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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

#781

Post by twblalock »

knzhou wrote: post #492
twblalock wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Misinformation is killing people. How many? I don't think it's very many.

The ban is meant for 4chan-based messages like "drink bleach/rubbing alcohol/methanol to cure yourself now!", which have killed plenty of people.

> The ban is meant for 4chan-based messages like "drink bleach/rubbing alcohol/methanol to cure yourself now!", which have killed plenty of people.

How many? Give numbers. I don't think very many people followed that advice and got killed by it, and I cannot find any data that suggests otherwise.

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

#782

Post by pjc50 »

aww_dang wrote: post #741
pjc50 wrote: post #706

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Who cares if people consume incorrect information? Anti-vax information can get people killed. The "5G causes coronavirus" conspiracy theory is causing people to burn down mobile phone masts. The Rohingya crisis was accelerated by all sorts of fake news and racial libel, resulting in a large number of deaths.

Similarly the crisis was exacerbated by the WHO's complicity if not participation in the CCP's cover-up.

Yes. So .. we should give up on all informational hygiene standards and just let people tell their followers to inject bleach or whatever?

Two wrongs don't make a right. A wrong information source is not the counter to another wrong information source.

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

#783

Post by yellowapple »

nelox wrote: post #722
WA wrote: post #712

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dare to ask the question how wearing a mask carries critical risk vs wearing no mask.

Again, if you read the advice ... "However, the following potential risks should be carefully taken into account in any decision-making process: • self-contamination that can occur by touching and reusing contaminated mask • depending on type of mask used, potential breathing difficulties • false sense of security, leading to potentially less adherence to other preventive measures such as physical distancing and hand…

This advice seems to be directed at wearing masks to prevent oneself from becoming infected, but that ain't the point of having as many people as possible wear masks while out and about; rather, it's that you can be infectious without ever knowing it (i.e. you're asymptomatic) and wearing a mask (and gloves if you've got 'em) helps significantly mitigate the risk of you spreading it to people around you. That the WHO would advise against the widespread wearing of masks goes to show how behind-the-curve they continue to be throughout this pandemic; this has been widely recommended by pretty much every other authority for weeks now.

Also, "diversion of mask supplies" is a ridiculous excuse. Even an improvised mask (bandana, something handmade, etc.) is better than nothing at all. And if you already have full-blown N95s, might as well use 'em, taking steps¹ to sterilize them and maximize their reusability (I have two N95s, one previously used long before the COVID-19 outbreak, and one new one from my grandpa who found a box of 'em with his tools; I cycle between them, giving each at least 72 hours between uses per the rule of thumb that SARS-CoV-2 won't survive longer than that on an N95 mask, and if I ever need to reuse one sooner I'm content with sacrificing my oven for decontamination purposes. I also have some work gloves that I similarly cycle through, but I also recognize that these ain't designed to resist much contamination so I still take care to avoid needlessly touching things.).

----

¹: https://www.msn.com/en-xl/lifestyle/coronavirus/how-to-clean...

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

#784

Post by intended »

0xy wrote: post #558
robrenaud wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany bans holocaust denial. That seems fine.

Nothing emboldens racists like pointing to government oppression of their ideas. The KKK has free reign in the USA and they've experienced plummeting membership. Nothing kills bad ideas like sunlight and scrutiny, you don't need to ban it and make them martyrs.

Bollocks.

This is old, early internet era naïveté.

Sure - anecdotally- you could perhaps convince one person by highlighting information.

But the plural of anecdote is not data.

At scale - sunlight and exposure increases dissemination of bad ideas.

Designing ideas to sound appealing in a viral sense means that even their dismissal and refutation by authority sources only increases their spread in the target population.

“Of course the governments going to deny they made the corona virus! They aren’t stupid.”

“Of course scientists would say that, they need grant money.”

All the ideas that grow from the root of this tree fail at scale.

Malicious actors are beyond the scope of this axiom for example - they don’t care about being defeated in argument- they just want to let vulnerable people know they exist, and then have them fall into their ideological orbit.

Competition over information networks only drives the news cycle effect - a market adapting to target the weakest link the human Fight or flight response, over giving better quality news.

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

#785

Post by yellowapple »

glenstein wrote: post #472
bobcostas55 wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The WHO has been spreading misinformation from the start, including claims that covid does not spread from human to human after it was abundantly clear that it does[0], claims that travel bans would be unnecessary to halt its spread[1], and claims that people should not wear masks[2]. These are not mere edge cases. We have structured our public organizations in a way that gives credentialed "experts" enormous amounts…

So far as I can tell, your extremely confident, categorical interpretations of your own citations are basically mistaken, across the board. As I read [0] it is not, in fact, a blanket declaration about transmissibility. As I read [1] it is not in any way an inaccurate statement (see [3]). When read [2] it's clear that it is not a blanket declaration not to wear masks. Meanwhile Youtube is going to take down videos cl…

> As I read [0] it is not, in fact, a blanket declaration about transmissibility.

