Hacker News Reader

Comment by forgot_my_pwd | Hacker News Reader

But that misses the point. The very fact that a few people at Google/Youtube have the power to censor whomever they want for whatever reason they choose is a problem in itself.

Are the doctors in the video saying untruths or misrepresenting data? I think what they said in the video was eminently reasonable. But perhaps I'm wrong. Luckily we have the freedom to publicly critique their claims - assuming our critiques aren't censored by major internet companies - which is how falsehoods and untruths should be dealt with, not with censorship.

View on HN

> Are the doctors in the video saying untruths or misrepresenting data?

Yes, they are.

https://www.dailynews.com/2020/04/28/california-doctors-with...

> But public health experts were quick to debunk the doctors’ findings as misguided and riddled with statistical errors — and an example of the kind of misleading information they are forced to waste precious time disputing.

> The doctors should never have assumed that the patients they tested — who came for walk-in COVID-19 tests or who sought urgent care for symptoms they experienced in the middle of a pandemic — are representative of the general population, said Dr. Carl Bergstrom, a University of Washington biologist who specializes in infectious disease modeling. He likened their extrapolations to “estimating the average height of Americans from the players on an NBA court.” And most credible studies of COVID-19 death rates in reality are far higher than the ones the doctors presented.

> In a rare statement late today, the American College of Emergency Physicians and the American Academy of Emergency Medicine declared they “emphatically condemn the recent opinions released by Dr. Daniel Erickson and Dr. Artin Messihi. These reckless and untested musings do not speak for medical societies and are inconsistent with current science and epidemiology regarding COVID-19. As owners of local urgent care clinics, it appears these two individuals are releasing biased, non-peer reviewed data to advance their personal financial interests without regard for the public’s health.”

Many studies across the world are showing infection rates for Covid-19 are far higher than official numbers indicate. These studies appear to support the spirit of their statements.

AFAIK, there is not a single study that "[shows] infection rates for Covid-19 are far higher than official numbers indicate". There is no place in the world (again, afaik) that is attempting to report the number of infected people, all the "official numbers" are roughly either "confirmed infected" or clinically-confirmed infected. All health experts (as far back as early january when we just had numbers from Wuhan) were saying that the actual number of infected will be much higher than those confirmed infected. There are a lot of studies that indicate that those experts are correct (and I am, maybe unfairly, assuming that those are the studies that you are misrepresenting).

Confirmed infected is being used for the mortality rate. Confirmed infected is not being updated to take advantage of serological data which shows percentage prevalence tens of times higher than the official confirmed count.

If we were talking an order of double, I think people would be a bit less ruffled. We're not though. We're talking 50-85 times in places like Santa Clara.

It doesn't matter. Why is YouTube policing speech? If anything, this will give "incorrect ideas" more attention than letting them be heard.

That does not logically follow if the general public does not have the expertise to evaluate public health policy discussions and decisions.

> if the general public does not have the expertise to evaluate public health policy discussions and decisions

But you're now asking people to trust experts, which in 2020 is apparently crazy-talk

It doesn’t help that the experts started 2020 by downplaying the threat and telling people not to wear masks.

"Experts" in 2020 are merely washed up mathematicians and Ethiopian politicians who have no incentive to be correct, only to speak, and who have spent a lot of time publicly arguing with each other and producing completely contradictory advice and predictions. Of those predictions they all had severe and deep flaws, like the Imperial paper that assumed hospital capacity was entirely static and couldn't increase at all. That's an assumption any working nurse could have corrected immediately but the team responsible didn't bother asking them.

There are no experts in this disease, only people trying to control other people through false proclamations of authority.

The problem is that the people who made this video are by definition experts. Experts are often wrong and disagree, so if the public listens to the wrong experts and silence the right experts we have a problem. Therefore it is better to not try to decide which experts are right or wrong so we can silence them, since chances are that the people doing the evaluation are the ones in the wrong.

> The problem is that the people who made this video are by definition experts.

They are experts in an entirely different field.

You don't need any training in statistics, epidemiology, public health, etc. to be an urgent care doc. They're experts in diagnosing and fixing ailments (at an individual level) that don't require a full-blown ER visit or hospitalization.

Same with the death rate. Covid is most always a co-factor in the death along with other reasons. Like a smoker with emphysema who was dying anyway and the virus is the trigger. They really died from smoking their whole life. Another virus or bacteria could've killed them.

I don't understand what's wrong with the data they presented. That article doesn't explain it, it just says it's wrong. There applications of data make perfect sense to me, that's how I'd use the data they presented.

That article makes inaccurate statements like, "basically hyped a bunch of data and weren’t transparent about their methods" which is not true. There were 100% transparent about where there information was from and how they were presenting it.

> I don't understand what's wrong with the data they presented.

They took stats from a massively self-selecting population - people seeking out COVID-19 testing at their facilities - and extrapolated to the general public.

That's inexcusably dumb.

As the bit I quoted states, that's like "estimating the average height of Americans from the players on an NBA court".

Did you watch the video? That is not what they did. What you're describing is a brief anecdote they shared about what they were seeing on the ground. Their statistics are based on state level aggregates for New York and California.

People will always put their fingers in their ears and not read/watch the source because it is easier to bash someone than to actually do the work that may change your beliefs

The source is gone.

Well, it’s also hard to watch the source video when YouTube goes out of their way to delete it. So here in this very thread, is a great example of the harms of taking down the content. It makes it hard to even have a discussion about its merits.

I don’t understand why YouTube couldn’t leave the video up, and put some kind of warning or interstitial advising of problems with the content. I would have problems with that approach too, but certainly less so than I do with the wholesale deletion of the video.

Anyway, you can find it hosted here: https://www.turnto23.com/news/coronavirus/video-interview-wi...

