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…
YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation
501–510 of 933 posts
Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation
#502Earlier quoted context omitted.
> things are going to need to be sacrificed I say this for emphasis, not to personally attack you: Whenever I read or hear this it makes me extremely suspicious, because it often doesn't come from those who will do the sacrifice themselves. Censorship and other forms of regulating free speech is simply never a good solution. Perpetrators of lies will even hide behind this, and create a false image of rebellious heroi…
> Censorship and other forms of regulating free speech is simply never a good solution. The almost free speech on the other side of the ocean seems to be working pretty well. You get to say anything that isn’t actively harmful to others, but you won’t be able to advertise bleach as a way to get Corona out of your system.
you can't do this in the US either if you're actually selling bleach. are you saying in europe ordinary people aren't allowed to publicly speculate about cures for the virus?
Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation
#503Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your thesis is based on the notion that “society is unstable” more than ever before. How are you measuring that? Despite tons of noise in social media, real life up has been incredibly stable for the last couple of decades in the west. The least amount of violence, lowest extreme poverty, highest disposable income, etc etc. In the 70s (before social media), there were multiple bombings every year in the US. That is c…
the US life expectancy is falling largely due to suicide, drug overdoses, and obesity. the richest city on earth has a sizable, entrenched homeless population that openly do drugs on the street. Are we not in the midst of the opioid epidemic? Can what happens in Chicago be characterized as a war? There is deep dysfunction and societal numbness to not see these realities; despite the riches accrued and the definitive…
You'll need a different gauge than that. I'll give you life expectancy. But I'll raise you obesity and other self-induced problems that have gotten worse statistically.
Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation
#504This is the slippery slope of censorship on display for everyone to see. What panel of certified physicians is YouTube using to identify what information is correct vs. incorrect? I'm pretty sure they don't have any doctors doing this. The ban is a political act and not a scientific one.
Damned if you do, damned if you don't. If these platforms don't do anything then everyone talks about how misinformation is rampant on these platforms, how dangerous it is and that nothings being done about it. If they do, then everyone's worried about censorship or blamed to be politically motivated. There could be simple legislation that defines what is and what isn't to be censored, then these platforms can adhere…
> everyone talks about how misinformation is rampant on these platforms
There is no tangible evidence for that, supporters of this strategy believe in conspiracies themselves. Same strategy as with Nazis on the net: ignore them.
That really works and it already has for years before everyone became panicked.
Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation
#505Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> it follows that 10% or so of the population are, well, nuts. Another 10% are so are willing to do anything to become famous. It has always been this way. Not sure that's true, though. Here's a cloud to cover your sunshine: what if the very concept that beliefs have to correspond to observable reality is a relatively new one, or a relatively unpopular one (with a 10% of the population subscribing to it)? What if it'…
The key innovation we require, as a society, are better feedback mechanisms to correct inaccurate beliefs. This means more frequent, but smaller, pain in response to mistakes. To those who object, the alternative isn't no pain, but rather, the catastrophic pain of collapse. Society is really a collection of institutions, and somehow in all institutions, loyalty has usurped principle, and accountability fails because the accuser is shunned, hated, feared. So, institution by institution, we weaken.
The solution, for example in academia, is to shun (fire, blacklist, etc) those "researchers" who cheat, lie, and distort their findings. In the justice system, lawyers, police, and judges who break the rules should be punished more, not less, severely than the rest of us. Again, these are not changes born of malice, or a desire to see more suffering, but rather a price we must accept to maintain healthy institutions with high standards, and so, prevent societal collapse.
In some ways I think "cancel culture" is a reaction to this lack of accountability, as an attempt to replace it, to ape it, almost like a cargo cult. Of course, there are huge problems with this, not the least of which there is not an institution behind it, but rather just mob rule that answers to no-one, not even itself.
Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation
#506Earlier quoted context omitted.
What are you talking about?! Don’t blame social media, the biggest and loudest source of COVID-related misinformation have been institutions like the WHO. There is very little science (we don’t yet have enough data, and not enough time has passed), so all we have to go on is “broscience” (smartly connecting anecdotal facts and whatever little data we have, and drawing sensible conclusions). By designating one opinion…
> Don’t blame social media, the biggest and loudest source of COVID-related misinformation have been institutions like the WHO. This is demonstrably untrue. There is measurably more bullshit on Facebook groups than there is coming from the WHO and other institutions.
Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation
#507I question what constitutes censorship here to people? Is all censorship is bad? Moderation is bad? Should Hacker News in particular not have rules to censor content that does not follow rules? Censorship has and will always be part of our lives. The problem is the application of it. I applaud YouTube, Twitter and FB primarily for trying to not facilitate distribution of bullshit all because free speech. Free speech…
And in what way are YouTube, Twitter and Facebook qualified to determine what's bullshit and what isn't? What really happens is that those services just end up forcing their values/beliefs on their users.
Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation
#508Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd be interested to know what your thoughts are on the UK and German models of "free speech" where no one has an absolute right to say what they want - certain subjects such as Holocaust denial or promotion of terrorism are banned. You could argue that we have been on a slippery slope for a long time but you could equally argue the slippery slope is a fallacy. I think it's important to think about what the actual pu…
The idea of an arbiter of what is and isn't free speech is deeply repulsive to me. So is cough medicine. So is chemotherapy. I can't see every cell of the cancer but collectively, there's enough of it visible to shake me. Do you kill the poison with a lesser poison? Depends on your level of concern, I suppose. Philosophically, I'm in a weird place right now to be honest. If you told me that our country was going to r…
Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation
#509Earlier quoted context omitted.
China and WHO confirmed human to human transmission on Jan 20, before any doctors died and before China closed Wuhan province. Anyone who says or implies otherwise are lying or misinformed. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/20/coronavirus-sp...
And they were denying it a week earlier: https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152
Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation
#510Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I just mean that they should have their work peer reviewed first.