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

YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

551–560 of 933 posts

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation

#551

Post by shadowgovt »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #430
thaumaturgy wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...what YouTube is doing here is a slippery slope and it's scary... BTW, "slippery slope" was intended to be an example of fallacious thinking. Before it became a popular term, it was intended as a criticism of arguments of the form, "A will lead to B will lead to C, so A is bad." I'm not bringing this up (just) to be pedantic; the overwhelming evidence to date is that it is extraordinarily difficult to get any of…

The slippery slope is a fallacy only if the slope isn't, in fact, slippery.

No, it's always a fallacy. If A leads to B, B leads to C, and C is bad, argue that people shouldn't do B, not A. Especially if A also leads to D, which is good.

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation

#552

Post by toolz »

rmrfstar wrote: post #483
dgb23 wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> things are going to need to be sacrificed I say this for emphasis, not to personally attack you: Whenever I read or hear this it makes me extremely suspicious, because it often doesn't come from those who will do the sacrifice themselves. Censorship and other forms of regulating free speech is simply never a good solution. Perpetrators of lies will even hide behind this, and create a false image of rebellious heroi…

> This is from the top of my head but there are certainly other people who have smarter ideas that don't involve straight up censorship. So what can you conclude about the private intent of key decision makers? I find that imputing malign intent often improves my ability to forecast outcomes. Whether there is actual bad faith almost doesn't matter if the assumption improves forecasts.

Care to make any predictions then? I'm always highly skeptical of confirmation bias and I think when I ask people to make predictions they immediately get a bit nervous which hopefully is enough to help them recognize they're only willing to claim their methodology works and not quite so eager to prove it.

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation

#553

Post by [deleted] »

jackhack wrote: post #528
Aeolun wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Censorship and other forms of regulating free speech is simply never a good solution. The almost free speech on the other side of the ocean seems to be working pretty well. You get to say anything that isn’t actively harmful to others, but you won’t be able to advertise bleach as a way to get Corona out of your system.

Nonsense. Almost free speech is censorship by another name. Working "pretty well?" Sure, unless one tries to talk about things that really matter and strays outside the dotted lines of permissibility. Some topics are verboten. When you say "other side of the ocean," I assume you're talking about Europe. Try to discuss the muslim rape gangs in the UK. Try to discuss the surge in grenade attacks and many-fold increase…

[deleted]

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation

#554

Post by shadowgovt »

pritovido wrote: post #314
thaumaturgy wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...what YouTube is doing here is a slippery slope and it's scary... BTW, "slippery slope" was intended to be an example of fallacious thinking. Before it became a popular term, it was intended as a criticism of arguments of the form, "A will lead to B will lead to C, so A is bad." I'm not bringing this up (just) to be pedantic; the overwhelming evidence to date is that it is extraordinarily difficult to get any of…

No, a slippery slope is just that: A slippery slope. A slippery slope is a inclined surface, a place in space that once you are into, makes you transition very fast to a worse state, like your head hitting the floor at great velocity. That is you can start well, in a good state, and transition to a much worse state over time. Your definition is also valid but not the only one way to interpret it. It is an expression…

Yeah, it turns out when something becomes mainstream, it becomes beholden to mainstream sensibilities. You could post anything you wanted on old YouTube because nobody cared. Now people care.

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation

#555

Post by [deleted] »

toolz wrote: post #552
rmrfstar wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is from the top of my head but there are certainly other people who have smarter ideas that don't involve straight up censorship. So what can you conclude about the private intent of key decision makers? I find that imputing malign intent often improves my ability to forecast outcomes. Whether there is actual bad faith almost doesn't matter if the assumption improves forecasts.

Care to make any predictions then? I'm always highly skeptical of confirmation bias and I think when I ask people to make predictions they immediately get a bit nervous which hopefully is enough to help them recognize they're only willing to claim their methodology works and not quite so eager to prove it.

[deleted]

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation

#556

Post by throwaway894345 »

owlbynight wrote: post #174

I'll preface this by stating that I hate the idea of censorship and I always have. However, were I to happen across someone motionless on the floor with a needle in their arm, I would give them NARCAN instead of a ride to a rehab center. I'm from the United States. Social media is currently poisoning our country to a degree that I think it may be too late to try and draw out the fight for free speech by using free sp…

I don’t think the problem is so much social media, but the polarization of our epistemological institutions, which erodes trust in them and rightfully so—we now have to take our academic information with a particularly large grain of salt, accounting for the aligned interests of the media and certain departments in the academy. However, many go too far, moving from skepticism to positions which can’t be supported by the evidence. They throw the baby out with the bath water. The only solution in my mind is to restore heterodoxy to these epistemological institutions, so people of all stripes can trust them. I know this kind of comment draws out bad faith arguments like a moth to flame (“...biased against reality”), so I hope we can dispense with that and focus on solutions.

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation

#557

Post by gridlockd »

javajosh wrote: post #505
TeMPOraL wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it follows that 10% or so of the population are, well, nuts. Another 10% are so are willing to do anything to become famous. It has always been this way. Not sure that's true, though. Here's a cloud to cover your sunshine: what if the very concept that beliefs have to correspond to observable reality is a relatively new one, or a relatively unpopular one (with a 10% of the population subscribing to it)? What if it'…

Thank you for saying this. It takes the discussion in a different, but I think more useful, direction. Suffering is caused when you believe something that isn't true, and the rational idealists don't want to accept "it's natural for people to believe in lies", as you say. (There is a juicy irony here, which I will leave as an exercise for the reader.) The key innovation we require, as a society, are better feedback m…

> The key innovation we require, as a society, are better feedback mechanisms to correct inaccurate beliefs.

I have come to the conclusion that managing our collective delusions is more important than correcting them. Reality is unbearable to the human psyche. Most collective delusions are benign or even beneficial to society.

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation

#558

Post by fennecfoxen »

BariumBlue wrote: post #545
dgb23 wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> things are going to need to be sacrificed I say this for emphasis, not to personally attack you: Whenever I read or hear this it makes me extremely suspicious, because it often doesn't come from those who will do the sacrifice themselves. Censorship and other forms of regulating free speech is simply never a good solution. Perpetrators of lies will even hide behind this, and create a false image of rebellious heroi…

> Perpetrators of lies will even hide behind this, and create a false image of rebellious heroism, instead of facing public discourse and the consequences thereof. Unfortunately, I think it's a bit of a classical liberal ideal that "the truth will come through and those who were wrong will see the error of their ways". To some, the truth is a tool. If it's not a useful tool, it will be discarded. Probably a more usef…

If you say it is naive to raise the idea that free speech alone will solve all issues, that is quite reasonable — but I would raise that is just as naive to think that a carefully administered censorship is an effective remedy, either.

The only possible remedy in the end is to build our societies, our law, and our culture to be resilient against those cases when people are wrong, because they often will be.

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation

#560

Post by whoknew1122 »

Now donate the ad money you generated off videos that contained misinfo. Otherwise this doesn't mean anything.

Social media companies continue to profit off conspiracy and extremist content. Then when their position becomes politically untenable, they just say 'Oooops, our bad. Can't do post that anymore.' But they still get to keep the bags of money that content generated.

It's a pretty sweet hustle they got going.

Post reply on HN