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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

#521

Post by whywhywhywhy »

ggggtez wrote: post #279
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 think we have to ask No we don't. The question we have to ask is whether allowing this content is worse for society than any stifling of moderate voices. And the answer is obviously yes. Covid-hoaxers represent millions of people who are causing a national health crisis that doesn't need to be happening anymore . Fuck moderate voices who are "just asking questions". They can deal with playing a little less devil'…

> causing a national health crisis that doesn't need to be happening anymore

This just isn't true, it's never going away and nothing can stop it, this is it for the rest of your life. It'll get less deadly over time but you will get covid at some point in your life and you will get it again and again as it mutates over the years. Same with flu it was initially deadly, now it's just bad but it's never going away.

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

#522

Post by supercanuck »

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…

*May

The word May is doing a lot of work in this paragraph.

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

#523

Post by skocznymroczny »

Once again YouTube is standing against free speech.

Yes, most of you will cheer for it just as you did when Twitter banned Trump. You will say it's a private company, they have the right to do that. Don't expect people like me to support you when you complain about YouTube banning e.g. Russian activists.

Part of supporting free speech is that you have to support the speech you don't agree with.

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

#525

Post by dang »

All: if you want to read all 2500+ comments you'll need to click More at the bottom, or like this:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28693060&p=2

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28693060&p=3

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28693060&p=4

etc. (Sorry for the annoyance - comments like this will eventually go away.)

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

#526

Post by bondarchuk »

RandomLensman wrote: post #499
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…

One of the reasons we find ourselves even in such a predicament is so odd: while governments the world over were (and are) quite willing to put very strong curbs, shut-downs etc. in place, they are hesitant to generally mandate vaccination. So now we are in these proxy campaigns on vaccinations. Of course, one could argue that governments should not/cannot mandate vaccination, but then we also generally accept that g…

It would look like this: people get dragged out of their houses by armed men, and are forcibly injected while screaming and being held down. "We also send people off to war" is not a sufficient argument for removing the right to bodily autonomy.

Edit: oh, and probably you wouldn't get to see any videos of it online, because it's anti-vaccination content. Haha.

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

#527

Post by ceilingcorner »

landryraccoon wrote: post #447

Here's a thought experiment. Suppose we were at war with a hostile adversary, and that adversary had killed over 700,000 people already, and thousands more each day. I can scarcely believe that any reasonable person would argue that blocking propaganda or misinformation that harms the war effort would be an egregious imposition on free speech. Once the imminent threat is over, those efforts can and should stop, but n…

Should we ban car commercials? Cars kill lots of people.

Should we ban soda commercials? Obesity kills a lot of people.

Here’s the issue: if your entire value system is based on extending life at any cost to other values, you’ve already lost. Full stop.

This entire thing is one giant flashing sign that says “Modern human beings are scared of everything, even as they live in the safest times ever.”

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

#528

Post by adamrezich »

duhast wrote: post #395
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…

thought experiment:

what if YouTube existed and was as popular as it is now, in the early 00s, leading up to the US invasion of Iraq, and there videos attempting to prove that Iraq did not in fact have weapons of mass destruction, and YouTube was deleting these videos?

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 question the Bush administration narrative, parroted and perpetuated unquestioningly by the media?

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

#529

Post by gorwell »

“All censorships exist to prevent anyone from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions.” George Bernard Shaw

“Freedom of expression is the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom.” U.S. Supreme Court Justice Benjamin N. Cardozo in Palko v. Connecticut

"If you believe that the arguments against slavery in their time and against Jim Crow laws more recently could only have been expressed when people had the freedom to voice unpopular opinions, then you can’t now say that free speech is inherently dangerous." Stephen Pinker

“Goebbels was in favor of free speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you’re really in favor of free speech, then you’re in favor of freedom of speech for precisely the views you despise. Otherwise, you’re not in favor of free speech.” Noam Chomsky

"To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the right of the hearer as well as those of the speaker. It is just as criminal to rob a man of his right to speak and hear as it would be to rob him of his money.” Frederick Douglass

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

#530

Post by kodah »

CodeMage wrote: post #433
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…

> Months ago he was insisting that the people who had contracted COVID-19 and who had antibodies in their system may not need the vaccine. Now, we have a number of studies coming out to support that. But months ago that was "anti-vax" (employing the slanderous use of the term). If you're claiming something that hasn't been demonstrated through peer-reviewed scientific research, then you're offering your opinion. If y…

> If you're claiming something that hasn't been demonstrated through peer-reviewed scientific research, then you're offering your opinion.

By that standard, this entire website and most of the software industry is misinformation. In fact, most political speech is misinformation.

> If you're pushing a narrative that implies that you shouldn't get vaccinated, then yes, that's "anti-vax".

GP is saying that the conversation is, and should be recognized as, more nuanced than that. There sure is an undercurrent of people making narratives but that's not a new problem. The left and right have weaponized narratives to the detriment of this country ad infinitum. If you're arguing we should only have evidence based discussion and that anecdotes and opinions don't matter, then you have new problems. The new problems will alienate and harm anyone that your current telemetry (and understanding) doesn't reflect. To me, that's an age-old problem where some value technocracy while others value bureaucracy; my personal opinion being that both are valuable but they need a distribution model in government that optimizes for problem solving.

> If you're publishing your opinion, or if you're discussing your research before it's been peer-reviewed, you have the responsibility to make that clear, and even to point out that it does not agree with the current scientific consensus (if any exists).

I agree, but it seems GP was indicating this doctor was doing just that and was still silenced.

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