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YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation

reuters.com

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Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation

#261

Post by hef19898 »

CyanBird wrote: post #228
crististm wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 the…

That is a serious problem. Media, traditional media in print and TV and so on, has failings. Problem with all the fake news crying from certain people, it is hard to call these failings out. And the fake news crowd has some truth to point to. And that makes propaganda so much more powerfull, the most powerful lies contain a grain of truth.

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation

#262

Post by sgift »

brigandish wrote: post #201
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This assumes rational, reasonable and good-faith arguments and behaviour though; if there's a thousand voices (pushed by interest groups, foreign governments, advertisers, etc) pushing one narrative, what's a single challenging voice going to do? I mean I can invoke Godwin's Law, but we don't have to go that far back; everybody knew Trump was a terrible person and he should not have been eligible for the presidency,…

> I mean I can invoke Godwin's Law Firstly, the Nazis rose despite and possibly helped by speech laws. > My new favorite wiki page (for now) is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance Secondly, Popper is not calling for speech to be supressed in any way except for those who choose violence instead of speech. The original[1] is better than a Wikipedia article that cuts off the important part of his words: >…

> as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion

Which we cannot do the way Youtube worked until now. The way YouTubes algorithms worked rational argument gets drowned out and public opinion cannot keep anyone in check.

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation

#263

Post by torginus »

While I under what YouTube is trying to do, even if it raise issue with free speech, I feel the bigger issue is how they plan to determine if a video is in line with their policies. Due to the sheer volume of videos YouTube needs to handle, this inevitably will end up as some sort of ML/ Natural Language Processing algorithm. Needless to say, the problem of determining whether a contents of avideo is inline with currently established scientific knowledge, is WAY beyond the ability of the current AI. In practice it seems, that YouTube struggles with basic stuff, like flagging an anti-mask debunking video that contains a part of the video its debunking.

I fear that the in practice, this will mean that if your video contains the 'C-word' in any context, it has a good chance of being deleted, and an even better chance of being demonetized.

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation

#264

Post by stkdump »

konjin wrote: post #204
j8hn wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is a short video from the CDC in March of this year. https://twitter.com/CDCgov/status/1238487810874789889 If you search Google news for "masks" between February and March you can see where the surgeon general and others were saying that masks may increase the likelihood of infection because of touching your face.

I'm glad someone spreading lies like that will be ever banned from youtube.

Did you even watch the video? 1. He says there is no need to wear masks in public "at this time". 2. He says there is no evidence that masks protect you against infections (which is of course something that can and did change over time) 3. He mentioned that touching your face can be dangerous, not that wearing masks increases the risk. I don't think anyone disputed this then or now.

That is something else than people saying now that there is no evidence that masks help, because now we have evidence.

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation

#265

Post by CyanBird »

gitrog wrote: post #238
crististm wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> So when they decide what is misinformation they position themselves above public scrutiny. But aren't Youtube doing this specifically because of pressure from government?

> doing this specifically because

No, more like reducing risks to their brand. Covid is historic and will soil the public image of all these ones whom don't take it as the public health hazard that it is

YouTube is simply minimizing brand risks which can very easily escalate into costly legislative fights, therefore they are maximizing profits on an uncertain time

They decided this move is less damaging to them than not doing it

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation

#266

Post by darkerside »

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…

> The incentives here are not aligned with the survival of our species

It's a pretty far leap from that to saying something should not exist. But I'll bite. How are they not aligned, and why does it not merit existence?

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation

#267

Post by cheph »

bosswipe wrote: post #235
cheph wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I agree that what YouTube is doing here is a slippery slope and it's scary. However, I personally think that this is now a war for democracy, and things are going to need to be sacrificed. YouTube choosing what you can see is as far from democracy as it can get. Not sure how you get from that to saving "democracy".

But this is how it's always been, before the web people got their news from a different set of media companies NBC/ABC/CBS. 20th century media conglomerates didn't have the problem of having to censor viral user generated content but they were still censors, and much stricter censors than the social media companies because their channels had more limited information bandwidth so they had to be much more selective abo…

Slavery was how it's always been until it stopped being how it's always been. Saying something is how it is is not a reason why it should be the way it is.

If you want to support it, you actually have to make an argument for it.

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation

#268

Post by owlbynight »

keiferski wrote: post #236
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 solution is decentralized, verifiable forms of authority. Not unelected, unaccountable corporations that selectively (and with repeated obvious bias) choose what is “true.” Especially not YouTube, of all places, who has about as much authority as McDonalds, as far as I’m concerned. That’s it. No attempt to have a single source of authoritative information is going to work post-Internet. The cat is already out of…

Is this solution possible with misinformation campaigns being waged against it from its inception?

I'm not disagreeing with you on an ideological level, but this solution is pie in the sky.

How do you propose this solution be enacted while the supporters it would need to come to fruition are actively being lobbied by the problem its supposed to solve?

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation

#269

Post by hef19898 »

cheph wrote: post #211
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 that what YouTube is doing here is a slippery slope and it's scary. However, I personally think that this is now a war for democracy, and things are going to need to be sacrificed. YouTube choosing what you can see is as far from democracy as it can get. Not sure how you get from that to saving "democracy".

Youtube is part of a public, non-state-controlled entity. As such, it has close to nothing to do with democracy as a form of government. It does have a social impact, which then influences democracy. As such, Youtube, and FB and Twitter and all the others, do have a responsibility for all of us. And they have to be held accountable for their actions, up to know they just raked in the profits and gave shit about anything else. Them now changing that is a good thing.

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation

#270

Post by dna_polymerase »

gitrog wrote: post #217
roenxi wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Banning everyone who disagrees with the current state of the science is also not how science works; and yet YouTube is going to attempt (and fail) to do just that. YouTube is almost certainly going to be banning literal doctors with actual PHDs from expressing scientific opinions which later turn out to be substantiated. The article says this ban includes material that "explicitly disputes health authorities’ guidanc…

> YouTube is almost certainly going to be banning literal doctors with actual PHDs from expressing scientific opinions which later turn out to be substantiated. To be fair, Youtube shouldn't be the platform where doctors express their scientific opinion or try to win over support.

Why not? It pretty accessible and a nicely done video does more for the education of the general public than some pdf on a server behind a Springer paywall.
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