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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

#621

Post by SergeAx »

Spivak wrote: post #408
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…

The real answers: * YouTube’s team of content moderators who are directed ultimately by YouTube’s ELT. So… humans. I mean if we expect every highschooler in the US to be able to read a book and interpret its meaning I think we can figure out what anti-vaccine content looks like. * That same team is going to draw the line. If it were me I would bring the banhammer on any content that had hints of grey because unless t…

> every highschooler in the US to be able to read a book and interpret its meaning I think we can figure out what anti-vaccine content looks like

Good. Supposing you are graduated from hight scholl and read a book. I beleive that covid vaccines are good and everybody in their right mind and without medical conditions should vaccinate. I also beleive that everybody has a right to decide by themself to take vaccine or to pass any time. Am I pro-vaccine or am I anti-vaxxer?

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

#622

Post by stale2002 »

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. If you present that opinion as a fact, then that's misinformation.

Unironically, I would consider your opinion here, to be dangerous mis-information. Yes really.

We do not have to throw out the entire body of past medical work, for every single "new" question that comes up.

So there are absolutely some, scientifically supported, conclusions, that we can come to, about diseases, using this past body of medical work.

If we listened to you it would result in people refusing to do basic things, like wash our hands and socially distance, because we haven't yet completed a full study, for a specific new disease that is going around.

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

#623

Post by shadilay »

SSilver2k2 wrote: post #376
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…

No one is stopping anyone from hosting their own website and getting on their own soap box. You just can't do it on this person's lawn anymore.

What happens when the company owns the whole town and you're not allowed to have your own lawn to speak on?

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

#624

Post by burrows »

inglor_cz wrote: post #103
ookblah wrote: 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 f…

> 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.

Like the millions of people who unironically watch CNN, FOX, ESPN, MTV and whatever else TeeVee networks are carrying?

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

#625

Post by Solstinox »

ookblah wrote: 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…

Hypothetically, what do you do when there isn’t enough quality information to gauge “disinformation” from “information?”

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

#626

Post by enraged_camel »

mariodiana wrote: post #73
ookblah wrote: 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.

Nah. Brandolini's Law, also known as the bullshit asymmetry principle, explains why this will not work:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law

The gist of it is that making up bullshit takes almost no energy, whereas refuting that bullshit effectively will be very time-consuming. This is exacerbated by the fact that bullshit is usually packaged in a way that makes it spread way faster by, for example, exploiting social media "engagement" algorithms.

There are corollaries to this. For example, the idiom "a lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth is done tying its shoes."

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

#627

Post by hartator »

ascar wrote: post #271
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.

That line of reasoning doesn't make a lot of sense to me. One of my family members is also very hesitant to get the vaccine and gets all kind of anti-vaccine propaganda through various groups and channels. She takes that content as "reasonable" and "potentially true" even tho basically all of what I've seen is simply untrue. E.g. an article claiming there were more deaths due to covid vaccines than to covid, which is…

> That line of reasoning doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

Can you think about one time in history when you conclude "the government was right to censor this"?

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

#628

Post by mythrwy »

shadowgovt wrote: post #615
ookblah wrote: 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…

Principles aren't worth anything if people don't stick by them when expediency would recommend another course of action. ... This is why I chucked this particular principle overboard years ago. I don't personally think it holds water in light of irrational human actors and an under-informed public, given the immense power of modern bidirectional communications media.

How do you propose to deal with unpopular opinions that turn out to be correct with this method?

Also (and related) how do you propose to deal with corruption?

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

#629

Post by maerF0x0 »

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…

To me this is the key, I got the myocarditis symptoms post vaccine and notably none of the ER staff knew (or wished to acknowledge) that this was a potential sideffect. It's become heresy of the most dogmatic kind to not support the vaccine full stop.

Also it took an unrelated to this situation healthcare worker (therapist) to even suggest to me to report it on https://vaers.hhs.gov/ which is how they find out if the vaccine has side effects.

IMO we need to tolerate a lot of "free speech" in order to ensure the validly dissenting voices are not squashed.

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

#630

Post by megous »

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…

Governments already mandate vaccinations [of kids] in many places. Just not for covid-19.
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