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YouTube is banning anti-vaccine activists and blocking all anti-vaccine content

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101–110 of 1001 posts

Re: YouTube is banning anti-vaccine activists and blocking all anti-vaccine content

#101
Inb4 it’s a private company argument. Or they are free to setup their own video sharing site argument.

What happens when a topic you care about is censored? How would you feel?

Are you really going to recreate your own video sharing website just to share your ideas?

Re: YouTube is banning anti-vaccine activists and blocking all anti-vaccine content

#102
post #40

Time for repeat showing of the free speech debate we’ve already had a dozen times, whoopee! As ever, IMO, the problem isn’t the hosting or the banning, it’s the algorithms. I don’t care whether YouTube hosts anti-vaccine activists, I care that they actively promote anti-vaccine content to users simply because it’s proven to get clicks and earn them money. Bans like this look incredibly stupid when you realise YouTube…

It isn't the guy with the gun. It's actually the bullets that are to blame.

Re: YouTube is banning anti-vaccine activists and blocking all anti-vaccine content

#103
post #50

Someone want to throw out there a better way to combat disinformation than just armchair criticizing their decision? I almost feel like people are siding with the anti-vaxxers out of "principle". Just a no win situation. It's too easy for bad characters to screw up an entire system with little effort (look at trolls, spammers, etc). Either you moderate everyone and slippery slope down into censorship where the tools…

This isn't a new situation. Free speech debates are as old as civilization itself. The printing press was at least as disruptive as the Internet, precisely because relatively small players could sabotage power of huge organizations such as the Church relatively cheaply.

I think that the old classical liberal principles still apply. A certain fringe of the population will eat any propaganda unthinkingly, domestic or foreign. But if a majority was so uncritical, democracies would have collapsed a long time ago.

We might actually be over the crest of max poisoning in social media. Lots of people have realized that such channels are not to be trusted. This is partly masked by the fact that a lot of new content is still churned out by dedicated players; silent majorities are silent.

Re: YouTube is banning anti-vaccine activists and blocking all anti-vaccine content

#104
post #78
post #40

Time for repeat showing of the free speech debate we’ve already had a dozen times, whoopee! As ever, IMO, the problem isn’t the hosting or the banning, it’s the algorithms. I don’t care whether YouTube hosts anti-vaccine activists, I care that they actively promote anti-vaccine content to users simply because it’s proven to get clicks and earn them money. Bans like this look incredibly stupid when you realise YouTube…

> proven to get clicks and earn them money Aren't they already 'demonetised' (as Youtube terms its withdrawal of adverts and hence money)? I agree though, simply not recommending them (i.e. you can be linked to them, or get them from search results only) would be better.

I'd imagine most of this type of thing (prominent anti-vaccine personalities) is externally monetized via donations, as opposed to directly through YouTube.

Re: YouTube is banning anti-vaccine activists and blocking all anti-vaccine content

#105
post #50

Someone want to throw out there a better way to combat disinformation than just armchair criticizing their decision? I almost feel like people are siding with the anti-vaxxers out of "principle". Just a no win situation. It's too easy for bad characters to screw up an entire system with little effort (look at trolls, spammers, etc). Either you moderate everyone and slippery slope down into censorship where the tools…

"Misinformation" should not be combatted by anything other than better, more persuasive information.

You’re wrong, several Oxford and Harvard studies show that misinformation is best fought with more misinformation. Either that, or your own personal beliefs, which are _way_ more true than something studied for years by ivory tower academics who are always changing their mind. Like and subscribe to my podcast and buy my T-Shirts……

Re: YouTube is banning anti-vaccine activists and blocking all anti-vaccine content

#106
post #50

Someone want to throw out there a better way to combat disinformation than just armchair criticizing their decision? I almost feel like people are siding with the anti-vaxxers out of "principle". Just a no win situation. It's too easy for bad characters to screw up an entire system with little effort (look at trolls, spammers, etc). Either you moderate everyone and slippery slope down into censorship where the tools…

"Misinformation" should not be combatted by anything other than better, more persuasive information.

Good luck explaining to the mob that "there in fact is no fire", as they charge out of the theater.

I typically agree with you, and it was justice Louis Brandeis who said it so well: “If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.”

On the other hand, the one exception to this is when the speech is question causes a clear and present danger. We are facing a rather perverse crisis in the world right now with respect to vaccine misinformation. I'm not saying I know the answer, but I know we did not get here through a lack of quality, persuasive information.

