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

If freedom of speech - as a concept - doesn't protect the worst of us, it won't protect the rest of us.

> Months ago he was insisting that the people who had contracted COVID-19 and who had antibodies in their system may not need the vaccine. Now, we have a number of studies coming out to support that. But months ago that was "anti-vax" (employing the slanderous use of the term).

I live in Iceland. Recovery from cov-sars-2 infection is considered as valid as a vaccine here. The same goes for Norway and ( to the best of my knowledge) Sweden, Denmark and Finland. They all recognize recovery from covid-19 as sufficcient protection.

Looking at US and Canada, along with a slew of terrifying commenters in this thread, the entire Nordic region consist of misinformed anti-vaxxers that have fallen prey to fake news by this definition.

We have also never put masks on our 24 month old toddlers. US and Canda WTF is wrong with you? We have a very high vaccination rate here in Iceland but that did not stop hospitalisations, or deaths. But definetly decreased them. Our high vaccination rate has had 0 effect on the spread of infections though. Even if hospitalizations have reaped the benefits because of it. If anything we got the highest wave of infections we have ever encountered this summer. But with a clear decrease in hospital load. We went back to mandates after only a very brief 4 week reopening because our high vaccination rate did absolutely nothing to stop the spread.

When this fact hit us in Iceland, when the summer wave hit, we as a country went into a state of mild shock. As so many nations we declared victory way, way too soon.

No one mentions this in the news though. Crickets. We might not even exist for all CNN, Times, all the Posts and vox cares.

I am not in any high risk group. Got moderna 2 shots, I still have PTSD from the side effects of the second shot. I sincerely thought I took the vaccine to help prevent the spread. But I most likely went through one of the worst nights of my life for no good fucking reason whatsoever. I statistically never needed the extra protection, I can still very much catch cov-sars-2 and still very much infect and kill another fully vaccinated vulnerable human being.

I guess I am now a misinformed anti-vaxxer

The fact that so many people are willing to choose a "lesser evil" is striking to me.

I wasn't even done with High School by the time I figured out that any dichotomy of two evils is a dead end, and that there is always a better place to focus energy upstream.

In this case, AI algorithms are the core problem. Their metrics for success (view time) appear to often lead to extremes. Nothing needs to be banned, it definitely needs to stop being suggested though.

YouTube does not deserve our trust.

We've seen repeatedly over the last two years truthful and helpful warnings classified as dangerous misinformation by big tech platforms.

First they censored people warning us about COVID itself, then they censored people saying we should wear masks, then they censored any talk of it coming from a lab.

Every time citizens try to spread the truth, they are censored. Sometimes the truth becomes so obvious that they can't censor anymore.

Facebook is directly responsible for censoring American expat groups in China that were trying to warn their families about COVID in late 2019.

Facebook has no problem shielding criminals and dictators for money[1]. They will eagerly censor innocent people speaking truth to power.

Corporate America will protect its interests from the people. They are invested in a new normal, and China, and they will censor us to protect their investments.

Even if something was wrong with the vaccines, or there was some effective new treatment, they would censor it regardless. So why should we ever big tech platforms the benefit of the doubt?

[1]: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/03/sheryl-sandberg...

does anyone else think that this is sort of the intended goal? not necessarily by YouTube in this case specifically but in a sort of meta sense, for many things such as this, in the past decade or so. it's almost as though those in power benefit when those who aren't in power are divided along ever more axes, axes which didn't exist only a few short years ago, but whose division is more significant than anything we've seen in many years.

for example, I'm reminded of how contemporary identity politics seemed to sprout up out of nowhere conveniently around the same time as the #occupy movement(s). since then, I haven't been able to shake the feeling that the powerful people in the world are maintaining power by dividing the populace.