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

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

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

391–400 of 1001 posts

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

#391

Post by tomp »

ryandrake wrote: post #359

A little off topic, but I wish we could stop using this nice-sounding "hesitant" euphemism. Hesitant implies that people are weighing options and open to changing their minds. With the amount of time they have been available and the overabundance of evidence that the COVID vaccines are safe, effective, and that they decrease hospitalizations and death, I find it very hard to believe that anyone is still "on the fence…

Indeed, I prefer "vaccine redundancy" over "vaccine hesitancy".

For people who've had Covid before, vaccine is simply redundant. (If you disagree, please provide sources / data for your view.) Of course, getting vaccinated would increase their immune system's response, but so would for someone who was vaccinated a month ago... at some point, it has to be "good enough" for normal life (not 100% safe anyways).

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

#392

Post by Tuckerism »

dlisboa wrote: post #256
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…

> People are going to cheer that "wackos" will no longer have a platform. It's not the wackos we should be worrying about. It's the stifling of legitimate public debate, the stifling of legitimate voices who find themselves in the minority. My opinion is that we didn't need YouTube/Facebook to conduct public policy debate before, and we don't need it now. It has brought nothing to the table except the, as you put it,…

I would say the distinction here is allowing some parties "direct influence over millions of people" and not others. As other commenters have pointed out, it feels like the decision on who gets access to the "virtual town square" is a small, un-elected, and limited-accountability group.

I do agree with your final point-- if social media went dark tomorrow, no ones rights would be diminished. But if it went dark for only certain people, I think we would agree that -something- is being diminished (even if it's not necessarily a right or that it's in the best interest of everyone).

I fully believe that this is a topic where people get to land differently, and I respect those that do their mental calculus differently. There's so many second-order and third-order effects when it comes to speech, and then you amplify it to global-level... there's no great, clean answer. But ultimately, we get to choose what we weigh as most important-- as I've heard others on HN say, "If we wrap ourselves around every conceivable axle then nothing will be achieved."

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

#393

Post by rchaud »

roody15 wrote: post #304
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…

Agreed shutting down discussion is not helping matters and we appear to be moving in an autocratic dystopian direction as a nation. The FDA advisory panel was overridden to endorse a booster shot. Even mentioning FDA officials resigning and the board being overridden gets you labeled as anti-vax and blocked. Future not looking good :/

Nothing is stopping you from running a server and hosting your own website.

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

#394

Post by colechristensen »

swader999 wrote: post #168
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?

The problem is that for any major issues you can get attention and money for publishing a contrarian view. Platforms like youtube then can be megaphones for monetizing conspiracy theories which do actual harm. There is some distance between good faith discussion and promoting the opposite of whatever view is popular.

Content distributors are then on a knife edge with moderation, and how to moderate fairly is incredibly difficult. Youtube doesn’t want to be the vaccine conspiracy clearing house so at some point they decided to just ban it all. Making money from peoples attention brings this problem and moralizing won’t make it go away.

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

#395

Post by duhast »

Nesze wrote: post #362

Age old follow-up question. Who decides what anti-vaccine content is? Who is going to draw the fine line? How simple (i.e. black and white) is to make this distinction? Do you trust that person / entity making these decisions for you and your peers? But even without defending free speach, looks to me that when you start censoring you just create multiple new problems with zero solution. So even from a design point of…

Thought experiment:

Would you be making the same points if the debate was about ISIS propaganda? Or Holocaust denialism? Or content encouraging child exploitation? Viral videos encouraging suicides?

Wouldn't it be suddenly obvious that these videos must be taken down immediately, accounts banned and that platform owners are responsible? Or would you advocate for free speech and watch as the algorithm encourages more and more people to leave their home and join ISIS in Syria?

After all, people are free to make decisions and are responsible for their actions. Suicide doesn't harm anybody else, right?

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

#396

Post by zionic »

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…

People need to get it through their skulls that "tech companies" have _no place_ "moderating" scientific debate.

If you've ever found yourself typing "Should X give Y a platform?" you are part of the problem.

Be better, be a part of the solution.

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

#397

Post by darthvoldemort »

ryandrake wrote: post #359

A little off topic, but I wish we could stop using this nice-sounding "hesitant" euphemism. Hesitant implies that people are weighing options and open to changing their minds. With the amount of time they have been available and the overabundance of evidence that the COVID vaccines are safe, effective, and that they decrease hospitalizations and death, I find it very hard to believe that anyone is still "on the fence…

Such judgmental bullshit. People like you are part of the problem and need to stop.

