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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

#411
post #399

Looks alive and well to me... https://youtu.be/uk2YZfnsOPg

So just guerilla advertising? So weird, that video is in the article that claims it was banned.

Don't want to duplicate my comment but trying to prevent wrong conclusions. He tweeted few hours ago that YouTube has reinstated his video:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23266336

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

#412
post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So just guerilla advertising? So weird, that video is in the article that claims it was banned.

I would have been really surprised if they actually removed it. The points made in the video are mostly sensible. They acknowledge the many unknowns. It more or less advocates for the Swedish model of dealing with this vs. most other countries.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23266336

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

#413

> professor of medicine According to this guy's Wikipedia page, he has claimed many times to be a professor of oncology at Imperial College: but he is not, and Imperial College has sought legal options to stop him from making this claim. The page is full of other fairly astonishing stuff, not the least of which is apparent fraud connected with the Lockerbie Bombing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karol_Sikora I get th…

So he is a paid shill. At least he does not promote drinking bleach.

> At least he does not promote drinking bleach

Lets not resolve to flame wars using factually false info which nobody ever said.

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

#414

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.

At the end of the day, Youtube's intent is to make as much money as possible. If Youtube didn't censor a lot of misinformation videos, people would get mad and demand advertisers to stop advertising on Youtube.

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

#417
post #394
post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's using pedophrasty in his argument in desperation by adding unnecessary elements that distract from the underlying debate and illicit emotions you can't really argue against without being the bad guy. Once you see this approach used, it's safe to assume that person's an idiot (at least on the underlying discussion topic). Pedophrasty Definition: Argument involving children to prop up a rationalization and make th…

> as people are defenseless and suspend all skepticism in front of suffering children: nobody has the heart to question the authenticity or source of the reporting. But that's not actually true. It's nearly impossible to express concern for children in any context on the internet without being mocked and dismissed for having invoked a "won't someone think of the children" ad hominem. It's strange how deeply that part…

In your example, the people saying "won't someone think of the children" are the culprits of pedophrasty.

Once you conceive the concept, you see it all over the place. See here for a more in depth explanation: https://medium.com/incerto/pedophrasty-bigoteering-and-other...

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

#418

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…

Until February, WHO was saying COVID does not spread human to human and travel restrictions won't help. So anyone who said "it does spread human to human" and "travel restrictions will help" was considered misinformation and conspiracy theorist.

February onwards, WHO did a full 180. But everyone who got censored before then was the victim.

Same thing about effectiveness of wearing masks.

So anyone pointing out the obvious that "China cannot have lesser deaths than Canada" is considered a "misinformation, disinformation and conspiracy theorists" because they "contradict the World Health Organization's official guidelines during an emergency pandemic".

How people don't see the clear danger of such censorship is beyond me. WHO also says China has been transparent.

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

#419
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.

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 dec…

This is a great point and is also true of Facebook and a number of other platforms. Roger McNamee spoke at length about this issue with Sam Harris on his podcast back when it was called Making Sense. His point was essentially that the AI that controls the recommendations is trained to maximize clickthrough rates, and so it learns in its own way to feed us articles that make us angry, because we click and share more that way. Hence the tendency to lead people down rabbit holes of extremism.

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

#420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CloudFlare, the biggest CDN, despite their words and claims routinely censors sites meanwhile defending hosting terrorist site's free speech. https://www.fastcompany.com/90312063/how-cloudflare-straddle... > the company serves at least seven groups on the U.S. State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations, including al-Shabab, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), al-Quds Brigades, th…

CloudFlare is under no obligation to follow a policy you find logical. If you dislike their business practices or find them problematic you might contact your local elected officials and request regulation. Otherwise you’ll have to wait and see if the magic of the free market changes anything.

All I am pointing out is the hypocrisy and false statements CF and others make. CF's actions are much different from their words. They say they need to allow dangerous terrorists because of free speech but then ban other speech which they don't like.

> you might contact your local elected officials and request regulation

Voicing my opinion on a public forum is one way to do that.

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