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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

#411

Post by belter »

jaybrendansmith wrote: post #373
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 might just die. I recently convinced a coworker to get the vaccine, and she did. And four weeks later contracted Covid-19, probably the delta variant, lost her taste and slept for 5 days straight. Had she not had the vaccine, it's quite likely she would now be dead.

Or you could have convinced Lisa Shaw:

"Lisa Shaw: Presenter's death due to complications of Covid vaccine"

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-tyne-58330796

Or this lady in New Zealand:

"New Zealand woman dies after receiving Pfizer vaccine"

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-58380867

Or the parents of this boy

"Michigan boy dies 3 days after getting Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine, CDC is investigating"

https://eu.freep.com/story/news/2021/07/02/jacob-clynick-pfi...

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

#412

Post by koolba »

We live in a world where the rat that heads the NIAD cannot bring himself to publicly say that natural immunity (i.e. you’ve recovered from COVID) provides substantial protection and instead says things like “we’re still looking at the data on that…”: https://twitter.com/drsanjaygupta/status/1436133536239599619

If we’re going to let that continue unchallenged then banning dissenting voices is a drop in the bucket.

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

#413

Post by mlang23 »

ryandrake wrote: post #359

A little off topic, but I wish we could stop using this nice-sounding "hesitant" euphemism. Hesitant implies that people are weighing options and open to changing their minds. With the amount of time they have been available and the overabundance of evidence that the COVID vaccines are safe, effective, and that they decrease hospitalizations and death, I find it very hard to believe that anyone is still "on the fence…

Right, people like you need to be stopped. Lets stop talking to people like you, and support them in our community. Lets stop helping people like you if they need something. Lets just drop people like you out of society.

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

#414

Post by travoc »

jaybrendansmith wrote: post #373
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 might just die. I recently convinced a coworker to get the vaccine, and she did. And four weeks later contracted Covid-19, probably the delta variant, lost her taste and slept for 5 days straight. Had she not had the vaccine, it's quite likely she would now be dead.

The sleepiness of a vaccinated Covid victim is not a scientific way to measure their risk prior to vaccination.

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

#415

Post by nradov »

mbesto wrote: post #305
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…

Fortunately the First Amendment doesn't allow the US government to regulate such activities just because elitist authoritarians consider them harmful. This is an area where fundamental rights overrule cost-benefit analysis.

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

#416

Post by gred »

It used to be that I didn't want to work for Google because I'm not a fan of surveillance capitalism and all of the second order effects. I'm now realizing that there is a second, just-as-important reason: the level of censorship that Google enables.

A few years ago I wouldn't have thought there could possibly be a second reason just as important to me as the centralized, pervasive surveillance... but here we are.

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

#417

Post by justwanttolearn »

deelowe wrote: post #134

Of course it will. Welcome to the new propaganda. Same as the old propaganda. Free speech is the act of standing up for those who you disagree with simply because you believe they have the right to be heard. In today's world of "woke" content creators, everyone seems to miss this point. What started out as fairly clear cut issues such as racism and homophobia has now bled into grey areas around vaccines and gain of f…

Even for racism and homophobia has now merged through grey areas. Someone who disagrees with mass immigration is a racist and someone who is pro the sanctity of marriage between man and woman (not that you can't get legal rights as a same sex couple) is now homophobia. There's so much nuance in under these big umbrellas that no one care to have a dialogue about, they just want clear cut right or wrong with the world is filled in fuzzy lines.

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

#419

Post by aimor »

What parties motivate Google? For example: does the US Government make requests to Google directly? Do advertisers? Lobbyists? Wealthy individuals? Friends and family of higher-ups? Is the source completely internal to Google? I'd love to see more about the process these ideas go through.
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