It isn't exactly what they did but it is fairly close. They consistently incorrectly extrapolate the covid positive test rate from a biased sample (biased by both the testing guidelines and self-selection) to the general population, not just for their county, but also for California, New York, the United States, Italy, Sweden and Norway.

They then use this to massively misrepresent the lethality of Covid 19.

State level data is collected using the exact same methods. In many places people with symptoms are told to self isolate until they have difficulty breathing etc. This makes state level data a highly biased sample.

There are a few population studies for very specific areas, but no widespread statewide sampling anywhere.

PS: The US has ~50,000 Coronavirus deaths. Assuming a very optimistic mortality rate of 0.5% suggests at most 10 million infections out of 330 million people or 3.3%. A higher mortality rate of say 5% would mean total infections are possibility as low as 0.3% of the US population.

I'm not saying these doctors are correct in their statistical extrapolations. What I am saying is the Kern County anecdote being spread around to discredit them by people who haven't even seen the video are practicing in the disinformation that they accuse these doctors of perpetrating.

Using state level data is exactly like sampling MBA heights. A biased sample is a biased sample.

So, no I don’t see how it’s misinformation.

Given the delay between catching it and dying, a lot of the people who have it and will die from it are not currently counted in your deaths.

This could mean that substantially more Americans have it. (Though on current projections, less than a factor of 2.)

I was including that for my optimistic 0.5%. South Korea with a younger population, good healthcare system far from maximum capacity, and very good but not perfect testing has a CFR of 2.3% and rising. Diamond Princess has 14deaths out of 712cases, while not a representative sample it’s still conformation that a high percentage of even young healthy people need hospitalization.

The biggest question IMO is how much we are undercounting fatalities. NYC lists Confirmed deaths at 11,820 plus Probable deaths at 5,395. They also add: Due to delays in reporting, recent data are incomplete. https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data.page

Your 'very optimistic mortality rate' makes a number of assumptions about the rate of asymptomatic cases, the population which experiences asymptomatic cases, etc. It ignores data coming out which suggest that interventions like ventilators may be harming more than helping.

Making any assumptions about the mortality rate with the abysmal state of testing in the US and around the world is guesswork.

Making assumptions based on the horrific codebase that's spawned our most cited models should also give anyone in software at least a twinge of anxiety.

Diamond Princess had a slightly older population but healthy population, tested everyone, provided good medical care. They still hit 14 deaths out of 712 infected or ~2% and only had 20% asymptotic cases. South Korea has very good testing, a younger than US population, similar rates of hospitalization to DP and a slightly worse mortality rate likely due to missing some people but having a more at risk population.

The US has an older and sicker population than SK, and in NYC an overworked healthcare system. So, a 1% US mortality rate discounted to 0.5% due to recent infections not having time to die is extremely optimistic. It would also mean testing was only discovering 10% of cases.

PS: Many more people are exposed without having sufficient infections to trigger long term immunity. But, it’s herd immunity or deaths/long term issues we care about making such cases irrelevant as their still at risk.

I watched the videos. Just like many others have said in this thread, the doctors took the percent of people who tested positive for covid and assumed that percent of people overall in the whole state had covid. Then they took the total number of deaths from covid, and divided that number by the population of the state.

They compared them to several countries as well, so your statement is misleading.

> That's inexcusably dumb.

Even if that’s true, what does it have to do with banning the video and preventing the public from making their own decision?

Right this moment I can go on youtube and look up a million rap videos that talk about guns, violence, murder, and more. I can look at videos that would lead me to harm myself in all sorts of ways if I didn’t have a brain. By picking and choosing like they’re doing, it leads one to distrust the company which will ultimately hurt them.

Come on. Rap videos are often grotesque but it’s entertainment, like a horror film.

This video was more like yelling fire in a theater. I’m willing believe the doctors were sincere, but they were gravely wrong, and their misinformation was endangering the public.

YouTube was correct to turn off the alarm they erroneously turned on.

Granted, YouTube’s method of throwing up a standard “violation of community guidelines” message is crude, and leads to suspicion. Then again, so was ABC’s editorial judgment. It’s a hard problem.

can you or anyone factually prove that they’re wrong? 99% of the internet and “experts” said HCQ is dangerous and ineffective, then it just came out that a leading group of ER docs say it’s effective in ~90% of cases.

The point is that even if they’re wrong, youtube and others are playing a dangerous Orwellian game and it’s going to harm their reputability in the end.

"Even if that’s true, what does it have to do with banning the video and preventing the public from making their own decision?"

Research done on fake news illustrates why ordinary consumers of news cannot be trusted to make informed judgements.

"Right this moment I can go on youtube and look up a million rap videos that talk about guns, violence, murder, and more. I can look at videos that would lead me to harm myself in all sorts of ways if I didn’t have a brain."

Exactly this. This is why it is irresponsible for a global platform to promote this tripe.

People should be able to see all the opinions of various experts; doctors in NYC, doctors in Minnesota. Just them on their merits and examine the evidence.

By pulling videos, YouTube/Google is saying they don't trust people to be able to discern anything or do research among several dissenting opinions. And yes, it's their platform and yada yada .. they still allow a lot of content to be uploaded and they have become the most typical/standard centralized source of videos.

I will admit, they might be right to not trust people ... at which point why do we even care about humanity anymore? Are those with more power and influence always going to think the rest of the world are sheep who can't think for themselves and need to be led around?

This time sets all kinds of dangerous prescients. I wish Orwell was still alive.

"People should be able to see all the opinions of various experts; doctors in NYC, doctors in Minnesota. Just them on their merits and examine the evidence."

Most people are not qualified to "examine the evidence" and make public health policy decisions. This is why we rely upon the experts. Otherwise you have measles outbreaks in Beverly Hills.

You mean the experts that said no human to human transmission? or the experts that called for maska being ineffective? or the experts that didnt know how to store and deploy resources as they needed? or the experts that miscalculated projected infection rates?

> You mean the experts that said no human to human transmission?

