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YouTube bans coronavirus-related content that directly contradicts WHO advice

bbc.com

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Re: YouTube bans coronavirus-related content that directly contradicts WHO advice

#591

Post by canjobear »

jdavis703 wrote: post #444
glenstein wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Where we live, due to local laws, we are now obliged to wear a mask to go shopping. Can one discuss that on YouTube, or would one be contradicting the WHO? Examples like these are frivolous. There's a heartland of obvious, flagrant misinformation that is indisputably worth banning and for which a moral case exists to ban immediately: '5g caused corona, this home remedy will cure it!' etc. The go-to move of internet…

The problem is they give one body the ultimate authority on what is truth. Science, epidemiology & politics is more complex than that. For example some in the Chinese government think coronavirus was released by the US Army while some in the US intelligence community think coronavirus leaked from a Chinese government lab in Wuhan. Another example, some US government officials think chloroquine is a COVID cure, while…

> explicitly disallowed sources (states owned media organizations, politicians and intelligence agencies).

If the intelligence agencies are any good then they do not release information under their own name.

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus-related content that directly contradicts WHO advice

#592

Post by anigbrowl »

ardy42 wrote: post #214
Barrin92 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither does the US. Taiwan is only recognised by IIRC 12 natinos, mostly small island states. This has become another weird internet talking point as international recognition pretty much unanmiously switched to the PRC in the 1970s.

> Neither does the US. Taiwan is only recognised by IIRC 12 natinos, mostly small island states. This has become another weird internet talking point as international recognition pretty much unanmiously switched to the PRC in the 1970s. That's misleading. The US de facto recognizes Taiwan, and the only reason it doesn't recognize it de jure is that the PRC would formally cut off relations if it did. https://en.wikipe…

Well, the WHO probably reads what comes to it from Taiwan, but they don't publicly give lip service to it because that would piss of china, the very large country whose cooperation they needed given that the apparent origin of the pandemic there.

The existence of political factors (which are not the fault of the WHO) makes it less than perfect, but people using it as a cudgel against the organization are (not you necessarily) are insinuating that the WHO's failure to be perfect thus makes it scientifically useless. This is an obvious bad-faith argument deployed for rather obvious political ends.

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus-related content that directly contradicts WHO advice

#593

Post by vkou »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #445
vkou wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did not realize that the WHO's job is to get involved in arguments over borders. I always thought that their job was to get involved in arguments over public health.

Public health is the problem with them ignoring data from Taiwan.

1. What part of that statement makes you think that they ignored data from Taiwan? It was quite obviously a dodge of a politically sensitive question.

2. Both Taiwan and China claim to be China, so that statement wasn't even factually wrong.

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus-related content that directly contradicts WHO advice

#594

Post by throwaway8879 »

MisterBastahrd wrote: post #337
calpaterson wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Almost no one in previous history had an ability to directly target poor, uneducated masses which their own content created in their own bedroom. Yes they did - where do you think Martin Luther composed his 95 theses?

He didn't target poor, uneducated masses. He targeted the most educated people in his society, the clerics of the Catholic church.

He translated the new testament from Greek to German. That helped the poor more than anybody else.

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus-related content that directly contradicts WHO advice

#595

Post by anigbrowl »

klodolph wrote: post #213
afarrell wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its not that it is unethical But it does support the statement that "The WHO is a political organization with medical leanings". Personally I think that statement puts it a bit too strongly. It would be like saying "PyCon is a feminist organization with technical leanings."

I’m curious what possible behavior by the WHO you would consider not to indicate that it’s a political organization.

Why not view it as a medical organization with political constraints?

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus-related content that directly contradicts WHO advice

#596

Post by PixyMisa »

outside1234 wrote: post #353
ardy42 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Neither does the US. Taiwan is only recognised by IIRC 12 natinos, mostly small island states. This has become another weird internet talking point as international recognition pretty much unanmiously switched to the PRC in the 1970s. That's misleading. The US de facto recognizes Taiwan, and the only reason it doesn't recognize it de jure is that the PRC would formally cut off relations if it did. https://en.wikipe…

The WHO de facto recognizes Taiwan as well.

