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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

#671

Post by ohdannyboy »

NotSammyHagar wrote: post #632
ohdannyboy wrote: post #290

I 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…

    Can you expand on why you were hesitant because of censorship? ... Have you heard rumors of some problems from vaccination?
It made it more difficult to ascertain what the risks were, I didn't feel our officials were being honest with us (something I still think). Back in early 2021 it was a lot more open to speculation since it was an minimally tested treatment who's delivery method had never been widely deployed on humans before. We still don't know if there's long term effects and there's no way for us to find out until enough time has passed. I didn't want to be part of the initial test group.

    Since covid is so deadly if you get it
I'm relatively young and not in any risk categories, covid does not pose much of a death risk to me. Significant non-deadly outcomes are another story (permanent lung damage, loss of taste, ect). I decided that protection from the latter category (significant non-deadly outcomes) was worth my rather nebulous fears that we'll realize it does some harm over the next decade.

    and there are basically almost no cases of serious health issues with vaccination and furthermore
"Basically almost no" is a difficult term to quantify, but VAERS database does have plenty of entries.

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

#672

Post by kats »

j79 wrote: post #489
hereforphone wrote: post #458

Social media companies are stifling freedom of speech in America. Have you seen the "Who's banned from Twitter and who's not" meme with Donald Trump and the Taliban? Unpopular or non-conformist opinions are censored, and it's dangerous. "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…

> "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…

It's a difference between banning behavior vs. ideas.

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

#673

Post by wqewqe »

SergeAx wrote: post #577
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…

A simple question: do you beleive that suppressing freedom of speech will seriously inclrease a number of vaccinated? I beleive that the best outcome is it will stay around the same. Some sensitive people will calm down and eventually vaccinate, others will become stronger anti-vaxxers, because "if it is forbidden by authorities, it should be somehow true".

Of course it will.

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

#674

Post by q1w2 »

yawaworht1978 wrote: post #650

With the traffic and gravity that YouTube etc have, they're almost as powerful news broadcasting tools as the classic news media. True, they're a private company and liable for some things, but they all try to squeeze out every last cent before a government intervention. Banning content like crypto, anti vax, gambling etc is understandable, but all the people without a voice will think they are silenced because they…

The issue is that a few corporations control a majority of global human communications, and are accountable to no one for their decisions of what to censor/promote.

This is dangerous to democracy. If we do not subject them to the will of the people, they will eventually use this massive influence to make themselves immune to public scrutiny, and will one day be indistinguishable from an unelected branch of government.

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

#675

Post by mcguire »

SergeAx wrote: post #577
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…

A simple question: do you beleive that suppressing freedom of speech will seriously inclrease a number of vaccinated? I beleive that the best outcome is it will stay around the same. Some sensitive people will calm down and eventually vaccinate, others will become stronger anti-vaxxers, because "if it is forbidden by authorities, it should be somehow true".

If you don't mind my asking, how old are you? And did you grow up in the United States?

If you grew up in the US and are (significantly) older than Facebook and Youtube, you were raised in a society that had significantly greater suppression of free speech than is being discussed here. Nobody handed crazy people a megaphone and a world-wide platform to spread their nuttiness. They had to stand out in front of the post office or mall entrance (where they would be shooed away by security quickly) to enlighten the world about the evils of fluoride.

But that's probably just Bill Gates' chip talking.

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

#676

Post by drewwwwww »

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…

the printing press did not induce algorithmically amplified radicalization in order to serve more underwear ads. youtube and facebook are different.

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

#677

Post by gorwell »

beebmam wrote: post #612
gorwell wrote: post #529

“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…

YouTube isn't the government

In our internet age, the freedom of speech that truly matters is ALL digital.

The US has no Public ISP, nor Public Speech Platform equivalent of Twitter, Google, Facebook, etc.

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

#679

Post by mdp2021 »

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…

If you have a formula to infallibly decide that A is a "bad actor" for any A in actual practice, you have solved the organizational problem of the past few millennia.

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

#680

Post by avereveard »

quartus wrote: post #657
ohdannyboy wrote: post #290

I 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?

That "vaccine granted immunity" was a big one, it rapidly became less symptoms, and from that surreptitiously changed again to well you'll still have a week of feeling like shit if you catch covid, but you'll be less likely to die from it.

Then there's whatever percent of vaccinated that would have allowed the fabled reopen, we engaged trough most of these metrics, and we're still far from normalcy.

Heck my vaccine passport has a very clear, very bold expiry date on it, talk of normalcy are nonsense.

Oh and there's that "let's not tell peasants masks are useful as not to cause shortages to professionals." Maybe warranted, given what happened with hoarders and toilet paper, but still definitely a lie.

edit:

jesus christ look at the mess of downvotes this whole thread attracted, replies included, this place is populated by people more toxic than facebook's and more sensitive than twitter's.

and you wonder why the content platform are in full on containment mode. truth is you're bringing your corporate dystopia unto yourself.

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