Perfect example, no expert said there was no human to human nor is there any chance of it. The only language close to that was "there isn't any proof of it now" which might have been informed by CCP misinformation.

Even though they were misinformed, any true expert should have known not to make any definitive statement either way. If you have such a quote, it was not made by an expert.

So doctors aren't experts in health now. That's what it's come to?

Do you think epidemiologists are? The people who have apparently never predicted a disease outbreak successfully, ever? Why are they experts but not these doctors?

And what makes YouTube employees believe they're qualified to decide who's right? They're experts in HTML5 video serving, not health.

> So doctors aren't experts in health now.

Even doctors generally recognize that public health (of which epidemiology is only a part) is a separate domain of expertise. There are doctors who specialize in infectious disease who need some public-health training, but there's no reason to expect that e.g. a oncologist or trauma surgeon would know more than the average scientifically-literate person about a different profession.

> That article makes inaccurate statements like, "basically hyped a bunch of data and weren’t transparent about their methods" which is not true. There were 100% transparent about where there information was from and how they were presenting it.

I can vouch for their transparency. The speed with which I was able to see that their statistical methods were totally wrong was almost entirely due to their transparency. The only fact I had to find outside of what they said was the criteria for testing in the county for which they cited statistics, which I found at https://kernpublichealth.com/coronavirus-disease-2019-covid-...

"Testing is NOT indicated for asymptomatic persons."

The doctors' statistics in the quote below don't work because of sampling bias.

“In Kern County, we’ve tested 5,213 people and we have 340 positive COVID cases. Well, that’s 6.5 percent of the population. Which would indicate a widespread viral infection similar to the flu,”

Did you watch the video or are you just basing this on out of context quotes? What you're quoting was a brief anecdote about what those doctors were seeing on the ground. Their extrapolations are based on state-level aggregates in New York and California. Sample sizes of 300-650K patients.

I did not get the chance to see the video before it was taken down, but I got the content of their arguments here: http://www.tathasta.com/2020/04/watch-er-doctors-urge-reopen...

They use the same logic for Kern County, California, and New York. Their logic is, that if you test N people and find M positive cases, that in the population at large you'll have an infection rate of M/N. This would be true if the N tests were performed on random members of the population. But because the tests are only performed when there's reason to suspect infection, M/N is a higher infection rate than in the population at large. Their inflated number for total infected persons makes the death rate appear smaller.

FYI the full video is available at the website of the news station that uploaded it to YouTube (where it was removed):

https://www.turnto23.com/news/coronavirus/video-interview-wi...

Thanks. 51 minutes is too long for me to watch. Anybody who knows of anything in there that addresses the sampling bias issue, please point me to how far in it is.

> I did not get the chance to see the video before it was taken down

I suppose that’s the real problem, in so many words...

I did watch the video and the critique by brlewis is perfectly accurate.

But why should we believe you? Why can't we watch and make our own judgements?

> But why should we believe you?

Because you have a basic understanding of statistics.

> Why can't we watch and make our own judgements?

You can. The video is available in many places.

Because, I’m Youtube, why would I ever lie to you. I have your best interest in mind, and trust me, this shits gonna get us all killed if we watch this.

I did watch the video and I can safely say that these doctors make massive and very convenient statistic mistakes throughout.

Sample size doesn't help if the sampling method is biased. Even if tests were available to everyone regardless of symptoms, you would still have a selection bias that would skew the numbers. The only way to accurately estimate overall infection rates in the general population is to test a random sampling.

Then there is the "comparison" of Sweden (no lock down) and Norway/California. They mention the death counts and population of these countries in another attempt to show that the "number of cases is high and the number of deaths is small regardless of lockdown" but completely gloss over the fact that Sweden has more that 5x the covid deaths per capita that Norway and California have.

Regardless of if this video should be censored, these guys are awful scientists.

> Regardless of if this video should be censored, these guys are awful scientists.

This is the exact reason why it shouldn't be censored. Because if their science is bad then it needs to be available for people who know better to tear it to shreds.

If you take it down then the story can't be "this is why they're wrong" because what they said isn't available anymore, so a rebuttal isn't believable because you can't tell if it's an accurate representation of the original presentation.

So then the story becomes about censorship and you're making it all too easy for motivated people to spin a conspiracy theory about how these scientists are speaking truth to power and getting oppressed, even if they are in actual fact totally wrong.

Yet if you look at the comment sections for this video, there isn't anyone tearing it to shreds.

This isn't something I have been able to confidently form an opinion on; it's a hard topic. I think we will be strugging with how to balance bias, deliberate misinformation and freedom of speech for a long time.

But I think at the very least, YouTube needed to put up prominent disclaimers and links to limit the harm that this content can cause.

> Yet if you look at the comment sections for this video, there isn't anyone tearing it to shreds.

I count several detailed criticisms of it just in this thread. Do none of them have a YouTube account?

Why don't the people proposing to censor it post their own rebuttal?

> I think at the very least, YouTube needed to put up prominent disclaimers and links to limit the harm that this content can cause.

Which is totally different. Leaving the video up while posting a prominent link to a rebuttal isn't censorship, it's more speech.

> I count several detailed criticisms of it just in this thread. Do none of them have a YouTube account?

I did post a rebutal in some of the duplicates I found on YouTube. YouTube comments are not really a great platform for debate and the way their algorithm works tends pull videos like this into an echo chamber that avoids the exact types of critical discussion you are calling for.

So, given the (artificial) choice between leaving the video up as is and taking it down, I suspect that in this particular case, the practically beneficial choice for society (in the short term at least) is to take it down precisely because of how YouTube works as a platform and community.

> Which is totally different. Leaving the video up while posting a prominent link to a rebuttal isn't censorship, it's more speech.

