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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

#531

Post by Notanothertoo »

ggggtez wrote: post #279
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 think we have to ask No we don't. The question we have to ask is whether allowing this content is worse for society than any stifling of moderate voices. And the answer is obviously yes. Covid-hoaxers represent millions of people who are causing a national health crisis that doesn't need to be happening anymore . Fuck moderate voices who are "just asking questions". They can deal with playing a little less devil'…

This is a very dangerous slope, especially because you are so willing to dismiss the conversation under the assumption that you know best/everything.

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

#532

Post by BurningFrog »

ascar wrote: post #271
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.

That line of reasoning doesn't make a lot of sense to me. One of my family members is also very hesitant to get the vaccine and gets all kind of anti-vaccine propaganda through various groups and channels. She takes that content as "reasonable" and "potentially true" even tho basically all of what I've seen is simply untrue. E.g. an article claiming there were more deaths due to covid vaccines than to covid, which is…

> That line of reasoning doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

Those who have good arguments against something can convince people with them.

Those without good arguments, need to ban it.

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

#533

Post by ceilingcorner »

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…

It already has had a massive chilling effect, because anyone that even raises the slightest question about the situation is labeled as some kind of right wing Trump supporting radical. A lot of very normal, thoughtful people are not okay with what is happening.

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

#534

Post by tikiman163 »

YouTube has been cracking down on anything Covid related for over a year. Any discussion about Covid that has gone much past saying stay safe or get vaccinated has been instantly demonitized and hidden from people's subscriptions. This is just the next obvious step they were obviously going to take. The thing is, this is an incredibly complicated topic.

Legislation that could result in YouTube being held liable for user posted content that deseminates misinformation has been more than lightly discussed. The problem of misinformation is frequently made worse by the fact that studies have shown around 80% of misinformation of major topics can generally be traced back to fewer than a dozen unique users. It's not the same dozen people on every topic of discussion, but once some of the misinformation has gone viral it's extremely difficult to stop it getting shared again and again. This may seem like a matter of freedom of speech, but on some topics viral misinformation spreading can end up being deadly to thousands of real people.

Consider an analogy. If a person sets up to pull a prank by changing the words on a billboard, with only the intention of just surprising some people. But 3 car crashes occur where the drivers blaim the billboard for being a distraction. How much responsibility would you say the prankster has? How much should the billboard owner have for failing to prevent the prankster?

Now consider that instead of changing a billboard he changes the speed listed on a sign that cautions people not to take a blind turn at greater than 25 mph. Say he changes it to just be the same as the posted speed limit for the road and several cars spin out or there are minor fender benders. Then say he changes it to be even faster than the speed limit. How much responsibility should the prankster have for those accidents? How much should the city have for failing to prevent the prankster from being able to change their official signs?

There are strong points for debate in all of these situations. How easy was it for the prankster to access the billboard and make changes? What else were the drivers doing that a billboard could cause them to crash? What was so distracting about what they put on the billboard?

Why didn't the city post a sign that was more difficult to tamper with? How much effort did the prankster put into their fake? Why didn't local people notice the change and report it? How quickly did the city respond? How believable was the speed he put on the sign?

My point isn't to ask for the answers to these specific questions, but to point out that there is a difference between circumstances that requires greater responsibility from the medium the prankster changed. The contents of a billboard is just an advertisement, speed limits and road hazard signs are more important. Speed limits and road hazards also have to display probably true information that has some degree of validation that relying on them is safe.

This is a particularly tricky subject for YouTube because they are essentially a billboard, but people have started treating what's on it like road signs. How responsible should YouTube be when people use their platform to post complete nonsense that has the potential to get thousands or even millions killed?

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

#535

Post by lemmsjid »

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…

It's highly debatable (bold face on that!!), but I'm not sure that Youtube counts as public debate. If you look at the comments sections on Youtube articles about vaccination, you will find a lot of manifestly false or misinterpreted information. If argued against, people will link to their evidence, which, unsurprisingly, is usually other Youtube videos. This is when you can go down a depressing rabbit hole. These are usually videos, slickly produced, making probably-intentionally bad faith arguments against vaccination. They will take public statements out of context, misinterpret public data, and use a combination of charisma and good (if scrappy) production values to give the viewer the sense that they are the ones telling you the truth. You will find these videos on pretty much any subject, and the makers are clearly monetizing them. You can then go down a rabbit hole, viewing video after video, each providing you with another nugget the confirms your growing suspicion that they're all out to get you.

