YouTube Removed 30,000 Videos With COVID-19 Misinformation (axios.com) 147
YouTube has taken down more than 30,000 videos that made misleading or false claims about COVID-19 vaccines over the last six months. Axios reports: YouTube first started including vaccination misinformation in its COVID-19 medical misinformation policy in October 2020. Since February 2020, YouTube has taken down more than 800,000 videos containing coronavirus misinformation. The videos are first flagged by either the company's AI systems or human reviewers, then receive another level of review.
Videos that violate the vaccine policy, according to YouTube's rules, are those that contradict expert consensus on the vaccines from health authorities or the World Health Organization. Accounts that violate YouTube's rules are subject to a "strike" system, which can result in accounts being permanently banned. "Platforms are eager to share data about the volume of misinformation they catch, and that transparency is valuable," adds Axios. "But the most valuable data would tell us the extent of misinformation that isn't caught."
Videos that violate the vaccine policy, according to YouTube's rules, are those that contradict expert consensus on the vaccines from health authorities or the World Health Organization. Accounts that violate YouTube's rules are subject to a "strike" system, which can result in accounts being permanently banned. "Platforms are eager to share data about the volume of misinformation they catch, and that transparency is valuable," adds Axios. "But the most valuable data would tell us the extent of misinformation that isn't caught."
That last line in the summary? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's stupid. It's management level stupid. It's, "I need a full report on all the bugs that you aren't aware of" stupid.
You can't report data that hasn't been collected. I'm sure it would be valuable, but if they are aware it exists, it's because it's been flagged and reviewed. You're expecting the cart to push the horse, and that's just not how this works.
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What is misinformation?
Science is ever changing and sadly becoming politicized.
No masks.
https://www.bing.com/videos/se... [bing.com]
Double masks.
https://www.businessinsider.co... [businessinsider.com].
Face masks reduce covid
https://www.medicalnewstoday.c... [medicalnewstoday.com]
Face masks actually do almost nothing (2% drop, 5% margin of error)
https://www.webmd.com/lung/new... [webmd.com]
Covid vaccine safe
https://www.cdc.gov/coronaviru... [cdc.gov]
Covid vaccine actually killing people
https://www.legacy.com//us//ob... [legacy.com]
https://nypost.com/2021/01/15/... [nypost.com]
Re:That last line in the summary? (Score:5, Informative)
Most people would tend not to give equal weight to these two contradictory positions::
* one year ago - US officials say no need to wear masks (likely concerned about PPE stockpiles)
* advice for the last 11 months - nearly all experts recommend wearing masks
Likewise, while covid-19 continues to kill 1500 people a day in the US, we should not be overly concerned with 13 nursing home patients (all over eighty years old) who had direct negative reactions to the vaccines. Perhaps it just means re-evaluation for people in very frail health. It doesn't mean the vaccine isn't safe and effective for the vast majority of the population. I would still absolutely recommend my 75-ish year old parents get vaccinated. "Safe" is not an absolute guarantee, but taking the vaccine is still safer than avoiding it, both individually and collectively.
You haven't presented any actual misinformation here, but what you've done is presented facts in a rather misleading fashion, giving equal weight to conflicting reports or incidents that need more nuanced explanations.
Re:That last line in the summary? (Score:5, Insightful)
So in summation, a year ago US officials bald-face lied to the public 'to preserve PPE stockpiles.'
What a way to build public trust. What are they lying about now?
Re:That last line in the summary? (Score:4, Insightful)
So in summation, a year ago US officials bald-face lied to the public 'to preserve PPE stockpiles.'
What a way to build public trust. What are they lying about now?
Different administration. They will be lying about different things. On balance I suspect there will be less lying, but still some.
Re: That last line in the summary? (Score:3)
It was dr faucci. He's still the primary source on covid information. It's a valid point. I don't know that there is anything wrong with a message about a sensitive topic, but even if people are wrong, I'd rather that not be removed. When you censor someone for talking about covid, even if they're wrong, it tends to make those people think other even more extreme opinions that have been censored might be more extreme. I think the best way to combat bad ideas is with good ideas.
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I'd like to think so too, but unfortunately I don't think you've been paying attention to the track record for good vs. bad ideas lately.
By and large people don't give a shit about the truth. They say they do, but in the end they're just looking for facts supporting a world view that makes them feel better.
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Agreed. When you remove or censor information, it adds weight to it.