Yes, I am a big fan of free speech. However it has become increasingly clear that simply making speech as free as possible in as many places as possible is not enough (by itself) to solve the problems of misinformation, partisanship and radicalization that we are facing as a society. We can't just dismiss those problems, so as advocates for free speech, we need to find non-censorship ways to help solve those problems.

> YouTube comments are not really a great platform for debate and the way their algorithm works tends pull videos like this into an echo chamber that avoids the exact types of critical discussion you are calling for.

This seems like a YouTube-specific problem that should have solutions not involving censorship.

I did watch the video. At about the 5-minute mark, they make a huge error in extrapolating the percent positive of tests to the general population (in California, 12% positive test rate). As many others have pointed out, that is an inexcusable error that leads them to an wildly erroneous conclusion about the mortality rate of COVID-19. Recent antibody tests in Santa Clara County and Los Angeles showed a rate around 2-4%, and those studies were criticized because those percentages are close to the levels of false positives one could expect in the antibody tests. So at best, the conclusions in the video are off by a factor of three, and most likely, more.

As I fully explained in a nearby comment, the logic in their Kern County anecdote is representative of their logic for California and New York statistics as well. I am not misrepresenting anything or practicing any form of disinformation.

>I am not misrepresenting anything or practicing any form of disinformation.

I'm not saying that you are misrepresenting or disinforming people. But, how would you know unless someone told you?

Answered in nearby comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23014548

https://www.aaem.org/resources/statements/joint-endorsed/phy...

I did watch it. Their extrapolations were wrong. You can't just multiply positivity rate found in a biased sample by the whole population. That's not a meaningful extrapolation. Then using that extrapolation to say the death rate is low is just building up the error even more.

And then, comparing that to the flu and saying this isn't much worse, we're now well into the "this video is a potentially a public health hazard" territory.

No, you just debate it. A follow up video where there's a debate. Simple.

That puts you in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop territory, where watching hours of video and an epidemiology and stats degree is needed to tease out the truth.

And then, comparing that to the flu and saying this isn't much worse, we're now well into the "this video is a potentially a public health hazard" territory.

No, lockdowns are the public health hazard. The data is quite clear at this point that what's going on here is no worse than the flu. Here's a simple graphic from the UK to make that point clear:

http://inproportion2.talkigy.com/

And if you look at when lockdowns could have possibly started working given incubation and death lags, you'll see that most countries seem to have peaked before the lockdowns could have started working. Implication: they weren't responsible for the peak and decline.

But the more important point is that it's critical such things can be debated. Simply assuming you're right and anyone who disagrees is a "public health hazard" is totalitarianism. You won't have any ability to defend yourself, or even any right to, next time someone erases you because e.g. Trump declared your views to be dangerous.

Well, i don't know about the us you probably have more hospital beds than us, but in france it was absolutely criticla to enforce a lockdown at the time we did. Even with this timely lockdown, we still had to stop intubating >90 yo patients for two weeks (it's getting better). And bear in mind that only a part of one region (1/13th of France basically, not really true but...), not even the whole area, and all the hospital in the region (not the hot area) were so full they had to transfert arounf 20 patients abroad and hundreds to hospital in other regions. My cousin in Colmar, eastern France (SMUR chief) has transfered around 20 people to my other cousin (intensive care anesthetist) in western Brittany. If you have a map: its basically the longest East-West travel you can do in France. In Colmar they also had to close almost all of their non-maternity, non-urgency service, and the number of people dying of overdoses or of too much alcohol (don't have the english word sorry) is at least twice as high (we will have the true numbers in a few months).

Also i've said it here before, but young, healthy people who did not had to have invasive respiration (so no ICU) still got out of their sickness with lingering asthma, possibly caused by a pulmonary fibrosis. I found this [0] in English if you don't know what it is. In five to seven years (assuming we find a vaccine for sras-cov2 in two year) we will really start counting our dead, unless we find a non-chirurgical fibrosis cure.

[0] https://lungdiseasenews.com/2017/06/16/12-facts-pulmonary-fi...

From the video around 4:40:

> 33,865 COVID cases out of a total of 280,900 total tested--that's 12% of Californians were positive for COVID.

This would only be true if those tested were randomly selected. Even in the most optimistic Santa Clara County study prevalence was estimated at under 5%. 1

1. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.14.20062463v...

Why does the UW doctor's opinion supercede that of the doctors in the removed videos?

The answer of course is ideology. These are two experts giving two different opinions based on different sets of similarly poor evidence. The fact that a doctor goes against consensus does not necessarily mean he's wrong and it certainly does not warrant censorship, all else considered.

Youtube is making a dangerous mistake.

> The fact that a doctor goes against consensus does not necessarily mean he's wrong and it certainly does not warrant censorship, all else considered.

It's not the unpopularity of the views of the doctors in the video that makes them wrong, it is their complete misapplication of statistics. The analogy of “estimating the average height of Americans from the players on an NBA court.” is very apt.

It may not mean that they should be censored, but at a minimum they deserve to be called out and ridiculed.

It has nothing to do with opinions, and it has nothing to do with ideology, except insofar as these two doctors were motivated by their ideology to profoundly misunderstand or misrepresent statistical sampling.

It’s not one side thinks this, the other side thinks that, it’s that their video is factually wrong, and in being wrong encourages dangerous behavior.

That's why you should always get a second opinion.

Really? Are you really so arrogant as to ignore that YouTube is far more likely to be making an ideological decision here?

An expert made a statement. YouTube went out of its way to find a doctor who supported YouTube's ideological slant and used that as justification for taking action.

This obliviousness. This is why we must restrict power. This is why we can't have nice things.

What makes these two doctors experts in epidemiology and statistics?

Do you really trust YouTube to make that decision? That's the whole point. I'm not actually interested in the credentials on either side - merely pointing out that YouTube is doing far more harm than good in choosing a side. Society would be far better off without their curation.

