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YouTube removes interview with professor of medicine on Covid stats and policy

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Re: YouTube removes interview with professor of medicine on Covid stats and policy

#561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the massive risk remains censorship by state actors the state actors are to an extent, elected by the people. The big corporates have no accountability. > I suggest we in the short term we encourage people like YouTube to censor more evil idiocy You say that because in this narrow issue, you agree with youtube. What is the short term? Have you thought through all the consequences? and still, things will happen that…

Find me something of import to society that is getting suppressed on platforms like YouTube that is deleterious to society? If you say this doctor I will be rather disappointed.

Ok, here is one.

PragerU got a whole bunch of videos blocked. One of them was about the 10 commandments. about 10 minutes long.

One of the commandments was 'Do not murder'

the reason youtube gave was that hate words were used. (I am paraphrasing).

you really should watch that video with a open mind, look at all the rap videos that exist that talk about murder, violence etc, and make a case for it.

--

>"import to society"

Again, who decides what is important to society? To me, the pragerU series is very important to my worldview, to you, it could be nonsense. Youtube is clearly biased against it.

It is important for you to be able to seek out alternative view points. Currently, these are being buried.

Re: YouTube removes interview with professor of medicine on Covid stats and policy

#562
post #51

I don’t agree with the interview contents, nor think professorship alone gives sufficient credibility in the face of a novel pandemic, data of which is in the process of emerging. That said, I don’t want youtube to be in charge of deciding what is credible or not. They don’t have in-house experts on these domains, they don’t have a magic epistemology machine that spits out the “facts”. They are good at writing web se…

https://health.google/

Re: YouTube removes interview with professor of medicine on Covid stats and policy

#563
post #51

I don’t agree with the interview contents, nor think professorship alone gives sufficient credibility in the face of a novel pandemic, data of which is in the process of emerging. That said, I don’t want youtube to be in charge of deciding what is credible or not. They don’t have in-house experts on these domains, they don’t have a magic epistemology machine that spits out the “facts”. They are good at writing web se…

> They don’t have in-house experts on these domains, they don’t have a magic epistemology machine that spits out the “facts”. What are the other options? Is there any good_or_not(url) API youtube service can call? They are forced to moderate content.

Actually... https://health.google.com

Re: YouTube removes interview with professor of medicine on Covid stats and policy

#564
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For (2), allowing conversation as a general solution seems tough at scale, e.g., targeted misinformation campaigns on fb and twitter.

Allowing conversation isn't tough: FB and Twitter would literally have to do less than they do now. Creating a culture where people are willing to have uncomfortable conversations instead of trying to silence anyone they disagree with is the hard part.

I agree but it isn’t a general solution. “Allowing conversation” is what Facebook did in 2016, letting people attend fake rallies created by fake Facebook groups disseminating fake facts.

Re: YouTube removes interview with professor of medicine on Covid stats and policy

#565
post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remembering that Wikipedia is also heavily biased.

Yes, however Brietbart used to have a section called "Black Crime"

Link? Also, a major political party used to be pro-slavery, so acknowledging and removing mistakes should be considered a good thing.

Re: YouTube removes interview with professor of medicine on Covid stats and policy

#566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is likely a biased view. If you ask the families of the 300+k people who died from Covid-19 they probably won't consider the economic impact to be the most significant.

People are worried about economies not for some abstract reasons. Bad economies literally kill and have a potential to kill much more people than Covid-19. From what I gather, the scale of current economic damage is seriously compared to the Great Depression in mainstream media[1][2]. Well, the Great Depression brought Nazi into power in Germany[3], WW2 followed and took lives of 70-85 million people[4] to say nothin…

I don't think anyone said worry about the economy was an abstract idea. It obviously has a very real effect on people and their health, it has been well studied. I was simply pointing out that what people will consider more significant in five years time (the effect of the pandemic itself or the subsequent harm to the economy due to the response) depends on who you ask. Furthermore, since we don't know the full extent of the pandemic or the ensuing economic impact it doesn't make sense to claim one way or the other right now.