Re: YouTube is banning anti-vaccine activists and blocking all anti-vaccine content

#107

I think we have to ask if this won't have a chilling effect on open discussion by moderate voices. I'm subscribed to the channel of an M.D. on YouTube who discusses COVID-19, vaccines, etc. He is very careful to (repeatedly) point out that he is vaccinated, he has personally vaccinated hundreds of patients, he encourages everyone to speak to their doctor and follow their recommendations, believing that the vaccine is…

Okay, but we really need to talk about what “stifling of public debate” means.

Companies are routinely pressured to fire people in public positions who espouse pro-Palestinian views.

Across the nation, states are enacting legal bans against teaching the history of racism, and firing teachers who dare to make students uncomfortable (by the same people who decried “safe spaces” less than a decade ago). Plenty of people on HN support this!

But for some reason, the only “free speech” issues that get attention here are radical right-wing viewpoints that get moderated on private tech platforms.

Re: YouTube is banning anti-vaccine activists and blocking all anti-vaccine content

#108
post #40

Time for repeat showing of the free speech debate we’ve already had a dozen times, whoopee! As ever, IMO, the problem isn’t the hosting or the banning, it’s the algorithms. I don’t care whether YouTube hosts anti-vaccine activists, I care that they actively promote anti-vaccine content to users simply because it’s proven to get clicks and earn them money. Bans like this look incredibly stupid when you realise YouTube…

The only disinformation I've seen about these vaccines has been from Fauci and other pro vaxxers. “You’re not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations.” - Joe Biden there was never a basis for this statement, making it clear disinformation. Grass roots research doesn't fit the bill of what that word means.

I might suggest we avoid using superlatives. I have seen disinformation about vaccines both from mainstream media presumptions that breakthrough infections won't happen at all, and also from other mainstream media publishing entire segments that the vaccine might cause infertility in women or somehow affect the fetus (a spreading of FUD basically).

Re: YouTube is banning anti-vaccine activists and blocking all anti-vaccine content

#109
post #40

Time for repeat showing of the free speech debate we’ve already had a dozen times, whoopee! As ever, IMO, the problem isn’t the hosting or the banning, it’s the algorithms. I don’t care whether YouTube hosts anti-vaccine activists, I care that they actively promote anti-vaccine content to users simply because it’s proven to get clicks and earn them money. Bans like this look incredibly stupid when you realise YouTube…

Let me reframe: let’s say that YouTube hosts anti-vax content and as a result some percentage of people are swayed by this content to not vaccinate themselves or their children. Some percentage of them dies. Let’s say in absolute numbers it is 10,000 people. Do you think that YouTube did a good thing by allowing that content?

That is a moral argument and has no place in a discussion of the laws of a modern western country. We are a system of law, not a system of justice.

Although I do agree with you that anti-vaxers should be treated no different than common terrorists; as Americans, under the law, they have a right to declare that they are terrorists and give their little illogical terrorist rants. The First Amendment is very clear on what is not covered, and the courts have repeatedly confirmed that being wrong, being disingenuous, and lying is covered (as long as you are not committing perjury or other similar, actual, crimes).

Our founding fathers knew exactly what they were doing when they penned this: in their day, they also had their form of denialism. The first amendment is, essentially, "It is better to keep silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubts.", but weaponized against the idiots that shall forever plague us.

That said, if a rational adult, one that we have, as a society, cannot tell the difference between the truth and the lies, then we have both failed as a society, but also have trusted an adult to actually act like one and they, personally, made the choice to act like a spoiled brat; acting like a spoiled brat is not a victimless crime, and sometimes, but not always, they are punished like an adult for violating the trust of the society that they live in.

Re: YouTube is banning anti-vaccine activists and blocking all anti-vaccine content

#110
post #40

Time for repeat showing of the free speech debate we’ve already had a dozen times, whoopee! As ever, IMO, the problem isn’t the hosting or the banning, it’s the algorithms. I don’t care whether YouTube hosts anti-vaccine activists, I care that they actively promote anti-vaccine content to users simply because it’s proven to get clicks and earn them money. Bans like this look incredibly stupid when you realise YouTube…

There seems to be an AI safety problem here: The youtube algorithm is optimizing for engagement at the cost of some other less-quantifiable human value like social trust.

https://youtu.be/L5pUA3LsEaw

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