YouTube suspends Rand Paul for seven days • Hacker News Board

Re: YouTube suspends Rand Paul for seven days

#511

Post by Barrin92 » Wed, Aug 11, 2021, 11:36 PM UTC

fighterpilot wrote: post #149

Someone1234 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So your point is that a federal agency got more data and updated its guidance inline with that data? That's what they're meant to do...

Their point is that the official stance can easily be wrong, which calls into question whether it's a good idea to silence people who are questioning it, which is what many were doing on social media in early 2020 when the official stance was that masks don't work.

depends entirely on how someone is 'questioning' something. Merely contradicting existing public health guidelines with misinformation or speculation provides no actual meaningful further input.

as per the article, youtube's policy is: "and we make exceptions for videos that have additional context such as countervailing views from local health authorities". So presumably if your contradicting opinion is actually substantiated you're not getting the banhammer, which seems fair to me.

But letting people rant against public health guidelines which exist to prevent harm (even if to some degree uncertain) without actually justifying their case is irresponsible.

Re: YouTube suspends Rand Paul for seven days

#512

Post by scythe » Wed, Aug 11, 2021, 11:36 PM UTC

chlodwig wrote: post #87

ALittleLight wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is blocking X% of the virus particles less impactful if there's more of them? Fewer particles admitted means reduced chance of infection, no? Always better to less virus particles than more.

Fewer particles admitted means reduced chance of infection, no? The thing to keep in mind is that blocking 50% of the particles does not mean a 50% reduction in infection. It may mean a 50% reduction in infection -- or it may mean a basically zero percent reduction. It depends on the exposure. Say that in a particular covid-filled room you have a 50% chance of being infected after 5 minutes and a 99.9% chance of bein…

A model with misleading values can easily reach misleading conclusions. If there were any places where the chance of infection reaches even 50% after an hour, there would be huge, obvious outbreaks associated with people going to those places. The actual observed spread of SARS-CoV-2 has been much slower than this; a basic reproduction number of 7 together with a duration of two weeks means that the average infected person behaving like an average American in 2020 will infect 0.5 persons per day (I'm being generous). This counts situations like e.g. someone becomes infected and goes home to their family and literally lives there. Even in those situations it moves slowly.

Or, to put it more on the nose: the half-life for an American getting CoViD under ordinary conditions seems to be longer than a year. Using your linear model, a 50% mask would make it more than two years! So half-life exhaustion doesn't seem an appropriate counterpoint.

Re: YouTube suspends Rand Paul for seven days

#513

Post by amznthrwaway » Wed, Aug 11, 2021, 11:36 PM UTC

bcrosby95 wrote: post #311

suyash wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally agree, YouTube is in the wrong here. They are no arbitrator of truth or facts, leave that to the courts and allow 'real free speech' in online platforms.

So 'real free speech' is about requiring private companies to carry the message of a politically powerful agent of the government?

[dead]

Re: YouTube suspends Rand Paul for seven days

#514

Post by AnimalMuppet » Wed, Aug 11, 2021, 11:36 PM UTC

selimthegrim wrote: post #491

treeman79 wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Misinformation is the excuse. This is banning a political party on whatever reason they think they can get away with.

Rand Paul is the GOP now? You might want to tell Trump that.

Well, they're also banning Trump...

(Different "they", though - Twitter. But Twitter was Trump's main medium. Anyway, point is, once you raise the topic, yeah, it looks like treeman79 actually does have a bit of evidence on his side...)

Re: YouTube suspends Rand Paul for seven days

#515

Post by patmcc » Wed, Aug 11, 2021, 11:37 PM UTC

tw600040 wrote: post #227

patmcc wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>I for one want to hear his expertise, even if it disagrees with the conclusions you've already made. That's fine. YouTube doesn't want to host it, because in their view it's harmful. What's the problem?

So if some restaurant business says X (gays, christians, asians etc) not welcome we don't want to host them, that's fine too?

We make a distinction between characteristics/traits and actions, generally. It's generally wrong to discriminate based on traits and fine to discriminate on actions.

So; if YouTube said "we don't allow Christian white men" or whatever, absolutely, that's terrible and shouldn't be allowed. If they say "we don't allow people to say things that are actively harmful" that's quite different.

If you go into a restaurant and insult the servers, or start bothering other patrons, they'll ask you to leave. That's perfectly fine.

Re: YouTube suspends Rand Paul for seven days

#516

Post by newacct583 » Wed, Aug 11, 2021, 11:37 PM UTC

nomel wrote: post #431

newacct583 wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> His comment was on masks reducing the risk of you getting infected, not infecting others. His comment was extremely ambiguous and certainly sounded to me like he was claiming masks don't work as a tool to fight the pandemic, or at least carefully choosing his works to align himself with the factions in his base that believe they don't. If you want to say the words "masks don't work", in a screed arguing against mas…

I find this need to pander to people who are incapable/uninterested in understanding the reality and nuances of a conversation very frustrating. I see it as a race to the bottom for news organizations, and society, where we weaponize and spread the intentional misunderstanding of conversations that are often well formed and logical.