Also, the Great Depression was one of many factors that led to the rise of the Nazis in Germany. The tensions that led to WW2 were brewing for before WW1 even started so don't try to claim that an economic depression caused all those deaths. There are far too many factors to make that claim.

Re: YouTube removes interview with professor of medicine on Covid stats and policy

#567

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is likely a biased view. If you ask the families of the 300+k people who died from Covid-19 they probably won't consider the economic impact to be the most significant.

Thankfully, that's both not how democracy works - we don't ask a biased sample - and exactly how it works - we ask everyone what they think of the government's performance and they vote for or against. When we all look back in 5 years, then 10, then 15, there will be different "obvious" conclusions drawn. Right now, anyone who sides with any action as correct should have a confidence level that is extremely small. Th…

I agree with you, that was basically my point. At this point in time we don't know enough about how this will play out to make any claim about what was the more important aspect to consider: the effects on the economy or the effects on population-level health due to Covid-19.

Re: YouTube removes interview with professor of medicine on Covid stats and policy

#568
post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's actually a good thing if advertisers don't sponsor something because their customers don't like that thing. Those customers are voting with their money, and those customers -- the democratic electorate -- those are the people we want making censorship decisions For one, I don't want anybody "making censorship decisions". We're not that far from the time the majority would like pro-integration/black, gay friend…

Advertisers will always have power, and platforms will always decide to publish different types of content. If an advertiser today wants to advertise with pornhub, that is a different editorial decision than choosing to advertise on YouTube I shouldn't have to spell this out because it seems pretty obvious. One can imagine a world where YouTube complies with your regulation by providing YouTube, YouTube for kids, and…

>Advertisers will always have power

Not if laws lessen it. Which is my whole point.

>If an advertiser today wants to advertise with pornhub, that is a different editorial decision than choosing to advertise on YouTube. I shouldn't have to spell this out because it seems pretty obvious.

It's only obvious within a certain puritan culture. In Europe nobody would bat an eye if an advertiser for a, say, fast food store, advertised in pornhub. People wouldn't want to take them down.

>One can imagine a world where YouTube complies with your regulation by providing YouTube, YouTube for kids, and maybe a couple political niches that capture their most popular creators

Adults are not kids - they don't need or should require special segmentation from different content (aside from their chosing what they like to view/read).

So we'd just needs a kids and an adults YouTube.

Plus making advertising on the adults YouTube wholesale: you buy impressions/views/clicks/etc - and that's it. You don't get a say which video they appear on.

Re: YouTube removes interview with professor of medicine on Covid stats and policy

#569

These types of censorship patterns are identical to that employed by China in intent . The practical consequences are the same as well. In China information censorship is due to the government trying to promote peace and harmony. Aka, the government thinks it knows what’s best for people and forces it on people. Facebook et al also encounter these same problems, where they see people spreading “misinformation.” It’s…

As long as you can host your video on your own website, that's not the same. If you own website, you have all rights to do any censorship you want. Now if your government will try to fine or arrest you because you hosted some video on your website, that's censorship. You can avoid youtube, but you can't avoid your government. That said, I agree that huge websites like youtube, facebook, instagram are something more t…

The difference between practically the same and purely the same is minimal.

In China you can easily get around the firewall if you try hard enough.

In American you can easily distribute your video on your own website if you try hard enough.

Do you see how these two things are fundamentally the same?

Re: YouTube removes interview with professor of medicine on Covid stats and policy

#570

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what it's worth, I do not think people in the past were more informed than people today. If anything, more people are more informed today than at any time in history. What we're seeing is the breakdown of consolidated narratives. It used to be that people's beliefs were all wrong in the same way. You'll note that this looks basically identical to everyone being well informed. Now that we've moved into a regime of…

The problem is that memes themselves undergo natural selection, which favors the "bad" ones overall. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc

I don't think this is true in the long run, any more than genes which favor their propagation are bad in the long run. In the short term, viruses, cancers, shitty memes, doomsday cults and other low-sophistication replicators are favored.

But long term you get things like multicellularity, complex nervous systems, the scientific method, civilization and art. The road may be rocky but I see no reason for it to be any different here.

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