platform with respect to their business process and company values, those decisions…

> they are moderating the content on their platform with respect to their business process and company values, those decisions are not a reflection of credibility. YouTube is a corporate product This is such a tired argument. YouTube is ubiquitous - it is the primary (read: effectively only) platform for video hosting, which today comprises a large proportion of all information transfer between humans. Companies like…

> This is such a tired argument. YouTube is ubiquitous - it is the primary (read: effectively only) platform for video hosting

Far from it. You can host your video anywhere you like, but you get the most eyeballs and revenue from YouTube, and that's based on user preference and not on some nefarious activity on their part. A lot of what makes them successful as a hosting platform is the same content curation that people like to complain about.

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