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If you listen to/read the actual quotes, instead of the talking points about them, you'll see that they included discussion about not wanting people to buy up masks when there's a shortage of them while masks are needed by the healthcare community and when there's no evidence of community transmission yet and phrases like "at this time". Remember, at the time there were very few cases in the USA outside of W
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Seems like their policy was based on ignorance regarding the likelihood of asymptomatic spread, but I don't see anything there that could be considered a bald-faced lie.
Re:That last line in the summary? (Score:5, Informative)
So in summation, a year ago US officials bald-face lied to the public 'to preserve PPE stockpiles.'
They didn't lie. They flat out stated that the reason they didn't want the population to buy and wear masks was to protect limited PPE stockpiles.
I think they also underestimated the effectiveness of cloth and surgical masks... remember that at the time they believed that contact ("fomites") was the primary means of transmission, that COVID didn't aerosolize much. That's why early on there was such an intense focus on disinfection of all surfaces. As we learned more, we figured out that while contact transmission does happen, it's not as common as airborne transmission. Surface disinfection is useful, but distancing, plenty of airflow (to disperse COVID-bearing aerosolized droplets) and mask-wearing (to protect those around the mask wearer, not so much to protect the wearer) are more valuable -- especially if the mask has a good particle filter or multiple layers of tightly-woven cloth.
I watched the evolution of the recommendations and the supporting data pretty closely, and I never saw any evidence of a lie from official sources. I did see some individual officials oversimplify the recommendations and thereby make statements that could fairly be called lies, but only when taken out of context.
I also saw a lot of evolution of the guidance as more was learned. People who don't understand science tend to consider that evidence that scientists don't know what they're talking about, or are lying, but it's not. That's how science works. Science is a process of gradually identifying and correcting errors, asymptotically approaching truth. Scientific "truth" is always flawed, but it becomes less flawed over time as we identify errors and correct them. This is uncomfortable to people who would prefer to be given eternal fixed truths, but the fact is that there is no source of eternal fixed truth available to us, and science has thoroughly proven itself to be the best way we have to find truth.
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Yep. That's the more nuanced explanation I was describing. There was an overriding concern about PPE supplies (justified, in fact), and officials simply knew much less about the benefits of the entire population masking up.
But to the simple mind, or perhaps those looking for a nit to pick... "ZOMG they LIED to us!"
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Denmark, Estonia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Latvia suspend AstraZeneca Covid vaccine after reports of potentially fatal blood clots [archive.is].
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I don't see any attempts to censor this. You have to look at it like this. Youtube censorship targets those who don't trust the government, big pharma, other important people. A lot of arguments will be in the category "good arguments for distrust but weak arguments that the policies are bad in this specific case" . What the actual arguments are and whether they are any good is secondary for the censors: those who distrust are wrong by default because we know we can trust the system.
A few governments suspen
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How about if they start censoring info like this: Denmark, Estonia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Latvia suspend AstraZeneca Covid vaccine after reports of potentially fatal blood clots [archive.is].
Isn't it funny how you claim censorship, then give a citation to a report we can all see. Anyhow, those countries have decided that is is preferable to die of a bradykinin storm than of a potential of something - it's their decision, and there ya go,
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Of course we can see it. I didn't say this particular article was censored. But if people were talking about such fatal blood clots BEFORE this news came out, those would likely be censored by our social media overlords. It's pretty evil.
Here's the straight skinny - have you decided to not get the vaccine because you don't like potential side effects? Are you an anti-vaxxer?
I've listened to people feigning outrage because the media isn't covering something, when I can find thousands of posts of media coverage of what they are taking umbrage about,
And just because you have a post of side effects, you tip your hand that you believe the media is censoring stuff, because you do a "howabout" scenario as well as specifically saying that the
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"Most people would tend not to give equal weight to these two contradictory positions::
* one year ago - US officials say no need to wear masks (likely concerned about PPE stockpiles)
* advice for the last 11 months - nearly all experts recommend wearing masks"
Or there is an extremely irrational, vocal, and highly aggressive mob mentality attacking those with ideas run counter to their own.
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The very real threat to the cultivation of an open forum is the medium people choose to harvest their facts .
Considering Youtube as a reliable source from which to distill important decisions is a bit like sharpening your worldview by watching old episodes of sitcoms.
