Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 1001 posts

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

#301

Post by prohobo »

mabbo wrote: post #112

YouTube is a private company, not a public service. Anti-vax is not a protected class of people, and so there is no law that says YouTube cannot discriminate against them. As a company, they've decided to take this path. They don't have to justify it. If that makes you angry, boycott them. Don't conduct business with them, which includes watching their content and ads. And if you think that YouTube is large enough an…

You're right; but I just want to point out that most people arguing against these actions hold this principle despite their visceral reaction.

Two things can be true: YouTube (and Google) have way too much power and are destructive to democracy, AND they have the right to be that way.

The point is that people believe they shouldn't have that right.

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

#302

Post by long_time_gone »

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.==

Sounds like she has already made up her mind, in which case I’m not sure it matters if the content is moderated or not. It’s possible she will find whatever reinforces the decision she’s already made.

==The only thing worse than bad ideas is the suppression of bad ideas.==

This sounds good, but is it true? The bad idea exists today and is spreading, does limiting that spread actually cause more harm? Is there evidence of this or a study to support it? In schools, we suppress all sorts of bad ideas. Take eugenics, has suppressing that idea made the belief in eugenics worse?

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

#303

Post by etchalon »

yibg wrote: post #275
mach1ne wrote: post #57

People don't see what the actual problem here is - perhaps because they don't want to see. What is happening is very much the transformation from an open society to one where freedom of speech is limited and certain other individual rights are stripped away. Perhaps not de jure, but de facto. And sure, one might argue that it's for a good cause (even though it's a complex topic). However, the fact is that as this is…

Do you also feel it’s wrong of YouTube to not allow porn? Feels like people are laser focused on anti vax content due to the political nature of it, while not really caring about all the other moderation they already do.

Porn is a great counter example to the idea social media companies have some all powerful control over public information. Nearly all of them ban porn, a form of absolutely protected speech, but behold, it’s easy to find porn.

The whole “death of free speech” argument is such nonsense

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

#304

Post by roody15 »

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…

Agreed shutting down discussion is not helping matters and we appear to be moving in an autocratic dystopian direction as a nation.

The FDA advisory panel was overridden to endorse a booster shot. Even mentioning FDA officials resigning and the board being overridden gets you labeled as anti-vax and blocked.

Future not looking good :/

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

#305

Post by mbesto »

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 than just armchair criticizing their decision?

Actually, people have, we've just moved on from the more important discussion which is whether YouTube (and other similar forms of social media / UGC) should exist in its current form.

I personally do not like regulation, but this is a situation in which the harm of social media / UGC is starting to outshine its benefit. I'm not sure if an outright ban of sites like YT is warranted but I think the frictionless experience of uploading/commenting/etc. on YT should be questioned.

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

#306

Post by MrRadar »

crocodiletears wrote: post #238

At this point I'm not hesitant about the vaccine, but getting it would only validate the heavy-handed approach we're seeing wrt censorship.

So you understand and acknowledge that this vaccine can literally save your life, and you accept all the science that shows that it is safe and effective, but you refuse to get it because some people are being forbidden (by a privately-owned platform, only on that platform) to spread lies about how it's not safe or effective? That's a very strange position to take, to put your own life in literal mortal danger because other people want to spread lies (that you acknowledge are lies) that put their own lives and the lives of people who listen to them at risk.

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

#307

Post by derbOac »

IgorPartola wrote: post #76
mach1ne wrote: post #57

People don't see what the actual problem here is - perhaps because they don't want to see. What is happening is very much the transformation from an open society to one where freedom of speech is limited and certain other individual rights are stripped away. Perhaps not de jure, but de facto. And sure, one might argue that it's for a good cause (even though it's a complex topic). However, the fact is that as this is…

Yes our freedoms are being eroded. It’s a slippery slope. All that bullshit. Come on. A private company doesn’t want to contribute to people dying. Oh and by the way don’t they have the right to do what they want? You want what, regulation to prohibit this?

I'm sort of sympathetic to that argument except:

1. I think at the end of the day, the problem isn't "does YouTube have the right to do this?" it's "should YouTube be doing this, given their status?" For me even though they have the right to, I think it's just the wrong thing to do.

I personally am baffled by how the US as a society seems to be devaluing free speech principles in the private and public sphere due to some argument that it's needed to combat misinformation. This strategy never ends well, and it belies a lack of strength in promoting alternatives. The way to combat misinformation is with better information. Resorting to free speech restrictions is a sign of weakness in my opinion.

In the end I'd rather have YouTube (and other platforms) modeling a different approach.

2. I also think, regardless of how they got there, at some point a private business functions as a monopoly and should be treated as such. I'm not so sure how I feel about regulations along those lines, but I do think anti-monopoly legal response to this sort of behavior wouldn't be unreasonable. I'm not at all sympathetic to the GOP in general, but if they started coming down on YouTube for this kind of thing under anti-monopoly regulation umbrellas I think it wouldn't be irrational or unreasonable to me.

3. As a more immediate issue, I think this sort of thing always backfires. If you have a bunch of people thinking there's a conspiracy to shove untested vaccines down people's throats, and then you have a major media distributor like YouTube censoring all anti-vaccine discussion, what do you think they're going to conclude? I'm as pro-vaccine as someone can get, and think arguments against them are usually pretty absurd, but I have to say that this kind of thing starts to look like a conspiracy, even if it isn't one. Why give them ammunition? If you can't convince people the vaccine is a good thing, how do you think that shutting down discussion is somehow going to work better?

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

#308

Post by syshum »

mach1ne wrote: post #57

People don't see what the actual problem here is - perhaps because they don't want to see. What is happening is very much the transformation from an open society to one where freedom of speech is limited and certain other individual rights are stripped away. Perhaps not de jure, but de facto. And sure, one might argue that it's for a good cause (even though it's a complex topic). However, the fact is that as this is…

Society is regressing back to a time where idea's like those in the Pre-Enlightenment era where prevalent, hopefully we do not regress all the way back to Dark Ages, where people will stoned and hanged for defying the church... In our time "the church" will likely be replaced with a new non-theistic religion of some kind, a Technocracy of "The Experts™" and "Authoritative Sources™" who are the ones that will tell us what "The Truth™" is today

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

#309

Post by SuoDuanDao »

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.

Yup, the Streisand effect is real. Tyrion Lannister said it best - when you cut out a man's tongue, you're not proving him a liar. You're just proving that you fear what he has to say.
Post reply on HN