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YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation

reuters.com

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Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation

#511

Post by raxxorrax »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #167
piokoch wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Misinformation coming from some random youtubers is not dangerous as nobody really cares what they say. The problem starts when you have a Yale educated doctor telling publicly that eggs (or butter, or fat) are unhealthy and then you have Harvard educated doctor who tells you the opposite. Same with wearing masks. We heard from the official sources (WHO, governments) that wearing mask by healthy people does not help,…

Except literally millions of people see and consume similar content, and then spread it to millions of other people in both its original form and other media. This is an actual thing that we can see happen in real time. It very, very obviously causes damage - and claiming it’s just “some random youtubers” is a deliberate attempt to misrepresent that. If you disagree that this approach is wise, or effective, or morall…

> It very, very obviously causes damage

It isn't obvious to me. Where has this caused concrete damage?

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation

#512

Post by desipis »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #387
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #195

Earlier 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'…

This is my line of thinking. Which is why I see professions that deal with the real world (engineers, doctors, lawyers to some extent) remaining more grounded in their thinking when compared to those that focus on people's opinions (politicians, media, academics, professional moralisers). The former are regularly conditioned to think in terms of unavoidable realities, while the later are repeatedly conditioned to drift further and further into their collective delusions.

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation

#513

Post by leetcrew »

blub wrote: post #338
pjc50 wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we've solved over and over again the problem of what it takes to have a peaceful and progressive society ... have we? Much of the 20th century was spent at war, with a death total somewhere in the region of a hundred million. As were most of the previous centuries. There have been isolated pockets where one might have a lifetime of stability over a wide area, but few of those were also "free". > The problem we have…

Actually, if we could snap our fingers and wish social media out of existence tomorrow nothing really bad would happen, besides some influencers becoming poorer. The opposite of social media today (election manipulation, divided societies, ethnic cleansing) is the state of affairs before social media, which wasn't bad at all. I'm struggling to think of large-scale benefits social media has brought us, because the ind…

> Actually, if we could snap our fingers and wish social media out of existence tomorrow nothing really bad would happen, besides some influencers becoming poorer.

I disagree. I would lose the ability to contact many good friends.

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation

#514

Post by kyle_martin1 »

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 realities of censorship are and historically have been large net losses. That was one of the large premises of the founding of the United States, among many other ideals.

So in the interest humanity and historical evidence, censorship is and will always be a bad idea. The best ideas will eventually win, as history has also shown us.

Source: US constitution, Venezuelan history, Romanian history, British history, Korean history, Vietnam history, Chinese history, Cuban history, Cambodian history, Soviet Union history, German history. That’s just a start.

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation

#515

Post by raxxorrax »

xmprt wrote: post #155
maaand wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are essentially arguing, your preferred side should be allowed to perpetuate hoaxes, not your opponents.

People always say there's a right and a wrong or that there are two equally valid sides to an argument but that's just plain wrong. The Earth isn't flat, the government isn't run by lizard people, and masks are effective at curbing spread of a airborne disease. You make it sound like both sides are perpetuating hoaxes but YouTube is only censoring the hoaxes from one side.

There are always different perspective on everything. You can determine the value of each for yourself and try to convince others of its merits. That is your freedom and your limit.

> You make it sound like both sides are perpetuating hoaxes

Which sides? Which hoaxes?

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation

#517

Post by tazjin »

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 do not like the idea that hard, easily proven facts can be overwhelmed by voluminous bullshit.

In principle this sounds agreeable, in practice it is often not that easy because things get muddied fast as soon as politics are involved.

I'm very skeptical/opposed to this particular measure, and others like it, because well-intentioned people are also fallible.

Disclaimer: I work at Alphabet, but this is strictly my personal opinion.

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation

#518

Post by Applejinx »

rmrfstar wrote: post #483
dgb23 wrote: post #452

Earlier 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…

> This is from the top of my head but there are certainly other people who have smarter ideas that don't involve straight up censorship. So what can you conclude about the private intent of key decision makers? I find that imputing malign intent often improves my ability to forecast outcomes. Whether there is actual bad faith almost doesn't matter if the assumption improves forecasts.

I agree. The thing that makes me suspicious is an absolute demand that things have to be taken at, and discussed at, face value.

The existence of malign intent is hardly mysterious. It's like the Firesign Theater skit with a political guy declaring, "And you can believe me. Because I never lie. And I'm always right." Part of the gag is that the guy picked to read the line is capable of delivering it really, really convincingly. You go, 'wow! He really means that… hey waitaminnit…'

I think it's interesting to see these tech giants react to a repeating pattern of using direct manipulative lying as a weapon. It fits with some of my 'singularity' theories: corporations are like aggregate people, and AI is a still higher level than that, and it's neither easy nor desirable to use these newer forms of intelligence to replicate the worst follies of the individual human.

At some point, tolerating the wilder excesses of the individual 'cell' will kill the 'host' organism, which if it's a corporation depends on living humans, if it's an AI depends on living human societies. If you've got an AI that isn't really an AI and is just a large informational weapon, or a corporation that isn't really an aggregate person and is just the intentions of one human expressed through power, there's no constraint on the actions of the larger more powerful entity. But if you have the larger organism (whether it's a corporation or a proper AI with a broad enough awareness) it's going to eventually resist self-destructive actions even if they're expressed in a complex way. I see this as YouTube as a larger organism recognizing it is being used as a weapon and trying to protect itself against future punishment or diminishment by preventing itself from being used in a particular way.

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation

#519

Post by paganel »

The Chief Scientist of the WHO still believed as recently as August that the mortality rate for this virus was still at 1% [1], even though Sweden had published its first data at the start of that month saying that the mortality rate in their case was around 0.4-0.6%. I've seen people mentioning a more recent CDC number of 0.35% mortality.

So, when even the Chief Scientist of the WHO doesn't know what she's talking about then based on what premises will the YT censors carry out the censorship?

[1] https://www.theweek.co.uk/108312/coalition-scientists-call-f...

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation

#520

Post by andi999 »

christophilus wrote: post #455
jmull wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't you think it makes sense that as we learned about how the virus spreads, and as the number of people infected exploded, that the mask recommendation might change? I think you're trying to mock scientific experts, but what kind of expert would NOT be willing to change their recommendation based on new, strong, contrary information? Of course experts would prefer not to make a recommendation until all the facts a…

The point is, if every platform pulls a YouTube, there will never be new, strong contrary information. It’s a tough problem. But scientific advancement depends on the ability to challenge broadly held opinion. I think part of the solution to the misinformation problem is to A) have a much better education system, and B) have much better media presentation around the facts. If you don’t have A, all is lost ultimately.…

Scientific advancement doesnt happen through youtube though, but peer reviewed journals.
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