If by "de facto recognizes" you mean they suddenly have trouble with their Skype connection the moment Taiwan is mentioned.

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus-related content that directly contradicts WHO advice

#597

Post by vkou »

jshevek wrote: post #581
vkou wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did not realize that the WHO's job is to get involved in arguments over borders. I always thought that their job was to get involved in arguments over public health.

That's a strange way of framing the fact that the WHO is explicitly siding with China in denying the very existence of Taiwan. Especially considering that Taiwan had data that would have saved lives, had the World Health Organization acknowledged their existence.

The next time someone who has nothing to do with congressional politics refers to President Trump, are you going to get on their case for failing to acknowledge the existence of the impeachment issue? Will you accuse them of explicitly supporting one side of that conflict?

After all, it is crystal-clear to all right-thinking people that if the world were just, he would currently be in jail. Referring to him as a president is explicitly taking a political position on the subject...

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus-related content that directly contradicts WHO advice

#598

Post by krrrh »

jtgeibel wrote: post #403
sneak wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can constrain your statements to only objectively true things and still be confusing and ambiguous. This is a perfect example of that. It warrants criticism.

I've probably seen this tweet 50 times now in the last week. Before that, not even once. It's easy to criticize now with 3 months of additional information and to cherry pick an instance of a few hundred characters out of all the statements the WHO has made. 99% of the criticism of this tweet that I've seen so far comes nowhere near the nuanced criticism you make here. In aggregate, the level of criticism this tweet…

It’s partly because around a week ago we discovered evidence that Chinese leadership was well aware of person to person transmission on the day that tweet was sent.

https://apnews.com/68a9e1b91de4ffc166acd6012d82c2f9

There is a lot that a mission-driven version of the WHO would have done differently. This Zeynep Tufekci piece does a good job of detailing that.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/04/why-world...

> This mission-driven WHO would not have brazenly tweeted, as late as January 14, that “preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in #Wuhan, #China.” That claim was false, and known by the authorities in Wuhan to be false.. Taiwan had already told the WHO of the truth too. On top of that, the day before that tweet was sent, there had been a case in Thailand: a woman from Wuhan who had traveled to Thailand, but who had never been to the seafood market associated with the outbreak—which strongly suggested that the virus was already spreading within Wuhan.

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus-related content that directly contradicts WHO advice

#599

Post by maximente »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #514
stcredzero wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fear there isn't "one truth" out there, despite the content providers' and fact-checkers' attempts :( The idea is: "We are the decent, good, people who know the truth. Now we control the platforms, so it's only well and good we control the information, and we tell the deplorable others what they can and can't say." Almost everyone in the history books as a horrible oppressor has told themselves that narrative. Many…

This is how all news media operated before the internet created mouthpieces for non-professionals. In addition to suppressing some inconvenient truths they filtered out crackpot ideas that have become a plague in modern times.

you mean like the NYT's Judith Miller, ostensibly a professional, who sabre rattled for the 2nd iraq war based on aluminum tubes which .gov leadership immediately cited after being published? because that was fairly crackpotty.

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus-related content that directly contradicts WHO advice

#600

Post by ZenPsycho »

ZenPsycho wrote: post #583
stcredzero wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fear there isn't "one truth" out there, despite the content providers' and fact-checkers' attempts :( The idea is: "We are the decent, good, people who know the truth. Now we control the platforms, so it's only well and good we control the information, and we tell the deplorable others what they can and can't say." Almost everyone in the history books as a horrible oppressor has told themselves that narrative. Many…

So, how many deaths are you willing to be responsible for? make sure to scale it up to youtube size.

Really disappointed in hacker news today. Children all of you, crying for the right to scream "fire" in a crowded theater.
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