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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

#721

Post by throwawayjeje »

Florin_Andrei wrote: post #697
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.

Do you routinely analyze and challenge your own biases? Do you ever wonder if someone you disagree with might be right?

It's easy to call someone stupid while ignoring what they are saying. It's hard to charitably hear someone's argument. I'm certainly at fault there.

Either way I categorically reject the worldview where a "benign" paternalism protects us from ourselves.

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

#724

Post by nonameiguess »

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".

This seems incredibly naive. The present proliferation of anti-vaccine sentiment is almost entirely the result of propaganda pushed by a tiny number of people being amplified by social media. You can argue about whether or not it's right to suppress information on principle, but I don't see how you can argue it's ineffective. It's ineffective at combating actual truth when things like the Supreme Soviet just lie about meeting their five year plan goals and imprison anyone who presents real data, but scientific journals and newspapers introducing some editorial curation in what they were willing to amplify worked perfectly fine at actually suppressing fringe pseudoscience and false conspiracy theories for centuries.

I get it. Some conspiracies turn out to be true. Watergate happened. The Panama Papers happened. COINTELPRO happened. The FBI probably really did assassinate Fred Hampton. Galileo was right. But for every Galileo, there are a few thousand cranks thinking they disproved special relativity or invented a perpetual motion machine and refusing to grant them a platform has worked fine forever until social media came along and gave everyone an audience.

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

#725

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#726

Post by ldbooth »

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…

Same here. Social Environment is hard to overcome. In the battle of social environment (group think) vs. individual reasoning, environment will win almost every time. This is a known bias among professional investors, and well appreciated there. Vaccine hesitancy follows this pattern, where future is unknown and FUD is trending.

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

#727

Post by papito »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #115
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…

>Someone want to throw out there a better way to combat disinformation Yeah. Don't do shit. Let the stupid run its course. Trying to combat disinformation is like bombing villages in hope of hitting an ammo dump. The collateral damage is more damaging than ignoring the problem. Why do we always have to be Doing Something(TM)?

As people already mentioned here, try running a free-for-all moderation-free discussion board and see what happens.

Back in the day, the Internet was full of HTML discussion boards just like this one, and idiots were banned with no questions asked. It was beautiful, and no one complained.

This site has moderation, no one is complaining. YouTube is a "person" - legally now, but somehow they don't have the responsibility to be a good citizen?

The fact that allegedly smart people on HN use the term "censorship" in the context of non-government control is pretty shocking. You don't know censorship.

"Censorship" has absolutely nothing to do with it. A private company can allow/disallow whatever content they f---ing please, and the Wild West capitalists on this board should be the first ones to support this move. Who is going to force them? The government? Oh, hello.

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

#728

Post by tomrod »

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…

Thank you. In my view you did everything appropriate, including seeking out advice from people with training and experience who could help you decide.

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

#729

Post by gonational »

It's interesting to see people labeled as "anti-vaxxers" or "vaccine hesitant" or "unvaccinated".

If I was not looking to purchase a medication because I had no ailment, and then a medical professional came up and showed me the following chart and told me "Vaccines have cured most of the calamitous diseases of yesteryear, and here is a new one that you should take.", I would not then decide to get a vaccine. Would you? Look at the chart.

https://learntherisk.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/diseases...

No need to argue with me; why bother. I didn't create the data used to make the chart. When that feeling starts to come back look at the chart once again. The data doesn't change. Your feelings might change, but facts will stay the same each time you load the chart. Try it out.

Labeling people, because they haven't made a choice to do something that you think they should do, is a strange phenomenon.

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