I sort of feel like a dunce reading this thread, as I can't get my head around the fact that Youtube removing a video is being called censorship. Doesn't Hacker News let readers downvote unpopular opinions until they're effectively erased? Why isn't anyone calling HN on its censorship? Is it just the size of the viewership that matters, as if, after a big enough user threshold you have to act like a public service? I'm being honest here, why should Youtube have to host any uploaded video it doesn't want to? Question to free speech absolutists: should Youtube allow pornographic videos on its site? What about extremely violent videos, like car crash fatalities, etc? What about child pornography? Why does Youtube /have/ to host garbage?
Isn't the issue here something else, that a lot of people now have bandwith to express what they want, yet the biggest channels for this expression are just like every other important commercial segment, in that a few very big companies are in control of most of the bandwith? When did network TV stations were accused of censorship if they didn't want to air a KKK ad, or interview one of its leaders just because he wanted to air his opinions on race?
YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation
801–810 of 933 posts
Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation
#802Earlier quoted context omitted.
No January 2019. As a reply to the WHO revising their opinion on human-to-human transmission commment above. I read the situation reports a lot as well, I guess I'll start doing so again.
There was no Covid in Jan 2019(??) I have no idea what you are arguing.
Regarding the GP, attacking the WHO for changing their minds regarding human to human transmission as he found a statement dating before the one you shared. Doing that would also allow you to attack the WHO for not talking about COVID-19 before it struck, same logic and just as wrong.
Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation
#803Earlier quoted context omitted.
Once you give people the power to censor things, you can't assume that the people with that power will act in good faith forever, even if they do currently. Would you want to give that power to your political opponents? If not it's better than nobody have that power.
Someone always has and always will have that power though. I would rather the owner of the platform than the government have that power. Think about this: would you rather have the power to decide what speech you allow in your house, or would you rather the government decide for you? Because those are really your choices.
So the choice is between a corporation beholden to no-one apart from the CEO, or someone you can vote out every so often?
People will always have that power, at least at a technical level, but they should be discouraged to use it.
Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation
#804Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not defending WHOs treatment of Taiwan. I think that incident was atrocious. Your link says (about the Dec 31 email): "Public health professionals could discern from this wording that there was a real possibility of human-to-human transmission of the disease. However, because at the time there were as yet no cases of the disease in Taiwan, we could not state directly and conclusively that there had been human-to-…
I apologize if this is presumptuous of me, but I get the impression that you don't live here, haven't followed this topic in much detail and probably haven't read anything at all in local media from that time frame. Here's more background: Dr. Li Wenliang's email warning colleagues about the outbreak was sent on December 30th. Multiple Taiwanese doctors were working in Wuhan at that time. Taiwan's very early and very…
I hope we can agree to argue about spilled milk doesn't help anyone. Especially when this spilled milk is used now to basically discredit very relevant organizations in the midst of a pandemic. But maybe you can share some recent fuck ups from the side of the WHO, real fuck ups and not opinions that changed over time as they learned more and more about COVID-19.
Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation
#805Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There's often no way of knowing whether the lecture is being given by a college physics professor or a 9/11 truther, except by examining the contents Exactly this. Your points about extremist content stand as well. We've countless examples of NGOs that fight extremism, that get their content taken down due to algorithmic monitoring. AI aren't capable of this sort of nuanced decision making and there is no evidence…
That's the how, but not the why. A free flow of information is a net good. Restricting information is a net bad. Western society learned this 400 years ago. These are the same arguments which were used against the printing press, now being used against the internet, fighting against a new enlightenment the same way that the church fought to maintain their monopoly on knowledge. All combating "extremism" does is prote…
A free flow of information is a net good - by default.
From this point, publicly visible information that consistently shows to be counterproductive could be reasonably restricted from the highest volume platforms.
1 zillion loopholes ought to be enough for anyone.
Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation
#806Earlier quoted context omitted.
It happened in many countries around the world at all levels of government. History has shown that blindly following uber global bodies like the WHO can have a massive negative outcomes even with best intentions.
The first global body was the League of Nations, if you exclude entities like the British Empire from the perspective of their colonies. When exactly did following the UN or any other body result in desaster?