No, you claimed "an expert made a statement". I want to clarify. No expert made a statement on youtube. Two nonexperts made statements, and Youtube removed them, presumably at the behest of experts (like the WHO, whom youtube is using to set guidelines on removable content).

A doctor on the frontlines is an expert. He may not specialize in epidemiology or virology, but his credentials are sufficient that the difference between credibility between the scientists and the doctors is too small for youtube to reliably choose one over the other. YouTube is not an accreditation agency or an arbiter of credibility.

YouTube has no authority to suppress credible doctors from going against the consensus. The fact that this particular decision agrees with what the majority of us think is right doesn't mean that YouTube is right to choose.

> He may not specialize in epidemiology or virology

Exactly, so he should not be speaking on epidemiology. And it's even more dangerous because people, like you, believe he could be an expert.

> YouTube has no authority to suppress credible doctors from going against the consensus.

But the WHO does.

Great, and the WHO is welcome to keep the doctors video off of their platform.

Ignoring ramifications of politicization, How many developments will be missed if we embark on a campaign to suppress all dissenting opinions?

You don't think a doctor on the front line is qualified to make inferences about the disease that he is literally treating en masse? You don't think direct observation and experimentation with hundreds of patients could provide valuable insight into the properties of this disease or potential working treatments and/or best practices? How far backwards are you going to bend to defend this position?

Again, the fact that this particular decision agrees with your preconceived notions does not mean that YouTube's emerging practice of choosing truth is good for society. The WHO is also not the only qualified body, nor is it a final authority, yet here YouTube is suddenly treating it as one and, conveniently, YouTube's political slant is aligned with this particular decision. If we allow this behavior, it won't be the last time that YouTube picks a winner and shapes the reality perceived by millions of people. This is a possibly unprecedented amount of soft power and it is being used without oversight or control by the society that is being influenced by it.

I'm not suggesting we make it illegal but educated citizens should be at least resistant to the idea, not welcoming of it because it happens to agree with their politics now. The same goes for Google and FB and any other platform that acts as a window to information - these corporations are not authorities and should not be gatekeeping information. Long term that's a far greater danger to society than COVID19.

> Ignoring ramifications of politicization,

Let's not. It's relevant to real world actions.

> You don't think a doctor on the front line is qualified to make inferences about the disease that he is literally treating en masse?

About symptoms or specific treatment plans, perhaps. About government response? No. It's the difference between macro and micro scale approaches. The front line doctors are experts at mirco-scale treatment. Epidemiologists are best at macro-scale treatments. The two skillsets are not the same. An expert at one is not an expert at the other, and no amount of repeating that belief will change that.

> Again, the fact that this particular decision agrees with your preconceived notions does not mean that YouTube's emerging practice of choosing truth is good for society.

Correct. I just happen to believe that suppressing lies that can kill people if they believe them is also a good thing. Or do you think that "take Hydroxychloroquine, it's a miracle drug" should be posted on the youtube homepage?

> The WHO is also not the only qualified body, nor is it a final authority, yet here YouTube is suddenly treating it as one and, conveniently, YouTube's political slant is aligned with this particular decision

What is the political slant you're describing? The WHO, CDC, and pretty much every expert body on epidemiology in the world, in every nation, from Iran to Argentina to Germany to China are doing approximately the same thing. The political spectrums in those nations cross the gamut. Yet they're all following the same treatment plan for the pandemic response. What is the political slant?

> If we allow this behavior, it won't be the last time that YouTube picks a winner and shapes the reality perceived by millions of people.

They already do that. They're just doing so with a bit of morality instead of hoping that unmonitored algorithms will lead to the best outcomes for society.

> these corporations are not authorities and should not be gatekeeping information.

Information is relative. Google's mission statement is "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful". So which is more in line with that mission: providing a platform for lies, or curating correct information?

Is "up is down" information? Or is it something else? I don't think lies (or perhaps less aggressively, falsehoods) are "information", they're something else. If the doctors are correct (they aren't, but assuming they were), they'd have evidence they could share and that actual experts would agree with. Then the expert consensus would change.

Either that or you think there's a worldwide conspiracy to keep us in our homes, hurting the economy and millions, or even billions, so that...as far as I can tell, the best guess is so that governments can replace the batteries in the birds. There's nothing for the WHO or CDC to gain by suppressing these guys. There's nothing for Google to gain by suppressing these guys. And yet, they do because it's morally right to keep people safe from disinformation.

>And yet, they do because it's morally right to keep people safe from disinformation.

This is literally why we have the first amendment. Because, as you say, information is relative; that also means it is relative in time. And we can only come to a correct consensus if we allow all voices to be heard.

This is an excellent example of a time not to suppress dissidents. The doctors on the front line are just as likely, if not moreso, to come up with potential treatments or policies, because this is happening in real time and the information arbitrage lends extra credibility to the doctor's words. Do you see how subjective this decision of censorship is? And any subjective decision is subject to bias, political or otherwise.

>There's nothing for Google to gain by suppressing these guys.

It's no secret Google leans left. It's no secret that protestors of the lockdown lean right. You don't see a conflict of interest here?

What if the WHO and CDC are in conflict? Who decides then? YouTube? What about platforms that are partly owned by China? Conflict of interest?

What about elections? You think it's OK for a platform like Google or YouTube to pull ads that fail "fact checks"? What about viral posts? You don't think it'll be a partisan shitshow?

If not then we have no reason to continue this discussion because we will not agree.

> It's no secret Google leans left. It's no secret that protestors of the lockdown lean right. You don't see a conflict of interest here?

No. I'd see a conflict of interest if this were a political issue. But it's not. Making something political by spouting a bunch of lies until people believe them doesn't change the science.

>What if the WHO and CDC are in conflict?

But they're not. So we're well into the realm of irrelevant hypotheticals.

> treatments or policies

Treatments, yes. Policies, no. Because as I keep saying, they're different things. You're comparing, in essence, the skills of a software engineer and a CEO. Drop either into the others' chair and they'll flounder.