Re:That last line in the summary? (Score:5, Insightful)
I hear a lot of people telling me that I shouldn't get information from Wikipedia because "anyone can edit it." And yet I also see these same people sharing youtube videos as "evidence" of their crazy theories.
Which is easier, uploading shit to Youtube, or editing a Wikipedia article to be false, amd having it somehow slip through all of Wikipedia's moderation?
Sure, Wikipedia isn't perfect, but I see a fairly widespread idea that videos on youtube are somehow more authoritative than Wikipedia, with its very clear, published guidelines.
Of course, I am somewhat biased. See my sig.
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There is no source unworthy of research. There's good and bad information out there in many venues, within every free man's grasp... what's typically missing is the critical thinking skills necessary to discern the truth from the noise.
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Youtube is a medium for the illiterate.
Countless times in the past I have wanted information about a process or how to do something.
All I can find is some idiot talking about it over terrible music on Youtube.
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Yes it is.
It's also a medium for good information.
I don't at all have problems finding useful and accurate vids on YouTube. Most of those don't do background music.
Perhaps you need to up your YouTube search game.
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>It's also a medium for good information.
I agree. There's a lot of dreck on Youtube (A *lot*). But an honest and well-made video can be *incredibly* information dense. As well as imparting information that's very difficult to clearly express in other mediums.
The big problem is one of trust. If you're looking for home improvement how-to videos, I think most people would agree that you'd be best served by finding a video by someone who at least makes a credible claim to having extensive professional ex
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Watching YouTube, for educational purposes, is essentially sitting in on a lecture. This isn't the same thing as a reference manual, but it also isn't useless. Obviously it's more useful for some subjects than others.
The best channels provide you links to the supplementary materials you need. Problem is, most of them aren't the best channels, and the algorithms aren't good at sifting them for you, either. On the plus side, did you really want to be taking direction from an idiot anyway?
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>Watching YouTube, for educational purposes, is essentially sitting in on a lecture.
With the caveat that if you're sitting in on an actual lecture, the speaker is likely to have been vetted by knowledgeable people as knowing what they're talking about. Not so much on Youtube - you've got to do the vetting yourself. And if you knew enough to be a good judge of their competence, you probably wouldn't be looking for their video in the first place.
Video does have advantage of being able to show a lot of de
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>Watching YouTube, for educational purposes, is essentially sitting in on a lecture. With the caveat that if you're sitting in on an actual lecture, the speaker is likely to have been vetted by knowledgeable people as knowing what they're talking about. Not so much on Youtube - you've got to do the vetting yourself. And if you knew enough to be a good judge of their competence, you probably wouldn't be looking for their video in the first place.
I've taken classes and lectures on Youtube, and the instructors have been excellent, Now these are NOAA related lectures, have in depth materials, so it isn't Alex Jones screaming about gay frogs, but very competent meteorologists training people in how their craft functions.
The big thing is that the low information, easily swayed would watch them for about 30 seconds, then look for Alex Jones' videos. Maybe videos how the man is keeping them from using free energy. Actual intelligent videos need intel
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No doubt. I've spent many an hour watching wonderful lectures on YouTube.
But for every high quality educational video there's piles of tripe that will de-educate you instead. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to tell the difference, but you do have to pay attention, do at least a little background checking, and care more about accuracy than emotional satisfaction.
It seems like the ratio is a lot better for in-person lectures - probably because it's a lot harder to turn a profit by getting a bunch of
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YouTube videos often feel more authoritative because of human psychology tending to weigh things said to them in person by other people, particularly people they know in some capacity, higher than largely anonymous sources like Wikipedia.
They also allow the speaker to get all their rhetoric and framing in.
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YouTube videos often feel more authoritative because of human psychology tending to weigh things said to them in person by other people, particularly people they know in some capacity, higher than largely anonymous sources like Wikipedia.
They also allow the speaker to get all their rhetoric and framing in.
Which is exactly why people need training in critical thinking. In my world, we get kinda twitchy about anything authoritative. I've seen it take to extremes, with one co-worker wanting my work to look less professional on my input to his projects. That looks too "slick" Ol, make it a little more first kick of the can looking."
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I hear a lot of people telling me that I shouldn't get information from Wikipedia because "anyone can edit it." And yet I also see these same people sharing youtube videos as "evidence" of their crazy theories.
Wikipedia has since changed that, because the kooks got into the house too often.
