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

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28693407, partly because it's swerving into generic ideological flamewar, and partly because I need to prune some large subthreads in order to ease the load on our poor server, which smoke is coming out of right now. The latter is our problem and we're working on fixing it, but the former is the community's problem and everyone needs to work on fixing that.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I know this comment will be lost in the shuffle, and I notice this was submitted by danso, so I imagine there's an intentionality here, but I very strongly believe submissions like these are a substantial and growing threat to HN.

Just remove them! Let's talk tech, startups, science! Submissions like these distract from the stuff I like on HN, but more importantly I worry they chase away the people I like from HN.

I flag each of these, hoping enough of us can get content like this removed, and I'm willing to be outvoted on that count, but I personally think HN is better off without this content.

Heck, I view it all as 'misinformation', and I certainly don't need some cubicle drone at youtube to decide for me.

Certainly the average person is smart enough to understand the statistics of the thing, after all that's something of the point of epidemiology.

There should be enough data points by now to tell me a few things.

. What is the real value of a cloth mask worn inside in a crowd with strangers? What is the value of a properly fitted N95 mask? Give it to me as an odds calculation.

. Just what percentage of covid is picked up in bars? grocery stores? schools? at home? Our local health department is notably mum about that preferring only to hand out the county-wide ages and that's it.

.Actual strong data on value of vaccine in terms of infection and symptoms. 1st, 2nd, 3rd dose. How long are these valuable? How long will they remain so due to mutations? Odds.

.Actual data on nasty side effects of vaccine including odds.

.Fairly presented value of home remedies, anti-virals, etc.

.etc.

You can twizzle out some of this, but rarely. Cut down to the essentials, it wouldn't take up a single sheet of paper. Post that sheet of paper whenever anyone feels the need to opine.

Instead I'm treated to shaming and scolding and peoples' fear about their precious bodily fluids and I'm sick of everyone. Somehow this has become a proxy for the 2016/2020 elections complete with all the religious overtones. Please stop.

Personally, I don't care what Youtube bans and believe they should just do whatever they like. I don't care because Youtube does not provide any essential service to society. The content they serve is entirely expendable. The same holds for Twitter and Facebook. You could close these content distribution sites tomorrow and nothing substantial would change. A few of their competitors would gain a larger user base and that's it. If you rely for your income on some of these media channels (like ad revenue), you have a bad business model.

Principally, however, there could be a quasi-monopoly that turns out so essential for society that they should be treated as a public utility with a right to access instead of a private company that can enforce whatever house rules they like within the boundaries of law. I just don't think YT (or FB or Twitter or Google...) are there yet and find it hilarious that butthurt Youtubers so grossly overestimate their own importance.

> "But it's private companies! They can do whatever they want!" The telephone companies are private. Do they have a right to kill your connection when you talk about unapproved subject matter? Twitter, Youtube, Facebook, and so on are the modern de-facto means of communicating long distance and to wide-spread audiences.

If I started robo-calling millions of people with unapproved subject matter, I'd wager they'd kill my connection fairly quickly.