> I see it as a race to the bottom for news organizations, and society

Why are you citing "news organizations" and "society" when the offender is a political leader? I don't argue with your point but it seems like your blame is misplaced.

Re: YouTube suspends Rand Paul for seven days

#517

Post by rwcarlsen » Wed, Aug 11, 2021, 11:37 PM UTC

nicetryguy wrote: post #402

rwcarlsen wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I argued nothing black and white at all. I said that these things are tradeoffs . In this case - it is something along the lines of a freedom safety tradeoff. And why aren't people allowed to draw their own lines on that spectrum. I was just stating that I draw my line in a different place than some.

Why bother locking your doors if a criminal can just carry a crowbar and pry it open anyway? Gray areas exist. If you decide to drive drunk and hit me while i am driving while i'm wearing a seatbelt you could kill me. If you decide not to wear a mask in public and are an asympomatic carrier of COVID and i am immunocompromised you could kill me. This has nothing to do with personal choice or liberty, it is a legitimat…

We allow people to make personal choices all the time that negatively impact others. I am acknowledging the gray area and have been the entire time. I'm saying that on the particular issue of seatbelts (and mask wearing) - I prefer to let people make their own choices being fully aware that it could cause some amount indirect harm to others. Maybe I hate the color yellow - people can still have yellow cars. I hate breathing in second-hand smoke, but I don't think people should be disallowed from smoking everywhere. I pay into entitlement programs that help support medical costs for people that voluntarily engaged in unsafe activities that caused their health problems. I still think those people should be allowed to make those choices.

Re: YouTube suspends Rand Paul for seven days

#518

Post by telxoss » Wed, Aug 11, 2021, 11:37 PM UTC

kypro wrote: post #404

Bud wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is unquestionably misinformation, and Rand Paul needs to have a permanent muzzle installed until covid is extinct. Masks DO WORK. Yes, N95s work better than cloth masks, usually, but cloth masks work very well for reducing the likelihood that a covid-positive person will transmit the virus. This isn't controversial. Rand Paul needs to stop spreading lies on purpose, and if he won't, I fully support YouTube telli…

There’s a lot of people agreeing and disagree with your perspective here. Individual opinions on what Rand Paul said are frankly irrelevant to the underlying discussion here. There are many intelligent people on both sides of this debate and for either side to preemptively conclude that they are right and the other side needs to be silenced (by private for-profit companies) is incredibly naive thinking. If an issue i…

Especially an elected official.

I am vaccinated and still wear a mask but censoring an elected official over this is just disgusting.

I don't know how anyone who cares about our democracy can be for this.

Re: YouTube suspends Rand Paul for seven days

#519

Post by robotresearcher » Wed, Aug 11, 2021, 11:37 PM UTC

syshum wrote: post #444

robotresearcher wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we did that and got the jab ...but you were not appeased No, not enough of us did that. For measles and polio we did. No one is asking you to wear a measles mask, and measles is very contagious.

Thanks for admitting that you are treating this like Polio, and not like the Flu... Treating COVID like polio is foolish, and naive. All indications are COVID will be an annual thing like the flu, chances are mutations will be more transmissible but less deadly (and the data is bearing this out) Chances are we will need annual "booster" or other vaccine just like the flu... We do not mandate people get the annual flu…

The question is how to get the fraction of people vaccinated high enough, so that costly mask+behavior mandates are obviated.

Mask wearing and behavior changes last year were massively effective against flu, by accident.

Flu is usually much less deadly than COVID. That factor matters in how we treat it.

(edit: added data) The 2017-2018 flu season was an historically bad one in the US, resulting in an estimated 30,453 hospitalizations the whole season.

The 7 day moving average for new COVID hospital admissions is 89,977 today, and peaked at about 260K in a single week in January.

Re: YouTube suspends Rand Paul for seven days

#520

Post by adventured » Wed, Aug 11, 2021, 11:37 PM UTC

lupire wrote: post #400

shadowgovt wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I, for one, wouldn't think that was crazy, no. Not when the preventability of those deaths is proportional to how well people stick to pandemic mitigation protocol. Very, very few people are willing to just shrug and say "600,000 preventable deaths is acceptable" in this context. The pandemic creates challenges that are uniquely tuned to impact the American "rugged individualism" approach to problem solving that work…

> "rugged individualism" approach to problem solving that works well in most circumstances. I would love a source for this, because "rugged individualism" is the reason why US has the worst healthcare and homelessness of developed nations.

> and homelessness of developed nations

That's false by a large margin. The US rate of homelessness has been massively reduced over the past 20-30 years and is comparable to Austria.

The US homelessness rate is far below Sweden, France, Britain, Australia, Canada. It's also below the Netherlands.

The housing first program by the US worked exceptionally well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_homeless_...