The whole issue comes down to why people might challenge knowledge or science. When it is political, then it needs extra scrutiny.
and using Covid-19 as the example, those with a political, anarchistic, or just trolling agenda can put up bullshit, then claim their rights are being infringed upon when aspects that are provably lies are rejected.
In a rapidly evolving situation, such as the Covid-19 issue, things do change r
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Nobody should get their "facts" from youtube comments anymore than they get them from slashdot comments or 4chan comments. Sure someone might be right, but the tendency for people to be trolls and feed misinformation for lulz to people who were asking a serious question means you can't trust comments, and "comment"/"forum" systems with no moderation should be treated as all misinformation.
The problem with videos, is that since there is supposedly a creative or educational aspect to them, and just unilateral
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Corporations will of course never lie to sell product. Aren't the pharmaceuticals making billions in profit in a product they have so little confidence in, they demanded no liability for anyone using the product.
Smart rule of thumb and fuck everyone else's opinion, a product is only as good as it's warranty. The vaccines zero warranty, straight rule of thumb, shitty product not to be trusted, the corporation that makes it doesn't trust it, why the fuck the hell should you.
A paper mask has been proven to be
Re:That last line in the summary? (Score:4, Informative)
If you only had a dictionary:
So, inaccurate information given out because "science is ever changing" does not strictly fit the definition.
Inaccurate information given out to disrupt, intentionally deceive, or outright harm (such as anti-vax BS, Qanon or "the big lie") strictly fits the definition.
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What is misinformation? Science is ever changing and sadly becoming politicized.
Becoming? Science has been politicized just about as long as there has been science. Galileo and the Pope, Giordano Bruno, who was burned at the stake for his heresy that the sun was the center of the Solar system, not the earth.
Today, crypto-conservatives deny the physics of the energy storage of certain gases, and some are even venturing to a return to the old T-O flat earth mechanism. But I digress.
If there is bad information, it should be removed, unless we consider Youtube a library. But earlier a
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Because Slashdot only removes comments that are spam, flooding, or illegal content, and allows users to moderate. Spouting bullshit is not against the rules.
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Actually, it is not. They correctly state that this data would be extremely valuable. Obviously it is impossible to derive directly, but there may be indirect ways.
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They used the phrase "would be", meaning they know the data isn't there. They haven't called on Google to produce the data. We can conclude it was brought up strictly as a rhetorical device, to put some perspective on the figures that Google is publicizing.
Not the way I would have done it, linguistically. But it's hardly comparable to a management that places unreasonable demands on its workers. I'm not sure you understand the relationship between Google and the writer.
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More useful is how often misinformation still shows up when you search for COIVD related stuff, or even unrelated stuff, on YouTube. That can easily be discovered by a simple study.
Agree or Death? (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, how does this work when the very definition of science says that is changing according to experimentation and observation?
What is false today could be true tomorrow.
When we force everyone to see from a single perspective how are we not different from the inquisition?
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Re:Agree or Death? (Score:5, Insightful)
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the Moderna vaccine is really 92% effective not 94%.
Both of these claims are odious lies.
It is actually 93% effective.
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It works that way because there's actually no such thing as the common cold. It's a catch-all term for mild diseases with similar symptoms that can be caused by any one of hundreds of different viruses. There's maybe a dozen that are responsible for 90% of cases, but given how mild they all are it's not worth vaccinating against them - the vaccine tends to cause a day or two of symptoms anyway, which combined with the the low but non-zero risks of a severely bad reaction to a vaccine mean you're better of
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Next year it will be 0% effective, because thats how the common cold, no matter how severe it is, works.
Show your proof.
Claiming that Coronavirus is the common cold is something that needs some pretty good proof - you are the exact person who this is all about.
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Next year it will be 0% effective, because thats how the common cold, no matter how severe it is, works.
Show your proof.
Claiming that Coronavirus is the common cold is something that needs some pretty good proof - you are the exact person who this is all about.
To be clear in advance, I'm not defending the first statement by GP. He's clearly an idiot. Quite apart from the fact that effectiveness is not an all or nothing thing (e.g. immunity or death) their sense of chronology is completely borked.
That said, there are 4 coronaviruses that do cause (roughly 15% of) 'common colds' [wikipedia.org], and the one that is currently causing so much global concern will eventually join them. Part of the reason the current virus is causing so much trouble is that it's novel, and we have no e
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Next year it will be 0% effective, because thats how the common cold, no matter how severe it is, works.
Show your proof.
