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

washingtonpost.com

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

#161

Post by josephcsible »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #107
mariodiana wrote: post #65

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…

> states are enacting legal bans against teaching the history of racism

There's a big difference between keeping government employees from saying certain things during their official duties, and keeping everyone from saying certain things in general.

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

#162

Post by yonaguska »

sixothree wrote: post #155
mariodiana wrote: post #65

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…

I wouldn't blame YouTube here. I would blame the anti-vaxxers. They created an impossible atmosphere for youtube to navigate.

The beatings will continue until morale improves.

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

#163

Post by helen___keller »

LocalH wrote: post #156
helen___keller wrote: post #150

IMO, go further. Remove all medical recommendation and assertions from YouTube. Leave YouTube for entertainment, and have other platforms - perhaps ones better regulated and better managed - for medical discussions in a scientific context. There's inherent difficulty in trying to judge between wackos and pros, because wackos do their best to masquerade as pros. This is basically a turing complete issue, because there…

Taken to its logical end, that would also prevent many very useful channels from existing. What about all the people who live with a mental illness and also have a Youtube channel documenting that experience? Should that be prohibited too? For which disorders? If you remove all ADHD-related individual content from YouTube, you're harming the platform and a crapton of people who have bettered their lives with the aid…

You're alluding back to the moderation problem. I claimed that discerning between pros and wackos is turing complete, and you have indeed shown that discerning between ANY kind of allowable content A and disallowed content B is also turing complete - you can get arbitrarily close to the line between A and B, so any algorithm (or human guidelines) is necessarily going to have issues on some edge cases.

I agree, you're absolutely right. Still, I claim it should be done, and maybe the content you listed should also be disallowed.

I'm not saying these videos and discussions shouldn't exist, I'm suggesting that perhaps it's time we dispelled the idea of a global Town Square - one platform for all content. It's a recipe for disaster. We've seen what can happen and what will continue to happen. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube - how many times do we have to watch a global town square devolve into shit flinging, disinformation, and hate?

Let's stop pretending that there can be a global free speech forum and that we can have some fair minimum ruleset to moderate all content on that forum.

We should opt for the opposite - a spectrum of platforms that appeal to different interests and are regulated in proportion to the severity of incorrect or bad-faith information in that interest.

The entertainment that dominates Youtube is minimally severe if incorrect or bad faith, so YouTube would have minimal regulation.

Content on personal health and experiences could go into HealthTube, where moderation exists to prevent making strong medical claims or pushing bullshit (the "pay an influencer to say that ElaMexaTrin cured my covid" problem), but people are otherwise allowed to post what they want about their personal experiences.

Content with strong scientific claims on health would go into MedicalTube, which is regulated and heavily moderated to prevent commercial interests and disinformation.

Really, if YouTube was forward thinking, all of these could be different subsets of the same platform. But instead we have one platform with the same erratic hand of moderation slapping things down left and right based on whatever changing ruleset seems convenient today.

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

#166

Post by ocdtrekkie »

mariodiana wrote: post #65

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…

I'm not sure "legitimate public debate" is warranted in this case. Too many people who are not qualified think they have "done their own research" and come to conclusions causing real harm to other people.

Even MDs are not necessarily well-suited to make expert opinions on pandemics and vaccine technology and such. A lot of MDs are qualified to diagnose conditions and recommend treatment and prescription medication... that doesn't mean they should act like they know more than people who specialize in infectious diseases.

The place for "debate" of the effectiveness and safety of vaccines is peer-reviewed studies, not YouTube videos.

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

#168

Post by swader999 »

deelowe wrote: post #134

Of course it will. Welcome to the new propaganda. Same as the old propaganda. Free speech is the act of standing up for those who you disagree with simply because you believe they have the right to be heard. In today's world of "woke" content creators, everyone seems to miss this point. What started out as fairly clear cut issues such as racism and homophobia has now bled into grey areas around vaccines and gain of f…

Censoring discussion in an environment of coercive mandates. Anyone working for Google - how do you justify this? You have great options out there you know?

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

#170

Post by reilly3000 »

deelowe wrote: post #134

Of course it will. Welcome to the new propaganda. Same as the old propaganda. Free speech is the act of standing up for those who you disagree with simply because you believe they have the right to be heard. In today's world of "woke" content creators, everyone seems to miss this point. What started out as fairly clear cut issues such as racism and homophobia has now bled into grey areas around vaccines and gain of f…

Ir hardly "cannot be discussed". I've participated in several online discussions about it, and cited several major news outlets covering the story. The White House is openly investigating the topic. Defending free speech is very important, but crying wolf about censorship is counterproductive to the cause.
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