The topic was masks. So following that advice caused many lives lost.
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/04/why-world...
UN specifically
Israeli occupation (1948-Now) Kashmir dispute (1948-Now) Cambodia violence (1975-1979) Somali civil war (1991-Now) Rwandan civil war (1994) Srebrenica Massacre (1995) Darfur conflict in Sudan (2003-Now) Iraq invasion (2003-2011) Rohingya Crisis, Myanmar (2017-Now)
Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation
#807Earlier quoted context omitted.
Youtube and facebook refusing to host something is not a slippery slope to something being completely censored. Anyone can rent a server in pretty much any country. Saying the biggest companies in the world not hosting you is the same as being completely censored is like saying you will die of thirst if you aren't allowed to drink coke.
> like saying you will die of thirst if you aren't allowed to drink coke. I will die of thirst though if every source of water has a megacorp in the supply chain that can cut me off from it. Imagine a world where your tap water is ultimately sourced from Dasani. And imagine Dasani can cut off my water if I say bad things they don't like. That is the world we live in: s/tap water/information/g, s/Dasani/tech megacorps…
> That is the world we live in
No it isn't. Again, you can rent a VPS for under $10 in almost any country in the world.
> To reach a significant audience on the internet
This is not necessarily true, but it isn't really the point. You can put stuff up and people can access it.
You are not entitled to maximum easy discovery. You are not entitled to be advertised and promoted to a significant audience. The internet is a pull medium not push. If people want to hear what you have to say they can.
Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation
#808Earlier quoted context omitted.
I personally think that this is now a war for democracy In this war for democracy, which side of the war do you think wants everyone to be able to access any information and which side do you think wants to control the flow of information? How can we value each and every voter's input if we don't value their ability to filter for themselves what is true?
When you order a product on Amazon that immediately breaks and then you find out that of its 10000 reviews, 9750 of them were fake, I commend your ability to put your personal feelings aside in lieu of the greater fight for free speech.
That's a poor analogy. We're not talking about a service that is trying to help users achieve clearly definable goals like eliminating fraud with their customers' consent. No one is claiming that Amazon customers object to having Amazon's help to prevent being defrauded.
We're talking about communication platforms where politically motivated decisions are being made to filter out information that the decision-makers don't like, and the users are saying, "We don't want you to make those decisions for us."
But also think through my original point. Why should we value democracy, the notion that each person has valuable and necessary input in building a society, when we hand control of information over to the very few? Shouldn't we cut out the middlemen and just have our information overlords be in charge of creating and implementing all our policies? Why trust people to vote when we don't trust them to choose and evaluate information?
Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation
#809Earlier quoted context omitted.
You've never understood why parents protect children from things that they will eventually be exposed to as adults? If your goal is to give your children unfiltered access to "reality," parents are entirely unnecessary after birth.
>You've never understood why parents protect children from things that they will eventually be exposed to as adults? If your goal is to give your children unfiltered access to "reality," parents are entirely unnecessary after birth. Hey I have a different opinion than you. I think you should respect that rather than say parents are unnecessary after birth. That's rude. First off think about it logically. Why indeed d…
Wow, A real life libertarian true believer, look at that. I didn't know there was such a thing
Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation
#810Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'll point up to the original topic. Do you think it's a good idea to let a young child watch anti-vaccine videos? What about political videos which claim that 'the other' side supports killing babies? Young kids don't yet have the context to understand lying and propaganda, and it's not clear when they'd have the mental maturity to understand it. More specifically, I was raised in a generation where adults didn't wo…
I would explain the content to them. Explain all the different sides and my personal views on it as well as direct him to content with opposing views. Then I would let him form his own opinion. My job as a parent is to help him understand. Not to build a bubble. As for violent content I would tell my kid to just watch out for that and that the content is unpleasant. It's his choice whether he wants to see it. Usually…
I will happily concede that your three year old is a more advanced thinker than mine is.
As for violent content, with YouTube specifically it is easy to watch it without being forewarned. I don't know if you are aware of Elsagate but the whole goal is to get kids to watch horribly disturbing content without warning.