Claiming that Coronavirus is the common cold is something that needs some pretty good proof - you are the exact person who this is all about.
To be clear in advance, I'm not defending the first statement by GP. He's clearly an idiot. Quite apart from the fact that effectiveness is not an all or nothing thing (e.g. immunity or death) their sense of chronology is completely borked.
That said, there are 4 coronaviruses that do cause (roughly 15% of) 'common colds' [wikipedia.org], and the one that is currently causing so much global concern will eventually join them. Part of the reason the current virus is causing so much trouble is that it's novel, and we have no existing defences.
He's probably taking snippets here, snippets there, and coming up with a 4 blind men and the Elephant idea.
The common cold was probably a pandemic that occurred in the late 1800's. And just like that is mostly something that comes and goes - yep, Covid 19 will eventually settle down into yet another influenza that most of us just weather. Between general immunity, that we get after infection or vaccination, plus virus' tendency to mutate, yup - it won't be all that bad. Probably.
For children that's not (as) much of a problem, their bodies are generally so much more resilient and their immune systems more effective, but this drops off as we age, which is exactly why the novelty issue is so relevant - our primary infection by a novel virus is no longer largely experienced in childhood, it affects every age group equally. Vaccination substitutes for our missed childhood primary infection, just without the (small) associated risk.
Exactly. If we were to d
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Exactly. Well said. Science also means that you need extraordinary evidence for extraordinary claims and that there is a body of well-established "facts" that require such extraordinary evidence in order to be validly called in question. The covidiots understand absolutely nothing about how Science works.
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The IFR of the common flu is 0.1
Citation needed.
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Did you miss the part where I said
"...As this breathless article reports it, IFR for Covid is 1.3% (TEN TIMES the actual number because they're misunderstanding IFR and CFR "accidentally" I'm sure.) but meanwhile confirming the IFR of seasonal flu is about 0.1...."
?
Here's the link, in case you were just too breathlessly indignant to notice
https://www.healthleadersmedia... [healthleadersmedia.com]
(And note that they are on your "covid is terrible bandwagon" so let's just skip the part where you assert they're some part of the vast-a
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TEN TIMES the actual number because they're misunderstanding IFR and CFR "accidentally" I'm sure.)
So you are sure that researchers are misunderstanding two terms because . . . you are sure.
How are you not presenting misinformation?
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So here we have documented, official sourced, simple math that shows COVIDs lethality is barely more than seasonal flu.
That's all fine, except you are leaving out some other important considerations, which is a form of dishonesty.
In a normal year, between 30,000 and 60,000 Americans die from flu. Last I looked you have passed 500,000 COVID deaths in about one year.
In my Canadian province, the year before COVID, 45 people died from flu. We are now at around 900 COVID deaths in the same amount of time.
Also keep in mind that the COVID numbers are only as low as they are because we have undertaken lockdowns and mass
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I'm not leaving anything out. Feel free to goalpost-shift all you like, the FACT is the IFR which is a *critical* part of the discussion about COVID's threat and has been since the beginning.
Yet it constantly misreported, misdiscussed, and in reality shows that COVID isn't nearly the threat it's purported to be.
I didn't say COVID isn't dangerous. Please read my actual words instead of arguing what you think I meant. That's another form of dishonesty.
COVID is more contagious than flu, it seems, so on bala
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Re:Agree or Death? (Score:5, Insightful)
I wonder when people will realize that public health officials responses are always conservative and ignore unintended consequences over safetyism nearly all the time. When we had little to no actual data on masks, the fact that we only had bio-plausibility and inference data was acceptable, and we were told to wear masks. Yet when it came to behavior after being vaccinated, we were told that the lack of direct data meant that we had to remain masked and keep our distance until we had actual data regarding these specific vaccines. The same is true of reinfection probabilities and immunity durations... rather than using what data we do have from other viruses and more specifically other corona viruses, the response was that we simply don't have the data and shouldn't make assumptions. Yet they are free to make assumptions when it leads to more restrictive behavior and in attempts to achieve a perceived safe outcome.
I think there's a valid argument to be made that all things being equal, leaning towards being more cautious when the severity of a outcome is harsh is justified... however we should be absolutely honest about our motivations and the biases they create.
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Amazingly, scientific consensus doesn't change via random YouTubers claiming things. It changes via journals, symposiums, and other academic sources. You let those groups, NGOs, the government all argue, and create a whitelist of information.
