The vast majority of content I watch on Youtube is produced by independent creators covering a variety of topics with much more detail, expertise, and truth than any mainstream program.
We aren’t going to conclude anything useful until we can agree that there are good and bad tradeoffs between central information control and decentralized, and that the optimum at any given point in time probably lies somewhere in between and depends on the context in which the communication takes place.
I would also look to inspiration from the past, and here I will copy loosely from a talk by Eben Moglen. Government wants to control communication. Sometimes in a claim of some civilizing mission on the belief that government and only government can really artfully determine who ought to speak to the masses, and sometimes quite explicitly for the purpose of remaining itself in power. But whatever the reason may be, a lust for power or a misguided belief in the superiority of government wisdom about who should speak to many, central information control is an evil whose time has come.
Right now Google is not seen as an essential part of the infrastructure of society. Google can shutdown email, maps, search and Youtube today and we the citizens have no voice to dictate otherwise. No matter how much people rely on Google maps for driving, or have information stored in the cloud that impact their lives, for now those systems are not considered essential. That view however is starting to change as people's lives start to get unseparable from their use of those services. At that point we get the same discussion. Who ought to speak to the masses, and what will that decision be based on? A lust for power, or the belief in the superiority of government wisdom?
It depends on the context. If your city is being invaded by a civilian-slaughtering army, I doubt many of the civilians would refer to a coordinated military defense as "evil", even though it would rely heavily on centralized information control.
During war time people genuinely believe in the superiority of government wisdom. It is sad aspect of how people work during a crisis, and it has enabled many atrocities which we in peace time can't image a human being could commit. Thankfully in peace time people tend to build up some resistance and recognize government wisdom for what it is. Sometimes it is right, sometimes it is not, and only through open dialog and free communication can we determine which is which.
If I had the skills I would build a strategy game that deals with the new reality - that tribes are nonlocal but often ideologically quite cohesive. Exploring the idea that one's ideological affiliations, rather than one's government or search engine, controls one's thought seems like it would lend itself to the medium rather well.
Today 600 million women are alive that were sold before they were 18 to the highest bid, around 200 million also received a physical downgrade by butchering & cutting out a part of their vagina.
Tribes are hyper local.
Even if censorship is good in the particular context (which seems to be the case here), but bad in general and bad in principle, it seems that the real issue is that there should be one unaccountable entity who gets to make that decision. Why is Youtube big enough to have such an impact without being accountable in any way to the public?
I think censorship can be dangerous in this context so I'm working on a decentralised fact-checker. I think it could be a more constructive solution to fake news that isn't subject to these problems: https://blog.verifact.io/2020/04/20/A-decentralised-fact-che...
[1] https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/covid-19....
[2] https://nypost.com/2020/04/17/facebook-fact-checkers-foul-ag...
Who cares if people consume incorrect information? Who decides what is correct?
The WHO has been wrong throughout this pandemic. Accusations of misconduct and a pro-CCP bias are still playing out. The establishment sources have similarly been wrong. At the end of the day, man is still fallible and 'fact-check' is a deceptive misnomer.
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.
No. Not vaccinating children get people killed. Therefore, the reasonable response is to mandate child vaccinations (together with fines and other punishments for non-compliance). With such mandates (that are already in many countries), non-compliance is limited to very tiny segment of population.
> The "5G causes coronavirus" conspiracy theory is causing people to burn down mobile phone masts.
The "5G causes coronavirus" is an obvious nonsense, but lets assume for the purpose of an argument that it is true. Even in such case a reasonable response is to petition your MP or do mass demonstrations, not burning mobile phone masts (as violent vigilantism is generally unacceptable approach).
As violent vigilantism is completely unacceptable reaction regardless of truthness of such statements, it does not make sense to blame that statements for such reaction based on being false (unless that statements also contain calls to violence, but in that case even truthfull statements would be responsible for that).
Two wrongs don't make a right. A wrong information source is not the counter to another wrong information source.
WHO advice is the standard being proposed. Adults should be capable of consuming and evaluating information. The solution is not to regard everyone as a child who needs to be coddled.
>'So .. we should give up on all informational hygiene standards and just let people tell their followers to inject bleach or whatever'
Let individual consumers determine their own standards. It is absurd to suggest that there would be no standards without platforms or supranational organizations determining them. When you choose to take a politically charged interpretation of a presser as your own standard, you establish this.
Individuals can disagree. We can't make the world safe for everyone. If based upon your informational standards you think that the president told someone to inject bleach, that's fine. Reasonable people can disagree.
> a question that probably some of you are thinking of if you’re totally into that world, which I find to be very interesting. So, supposedly when we hit the body with a tremendous, whether it’s ultraviolet or just very powerful light, and I think you said that hasn’t been checked, but you’re going to test it. And then I said supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way. And I think you said you’re going to test that too. Sounds interesting, right? And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it’d be interesting to check that so that you’re going to have to use medical doctors with, but it sounds interesting to me. So, we’ll see, but the whole concept of the light, the way it kills it in one minute. That’s pretty powerful. Steve, please.
What is your interpretation of "And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside"? I mean, it's kind of gibberish, not full sentences where one concept is logically related to another, but what do you think it means? Do you think it's a responsible thing to say after the deaths of people from self-administered chloroquine? Do you not think it refers to injections of disinfectant?
Of course, part of how this tactic works is that for any interpretation I can offer you can say "that's not what he said/meant", because what he said is incoherent.
"And I then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in one minute, and is there a way you can do something like that by injection inside, or almost a cleaning. Because you see it gets in the lungs, and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it'd be interesting to check that. So you're going to have to use medical doctors, but it sounds interesting to me, so we'll see."
The point being he is talking about doctors investigating and employing his "technique".
Don't get me wrong, it is disappointing that someone who doesn't appear to be able to formulate long, coherent thoughts is our president, but I am sick to death of the way some of the things he says are twisted simply because people hate on him. It is a deep level of bias.
(the first talks about ozone, which is a disinfectant but fundamentally cannot be taken internally as it's a gas, and it's slightly toxic https://www.epa.gov/indoor-air-quality-iaq/ozone-generators-... ; the book mentions "Oxygen-Ozone therapy is a complementary approach less known than homeopathy and acupuncture" so that's obviously quackery as well)
that say that if you cannot make the difference between an professional (or informed) opinion, and some redneck with the deep belief that the Earth is flat then I cannot do anything for you
Nobody is asking you to do anything for them, in fact they're asking for the opposite; to let them decide for themselves. And most people can do that just fine. Just because some extremist views exist does not mean the majority believes in them.
Countering assertions which are proven false is good (pointing to a FAQ is sufficient). Censoring, on the other hand, seems counterproductive to me and nourishes the usual "they censor us because they cannot produce a valid counter-argument".
That's what I said in my first post.
I'm not sure the point you wanted to make on the first place but you seemed to oppose the fact that some people should stfu a little on the internet because they know nothing.