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YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation

reuters.com

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Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation

#221

Post by nickff »

gitrog wrote: post #214
nickff wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"The right to free speech is simply a shortcut to a more fundamental right to allow people to live freely without undue influence from others." You are asserting a series of very controversial points here: 1) Some rights are more important than others. 2) Positive rights can override negative rights. 3) 'Living freely without undue influence from others' is more important than 'the right to free speech'. Which philo…

> 1) Some rights are more important than others. If you've been found not guilty of a crime in the US and admit to it afterward, you cannot be prosecuted again by protection of Double Jeopardy, correct? Is that not the same thing as saying some rights are more important than others? And is (2) and (3) not just variations on (1)?

I don't see how your Double Jeopardy example demonstrates 'ranking' of rights. There's no right to punishment of criminals. The US Bill of Rights is a list of negative rights.

I would say that (2) and (3) go further than one. You could say that they are subsets of (1).

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation

#222

Post by raverbashing »

hnlmorg wrote: post #212
owlbynight wrote: post #174

I'll preface this by stating that I hate the idea of censorship and I always have. However, were I to happen across someone motionless on the floor with a needle in their arm, I would give them NARCAN instead of a ride to a rehab center. I'm from the United States. Social media is currently poisoning our country to a degree that I think it may be too late to try and draw out the fight for free speech by using free sp…

Free speech isn't about all voices being equal though, it is about the freedom to speak out against the government. It's an important distinction because the latter is needed for democracy to work where as a former doesn't work in practice because some voices should carry more weight (like subject matter experts). Ironically the former seems more prevalent than ever with every nutjob on social media voicing their opi…

> has been systematically eroding the latter with his "fake news" campaigns and reporter biases.

As much as I disagree with Trump, the news orgs have done that to themselves. And I'm not talking about crap like Fox News

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation

#223

Post by zxcvbn4038 »

I am betting that all of the recent censorship by Google, Facebook, and Twitter is a thin attempt to ward off the anti-trust actions that the US wants to impose on the big tech companies. There is false information out there - that is nothing new - but we're in the territory where we are censoring opinions, viewpoints, and non-predominant theory. Is light a particle or wave? Ban everyone who believes X, they are fools and they shouldn't be allowed to infect others with their heresy.

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation

#224

Post by thaumaturgy »

owlbynight wrote: post #174

I'll preface this by stating that I hate the idea of censorship and I always have. However, were I to happen across someone motionless on the floor with a needle in their arm, I would give them NARCAN instead of a ride to a rehab center. I'm from the United States. Social media is currently poisoning our country to a degree that I think it may be too late to try and draw out the fight for free speech by using free sp…

> ...what YouTube is doing here is a slippery slope and it's scary...

BTW, "slippery slope" was intended to be an example of fallacious thinking. Before it became a popular term, it was intended as a criticism of arguments of the form, "A will lead to B will lead to C, so A is bad."

I'm not bringing this up (just) to be pedantic; the overwhelming evidence to date is that it is extraordinarily difficult to get any of these modern media giants to make any kind of move on any subject at all. You can say very nearly anything you want on YouTube's network, or Twitter's, or Facebook's, and in all cases, the most common forms of censorship are from the DMCA, not politics.

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation

#225

Post by gitrog »

brigandish wrote: post #190
wyattpeak wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> More freedom of speech is the answer to misinformation because then it can be challenged Do we have any evidence that it's true? Anecdotally, it seems that the more the internet has expanded our ability to communicate, the more widespread misinformation has gotten. I see the moral and anti-authoritarian arguments against censorship, but only in the context of accepting the costs. This "have your cake and eat it" ar…

Is/was there less misinformation among a population living under strong censorship? We have several examples to choose from, and I'd wager there's more, at any point in history compared to freer societies. > Anecdotally, it seems that the more the internet has expanded our ability to communicate, the more widespread misinformation has gotten. I completely agree, but why should we assume falsehoods and truth travel at…

No one here is advocating strong censorship though, and there is a massive chasm between banning specific topics during a pandemic and having generally strong censorship.

This slippery slope is fallacious.

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation

#226

Post by nickff »

spuz wrote: post #215
nickff wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"The right to free speech is simply a shortcut to a more fundamental right to allow people to live freely without undue influence from others." You are asserting a series of very controversial points here: 1) Some rights are more important than others. 2) Positive rights can override negative rights. 3) 'Living freely without undue influence from others' is more important than 'the right to free speech'. Which philo…

Sorry maybe I didn't express it correctly but my thoughts were that nobody believes the right to make sounds from our lungs or put words on a page are fundamental - what is more important to us is that our views and opinions are heard by others and that no authority can choose for us what we hear. Living in this way gives us more freedom to choose how we live and allows us to decide who to be influenced by. Now take…

You're now arguing that you also have a right to be heard? That's quite a right!

