Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

unherd.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 596 posts

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

#151

Post by kerkeslager »

gameswithgo wrote: post #103
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…

> Truth is the answer to lies. I haven't actually seen evidence that this is effective in the modern social media era.

White people who have never been around black people are more likely to hold racist views. Straight people who have never been around out gay people are more likely to hold homophobic views. MLK understood that to change the image of black people as dangerous, he had to get black people shown behaving peaceably on TV. Harvey Milk understood that to change the image of homosexuals as foreign and strange, he had to show people that gays were their siblings, their children, their neighbors. What makes you think that social media has so fundamentally changed humanity?

Trump is president, the American Nazi party is growing, the most popular news network in America is Fox News, the anti-vax movement is growing; and the primary evidence that deplatforming works seems to be a study that shows that bigots left Reddit and declares victory, completely ignoring that Voat started at the same time. If you want evidence, where's yours?

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

#152

Post by filoleg »

scarface74 wrote: post #67
ppod wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, but I'm not asking about what rights distributors should have, I'm asking normatively whether a distributor should ban people like this.

A distributor is a private business that has the right to ban anyone they want except for protected classes. He can be his own distributor that’s the power of the internet.

You are missing the point.

Yes, I fully agree with you that they have the right to remove whatever content they want. And I absolutely don't want that right to be taken away from them. However, I disagree with how they are currently utilizing that power, even though they have full rights to do so.

It's kind of similar to how I support the 2nd amendment rights and don't want them to be taken away from people (including open carry). But I disagree with how certain people use it during protests by open-carrying at the airports or in front of the city council building.

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

#153

Post by jansan »

lukifer wrote: post #48
H8crilA wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No idea if the claim is true, but that's exactly what you'd expect from "pockets of immunity".

As mindless replicators, viruses are also incentivized to mutate into less deadly forms over time, so as to spread more effectively.

Especially if the more deadly variants are stuck in bodies of people being isolated. With quarantine measures in place, the less aggressive variants (if different variants with varying degrees of aggressiveness exist) will spread more.

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

#154

Post by djsumdog »

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…

YouTube/Google/Alphabet have repeatedly said they are removing things about COVID19 from non-government sources. They cannot simply be written off as a private agents who can do what they want with their platform, considering their dominance and monopoly on content.

This is textbook definition of Orwell's Ministry of Truth. Google is either becoming the Ministry of Truth, or by its policy, allowing governments to be the Ministers of Truth, with no room of any dissent.

This should be greatly troubling.

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

#156

Post by ppod »

dang wrote: post #125
ppod wrote: post #21

Is there any way if I can find out why my submission is flagged? The last thing I submitted was also flagged (and then unflagged), but I have tried to abide by the submission guidelines.

The site guidelines ask you to email hn@ycombinator.com with questions like this: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html . Users flagged it. We can only guess why users flag things, but in this case I suppose it might have been a combination of users who are fatigued by this general topic having been repeated so frequently in recent weeks, and users who agree with the decision to take down the interview and…

Thanks for the response, I misunderstood the flagging process.

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

#157

Post by filoleg »

ksk wrote: post #136
kerkeslager wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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? A…

I disagree with your reasoning for the entire first half of your post regarding BillG, but I can absolutely agree with you on the last part.

The power to decide who is or isn't an expert, as well as the ability to restrict speech based on those decisions, is a pretty dangerous and scary path that I am vehemently opposed to taking.

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

#158

Post by lmilcin »

dang wrote: post #147
lmilcin wrote: post #138

(redacted voluntarily)

Please don't post in the flamewar style to HN. Internet threads can't handle denunciatory rhetoric without collapsing. It's the way the medium works, and we have to consciously compensate for it, if we're going to keep curious conversation going here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I think flamewar is for when people will have polarized views on a particular topic and the poster posts only to bring the people to fight each other.

My post is what I think a necessary reminder in a topic that I honestly don't think is very polarizing. It just needs to be repeated, over, and over again. The same way it gets taught to kids at school so they teach it to their kids, and so on.

Because it is important.

Think about this: if something is taught to kids at school, how can you justify objecting to it on HN (I mean unless it is a topic that is obviously incorrectly taught, which I suppose this is not one of them)?

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

#159

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#160

Post by kerkeslager »

gnusty_gnurc wrote: post #116
kerkeslager wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't watch the piece, but I've read enough of what Sakora has written to conclude that Sakora is a consistent liar. Even if a liar tells the truth, he's not a valuable source of information because you don't know whether what he says is true or not. > and imo the issue here isnt what is "true" -- nobody knows the truth with corona; its novel. If nobody knows what's true with corona, then shouldn't claim to know w…

> he's not a valuable source of information because you don't know whether what he says is true or not How do I know what anyone says is true? Why should I trust what you're saying about Sikora? I should be able to watch a video on youtube and decide for myself because censorship is inimical to free thought. You should take a moment to consider that most of the examples throughout history of censorship were carried o…

I am definitely NOT pro-censorship, so I don't know why you're saying this to me. Please read a few comments up. The entire reason censorship is a topic on this subthread is that I brought it up as a problem.
Post reply on HN