Facts are not a perspective. Things change, but not from YouTube videos. And when there is an emergency, rules change. When there was a World War, we took a bunch
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I'm not sure why the antivaxers should be given "fertile land." I don't want to buy contaminated crops for the plaguelands. And they never just fucking stay in rural areas. Rural areas are perpetually sources of reinfections - in 1918 and in 2020 pockets of plague in rural areas kept getting rereleased into the world as people from those areas commute to cities - or infect passing truckers and other travelers.
I suppose if antivaxers wanted to live in an open-air prison have have supplies dropped off, the
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This is the exact reason that speech on social media platforms should be first amendment protected. There will always be a few loons that abuse the system but protected speech is worth the cost.
Now I know some fool, or fools, are going to come along and point out private company... blah blah blah. I'm just going to short circuit these arguments right now. "You are wrong." There simple.
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Disregarding results from well-established science is not scientific behavior and it is not the "inquisition" either. Stop claiming that tired old lie. Science is not the place where everybody gets a say. That would be "social media".
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They only remove stuff that is likely to result in risky behaviour like not wearing a mask or not getting vaccinated. Just getting a few stats slightly wrong or something that isn't going to discourage people will be left along, mistakes accepted.
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It's hard for me to figure out what you use to decide that you have complete trust in a cooperation.
They are deleted posts/videos and telling you to trust that they are only removing false information.
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I don't trust them entirely, but it's not a binary thing. I think the idea that they are scheming away, using this as an excuse to... Well, what is it an excuse for? What would they be trying to gain by removing videos that aren't giving misinformation?
They can already just arbitrarily delete a video, give some vague excuse and ignore any appeals, as they occasionally do. They can shadow ban as well.
WHO?!? (Score:3, Insightful)
From TFS: Videos that violate the vaccine policy [...] are those that contradict expert consensus on the vaccines from [...] the World Health Organization.
Why the World Health Organization? They've been some of the worst offenders of Covid-19 misinformation since this whole thing began!
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Why the World Health Organization? They've been some of the worst offenders of Covid-19 misinformation since this whole thing began!
This is the worst and most damaging piece of misinformation being spread around in the US, and the parent got modded up insightful tells us how hopeless the situation is in America.
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This is the worst and most damaging piece of misinformation being spread around in the US.
Citation please. A quick Google search of "who missteps covid" shows me multiple articles from both the left and the right condemning WHO's response to this pandemic, so if you're going to waltz in here and just declare that I'm totally wrong, you better have something to back it up.
I wonder how many of those were outdated... (Score:4, Insightful)
Given we didn't knew squat about the disease by a good part of the last year, a bunch of videos probably aged quite badly and i see the labeling of em or removal being a quite good choice.
Re:I wonder how many of those were outdated... (Score:4, Informative)
That's a bit of an exaggeration. We came to understand a lot about this virus in a mindbogglingly short span of time.
But a lot of the early advice to the public was based on extrapolations from what works with influenza, and the virus had some surprises in store for us that invalidated *some* of that. But none of that advice was actually harmful -- e.g., sanitizing groceries. Some of it is just generally a good idea, like hand washing. Social distancing was spot on.
The biggest thing we didn't understand in the first few months was the virus's ability to spread through asymptomatic/presymptomatic carriers. That was a big part of the reversal on mask usage recommendations.
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> "But the most valuable data would tell us the extent of misinformation that isn't caught."
This is so absurd I am struggling to come up with an analogy to explain how absurd it is.
There was a story the other day wherein someone referenced the German tank problem [wikipedia.org]. It's not a direction correlation, but it gives you an idea of what they're trying to find. By having a known set of data, it is possible in many cases to determine what you are missing or don't know.
In the above example, human intelligence was saying the Germans were producing X number of tanks per month. However, when they documented the serial numbers of the tanks and other parts, statistical analysis determined the Germ
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The German Tank method doesn't work here because they are not numbered sequentially.
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Then why don't you do it? YouTube videos are publicly available. Anyone can look through them and find exactly how many of those videos still remain.
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The first comment described it as "management-level stupidity". That works for me.
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The most valuable data would be winning numbers for the next lottery. That can be true without me having a plan to get those numbers. And it can be true in cases with valuable difficult to obtain information where prediction is possible (the stock market). So people can try to generate that data by seeing what content is still available, for instance. Or statistical approximations of taken down videos and accuracy rates using sampling.