I am not sure how you would define your 'undue influence' test, as it seems internally inconsistent:

>"For example by asking his followers to reject the views of outsiders (a common tactic in many religions, cults and conspiracy groups) a terrorist could be argued to have taken the freedom to hear other viewpoints away from his followers."

Do you see the inconsistency here? You are looking to forcibly silence one group, so they can listen to 'outsiders'. From the other side, it would look like you're the one advocating in favor of an even more extreme 'undue influence'.

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation

#227

Post by ENOTTY »

owlbynight wrote: post #174

I'll preface this by stating that I hate the idea of censorship and I always have. However, were I to happen across someone motionless on the floor with a needle in their arm, I would give them NARCAN instead of a ride to a rehab center. I'm from the United States. Social media is currently poisoning our country to a degree that I think it may be too late to try and draw out the fight for free speech by using free sp…

I agree with you on the harms that you have identified (overwhelming bullshit).

I think it’s worth thinking about this problem by comparing and contrasting social media to traditional public spaces (like a soapbox in a town square).

By comparing these two kinds of public spaces (ignoring for now the fact that social media is privately owned), one can start to identify the mechanisms in social media platforms that are enabling overwhelming bullshit and work to mitigate, modify, or eliminate those mechanisms.

For what it’s worth, my opinion is that the amplification and discovery mechanisms in any media platform (from print to TV/radio to social media) play a key role in the spreading of bullshit. For that reason, I like twitter’s moves to introduce friction into retweeting. Additionally I support efforts of the social media companies to defeat bot farms.

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation

#228

Post by CyanBird »

crististm wrote: post #218
owlbynight wrote: post #174

I'll preface this by stating that I hate the idea of censorship and I always have. However, were I to happen across someone motionless on the floor with a needle in their arm, I would give them NARCAN instead of a ride to a rehab center. I'm from the United States. Social media is currently poisoning our country to a degree that I think it may be too late to try and draw out the fight for free speech by using free sp…

The point is that youtube is not an absolute authority and truth reference. So when they decide what is misinformation they position themselves above public scrutiny. It's not that the masses are dumb or smart. The few deciders from Youtube are not truth dispensers that we should all trust above all else.

And the few people on the editorial boards of selected news papers or wherever are?

Do I need to mention the "kicking babies out of incubators", or the "Iraq has chemical weapons" bits?

Do you honestly prefer to give the manufacture of consent machinery to the exact same people that had it before hand? The very reason why people don't trust the media is because the old "guardians of the news" thoroughly failed at their supposed mission

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation

#229

Post by lki876 »

dtech wrote: post #193
lki876 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. Something thought to be right was actually wrong. Happens all the time. And of course something thought to be wrong was actually right. This is why disallowing "misinformation" is utterly stupid.

This is not an argument to allow any fearmongering and actively spreading a harmful message. You can use this argument to say nothing should ever be forbidden/punished to say ever.

> This is not an argument to allow any fearmongering

So let's ban information that claims corona isn't that bad then, because it's DANGEROUS and you should BE SCARED and PEOPLE ARE DYING and if you don't wear the mask YOU COULD KILL PEOPLE.

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation

#230

Post by rimliu »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #195
owlbynight wrote: post #174

I'll preface this by stating that I hate the idea of censorship and I always have. However, were I to happen across someone motionless on the floor with a needle in their arm, I would give them NARCAN instead of a ride to a rehab center. I'm from the United States. Social media is currently poisoning our country to a degree that I think it may be too late to try and draw out the fight for free speech by using free sp…

I hate it as well, and if I could come up with some new way of advancing our species aside from free speech I would. I cannot and cannot see how such a thing would ever be possible. Here's a bit of sunshine: the human species has not changed in thousands of years. We're still the same hairless monkeys we were back when people were thinking up all kinds of cool shit. Knowing this, it follows that 10% or so of the popu…

You are right. Hardware hardly changed. However, one can argue, that software that we install into the new copies of hardware changed quite a bit. I think education and developing critical thinking skills should be the key to fixing those problems. Alas, the current trend is to try a way to get an education with as little effort as possible, which is destined to fail.
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