> What about elections? You think it's OK for a platform like Google or YouTube to pull ads that fail "fact checks"?

They already have policies that disallow lying in political ads: https://www.blog.google/technology/ads/update-our-political-...

> It’s against our policies for any advertiser to make a false claim—whether it's a claim about the price of a chair or a claim that you can vote by text message, that election day is postponed, or that a candidate has died.

> You don't think it'll be a partisan shitshow?

I mean, I expect that no matter what people will complain that it'll be a partisan shitshow. Given that like I said these policies already exist and I didn't notice any obvious political shitshow, only the usual suspects complaining, no.

> What about platforms that are partly owned by China?

They can make their own policies, and I'm free to use them, or not.

> This is literally why we have the first amendment.

And I fully support both the doctor's right to exercise it by spouting bullshit, and Youtube's right to exercise it by removing said bullshit from their platform.

I don't think you understand that in a reality with limited information, it is impossible for humans to know objective truth. And further you underestimate the degree of uncertainty regarding lockdown measures.

This uncertainty is an avenue for bias. I don't think you understand the dangers of giving a handful of people the power to censor and curate the material that reaches a majority of the eyes in the US. You'll change your mind when they bend against your own leanings though, I guarantee that. It's the spirit of the first amendment, because this is an enormous power that affects all of us, without our consent.

The CDC and the WHO were in conflict at one point regarding mask usage. As it happens, they are arguably in conflict today, as the WHO has praised Sweden's model which, in case you're not aware, is not a lockdown. So what now? Will you be expecting YouTube to remove any videos from the WHO suggesting people adopt the policy of Sweden?

How can you even put faith in authority right now after so many nations, organizations, hospitals, the world over, totally failed in responding to or preparing for this pandemic? And you think YouTube is in a position to choose? It's bad for society.

It's equally impossible for humans to know objective truth if all information is presented with no way to determine authority. If I present you with all possible 25 word sentences containing "covid-19", you have all of the conceivable information at your fingertips, but you can't draw any conclusions.

But that's mostly beside the point. No one is preventing these two doctors from determining the truth. If they think they have a breakthrough, they can present it in a paper, to other experts, who are capable of analyzing it.

> I don't think you understand that in a reality with limited information, it is impossible for humans to know objective truth. And further you underestimate the degree of uncertainty regarding lockdown measures.

Conventional news is far worse than Google both in terms of the things and, at least currently, in terms of reach. I'd much prefer if Fox news presented actual experts on subjects, instead of political pundits or "Dr. Phil" when discussing COVID-19. I am not and have not taken any political side anywhere in this conversation. I've been on the side of scientific consensus. I don't expect that will change.

> As it happens, they are arguably in conflict today, as the WHO has praised Sweden's model which, in case you're not aware, is not a lockdown.

Let's talk when the WHO releases official guidance to end lockdowns. Until then you're just trying to create conflict where there isn't any.

> How can you even put faith in authority right now after so many nations, organizations, hospitals, the world over, totally failed in responding to or preparing for this pandemic?

Because I trust the institutions of government (and their access to experts) more than I trust hucksters on the internet. While I don't expert the average person to be able to discern an expert from a huckster on the internet, especially due to the actions of certain politicians.

The point here is that youtube is not a harbinger of scientific truth. These doctors present their findings with their collected data to come to this conclusion that the according to them, this virus is not dangerous and the quarantine should end.

Does Youtube also censor videos where plumbers present an incorrect way to install a toilet that can lead to backflow and flooding.

The point to make here is that Youtube is NOT the New England Journal of Science and should not act like one for just one topic - Coronavirus.

If anybody feels that their data or interpreation of the data is incorrect, they should post their own video on Youtube, refuting their claims.

Instead what Youtube is doing is just silencing them.

Does Youtube also censor videos where plumbers present an incorrect way to install a toilet that can lead to backflow and flooding.

1) They probably would censor the plumber, if they received enough complaints about it, and 2) an incorrectly installed toilet doesn't have the potential to kill tens of thousands of people, whereas erroneous information about the danger of COVID-19 very well could. So they're not waiting for the complaints.

> The point to make here is that Youtube is NOT the New England Journal of Science and should not act like one for just one topic

Nor is cnn, fox news, msnbc, etc. They all exercise editorial control over what goes on their channel however.

The rules by which youtube exercises its editor control is its guidelines and policies from my understanding.

> The rules by which youtube exercises its editor control is its guidelines and policies from my understanding.

Which may be the result of its execs being dragged before congress about "fake news" -- hence the allegations of censorship.

Is that analogy sincere? YouTube itself has channels, no? Youtube is the TV. Wouldn’t it be fair to say you can exercise editorial control over your channel, but television manufacturers shouldn’t come with it’s own defined restrictions on content?

It would suck if a firmware upgrade goes out to all LG TVs disabling certain content. It’s within LG’s right, but what a betrayal of the customer who was sold a non universal television.

> The point to make here is that Youtube is NOT the New England Journal of Science

Exactly! So why are the doctors using it as a platform when they should be going through reputable peer-reviewed channels?

    The point here is that youtube is not a harbinger of 
    scientific truth.

    The point to make here is that Youtube is NOT the New 
    England Journal of Science and should not act like one 
    for just one topic - Coronavirus.

    If anybody feels that their data or interpreation of the 
    data is incorrect, they should post their own video on 
    Youtube, refuting their claims.

But this interpretation is wrong.

A scientific journal has a panel, which are qualified experts in the field or related fields, that read and pick up on statistical errors, and other errors, and decide whether or not to publish the paper. Youtube does not.

Peer review as a whole, means that your work gets assessed by experts, and they decide before publication if your paper is of the right quality to enter the journal.

