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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

#601

Post by LudvigVanHassen »

frogpelt wrote: post #536
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-l…

Frogpelt has an understanding that so many lack. I wish there was some way for this middle ground to speak and make itself now.

This "tribal" devolution of everything to two sides on an issue with interlocking viewpoints on all subjects is a major problem in our current climate.

I agree the nuance of this situation is lost when there are so many people who do not see the nuance to begin with.

A culture that cannot understand nuance is a culture more likely to go to war. To see others as "other", not seeking common ground, but seeing things that differ as reasons to hate

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

#602

Post by GuB-42 »

d0gsg0w00f wrote: post #572
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…

Breakthrough case here. Clinic said that's all they've been seeing recently, dozens per day. One thing I've never understood is why the vaccinated care so much about what he unvaccinated are doing? Vaccinated people still carry viral loads so it's either how it affects you personally or your compassion for the enhanced vulnerability of the unvaccinated. Based on the toxic rhetoric towards the unvaccinated it seems to…

The vaccine limit the spread of the disease, that's a fact. By how much is up to debate but it is not just effective at making the disease less severe.

The wave of infections caused by the delta variant is faster, larger and deadlier in places with low vaccination rates. The vaccinated are less likely to test positive by about half, symptoms or not.

Not perfect but the vaccine protects others. If the unvaccinated took the necessary precautions to avoid infecting others, it would be their problem (if healthcare is not overwhelmed...), but usually they don't. Just look at anti-vaccine protests, you don't see a lot of masks...

And of course, if almost everyone in your area is vaccinated, most cases will be breakthrough cases.

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

#603

Post by snarf21 »

d0gsg0w00f wrote: post #572
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…

Breakthrough case here. Clinic said that's all they've been seeing recently, dozens per day. One thing I've never understood is why the vaccinated care so much about what he unvaccinated are doing? Vaccinated people still carry viral loads so it's either how it affects you personally or your compassion for the enhanced vulnerability of the unvaccinated. Based on the toxic rhetoric towards the unvaccinated it seems to…

Part of it is a hope to get back to normal. The other part is that their "bodily choice" isn't self contained. If someone has ebola, is it their "bodily choice" to walk around infecting others? The unvaccinated are showing an extreme lack of empathy.

Also, go read some of the countless reports about how hospitals are overwhelmed, how states are allowing the rationing of care, how ICUs have no beds for heart attacks or normal pneumonia because the beds are full of people who don't trust doctor's enough to get the vaccine but want life sustaining help after getting covid. I predict we are going to see mass resignations from hospital workers who are burned out because one political party convinced its supporters to not take basic medical advice. I've lost two uncles from this disease. It sounds like you haven't. I hope you take a step back and think about what happens when someone you love needs ICU care but the staff, equipment and resources are full and your loved one can't be treated.

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

#604

Post by gentle »

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…

They're banning a set of channels that are known to be spreading vaccine lies and then they're also banning videos that are claiming that vaccines aren't safe.

We know they're safe because they undergo exhaustive testing. Banning videos from people that are lying isn't stifling debate, it's banning lies.

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

#605

Post by scrumbledober »

d0gsg0w00f wrote: post #572
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…

Breakthrough case here. Clinic said that's all they've been seeing recently, dozens per day. One thing I've never understood is why the vaccinated care so much about what he unvaccinated are doing? Vaccinated people still carry viral loads so it's either how it affects you personally or your compassion for the enhanced vulnerability of the unvaccinated. Based on the toxic rhetoric towards the unvaccinated it seems to…

My infant daughter had a fever the other day and the doctor's office said that normally if your baby has a fever for this long they would want you to bring the baby in to be seen by a doctor but they're not seeing any patients with fevers right now so just monitor the baby and see if it gets better.

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

#606

Post by mikaeluman »

The one thing you can do to ensure vaccine hesitancy and distrust is to ban that very topic.

This standard they are setting up, already started with warnings and bans for in any way contradicting the WHO, is impossible to maintain in a consistent fashion.

I can still find thousands of videos on homeopathy, ranging from debunkings to lecture-style videos. There are people who would advocate using this rather than modern health services.

In fact, there are people who would advocate the use of witchcraft to treat cancer.

Will YouTube ban them all? Or will they just ban certain topics based on a whim?

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

#607

Post by ktkoffroth »

eertami wrote: post #388
crocodiletears wrote: post #238

At this point I'm not hesitant about the vaccine, but getting it would only validate the heavy-handed approach we're seeing wrt censorship.

Dude read that back to yourself and think about it for just 5 seconds. "Validate" it how exactly. This is just like a child folding his arms and saying "well now I'm not doing it" because somebody asked them to. It's the same attitude that has left hundreds of thousands pointlessly dead, because owning the libs is more important than self-preservation.

Here's the thing: What about the vaccine is saving the lives of others? It doesn't prevent spread. It simply provides you with protection from the virus for a limited period (~270 days). So what, exactly, are unvaxxed people doing to harm others?

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

#608

Post by xadhominemx »

ceilingcorner wrote: post #533
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.

Correct, I am not ok with 10’s of thousands of completely unnecessary deaths because people believed dumb antivax memes on Facebook

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

#609

Post by loudmax »

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 one of the things we need to appreciate is the scale of video uploads that YouTube has to deal with. There are something like hours of videos uploaded to YouTube every single minute. Aside from dodgy medical advice, they need to look out for child pornography, revenge porn, snuff videos and incitements to terrorism and violence, not to mention copyrighted content. There's no way they could hire enough people to review every single video that's uploaded, so if they're going to have any review at all, it has to be automated.

Getting their algorithm to have any understanding of content that's being uploaded is an extremely difficult problem, and the fact that they're able to do so with any degree of accuracy is an impressive achievement, whatever the merits. Expecting a YouTube algorithm to be able to parse a nuanced reasonable argument from bullshit is to expect a level of AI sophistication that doesn't exist yet.

YouTube could, and probably should, hire people to review videos from high profile YouTubers, but this is only going to work for people who've already established themselves. There's no way to scale that down to everyone that wants to upload something.

So yeah, moderate voices pointing out that people who have already had covid have a solid degree of acquired immunity, or maybe we shouldn't shut down schools are being clobbered. That's a bad thing but it's tough problem to solve.

I also think there's a broader problem that a handful of private companies have such control over public discourse that they're able to effectively censor ideas at all. Or maybe they're not so effective, but the level of control that Google, Facebook, etc, have should give us pause.

I'm sympathetic to the idea that we should go back to the free for all internet that we had in the 90's where everyone who got online had equal access. This would allow a level of nuanced moderate discussion that we desperately need, but it will also allow crazies, and child porn and terrorists and all the rest. If we don't want that kind of stuff to be easily available online, we need to figure out not just where to draw the line, but how to draw the line. This is a hard problem.

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

#610

Post by pknerd »

First of all I am fully vaccinated.

It is believed that Vaccine supporters are dumb and ignorant, could be, but how can you prove that the other party is small and well educated.

Such carpet will fuel further the conspiracy theorists and they would say to their followers, "See, we were right! they do not want you to learn the truth about vaccine"

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