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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

#531

Post by iso947 »

RandomTisk wrote: post #525
Thorrez wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That article is about a Tweet being taken down, not about Google. Also that article says > It is not clear whether C-SPAN or Twitter took down the video.

My bad, here's a better link. It's hard to find a "mainstream" source because most of the old media is ignoring a lot of newsworthy items these days. https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2020/02/13/rand-paul-blasts-y... It's widely known that Google/Youtube took down any videos where the name of the supposed whistleblower were being mentioned, at least according to a lot of regular content creators who had videos deleted o…

Think about why the only sources you can find are those which Wikipedia says

“The site has published a number of falsehoods, conspiracy theories, and intentionally misleading stories.”

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

#532

Post by iso947 »

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…

“on matters of geocentricity vs heliocentricity we will follow the expert opinion of Catholic Church”

Does YouTube remove flat earth idiots?

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

#533

Post by iso947 »

djsumdog wrote: post #154
root_axis wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Use dailymotion, or vimeo, or host your own site.

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

#534

Post by mellow2020 »

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…

> These are relatively simple steps that would improve public health dramatically

And nuking a city stops all crime in it. If you only look at one tiny aspect and ignore everything else, just about anything can be made to seem sensible.

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

#535

Post by iso947 »

busymom0 wrote: post #418
drunkpotato wrote: post #124

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 ob…

> WHO was saying COVID does not spread human to human

The WHO said there had been no reports of it spreading human to human. And that was true, there hadn’t.

The reason your favourite conspiracy sources are taken offline is because they lie - they make you, an otherwise intelligent person, believe something that wasn’t true.

A favoured argument by one section of the internet is that “it doesn’t spread from Children to Adults”. An extraordinary claim.

They interpret the statement “there have been limited cases of it spreading from children” and treat that absense of evidence as an evidence of absence.

Note that in January, in a QA dated 9th, they did say

“Yes, some coronaviruses can be transmitted from person to person, usually after close contact with an infected patient, for example, in a household workplace, or health care centre.”

I.e coronaviruses in general spread, we haven’t seen this one spread yet.

https://web.archive.org/web/20200129195709/https://www.who.i...

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

#536

Post by biztos »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #526
biztos wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok but then how are we to distinguish Corporate Censorship from Corporation Chooses Not To Publish My Opinion? If your minority opinion on Covid is welcome on Platform A, but banned from much larger Platform B, both of them being private entities, does this count? If it counts, how is that different from the New York Times refusing to publish my dissenting opinion on the local galleries, which I am free to publish on…

I agree that there is a blurry line between corporate censorship and corporate choice. One way to draw a distinction is if the the corporation is typically in the business of publishing opinions, and intentionally suppressing of a specific idea to meet a goal or objective. >If your minority opinion on Covid is welcome on Platform A, but banned from much larger Platform B, both of them being private entities, does thi…

Thanks, I will give this some thought and if appropriate modify my usage.

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

#537

Post by thu2111 »

ehsankia wrote: post #428
raspasov wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Their automated system has a non-zero false-positive rate. It will from time to time accidentally take down legitimate videos, which they restore fairly quickly once you request a manual review, such as in this case. Yet people still jump to conclusion and assume malintent, posting headlines which imply Youtube is intentionally removing these videos. Clickbait.

No, that isn't what's happening. You're probably not aware of this if you only read particular media outlets but YouTube keep doing this and they keep defending it. It's absolutely intentional and the headlines aren't misleading people, you are.

Read the article: "They rejected our appeal to have the video reinstated." - appeals are at least looked at by humans and the humans are affirming they made the right call. Most likely the only reason this one got fixed is someone internally caused a stink and got it looked at by someone higher up, as usual for Google. But most of the time that isn't happening.

Here's another example of them erasing a video by an actual epidemiologist:

https://nypost.com/2020/05/16/youtube-censors-epidemiologist...

Ivy Choi, a YouTube spokesperson, told The Post in a statement: “We quickly remove flagged content that violates our Community Guidelines, including content that explicitly disputes the efficacy of global or local healthy authority recommended guidance on social distancing that may lead others to act against that guidance. We are committed to continue providing timely and helpful information at this critical time.”

