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YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation

reuters.com

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Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation

#111

Post by tony101 »

anigbrowl wrote: post #67
anonymousiam wrote: post #2

This is the slippery slope of censorship on display for everyone to see. What panel of certified physicians is YouTube using to identify what information is correct vs. incorrect? I'm pretty sure they don't have any doctors doing this. The ban is a political act and not a scientific one.

Zzzz. Yeah that's a problem, but come back with a proposal about how to deal with the existing misinformation and bad faith problem.

Demonetize and demote these videos, without taking them down entirely. Make them accessible through search but do not recommend them to people who are not specifically looking for the videos.

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation

#112

Post by triceratops »

brigandish wrote: post #72
anigbrowl wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zzzz. Yeah that's a problem, but come back with a proposal about how to deal with the existing misinformation and bad faith problem.

More freedom of speech is the answer to misinformation because then it can be challenged. Censorship allows convenient mistruths to spread unchallenged.

Fact checking is hard and time-consuming but making up bullshit is easy. People love sharing contary-to-conventional-wisdom news and ideas that they come across, because it makes them feel smart.

Given these two facts, it's far easier for lies to spread quicker than truth.

How do you solve for this in your spherical cow model of free speech?

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation

#113

Post by refurb »

garbagetime wrote: post #24
michaelterryio wrote: post #22

We’ve been searching for a rigorous way to determine scientific consensus on claims but I don’t think we realized the answer was YouTube’s management.

Science doesn't work by consensus, anyway.

Yes it does in some cases. Take Alzheimer's disease for example. What is the mechanism for the disease? We don't know. But the consensus is it's not amyloid plaques, based on the most recent data. Some scientists think it still is, but the consensus is it's not.

Scientific truth is not black and white but rather shades of gray. Yes, some things we know the absolute truth (or rather there is so much evidence that it's unlikely it's wrong), but there is plenty that we're just "pretty sure" and that's typically based on consensus.

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation

#114

Post by hef19898 »

s3r3nity wrote: post #4
anonymousiam wrote: post #2

This is the slippery slope of censorship on display for everyone to see. What panel of certified physicians is YouTube using to identify what information is correct vs. incorrect? I'm pretty sure they don't have any doctors doing this. The ban is a political act and not a scientific one.

Agree on this one - authoritative bodies can be wrong / misled as well, and shouldn't be the only arbiters of truth. Ex: The WHO made many mistakes during COVID, including faulty recommendations and (alleged) influence by a governing body to limit bad press. [1] (Before the ad hominem attacks come in, I'm obviously very pro vaccine...but against censorship and generally distrust authoritative bodies of most kinds.) […

You assume that the WHO and others have to be right all the time everytime. And that they changed their minds regarding COVID-19 because of "public" pressure and not because of new insights. Both assumptions are not correct IMHO.

The CDC did bow to political authority on COVID-19 measures so. Contrary to science.

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation

#115

Post by ajsnigrutin »

Yay, this is great, and should be used for everything! /s

If we used this for medical advice in my country, this would make it very funny... at the start of the epidemic, our government "experts" said:

- "healthy people don't need masks"

...and youtube would censor all the "fearmongering paranoics" advocating for mask use.

Then on some random spring day, our government makes a new rule:

- "you need a mask and gloves to enter any closed public space (stores,...)" (yes, literally overnight)

And youtube would censor everybody saying that masks don't help healthy people.

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation

#116

Post by zaarn »

brigandish wrote: post #72
anigbrowl wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zzzz. Yeah that's a problem, but come back with a proposal about how to deal with the existing misinformation and bad faith problem.

More freedom of speech is the answer to misinformation because then it can be challenged. Censorship allows convenient mistruths to spread unchallenged.

Youtube already had plenty of free speech where everyone can say anything unhindered and is rewarded if they generate attention.

The ultimate free speech hasn't lead anywhere good on the internet because quacks that previously where relegated to soap boxes in their villages when free speech was thought of in the US are now given the same platform and power of voice as field experts who have studied their domain for years and know the dangers.

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation

#117

Post by Barrin92 »

brigandish wrote: post #72
anigbrowl wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zzzz. Yeah that's a problem, but come back with a proposal about how to deal with the existing misinformation and bad faith problem.

More freedom of speech is the answer to misinformation because then it can be challenged. Censorship allows convenient mistruths to spread unchallenged.

There's literally no reason to believe that this is correct and anything else other than dogma.

There's quite a lot of psychological evidence suggesting that first impressions stick stronger than corrections (which everyone knows who has ever accidentally believed something just because they heard it quickly), that only people who are predisposed to corrections actually believe them, and that in others corrections even augment belief in the originally wrong claim ("see, the mainstream media feels threatened by this revelation!")

There's also a good book by Bartels and Achen[1] suggesting that prevalence of wrong beliefs can actually increase with education (climate change denial is more prominent among highly educated Republicans, highly engaged people on both sides of the political spectrum are more likely to make wrong assumptions about the demographics of the other), because they have more capacity to rationalise false priors.

So there's actually significant reason to believe that more speech, by increasing engagement increases partisanship, which in turn leads to ample adoption of misinformation. Which I think makes a little bit more sense when one looks at the state of discourse in the last few years.

[1]https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691169446/de...

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation

#118

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

gizmo385 wrote: post #89
xienze wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Obvious bullshit is fooling huge chunks of the population and causing huge damage. “Obvious” is debatable. Hardly anyone watching scientific content of any kind is an expert in the subject matter. What the public has always relied on is some sort of authority figure lending credibility to some idea or news story. For instance, saying masks don’t work is “obvious” bullshit. But remember back in March? Our glorious l…

> But remember back in March? Our glorious leaders were urging us not to buy masks because they don’t work, and besides, doctors need them. I think this is a bit disingenuous. First of all, you're looking back with the benefit of hindsight and the knowledge of the virus that we have today. Additionally, weren't most of the recommendations around mask wearing that people not gobble up PPE because there was such a shor…

The benefit of a free exchange of ideas is that it allows people to originate and develop the ideas that we later recognize are correct in hindsight. The eventual move towards masks wasn't inevitable; there are some countries even today where masks aren't broadly recommended, so if Internet platforms had banned mask advocacy in March there probably would have been a lot more.

(I'm not sure this is on point to Youtube's policy here, though - they say they aren't banning all vaccine skepticism, just specific categories of silly disinformation like microchips.)

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation

#119

Post by hanselot »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #115

Yay, this is great, and should be used for everything! /s If we used this for medical advice in my country, this would make it very funny... at the start of the epidemic, our government "experts" said: - "healthy people don't need masks" ...and youtube would censor all the "fearmongering paranoics" advocating for mask use. Then on some random spring day, our government makes a new rule: - "you need a mask and gloves…

Waiting for the shills to downvote you. This is exactly how every situation will go. Welcome to 1984.

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation

#120

Post by Cthulhu_ »

anonymousiam wrote: post #2

This is the slippery slope of censorship on display for everyone to see. What panel of certified physicians is YouTube using to identify what information is correct vs. incorrect? I'm pretty sure they don't have any doctors doing this. The ban is a political act and not a scientific one.

Misinformation is also a slippery slope though; you have to say "enough is enough" at one point because else you reach a point of no return.

See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance (iirc that was linked to on here a while ago, I may misremember)

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