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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

#261

Post by abstractbarista »

_bxg1 wrote: post #207
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…

And on the other end of the spectrum we have people being indoctrinated into violent conspiracy groups like QAnon, or being prompted to set fire to cell towers, or bringing measles back from the dead, because of YouTube videos. There's a line to be drawn here - and it's a tricky line, to be sure - but "YouTube should be totally neutral and not pull anything" is not a viable answer.

Frankly those people are just dumb, and there's nothing we can do to truly protect society from them. So, you might as well allow such content to exist.

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

#262

Post by logicslave »

chrischen wrote: post #238

These types of censorship patterns are identical to that employed by China in intent . The practical consequences are the same as well. In China information censorship is due to the government trying to promote peace and harmony. Aka, the government thinks it knows what’s best for people and forces it on people. Facebook et al also encounter these same problems, where they see people spreading “misinformation.” It’s…

You have to wonder if there are Chinese actors within Google influencing these censorships...

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

#263

Post by scottLobster »

majormajor wrote: post #217
_vertigo wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

There are a million options for video hosting. You are performing some sleight of hand here - claiming they are the only way to share your view - when what you are really referring to is that they have the most viewers, and that they have tools for promoting content in front of that audience. "I deserve access to an audience on their system" is a very weak claim compared to the (untrue) "they are the only place I can…

Access to an audience is part of speech IMO.

If most of the world's population was on one continent-sized piece of private property, and because it was private property the owners were allowed to censor whoever they wanted, "you can go talk freely on the almost empty island over there, maybe someone from the continent will come listen!" doesn't sound like free speech to me.

I agree that getting rid of algorithmic search/recommendation/promotion would be a big step forward, but platforms for speech of a certain massive size like Youtube/twitter/facebook/etc should also be heavily regulated and their ability to censor limited. They are, due to their overwhelming size, de-facto custodians of speech.

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

#264

Post by techntoke »

_bxg1 wrote: post #239
xhkkffbf wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me be contrary: who shut down millions of businesses and put millions out of work? It wasn't QAnon. It was the state -- and it looks like YouTube is aligned with the pro-shutdown folks who don't want their wisdom questioned. Now I'm a big believer in keeping things shut. I thing prudence is super-important. But QAnon's actions are mainly talk. The state's, however, are different.

> QAnon's actions are mainly talk QAnon is an FBI-registered domestic terror organization: https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/qanon-... They've been connected to multiple attempted acts of violence. They aren't just talk.

Terror organization who operates freely on reddit?

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

#265

Post by s1artibartfast »

DanBC wrote: post #29
teslabox wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Disputing the consensus should not by itself be forbidden, even when the consensus is accurate and important. I have a facebook page for sharing my take on non-monopoly medicine. I wrote a blog post for one of my websites commenting on a Spectator.co.uk article about how the Germans were doing much better with their SARS-CoV-2 patients than the Italians. The interviewed German doctor attributed their success to the…

> Dr. Cameron Kyle-Sidell broke rank with consensus to share the experience of doctors on the front lines actually treating SARS-CoV-2 patients, by posting a few videos expressing his frustration at the standards his ICU was implementing while treating SARS-CoV-2 [0]. He single handedly changed the COVID-19 standard of care in the United States by objecting to the consensus policy of ventilating fully-coherent people…

Do you have sources for any of your claims? My understanding is that there is a real medical discussion about when and under what circumstances it is appropriate to ventilate a covid patient. Some patients certainly die from ventilation who would otherwise have survived Covid. Some patients live due to venilation who would would otherwise have died.

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

#267

Post by JohnBooty »

xhkkffbf wrote: post #215
_bxg1 wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And on the other end of the spectrum we have people being indoctrinated into violent conspiracy groups like QAnon, or being prompted to set fire to cell towers, or bringing measles back from the dead, because of YouTube videos. There's a line to be drawn here - and it's a tricky line, to be sure - but "YouTube should be totally neutral and not pull anything" is not a viable answer.

Let me be contrary: who shut down millions of businesses and put millions out of work? It wasn't QAnon. It was the state -- and it looks like YouTube is aligned with the pro-shutdown folks who don't want their wisdom questioned. Now I'm a big believer in keeping things shut. I thing prudence is super-important. But QAnon's actions are mainly talk. The state's, however, are different.

    Let me be contrary: who shut down millions of businesses and put millions out of work?
Well, I'd blame the pandemic itself.

Sweden provides an imperfect but interesting what-if scenario for countries wondering what would have happened if they'd imposed little to no lockdown restrictions.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/30/coronavirus-sweden-economy-t...

Their economy is still taking a very severe hit despite retail businesses remaining open there, because people are shying away from making purchases and visiting shops.

You can (correctly) say that many governments took the decision out of peoples' hands. Perhaps the people of country XYZ would have made a different choice. But Sweden's example suggests that economies would have been screwed pretty hard no matter what.

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

#268

Post by coldtea »

wrsh07 wrote: post #204
coldtea wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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, interes…

Advertisers are ultimately pulling ads because of the will of the people, so if you're going to follow this one step further you see that the public has censorship power and that's what we want I think if you want to separate YouTube into separate stacks (eg fundamental infrastructure for hosting videos & a publisher / curator of those videos) you could imagine the infra part not being picky about what is uploaded (a…

>Advertisers are ultimately pulling ads because of the will of the people, so if you're going to follow this one step further you see that the public has censorship power and that's what we want

They only pull ads because they can. If all platforms are banned from allowing removal of ads on specific videos, then those advertisers will have the option to (a) advertise, or (b) not advertise.

Will the opt-out of YouTube (and every major platform) altogether?

In fact, the public will also understand it's not up to the advertisers and the story will end there. The people can then try to boycot YouTube itself for having a specific video, but that wont go very far either, especially if it doesn't touch the advertising money.

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

#270

Post by the_af »

krapp wrote: post #220
the_af wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A lot of what makes them successful as a hosting platform is the same content curation that people like to complain about. I'm not sure about this. Besides removing obvious hate speech, which sort of content curation do you mean? I thought its success was due to everyone being able to upload and share video clips. I don't think curation was an important feature.

>I don't think curation was an important feature. Maybe it wasn't in the beginning, but Youtube is a Google company now, and their entire business model is based on (mostly) algorithmic curation. The business model of every content creator depends upon catering to the preferences of that algorithm, and their success at doing so determines their value to advertisers. Entire genres of content have come into being and h…

That was my point, it wasn't in the beginning. YouTube's initial success wasn't caused by curation, which is the implication I was replying to.

I'm not sure the discovery/recommendation algorithm is the same as curation. It seems to me these are related but distinct fields.

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