Note: you aren't allowed to disagree with or even dispute the efficacy of government policy. Period.

There's no difference at this point in policy between a Chinese video site and YouTube, just that the latter are censoring criticism of the state because they've been internally taken over by authoritarians loyal to generic "authority", not because they're forced to. But in the end how does Chinese censorship work? Well, it's not like Xi individually orders people to kill individual stories. It works by ensuring that information services are run by people loyal to the state, who then take decisions autonomously to defend the state.

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

#538

Post by thu2111 »

modriano wrote: post #447
2019-nCoV wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is wrong with relying on the existing legal foundation? Arrest them for arson, if and when they decide to ravage a cell tower. Should we halt the sale of knives because they can be misused to murder?

Nationally, the clearance rate for arson is typically under 23%, meaning the vast majority of arsonists get away with it. In general, clearance rates are pretty bad across most crimes. The homicide clearance rate is typically below 62%, clearance rates for non-fatal shootings is typically below 55%, clearance rates for reported rape is typically below 40%, clearance rates for motor vehicle theft is typically below 20…

The last bit sounds like the plot of Minority Report.

I get that being a homicide researcher you're rather working on the assumption that a non-zero homicide rate is a problem that can be solved with a sufficiently clever policy. What if it's just a natural fact, like the laws of gravity? What possible solution could there be to homicide as a category of crimes beyond literally being able to see into the future or people's brains, a la Minority Report or Black Mirror? Isn't there a risk the mentality of a "war on homicide" (you talk of surrender) is actually more dangerous than the problem itself?

Attacks on cell towers is a very new problem. The 5G conspiracy theories are stupid, but you know, I got into a conversation with some coworkers about them the other day. We all laughed at how dumb these theories are until one guy said his mother believes it and he couldn't find a way to convince her otherwise.

The source wasn't YouTube. It was just her social circle. Communicating with WhatsApp and FB groups of course because of lockdown but people talk in real life too and always will.

The difficulty became apparent when I did a few quick searches for "5g coronavirus theories". The top search results were all attempted debunkings - pretty good. Unfortunately the debunkings themselves were not. I don't think I've ever seen such crap attempts at debunking a conspiracy theory. The top hits were mostly newspapers, and a common theme was "the world is now full of idiots who believe conspiracy theories, like 5G causing coronavirus or that there are cures for COVID" where the latter phrase linked to a doctor selling hydroxychloroquine. Which just yesterday the UK government started buying in bulk in case it turns out to be a cure. The article also lumped people protesting against lockdown (normal, expected) with 5G conspiracy theorists (not normal, not expected).

So this is the first reason why the theories aren't going away - the sort of people who attempt to debunk them keep lumping them together with any skepticism of government policy at all. But most people understand that being skeptical of a global mass house arrest justified via buggy computer model isn't at all irrational, so when they're told 5G theories are just like that, it just makes the problem worse.

For these conspiracy theories to be successfully debunked will require the debunkers to stop arguing from authority. People don't trust the authorities. That's why they believe in a massive conspiracy to begin with.

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

#539

Post by jexah »

iso947 wrote: post #531
RandomTisk wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My bad, here's a better link. It's hard to find a "mainstream" source because most of the old media is ignoring a lot of newsworthy items these days. https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2020/02/13/rand-paul-blasts-y... It's widely known that Google/Youtube took down any videos where the name of the supposed whistleblower were being mentioned, at least according to a lot of regular content creators who had videos deleted o…

Think about why the only sources you can find are those which Wikipedia says “The site has published a number of falsehoods, conspiracy theories, and intentionally misleading stories.”

Remembering that Wikipedia is also heavily biased.

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

#540

Post by thu2111 »

root_axis wrote: post #243
theandrewbailey wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Youtube is treating Youtube like an authoritative source of knowledge.

Marketing is not reality, this should be pretty obvious on HN.

They're not doing this for marketing reasons. They're doing it because they believe by controlling YouTube they control what people think. Even if they're wrong it's dystopian and suggests a megalomanic attitude.

Remember this is the same company that controls Chrome. It's all fun and games right up until people start discovering their Chromebooks and Androids are blocking web sites on the grounds of "misinformation"

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