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

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

#151

Post by noxer »

IgorPartola wrote: post #53
afavour wrote: post #40

Time for repeat showing of the free speech debate we’ve already had a dozen times, whoopee! As ever, IMO, the problem isn’t the hosting or the banning, it’s the algorithms. I don’t care whether YouTube hosts anti-vaccine activists, I care that they actively promote anti-vaccine content to users simply because it’s proven to get clicks and earn them money. Bans like this look incredibly stupid when you realise YouTube…

Let me reframe: let’s say that YouTube hosts anti-vax content and as a result some percentage of people are swayed by this content to not vaccinate themselves or their children. Some percentage of them dies. Let’s say in absolute numbers it is 10,000 people. Do you think that YouTube did a good thing by allowing that content?

The whole thing is a "correlation does not imply causation" fallacy because you just assume that changing one thing lead to the change of something else while ignoring all the other effect it has. For example by leaving the content and being a neutral platform the subjective value of the content on the platform is higher. More people who are not sure about something can listen both sides and choose based on that. However by removing it you exclude these people (for a million of other topics too) even trough they could very well end up on the "right" side after doing their own research. They wont do this if its clear that the platform already removed one side and the other therefore is propaganda. So by removing it, how many additional death would this actually cause? You just leave this out. What if it causes thousands of deaths too? Let’s say in absolute numbers it is 10000 people.

You can now make a non-emotionally decision whether removing it or not is actually a good idea because the arbitrary appeal to emotion evens out.

This is the way think about such stuff, not by making arbitrary emotional "arguments" which can not be proven or disproved and may as well be completely irrelevant or even in reverse.

Whenever the "logic" of "X people (less) die if we do Y" is used its an attempt to make it emotional instead of rational it should ring some bells and raise some flags. You can see this with autonomous driving or gun control an many other topics. Its some kind of appeal to emotion fallacy combined with false cause fallacy. And instead of convincing anyone or find common ground it just pushes people to more extreme opposition. Because you "literally kill people if you disagree with X".

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

#152

Post by wepple »

nanis wrote: post #141
wepple wrote: post #64

Can anyone recommend a good book on the balance between free speech versus disallowing harmful ideas to propagate? Or even one book from each side of the argument? I don’t think I’ve even begun to comprehend a robust position on what might make sense, or the arguments involved.

> balance between free speech versus disallowing harmful ideas to propagate? There is no balance. The very fantasy of such a balance relies upon the presumption that 1) there are harmful _ideas_; and 2) that there is an authority that can certify some ideas as _safe_ vs _harmful_. The discussion here gets overwhelmed by several generations of people who never actually understood what people had to give up for the rig…

There are folks out there that believe some level of content moderation is useful, and I’d like to understand their argument. If my conclusion is that it’s not robust, so be it.

But let’s run a thought experiment. Let’s say an idea shows up on Twitter that Asian people are ruining the US. It spreads and gains attention. People start killing, and citing the Twitter misinformation as a key motivator. Can the vast majority of society not agree that 1) this is a harmful idea and 2) reasonable people agree it is harmful. And therefore Twitter has a responsibility to remove that content?

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

#153

Post by IgorPartola »

wepple wrote: post #64

Can anyone recommend a good book on the balance between free speech versus disallowing harmful ideas to propagate? Or even one book from each side of the argument? I don’t think I’ve even begun to comprehend a robust position on what might make sense, or the arguments involved.

Look up the paradox of tolerance and go from there.

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

#154

Post by strgcmc »

mmcdermott wrote: post #121

One of the things that gets lost in the arguments around this sort of censorship (and, before I lose you, it is censorship and that is fine; we all engage in forms of censorship in determining what we will or will not ingest - the danger comes when some third party is acting as the censor for others) is the distinction between legality and morality. Legally, it seems self-evident that YouTube should be permitted to c…

In a funny twist of fate, I for one have become less and less worried about the "opposite" scenario coming to pass, as time goes on and we observe the evolution of political discourse at least in America (and to a lesser extent globally perhaps).

What I mean is, the general trend towards anti-intellectualism in the right-wing, means that their policy positions generally trend towards being based on opinions rather than facts, and become further and further divorced from reality. For example, think about banning contraception or sex education, which are proven to reduce teen pregnancy and abortions; these are counterproductive policy positions the right wing takes, because they don't care to judge policies by their factual outcomes, but instead by what "feels right".

Ergo, as time passes, I find it less and less likely that corporations or organizations that have to live in the real world, deal with practical real world facts and outcomes, will end up taking right wing policy positions or censoring pro-reality positions. It would be fundamentally anti-profit and anti-capitalist to do so and goes against their self-interest (which is an incentive structure that political parties don't share, as spewing misinformation and even acting irrationally won't necessarily lose them voters or supporters, but companies who act irrationally will over time tend to be less profitable), which is cynically the best available guarantee of good decision-making that we have in our broken society.

TLDR: I am not worried about a world where "round Earther's" or pro-vaxx positions get censored, because corporations know that round Earth and pro-vaxx policies lead to better outcomes, being better grounded in reality.

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

#155

Post by sixothree »

mariodiana wrote: post #65

I 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…

I wouldn't blame YouTube here. I would blame the anti-vaxxers. They created an impossible atmosphere for youtube to navigate.

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

#156

Post by LocalH »

helen___keller wrote: post #150

IMO, go further. Remove all medical recommendation and assertions from YouTube. Leave YouTube for entertainment, and have other platforms - perhaps ones better regulated and better managed - for medical discussions in a scientific context. There's inherent difficulty in trying to judge between wackos and pros, because wackos do their best to masquerade as pros. This is basically a turing complete issue, because there…

Taken to its logical end, that would also prevent many very useful channels from existing. What about all the people who live with a mental illness and also have a Youtube channel documenting that experience? Should that be prohibited too? For which disorders? If you remove all ADHD-related individual content from YouTube, you're harming the platform and a crapton of people who have bettered their lives with the aid of such videos.

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

#157

Post by rvz »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #107
mariodiana wrote: post #65

I 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…

Okay, but we really need to talk about what “stifling of public debate” means. Companies are routinely pressured to fire people in public positions who espouse pro-Palestinian views. Across the nation, states are enacting legal bans against teaching the history of racism, and firing teachers who dare to make students uncomfortable (by the same people who decried “safe spaces” less than a decade ago). Plenty of people…

> But for some reason, the only “free speech” issues that get attention here are radical right-wing viewpoints that get moderated on private tech platforms.

Do you mind reading the HN guidelines once again? [0] HN is not for flamewars or ideological battles especially when comments like this are unsubstantiated with lack of evidence.

From [0]

> Eschew flamebait. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents.

> Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#159

Post by paulryanrogers »

LocalH wrote: post #156
helen___keller wrote: post #150

IMO, go further. Remove all medical recommendation and assertions from YouTube. Leave YouTube for entertainment, and have other platforms - perhaps ones better regulated and better managed - for medical discussions in a scientific context. There's inherent difficulty in trying to judge between wackos and pros, because wackos do their best to masquerade as pros. This is basically a turing complete issue, because there…

Taken to its logical end, that would also prevent many very useful channels from existing. What about all the people who live with a mental illness and also have a Youtube channel documenting that experience? Should that be prohibited too? For which disorders? If you remove all ADHD-related individual content from YouTube, you're harming the platform and a crapton of people who have bettered their lives with the aid…

It could be a slippery slope. Still I wonder if such a ban could also have positive effects by fostering smaller, more collaborative communities too.

As it is YouTube is becoming a (mostly unidirectional) public commons that is captured by a single profit-seeking corporation.

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