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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

#691

Post by trts »

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…

There are at least four people close to me who become more entrenched in their anti-vax stance the more this stuff happens.

It's so obvious to me how counter-productive these measures are. However I don't suppose increasing vaccination rates are part of the goal of these measures, but just protecting YouTube from having to do moderation or take responsibility for the content on their platform.

My mom for example, after many conversations and a great deal of effort on my part to present data and evidence that was free from shaming and judgement, has made two appointments to get vaccinated, and subsequently cancelled them. The second cancellation came after Biden's recent speech blaming unvaccinated people being directly responsible for killing the vaccinated, a nonsensical supposition.

This is scary stuff. The moral absolutism that the platforms endorse is creeping into more and more subjective areas, and essentially obliterating any hope of nuance or increased understanding about changing strategies and data.

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

#692

Post by grillvogel »

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…

wasn't tons of isis and taliban propaganda being posted on twitter long after they banned the orange man?

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

#693

Post by oauea »

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…

Hey, if you want to die, go for it. It's your freedom.

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

#694

Post by orangepurple »

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?

Because of the way they are constructed, Randomized Control Trials will never show any benefit for any antiviral against COVID-19. Not Remdesivir, not Kaletra, not HCQ, and not Ivermectin. The reason for this is simple; for the patients that they have recruited for these studies, such as Oxford’s ludicrous RECOVERY study, the intervention is too late to have any positive effect.

The clinical course of COVID-19 is such that by the time most people seek medical attention for hypoxia, their viral load has already tapered off to almost nothing. If someone is about 10 days post-exposure and has already been symptomatic for five days, there is hardly any virus left in their bodies, only cellular damage and derangement that has initiated a hyperinflammatory response. It is from this group that the clinical trials for antivirals have recruited, pretty much exclusively.

In these trials, they give antivirals to severely ill patients who have no virus in their bodies, only a delayed hyperinflammatory response, and then absurdly claim that antivirals have no utility in treating or preventing COVID-19. These clinical trials do not recruit people who are pre-symptomatic. They do not test pre-exposure or post-exposure prophylaxis.

This is like using a defibrillator to shock only flatline, and then absurdly claiming that defibrillators have no medical utility whatsoever when the patients refuse to rise from the dead. The intervention is too late. These trials for antivirals show systematic, egregious selection bias. They are providing a treatment that is futile to the specific cohort they are enrolling.

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

#695

Post by nonameiguess »

jjtgbbjui wrote: post #690
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…

Provide a better education for the poor. I don’t mean education about a particular subject; better education in general. In almost all conspiracy theories, one side has a lot of facts, the other has a lot of “feelings”. If you try having a conversation with someone who believes in some conspiracy you’ll eventually get to “I just don’t feel…”

How on earth is YouTube supposed to do that? They have no control over the however many thousands of public school systems exist in the United States, let alone education in the rest of the world.

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

#696

Post by leepowers »

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.

> She thinks they’re taking it down because they don’t want people to know the truth.

1) If they take false content down that will reinforce her beliefs.

2) If they leave false content up, she will keep consuming it, which will reinforce her beliefs.

3) So - when it comes to changing her mind (and the millions like her), 1 and 2 are a wash. She's adopted an unfalsifiable position. There is no policy Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, et al. can adopt to reason her out of this position. She will have to reason her self out of it at some point.

4) The purpose of taking down false content is not to change her mind, or change the mind of anyone else who has adopted an unfalsifiable position. The purpose is to stop the spread of false and untrue information. If there's 10 million people who have taken the unfalsifiable position the goal is to prevent another 10 million from adopting the same viewpoint.

5) However I can't be sure #4 will actually work. Its very difficult to lockdown information and prevent its spread.

6) And can these platforms moderate edge cases with accuracy? If they bungle the job users will lose trust in them as an information source. But - since these platforms are the main driver of misinformation, then discrediting them as information sources would be a net good.

7) So - no moderation means we continue the status quo of information and vaccine hesitancy.

8) Requiring moderation might combat hesitancy by a) preventing the spread of misinformation and b) discrediting platforms in the eyes of the hesitant or hesitant adjacent.

9) Because these platforms are public and performative they are ill suited for mea culpas. Rarely do people relish engaging with ideas that might prove you wrong, especially in a public setting. The work of helping people reason themselves out of unreason will be done outside these platforms.

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

#697

Post by Florin_Andrei »

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…

> because the other side is too stupid to make their own decisions

The unfortunate reality is - that is the actual crux of the problem. Maybe say "incapable of making" instead of "too stupid to make", since that makes the scope wider. But that is the long and short of it.

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

#698

Post by oauea »

trts wrote: post #691
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…

There are at least four people close to me who become more entrenched in their anti-vax stance the more this stuff happens. It's so obvious to me how counter-productive these measures are. However I don't suppose increasing vaccination rates are part of the goal of these measures, but just protecting YouTube from having to do moderation or take responsibility for the content on their platform. My mom for example, aft…

Sorry to tell you, but your mom is an idiot and she is probably going to die. Sucks, but such is life for those people.

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

#700

Post by vimy »

jjtgbbjui wrote: post #690
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…

Provide a better education for the poor. I don’t mean education about a particular subject; better education in general. In almost all conspiracy theories, one side has a lot of facts, the other has a lot of “feelings”. If you try having a conversation with someone who believes in some conspiracy you’ll eventually get to “I just don’t feel…”

People who don’t want to take the vaccine come from all walks of life. Not just the poor or uneducated.
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