'Peer Review' =/= 'Allowing everyone to post and the truth will be found out or agreed upon in the end'

'Peer Review' == 'Having your work assessed by equally or more skilled people, who then decide if your work is good enough to publish'

Youtube operates in a fundamentally different way to peer review, it allows anyone to post, then retroactively decides if that work meets guidelines. This means that not only is it not possible to immediately filter work that is submitted, it also does not go through proper assessment of it's validity by a panel of specialists and experts. Youtube could not operate with it's current business model using that method, and so is forced to choose another. Just because it's retroactive enforcement, doesn't mean that the terms of the service and guidelines are not in force, or should be considered censorship. Nobody is actually censoring these people, they are free to post their video literally anywhere else, but they broke the terms of the Youtube service.

As many other people have pointed out, the work produced and hosted on Youtube does contain errors, these are statistical errors that would have been caught had they submitted this to an academic journal, however the video's makers explicitly decidedin to publish it on Youtube. There is very little reason to do that, other than to market this information to others.

As this information is dubious at best, it is fundamentally and ethically irresponsible of them, as scientists, as medical workers who have taken an oath to do no harm, to publish this work on Youtube and to the public without going through the basic step that is peer review. The comments section does exist, but has no value, because you cannot count on the general public to be as informed in the subject matter as a peer review panel would be.

> Does Youtube also censor videos where plumbers present an incorrect way to install a toilet that can lead to backflow and flooding.

This is more akin to YouTube removing a “I’m a plumber, trust me, clean your bathroom by mixing bleach and ammonia in your toilet” video.

What about evidence that the Jews created and disseminated Covid-19? Should I be able to present that evidence even though it's flawed and full of incorrect data?

Youtube owns the platform, we allowed it to become the largest and most powerful platform but there are others out there. Youtube (and google, and bing) have no reason to have to host misleading, wrong, or hurtful opinions/websites.

> The very fact that a few people at Google/Youtube have the power to censor whomever they want for whatever reason they choose is a problem in itself.

In the US, the media is almost entirely run by private corporations.

If you feel that is a mistake it's probably a better use of your time advocating for better funding and more independence for public media than criticizing corporations for exercising oversight of their platforms.

There have been several lawsuits about this over the past few years and they always fail. Google is a commercial company and not a public institution. There are no first amendment protections here and they can remove any content they wish. The commonality of the platform does not make it a public institution. If that bothers you then boycott them.

Are they arguing that they are a publisher? Because that would also mean being liable for the content.

That is not how it works. It’s a complete legal myth that there is some sort of “Platform” v “Publisher” distinction in the law.

Section 230 of the CDA was created 25 years ago to avoid this being the case. It gives companies the ability to moderate user generated content on their platforms without being held responsible for other UGC posted to them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communicati...

> One of the first legal challenges to Section 230 was the 1997 case Zeran v. America Online, Inc., in which a Federal court affirmed that the purpose of Section 230 as passed by Congress was "to remove the disincentives to self-regulation created by the Stratton Oakmont decision".[8] Under that court's holding, computer service providers who regulated the dissemination of offensive material on their services risked subjecting themselves to liability, because such regulation cast the service provider in the role of a publisher. Fearing that the specter of liability would therefore deter service providers from blocking and screening offensive material, Congress enacted § 230's broad immunity "to remove disincentives for the development and utilization of blocking and filtering technologies that empower parents to restrict their children's access to objectionable or inappropriate online material."[8] In addition, Zeran notes "the amount of information communicated via interactive computer services is . . . staggering. The specter of tort liability in an area of such prolific speech would have an obviously chilling effect. It would be impossible for service providers to screen each of their millions of postings for possible problems. Faced with potential liability for each message republished by their services, interactive computer service providers might choose to severely restrict the number and type of messages posted. Congress considered the weight of the speech interests implicated and chose to immunize service providers to avoid any such restrictive effect."[8]

To those who support YouTube removing these vids:

Without remarking on the quality of the video in this specific instance I will note that Dr. John Campbell's videos were contradicting WHO advice while WHO was asleep at the wheel.

By the current standards, would they have been removed?

Was he advocating a course of action that would cause people to die? Because if he wasn’t (he wasn’t) then no, they wouldn’t be removed.

> Was he advocating a course of action that would cause people to die?

I thought the censorship was about the Coronavirus. There are a lot of videos that advocate a course of action that would cause someone, somewhere to die, that aren't being censored.

Doesn't the WHO advocate a course of action that will cause people to die? Of course they do, it is just that different people will die at a different time. It is more fuzzy and diffuse rather than a data driven counter.

It's wrong to conflate this with censorship.

A few people at Google/Youtube should absolutely have the power to allow/disallow what they want on their platform for whatever reason they choose. That is as much a freedom of speech issue as is the doctors' right to public speech.

The real problem is that Google/Youtube has special legal protections related to not having editorial controls, yet here they are exercising editorial control. That they can play it both ways is the greater tragedy.

But the endgame is to have an organization, such as the AMA or the ABA, for the delegation of responsible judgment. Google and YouTube just grew up too fast without the FCC catching up, but in a society where we felt that Google and YouTube shouldn't be in a position of deciding whether youths might come into contact with swear words, that ultimately means we want delegation to another trustworthy body such as the FCC.

In this case Google choose the WHO. We can argue that there's a better choice on the table, but what?

Delegating “responsible judgment” to a formal institution or organization sounds fundamentally dubious in this context.

How is it fundamentally dubious? If you don't trust Google to make a category of social or moral judgments, you're either trusting the market or you have another institution do the job.

Or you could just not do the censorship in the first place and give people the freedom to make their own personal judgments whenever they’re presented with conflicting perspectives.

You’re assuming that some global institution has to be The Arbiter Of Truth because common people are too stupid to think for themselves and I find that assumption disgusting.

> Or you could just not do the censorship in the first place and give people the freedom to make their own personal judgments whenever they’re presented with conflicting perspectives.

