It would be useful for people to look up what the definition of a cult is and try and determine which side of the Covid vaccine debate that applies to.
YouTube is banning anti-vaccine activists and blocking all anti-vaccine content
651–660 of 1001 posts
Re: YouTube is banning anti-vaccine activists and blocking all anti-vaccine content
#652Vaccination was developed over 200 years ago, and it saved millions of lives ever since. Only the most crazy people would dispute its effectiveness or insinuate that some sort of hidden powers wanted to poison humanity.
Now when did this group of crazy people become so large that they start confusing people who don‘t have the intellectual capacity to get informed by reading serious sources.
My gut feeling tells me it is not about vaccination per se. But that‘s another topic.
Re: YouTube is banning anti-vaccine activists and blocking all anti-vaccine content
#653Someone 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…
> I almost feel like people are siding with the anti-vaxxers out of "principle". I can confirm your suspicions in my case. I'm vaccinated (against COVID, the flu, and tetanus, and all the other things you can get vaccinated against), but I think YouTube is wrong here.
I've also been vaccinated twice and think that this is a slippery slope we have been going down for quite a while.
Re: YouTube is banning anti-vaccine activists and blocking all anti-vaccine content
#654I 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…
mRNA vaccines and UGC platform censorship are both on topic for "tech" and "science".
Re: YouTube is banning anti-vaccine activists and blocking all anti-vaccine content
#655Someone 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…
Yes?
If we continue to allow explicit censoring this will become normal.
Re: YouTube is banning anti-vaccine activists and blocking all anti-vaccine content
#656I am American, but I believe the American view of "we must allow everything so that important things aren't censored" is wrong. I believe it is possible to avoid the slippery slope and just ban certain things. For example, Nazi images are banned in Germany. In a sense, banning anti-vaccine propaganda is an even more important issue.
Re: YouTube is banning anti-vaccine activists and blocking all anti-vaccine content
#657I was hesitant for a while and the massive censorship was part of it. I got vaccinated in May and have convinced others to get the shot since the side effects, while existent, appear to be minor compared to the reduction in harmful symptoms. Talking to my doctor is what did it for me. He cleared up most of my concerns and pressed me that my remaining concerns were too nebulous to be useful. If he just said "shut up a…
> Her main hangup was the lies and coercion.
Can you provide examples of the lies you're referring to?
Re: YouTube is banning anti-vaccine activists and blocking all anti-vaccine content
#658I 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…
If you look at the policy, you'll see that this isn't aiming at the doctor who says that some people don't need the vaccine, but specifically at people who spread specific claims that are considered solidly disproven with overwhelming consensus: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/11161123
You definitely raise valid points about the side effects of false positives during enforcement and the resulting self-censorship, but the other side of the coin is that we've seen that we unfortunately do have to worry about the wackos too.
Re: YouTube is banning anti-vaccine activists and blocking all anti-vaccine content
#659Someone I follow on instagram had opened up a conversation for women about irregular periods as a side-effect of the vaccine. They had to carry on the conversation using an emoji code to avoid getting banned. The basic idea behind these bans is that authorities decide what is right, and common people should not have a forum to discuss the decisions. It's basically soft-censorship, a partnership between government and…
> a partnership between government and large tech companies to make conversations contra government policy much more difficult to have.
Same situation as China, tbh.
Re: YouTube is banning anti-vaccine activists and blocking all anti-vaccine content
#660I was hesitant for a while and the massive censorship was part of it. I got vaccinated in May and have convinced others to get the shot since the side effects, while existent, appear to be minor compared to the reduction in harmful symptoms. Talking to my doctor is what did it for me. He cleared up most of my concerns and pressed me that my remaining concerns were too nebulous to be useful. If he just said "shut up a…
I'm glad you got vaccinated. But... Can you expand on why you were hesitant because of censorship? Because if there were lots of serious problems with the vaccine, they'd be covered in a second on fox news. Meanwhile, a lot of people are hugely influenced by false stories on social media, it's just a fact, with recent examples being things like ivermectin and the 2016 presidential election conspiracies, and don't for…
"almost no cases of serious health issues with vaccination" how do you think you'd possibly hear about this when you are replying to an article where any anti-vaccine information is censored?