Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

681–690 of 933 posts

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation

#681

Post by legitster »

cwhiz wrote: post #631

The YouTube suggestion algorithm is the problem! Create a new account, watch any political video, and then click through the suggestions. Keep clicking through the suggestions and in hour you will be on some extremist nonsense. YouTube is the source of this problem, and their solution is censorship? It's ridiculous. Show people the videos they have subscribed or searched for, and that's it. The majority of people don…

I actually appreciate the suggestions, it's how I have found most of the content I enjoy, and it's an important way to let new YouTube channels get established.

But yeah, I dread when someone sends me a politically charged video and suddenly my feed is full of crazy people.

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation

#682

Post by hairofadog »

Sincere question for the folks who posit that any regulation of broadcast of information is pragmatically bad: do you think there's no problem with the scale of the disinformation campaigns in popular social media? Or that it's a problem, but same as it ever was? Or that it's an unsolvable problem? Or that there's some other solution?

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation

#683

Post by collyw »

estebank wrote: post #676
collyw wrote: post #659

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"That's racist"

People responding to someone with "that's racist" isn't censorship. It's others exercising their free speech to strongly disagree with the points raised.

The end effect is the same, shutting down the conversation.

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation

#684

Post by confidantlake »

kyle_martin1 wrote: post #514
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, K…

Let me preface this by saying I used to be a free speech absolutist, and maybe I will be again some day. I still don't think the government should be banning speech. But I think companies moderating their spaces is necessary.

Good moderation is large part of why this forum is so good in the first place. The history of the internet has shown us that unmoderated spaces turn into dumpster fires.

German history seems to be the classic example of an unchecked conspiracy theory doing massive damage. That is why holocaust denial was made illegal in much of Europe.

I am ignorant of most of the other histories. Would love to hear your take.

(Also as an aside, I upvoted you since I think you make good points and provoke an interesting discussion, even if we don't agree on everything).

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation

#685

Post by nl »

hef19898 wrote: post #509
nomdep wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And they were denying it a week earlier: https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152

And last year in January they didn't even talk about it. Why would we listen anyway? I hope that's not your point.

Do you mean in January 2020?

They were talking about it a lot then: they had daily situation reports on the WHO website. I know because I was reading them!

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation

#686

Post by shadowgovt »

rmrfstar wrote: post #673
shadowgovt wrote: post #665

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Essentially, the international scope of the communications tools online has allowed for free-speech absolutism to be hacked by the propaganda methods refined via the Cold War. the NYT isn't highly likely to publish things that source to Russian propaganda ops, because they employ fact-checkers, care about pedigree of information, and change their editorial process in light of system failures. They get tripped from ti…

> the NYT isn't highly likely to publish things that source to Russian propaganda ops, The people who lied us into Iraq?

Yes, those people. As I said, they get tripped from time-to-time, but they modify their process when it happens.

In that case, they had multiple intelligence agency sources feeding them the same bad data, so their cross-checks failed. They've down-sampled the reliability of those sources in subsequent years.

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation

#687

Post by jennyyang »

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…

> things are going to need to be sacrificed.

What a comically cliche and stereotypical error that people keep making. 20 years ago it was the Bush and Cheney saying the same thing. Now its the liberals saying that the "poor, ignorant masses" need to be saved from themselves. For the record, I'm also a liberal, but old school liberal, not the contemporary liberal that eschews giving the same rights to those that I disagree with.

Who gets to decide what gets sacrificed? You? What happens when The Other Side gets control? The laws that protect their free speech are the exact same laws that will protect our rights when the opposition gets control.

Never, ever, ever mess with the ideals of Free Speech. No one is smart enough or uncorrupt enough to navigate that properly. The only thing that will save us as a society is completely unadulterated free speech. What we do as a society is to educate as best as we can and let the chips fall where they may. Which is hard, because we have the worst levels of education in developed countries, so we are reaping what we sowed for the last few decades. But basically it's herd immunity for information.

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation

#688

Post by blackbear_ »

Karunamon wrote: post #639
jackhack wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nonsense. Almost free speech is censorship by another name. Working "pretty well?" Sure, unless one tries to talk about things that really matter and strays outside the dotted lines of permissibility. Some topics are verboten. When you say "other side of the ocean," I assume you're talking about Europe. Try to discuss the muslim rape gangs in the UK. Try to discuss the surge in grenade attacks and many-fold increase…

Indeed. There's a Chomsky quote that fits here: The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum—even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on t…

This quote comes from Chomsky's book "Understanding power" [1], which I highly recommend reading.. more than once

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Understanding_Power

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation

#689

Post by marbletiles »

Nasrudith wrote: post #613
marbletiles wrote: post #567

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way to preserve free speech (really "free promotion" or "free publishing" in this case, as there are other avenues for these videos) is exactly what you say — consequences. Newspapers have free speech, but are subject to libel laws, for instance. There's no real mechanism to hold YouTube to account for promoting and spreading this stuff, and they are naturally incentivised for that mechanism never to come about.…

Funny how consequences always means bad ones, "people who say something I don't like get the stick!" and then later "I never thought I would get the stick sobs person brutalized with stick!". Free speech is sancrosanct for a reason.

Where do you get the idea that free speech means "freedom from consequences"? You're allowed to say offensive things, but you're not immune from (eg) getting fired for it

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation

#690

Post by bryan0 »

nineplay wrote: post #661
cwhiz wrote: post #631

The YouTube suggestion algorithm is the problem! Create a new account, watch any political video, and then click through the suggestions. Keep clicking through the suggestions and in hour you will be on some extremist nonsense. YouTube is the source of this problem, and their solution is censorship? It's ridiculous. Show people the videos they have subscribed or searched for, and that's it. The majority of people don…

You don't even have to watch a political video. I have crap popping up all the time, "Watch this professor get destroyed by !" I know youtube is a shithole and yet it still surprises me. My son's favorite kid's show is only on YouTube so I created a new account, subscribed just to their channel and still inappropriate content shows up. How hard is this? I also can't block it for my daughter because she has school ass…

> I also can't block it for my daughter because she has school assignments that involve watching YouTube videos.

Our school uses http://www.viewpure.com/ to avoid this.

Also, I agree you don't even need to watch a political video to see political garbage on youtube. Last night they showed me some bizarre political conspiracy ad saying Pelosi and Harris are going to invoke the 25th amendment on Biden to make Harris the president. YouTube was promoting this nonsense at the top of the feed.

Post reply on HN