The vaccine is the fastest vaccine EVER approved. We have ZERO long-term data as to what it does. We have a long history of drugs that have long term side effects. For fuck's sake, there are a ton of blood pressure medications that have recently been taken off the market because they have cancer-causing impurities in them. Do you think they cause cancer in 1 year? Of course not. They cause cancer over the long term. Even the people who breathed in the dust from 9-11 took years to die from cancer related to that.

Do we know if the mRNA vaccine has any long term effects? We do not. If you say they are 100% safe long term, then you are lying. We simply don't have the data. We will definitely have the data over the next several years in what is now the world's biggest medical experiment in history.

And by the way, I'm fully vaccinated and I was vaccinated before you were. But I UNDERSTAND why people are hesitant. I was hesitant as well until I was presented with the vaccine and I said fuck it, let's go.

But I completely empathize with those that are hesitant. That's what we need more of, empathy. Not judgmental jerks who just prolong the schism between people.

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

#398

Post by AgentME »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #249
listless wrote: post #174

My wife is very vaccine hesitant, and every time they make a move like this to block content or take it down, it only strengthens her position. She thinks they’re taking it down because they don’t want people to know the truth. The only thing worse than bad ideas is the suppression of bad ideas. It’s tragic that we knew this at some point, but are going to have to figure it all back out again the hard way.

> She thinks they’re taking it down because they don’t want people to know the truth. The sad truth is, they do this just because of fucking ad revenue . There's no grand conspiracy against, or even for anti-vaccination movements. It's just people selling the world for a quick buck. And some people are still shooting me weird looks when I keep telling them that advertising is a cancer on modern society.

If advertising is responsible for actually getting them to get off their asses to take down antivax misinformation and potentially save lives, that's making advertising sound really good right now. Though that might be crediting advertising a little too much, maybe some employees in charge don't want to take part in spreading misinformation.

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

#399

Post by NDizzle »

jaybrendansmith wrote: post #373
listless wrote: post #174

My wife is very vaccine hesitant, and every time they make a move like this to block content or take it down, it only strengthens her position. She thinks they’re taking it down because they don’t want people to know the truth. The only thing worse than bad ideas is the suppression of bad ideas. It’s tragic that we knew this at some point, but are going to have to figure it all back out again the hard way.

She might just die. I recently convinced a coworker to get the vaccine, and she did. And four weeks later contracted Covid-19, probably the delta variant, lost her taste and slept for 5 days straight. Had she not had the vaccine, it's quite likely she would now be dead.

Uhh.. what makes you say that? What percentage of people who get covid actually get admitted to the hospital? What percentage actually die? Both answers are probably lower than you think.

You convincing her to get the vaccine probably fucked up her immune system and led her to getting covid. That scenario is equally possible at this point.

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

#400

Post by jlebar »

colordrops wrote: post #379
jlebar wrote: post #372

It's ironic (or maybe not?) that the comments section here is filled with exactly the kind of anti-vax misinformation that YouTube is trying to take down. To respond to one point I keep reading in here over and over: Getting and recovering from covid does not necessarily give you better protection from disease than getting the vaccine. 1/3 of people who get covid develop no antibodies at all, as compared to 0% of (no…

Ironic indeed. How about referencing scientific sources rather than opinion pieces from political news sites. It's less than 2%, not 1/3, that don't develop antibodies. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-24622-7#Sec2 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abf4063 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01442-9

> How about referencing scientific sources rather than opinion pieces from political news sites.

The dude is a MD PhD who's been on NPR, NYT, etc. He's literally a scientist who is a source -- a scientific source.

But sure, we can talk journal articles.

Where is your "less than 2%" number coming from? I see this in the first Nature article:

> Of the 125 subjects exposed to SARS-CoV-2 according to the baseline ground truth definition, 101 (80.8%) participated to the May serosurvey. Among them, 93.5% (86 out of 92, 95% CI 86.3–97.6%), 84.2% (85 out of 101, 95% CI 75.5–90.7%), and 100% (92 out of 92, 95% CI 96.1–100%) had a positive result for Abbott, DiaSorin and Roche, respectively, whereas 44.9% (44 out of 98, 95% CI 34.8–55.3%) had a neutralising titre greater than 1:40 (1/dil). In November, 86 subjects (68.8%) were tested again, all of them except one (98.8%) tested positive to at least one serological assay.

They're saying that 44.9% of people infected had neutralizing antibodies at the level they recognize, right? They re-tested the same people six months later, and >98% of them tested positive for one assay. This doesn't speak to the 98% number you cite above. Maybe you're looking elsewhere.

I'm not going to be sealioned into going through studies if you can't point me to the section that supports your point.

Anyway for the article's 1/3 number, he also cites a study by the CDC, a fact which I guess you've chosen to ignore? https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/27/9/21-1042_article

Post reply on HN