While it's, again, highly debatable, increasingly to me these videos do not count as public debate, though they are certainly an exercise in free speech. They are not public debate because they do not subject themselves to any form of such debate and intentionally avoid it. If you want skeptical takes on left wing politics, you can see public debate on, say WSJ, Fox News, even OANN. Public in the sense that they put themselves out there in the public sphere and can be scrutinized thusly. These shadowy Youtube articles clearly bank themselves on A) not being found by people who will disagree, or B) have an audience who increasingly will not seek out or countenance opposing viewpoints.

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

#536

Post by frogpelt »

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…

There's an overwhelming tendency now to boil down all opinions to either "right side of history" or "wrong side of history", "anti-science" or "pro-science". This is especially true on social media, YouTube. etc.

Out in the real world there is so much nuance. There are actually black people who don't agree with BLM. There are intellectual people who don't think they need the vaccine. There are Democrats who are pro-life. There are Republicans who support gay marriage. There are bunch of undecided people on a bunch of topics.

We are not all on one side or the other. There is so much middle ground. I still believe most people are in the vast expanse of middle ground.

It just doesn't look that way on the Internet.

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

#537

Post by dragonwriter »

skocznymroczny wrote: post #523

Once again YouTube is standing against free speech. Yes, most of you will cheer for it just as you did when Twitter banned Trump. You will say it's a private company, they have the right to do that. Don't expect people like me to support you when you complain about YouTube banning e.g. Russian activists. Part of supporting free speech is that you have to support the speech you don't agree with.

> Once again YouTube is standing against free speech.

No, exercising it.

> Yes, most of you will cheer for it just as you did when Twitter banned Trump.

Well, I mean, its better than when Twitter rewrote its rule to officially privilege those in established positions of power to justify not taking actions against Trump's regular and egregious violations of their rules.

> Don't expect people like me to support you when you complain about YouTube banning e.g. Russian activists.

I don't expect that anyway. I expect people like you to continue to pursue the position that it is impermissible for YouTube to choose not to relay propaganda of your faction because it is somehow contrary to free speech rights for them to do so, while not taking that position for viewpoints you are less interested in, all while chanting the virtues of supporting speech you disagree with.

I, on the other hand, will continue to view it as within YouTube’s free speech rights to choose not to relay either kind of content, but undesirable for other reasons in certain cases (and, where it is bot a free choice by YouTube but compelled by a government seeking to suppress dissent, a violation of free speech by the government involved, not YouTube.)

> Part of supporting free speech is that you have to support the speech you don't agree with.

No, it isn't.

Part of supporting free speech is that you have to support the right of people to express viewpoints you disagree with, including by declining to relay the positions you do agree with.

(It also doesn't mean you have to support their choice to express those viewpoints, or the manner in which they do it, only their right to do it.)

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

#538

Post by CivBase »

landryraccoon wrote: post #447

Here's a thought experiment. Suppose we were at war with a hostile adversary, and that adversary had killed over 700,000 people already, and thousands more each day. I can scarcely believe that any reasonable person would argue that blocking propaganda or misinformation that harms the war effort would be an egregious imposition on free speech. Once the imminent threat is over, those efforts can and should stop, but n…

> I can scarcely believe that any reasonable person would argue that blocking propaganda or misinformation that harms the war effort would be an egregious imposition on free speech.

Count me as one of the unreasonables, then. Anti-war protests are logically "propaganda that harms the war effort" and the idea that those would be censored is extremely frightening to me.

> Covid-19 has killed more people in the United States than US combat casualties every war since World War 2 combined. It is the the worst mass casualty event any living American has ever experienced.

This is an apples-to-oranges comparison. Heart disease also kills more people in the US every year than every war since WW2, but YouTube isn't banning fast food commercials. [EDIT: In fact, they accept money in exchange for forcing people to watch those!]

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

#540

Post by qwytw »

RandomLensman wrote: post #499
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…

One of the reasons we find ourselves even in such a predicament is so odd: while governments the world over were (and are) quite willing to put very strong curbs, shut-downs etc. in place, they are hesitant to generally mandate vaccination. So now we are in these proxy campaigns on vaccinations. Of course, one could argue that governments should not/cannot mandate vaccination, but then we also generally accept that g…

I'm not sure if there is really any widespread acceptance in any democratic country that the government can just decide to send anyone to a foreign war. Every western soldier who died in Iraq, Afghanistan etc. volunteered. I think that if the US government just decided to reintroduce conscription back in 2003 it would had went down much worse than when they were sending conscripts to Vietnam and there'd probably be even much more resistance to that these days.
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