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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

#351

Post by jb775 »

It's probably about time we start discussing as a developer community how to take meaningful actions to curb this behavior. Putting the particular topic details here aside, I think everyone can agree it's very troubling that a platform with as much power as Google is actively censoring speech they do not agree with.

Not sure what the best action points would be, but I'm thinking we start by speaking with our companies about redirecting ad-spending away from Google, pausing any active development related to integrating Google products and seek out alternatives, removing/replacing Google analytics (since this is where tons of value is created for Google and allows them to follow users basically everywhere), and seriously talk about unionization next-steps. Thoughts?

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

#352

Post by michaelmrose »

naasking wrote: post #305
bachmeier wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

What ethical framework yields non insane results that isn't consequentialist/utilitarian?

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

#353

Post by acqq »

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.

> QAnon's actions are mainly talk. The state's, however, are different.

Isn't QAnon directly promoted by some people directly related to the president of the state?

Don Jr. wears it:

https://www.etsy.com/dk-en/listing/716574473/the-official-q-...

The President himself reused their hashtag:

https://www.businessinsider.de/international/trump-retweeted...

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

#354

Post by mensetmanusman »

Barrin92 wrote: post #208
mensetmanusman wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not a bad idea. At least direct advertisement or false information about unhealthy food should be banned. This has already happened with tobacco or high caloric drinks in some countries like Singapore in physical stores. These are relatively simple steps that would improve public health dramatically, I'm not really sure why these kinds of arguments are presented like some sort of self-evident zinger against censoring…

I think it’s because people are uncomfortable with the idea that information can be harmful to the masses who might not be able to process it ‘correctly.’

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

#355

Post by HomeDeLaPot »

_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.

That's a fine point, but YouTube isn't restricted to the option of taking down videos. They could stop recommending these videos, and they could pull them from search results. Actually, YouTube might be a better place if new videos were unlisted by default and teams of curators were responsible for approving new channels. But then maybe someone would just build their own YouTube index and search engine.

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

#356

Post by sangnoir »

unethical_ban wrote: post #256
majormajor wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Youtube Vimeo Name the next five that are discoverable, host your videos for free, and can stream that to millions of people in a single day.

> ... discoverable, host your videos for free, and can stream that to millions of people in a single day

No one has an inalienable right to any of these features, let alone to all of them in a neat package. The organizations that invest ingenuity, capital and labor to create platforms with those features do have a right to set terms on how their platforms is used.

I don't get how the solution to what is seen as corporate authoritarianism (on private property) is asking for more authoritarianism (by the government) to force persons to host content they'd rather not.

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

#357

Post by ibigb »

I used to get upset with untruths being published. But then I found that humans are evolving and it is an individual evolution, not really a herd evolution, and each individual must learn to discern what is true and what is false. It is Life Course 110. Imagine what wimps humans would be if everything were sanitized, there were no challenges. How would the human race grow strong? Challenges are there to make you strong, one not easily manipulated by Youtube, governments, religions, "experts" and so on. So stay awake, and see if you are being manipulated. Would Life be useful if it didn't challenge you? A certain amount of life's challenges are a blessing, too many challenges...well we don't want that.

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

#358

Post by Cyph0n »

unethical_ban wrote: post #256
majormajor wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Youtube Vimeo Name the next five that are discoverable, host your videos for free, and can stream that to millions of people in a single day.

We’ve already covered discoverability: you have no right to an “audience”.

As far as being able to reach millions of people per day for free, why do you think that’s a right, exactly? The fact that the websites you listed are footing the bill for you doesn’t mean that serving content (i.e., bandwidth) in general is “free”.

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

#359

Post by saulrh »

HomeDeLaPot wrote: post #355
_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.

That's a fine point, but YouTube isn't restricted to the option of taking down videos. They could stop recommending these videos, and they could pull them from search results. Actually, YouTube might be a better place if new videos were unlisted by default and teams of curators were responsible for approving new channels. But then maybe someone would just build their own YouTube index and search engine.

That works right up until the content-creator community or HN or Reddit riots about "the algorithm".

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

#360

Post by contravariant »

_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.

I'm not too sure if true neutrality is not the best answer after all. I think these bans are detracting from the real problem, which is that it's Youtube's system for promoting content that is causing problems, not the content on Youtube itself. Youtube has made itself too important a platform to be left in charge of deciding what content people should watch.

Frankly I would feel much more at ease if we could all decide that Youtube doesn't get to decide what content should be deleted, provided they also can't keep recommending videos. Let me explain.

By recommending videos youtube has a huge amount of influence on what content is promoted and what content isn't. However youtube's bottom-line isn't to recommend good content (despite what they claim it is) but it is to maximize ad revenue, which means they need to make people watch as many videos as possible. Superficially this would seem like it should drive Youtube to recommend good content, but it's beginning to look like it is biased towards addictive content, which has questionable quality at best, but might veer towards harmful conspirational theories at worst. It's a classic example of value drift, Youtube has turned into a paperclip maximizer that is beginning to harm humans to produce more paperclips.

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