It's still misinformation, and it's specifically misinformation that makes the WHO complicit in 187,420 deaths and counting. There had been plenty of indications by that point that - even if human-to-human transmission had not yet been confirmed - it was still evidently spreading beyond people at ground zero.

That is, I ain't sure how you're able to read it as anything but a blanket declaration. The WHO outright said that there's no evidence of human-to-human transmission; this is an outright lie, given that the sheer number of people by that point who were hospitalized with the virus without ever having visited the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market would be, I would argue, evidence.

> When read [2] it's clear that it is not a blanket declaration not to wear masks.

No, but it's advice that - if followed - would make any asymptomatic carrier dangerous. The point of wearing masks is not to prevent yourself from being infected (no mask is sufficient for that), but rather to minimize the risk of you spreading SARS-CoV-2 to other people by breathing on them.

The WHO seems to have a chronic pattern of being one or more weeks behind the curve on its assessment of COVID-19 and the mitigation thereof. Needless to say, I trust them about as far as I can throw them (which is 0 meters, given the impossibility of throwing an entire organization), and that YouTube is putting them on any kind of authoritative pedestal despite these blatant missteps is ignorant of that behavioral pattern.

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

#786

Post by thu2111 »

reaperducer wrote: post #605
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…

How are the employees of YouTube or any tech company exempt from those forces? What makes them somehow wiser or smarter than everyone else in history? Just ask them. They'll tell you. And tell you. And tell you.

"We only hire the smartest people ..."

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

#787

Post by yellowapple »

allannienhuis wrote: post #733
bobcostas55 wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that's how I interpret 'no clear evidence from preliminary investigations'. The relevant timeline: Li Wenliang (a doctor in Wuhan) blew the whistle on Dec 30. 4 days later he was harassed by the Chinese police for "spreading rumors". On Jan 8 Li Wenliang was infected. On Jan 12 he was put in the ICU. On Jan 14 WHO denied human-to-human transmission. Li unfortunately passed away in early February. And by the way,…

Just regarding your first statement: isn't 'no evidence of X' entirely different than 'evidence of no X'? Seems to me they were saying the first, but you're interpreting it as the second?

The vast majority of laypeople (inclusive of people who would be getting their information from the WHO's Twitter account) would readily interpret "no evidence of X" to be equivalent to "we shouldn't be worried about X". To pretend otherwise betrays a misunderstanding of how laypeople think.

If the WHO had a more nuanced stance, they should've made that clear - e.g. "We don't have evidence yet that the #coronavirus spreads human-to-human, but it's possible".

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

#788

Post by thu2111 »

adatavizguy wrote: post #398
grawprog wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since when am I beholden to the WHO? I don't remember voting for any of them or agreeing for them to represent me in any way. They are not my elected government, why should I give the slightest fuck what they tell me to do?

I hate to be the one to have to explain this to you. A private entity is deciding what content is and is not allowed to be hosted on their private servers using their private services. This is very different from government officials that you vote for censoring free speech. Anyone who doesn't like YouTube's policies are welcome to post their content on Facebook to share with their friends, on Twitter, stream it live…

Anyone who doesn't like YouTube's policies are welcome to post their content on Facebook to share with their friends, on Twitter, stream it live on Twitch, or, host it themselves on their own servers

You mean the Facebook that just banned WhatsApp message forwarding, despite their service supposedly being end-to-end encrypted? It didn't take long for that little sham to collapse did it? Sure, go self publish and watch as the self appointed guardians of the galaxy do everything in their power to stop you speaking.

We're not debating Google here. Not really. We're debating the whole ethos of Silicon Valley liberals which has become, "we're smarter than you and will ensure you think what we want you to think". Except they're not smarter. Having worked there for years I can confidently say that whilst there might have been some merit to that argument a long time ago within the scope of computer science, but years of endless hiring has now made them distinctly average groups of people with no edge over the rest of the world. Yet they continue to believe merely being a part of a particular organisation allows them to instantaneously decide the correctness of any argument.

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

#789

Post by thu2111 »

vkou wrote: post #427
nv-vn wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure it doesn't seem like that to the citizens of Taiwan who are basically told to go fuck themselves by the WHO

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.

Borders are considered to be rather important in this particular health crisis!

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

#790

Post by tidenly »

allannienhuis wrote: post #721
WA wrote: post #712

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dare to ask the question how wearing a mask carries critical risk vs wearing no mask.

It's pretty easy to find official answers to that question. This is from the bccdc.ca website: > Masks may give a person a false sense of security and are likely to increase the number of times a person will touch their own face (e.g., to adjust the mask). http://www.bccdc.ca/health-info/diseases-conditions/covid-19...

This argument makes about as much sense as saying seatbelts may give a false sense of security and cause people to drive recklessly. The WHOs mask advice is all outdated and from the perspective of stopping people from trying to catch the virus, whereas in Asia masks are worn to stop spreading your own virus. It's total crap that we can't question WHOs advice here - especially when they've been so behind the curve in other areas - when it could save lives.
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