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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

#301

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…

As long as you can host your video on your own website, that's not the same. If you own website, you have all rights to do any censorship you want. Now if your government will try to fine or arrest you because you hosted some video on your website, that's censorship. You can avoid youtube, but you can't avoid your government.

That said, I agree that huge websites like youtube, facebook, instagram are something more than just another web resource and probably some regulations should be applied to them. But it's very sensitive subject.

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

#303

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…

[flagged]

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

#304

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…

Yep. It seems to have started with the 2016 election which left popular opinion being that there's a huge part of the population who are too stupid to think for themselves and must be shielded from bad ideas in case they believe them and harm the rest of us with them. Now that such an idea is readily accepted, censorship is easily seen as the morally right thing to do in lots of cases. The feeling is that we're prote…

That a huge part of the population choose unwisely and footgun themselves and the rest it's quite obvious. But the real, longterm solution is education, not censorship. But we have to admit that we are in an ultra-connected world like never before and fake, easy news are even more easily spread. So, critical thinking is a necessary skill to be taught.

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

#305

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…

> These types of censorship patterns are identical to that employed by China in intent. The practical consequences are the same as well. True, if you ignore the fact that China is a government and YouTube is an internet video portal. And that there are sites like HN that can point it out. And that YouTube isn't taking steps to cover up what they've done. But yeah, let's compare the policing of bad information in a pa…

> where YouTube doesn't benefit from the "censorship"

Of course they do. You think they're spending all that money out of the kindness of their hearts?

Way to dodge actually engaging with the principles at play here. You can certainly assert your consequentialist/utilitarian arguments, but not everyone agrees with that ethical framework.

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

#306
post #207
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.

> 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.

It sure can be given other means of combatting misinformation. But sure, let's just go with the sledgehammer every time.

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

#307

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…

> These types of censorship patterns are identical to that employed by China in intent. The practical consequences are the same as well. True, if you ignore the fact that China is a government and YouTube is an internet video portal. And that there are sites like HN that can point it out. And that YouTube isn't taking steps to cover up what they've done. But yeah, let's compare the policing of bad information in a pa…

> At least you get to feel good about your purity when you're posting comments on HN, secure in the knowledge that you don't have a teenager or a parent that might die as a result.

What's this ad hominem crap doing here?

I don't know anything about the poster you're replying to, but I think I'm safe in assuming that they don't want your teenager or parent to die either. It's acceptable--essential, even--to be concerned about more than one thing at a time, even during a pandemic.

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

#308

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…

As long as you can host your video on your own website, that's not the same. If you own website, you have all rights to do any censorship you want. Now if your government will try to fine or arrest you because you hosted some video on your website, that's censorship. You can avoid youtube, but you can't avoid your government. That said, I agree that huge websites like youtube, facebook, instagram are something more t…

> As long as you can host your video on your own website, that's not the same.

Very few people even within this peer group have the capability of hosting videos on their own website unless the video is intended for a very small audience (say, less than 1000 viewers per day).

If you want to reach any significant number of people, you absolutely need to go through one of the major video hosters or pay for a CDN. And that's before you consider the network effects of YouTube.

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

#310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

No, you really don' have to wonder that. That's a deeply stupid and racist conspiracy theory that you're promoting with no evidence or logical reasoning at all.

How is it racist?
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