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> "But the most valuable data would tell us the extent of misinformation that isn't caught."
This is so absurd I am struggling to come up with an analogy to explain how absurd it is.
It is not. Of course, direct identification is not possible, but there may be ways to indirectly determine that number. For example, you can estimate the number of bugs in a software by the number of observed crashes _without_ knowing any of the bugs that cause the crashes. That is not very precise but still gives you an estimate.
Don't trust Google's algorithm statistics (Score:2, Flamebait)
Quick, delete the record! (Score:2, Troll)
This is like trying to remove newspapers from people's armchair archives. I bet these videos have millions of views. Opinions have been made. Content has been created from this.
About the only thing this does is to remove the record that "YouTube hosted massive misinformation back in the day." How can anyone ever learn a lesson without seeing the true record? How are you going to show the future population the mistakes made, if the record is removed?
This magical tool that people want, to delete "bad
Sure they did. (Score:3, Insightful)
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Their AI to remove animal fighting vids inadvertently removed robot combat fights (known to many as battle-bots). Eventually most got put back after hell was raised.
They took down Agadamator's video for race hate speech. "Black is better than white here". He does chess videos.
Good but... (Score:4, Interesting)
There's only one kind of valid censorship (Score:2, Insightful)
And that's self censorship.
There's absolutely no reason any corporation needs to get involved in deciding what is or is not "misinformation". All they need to do is give users the power to both choose what to read and what not to read, and then let them decide for themselves.
We already do this with ad blockers, spam filters, parental controls, etc. Slashdot does it with their comment filters (in a very naive way, but still far better than what YouTube is doing, that's for sure.) They could extend this acros
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in a very naive way
What do they do exactly?
Bravo YouTube! (Score:2)
"YouTube has taken down more than 30,000 videos that made misleading or false claims about COVID-19 vaccines..."
Only another 300,000,000 antivaxxer videos to go. Way to step up, guys!
Title is wrong (Score:2)
No. (Score:2)
Youtube removed 30,000 videos it CLAIMED contained COVID misinformation.
This includes everything from the biohacking group which produced their own vaccine and was reported by Bloomberg (if with a spin that tried to use a couple below threshold non-results to cast doubt on their successful research).
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> I thought we were in free society
So what do they do when WHO reverses a position?
Do they take down the video made yesterday that supports the previous position?
Do they re-instate videos that previously supported the WHO's current (new) position?
Of course not - this is about compliance with authority and manufactured consent, not intellectual pursuit.
At this point, if you're looking for uncensored content you'll have to use Odysee [odysee.com] - even Bitchute is censoring and Rumble has content guidelines.
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The WHO has "reversed" positions on multiple covid-related things
This is not a troll. This is calling a spade a spade.
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Setting aside for a moment that YouTube is corporation that can do as it pleases with the content that it owns (and yes it owns the content you willingly put there), there have been restrictions on so-called "free speech" in the USA longer than you've been alive.
The US Supreme Court has recognized a few different types of restrictions such as "content-based restrictions", "time, place, and manner restrictions", "prior restraint", and incidental burdens on speech.
Do you have the right to your opinion? You b
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The US Supreme Court has recognized a few different types of restrictions
The US Supreme Court once compared speaking out against war to "shouting fire in a crowded theater".
The speakers went to prison for passing out leaflets, were abused by pro-war guards, and soon died.
Schenck v. United States [wikipedia.org]
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It stops being an opinion when it begins to result in measurable harm.
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But they also laughed at Galileo.
Actually, they didn't laugh at Galileo.
They took him very seriously and threatened to torture him.
Not quite the same.
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But they also laughed at Galileo.
Actually, they didn't laugh at Galileo.
They took him very seriously and threatened to torture him.
Not quite the same.
Giordano Bruno suffered a rather toasty fate for his heresy.
Re:They laughed at Bozo The Clown (Score:4, Informative)
Catholics don't like telescopes.
They do now. The Catholic Church runs an observatory [wikipedia.org], and a Catholic priest [wikipedia.org] was responsible for the Big Bang theory.
Re:They laughed at Bozo The Clown (Score:5, Funny)
...and a Catholic priest was responsible for the Big Bang theory.
The first series was ok I suppose, but boy it went downhill quickly.
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I'll take a shot if you supply the actual quote of Sagan's.
But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.
That one? https://www.goldenproverbs.com... [goldenproverbs.com]