> You’re assuming that some global institution has to be The Arbiter Of Truth because common people are too stupid to think for themselves and I find that assumption disgusting.

The market is the sharpest vote the people may give for companies. Next would be holding businesses liable, which Google is in various ways. If Google is accountable for the content it serves, and it is in various ways, then that is the people's will in motion.

I find it alarming that you think you understand my thoughts without getting into a conversation with me, to the point of announcing your disgust over a forum.

If Google is liable, then HN will be liable for comments, and any website with user submitted content will die except Google, which has the money to fight lawsuits.

It will have to be proven that the comments actually caused harm.

Hello first amendment.

Which is why the liability argument is utterly absurd.

> I find it alarming that you think you understand my thoughts without getting into a conversation with me, to the point of announcing your disgust over a forum.

You’ve been expressing your thoughts on that same forum, and if I’ve misunderstood them I am sorry, but as far as I did understand them I am disgusted by them. You are free to clarify anything you think I have misunderstood, of course. But I would advise you to be more careful publicly sharing your thoughts on any forum if you’re going to go clutching pearls at how they are received. Failing that, let me clarify that I am merely disgusted at what you actually wrote, which may have nothing to do with the ineffable inner workings of your mind.

Did you not mean to imply, as a premise, that Google (specifically YouTube) should be censoring user-submitted content on the basis that it disagrees with the “responsible judgment” of some institutional authority? If so, please inform me what you meant in the first place. Because even in the best of faith I can’t find any other way to interpret your comment.

Specifically:

> If you don't trust Google to make a category of social or moral judgments, you're either trusting the market or you have another institution do the job.

If someone posts a video on YouTube, anyone who watches that video will make their own “social and moral judgments” about the content of that video, and in most circumstances that’s enough for me. Why are you assuming that some “institution” will inevitably make those judgments for us, and decide based on those judgments whether we’re allowed to see the video in the first place? Why is that something you accept, and seemingly advocate? Because that is the premise that I question, reject, and express my disgust at.

> How is it fundamentally dubious?

It's fine to have a trusted organization to make decisions. It's not fine to place that organization above all criticism.

I think their statistical methods are suspect and likely wrong. I don't think they should be censored and the act of censoring them is actively harmful if you don't want people taken in by misinformation, then we need to actively produce good information. There is not and cannot be some way to absolve a free society of that burden. Censorship only helps to convince people that you know you're wrong and you're hiding from criticism. This is especially bad when you're right.

having an independent organization does not imply being above criticism. even the government is not above criticism. what matters is how likely it is that the criticism will actually result in a change if there was a wrong decision made.

as it stands, google is already above all criticism because they are to big to be approached by any individual wronged by their decisions. an independent organization would be much more approachable, even if that approach ends up being a lawsuit.

> having an independent organization does not imply being above criticism

It will be if we have no problem deplatforming all criticism.

any other organization would be better. the key issue is to remove the financial incentive from the decision. google as a profit making entity needs to not care either way. it can only do that when the responsibility for the content is out of its hands.

any third party would be easier to approach, even if they need to be sued to see the error of their ways (if there is a decision in dispute).

ideally such an institution is directly answerable to the public and to lawmakers for their decisions and it could be properly funded to handle those decisions.

such an institution could work with multiple companies, especially smaller ones who can not afford this amount scrutiny to their content, and who would already are affected by the ever increasing requirements to police content.

Google/YouTube is moving from annoying to disgusting. If the claims are wrong, take them apart. Censorship is not the way.

Businesses have the right to refuse service, why should YouTube be any different? I think the solution is a decentralized video sharing platform.

> why should YouTube be any different?

Because it's almost a monopoly. It's not one of roughly equal dozens video hosting services. It's freaking youtube.

No it’s not. There are innumerable hosting services.

The crux is people wanting to spread their views but who don’t want to pay to do that.

> There are innumerable hosting services.

Is this an honest comment or one you hope won't be challenged? There are NO video hosting services with the popularity or reach of YouTube, by a very long shot. Customers of ours have lost their entire livelihood because content that was present on YouTube for a decade was suddenly politically incorrect and their accounts got banned.

That wouldn't be the case if they had more than one reasonable option.

There are hundreds if not thousands of video sharing platforms. Plus a shared web host cost very little, and there is always BitTorrent too. No one is forcing anyone to use YouTube for videos. Anyone that lost their livelihood because of YouTube should have read the TOS.

That may well be true, but it's not a reason for me to think of Google/YouTube's behavior as in any way acceptable.

So in order to have a business, you believe that you should have to cater to everyone regardless of what they do or say because otherwise you are censoring them?

I think that if you get a reputation for immoral behavior, even if it's legal, your business is going to eventually pay a price (and rightfully so).

Have you told that to Comcast?

YouTube is not "just any business" and the idea of regulating what is otherwise legal behavior is well-established.

> There are hundreds if not thousands of video sharing platforms.

You keep trying to gloss over the fact that RandomVideo has nowhere near the size or reach of YouTube. Monopolies DO NOT REQUIRE zero competitors, that has never been part of their definition. Some videos on YT have BILLIONS of views. There's literally no meaningful competitor.

You misunderstand the word "monopoly". Youtube is where the exposure is, they technology for hosting videos is a commodity.

In other words, no one has the "right" to Youtube's distribution and promotion. Put you video on another site and promote it yourself.

You are apparently unaware of how anti-vaccination videos are promoted as legitimate on social media platforms.

If you're saying that it's a problem that something that has become of great public utility is a de facto monopoly entirely in the hands of private interests, sure. But given that, the unfettered censorship is a feature, not a bug.

If there were a public utility similar to Youtube, it would have to have a clear policy for censorship, and some means for a public review of any decision to censor. And then you might have a legitimate complaint (though in this case there was a pretty clear case of a material factual misrepresentation, regarding the mortality rate of COVID-19). But since that is not the case, Youtube/Google is pretty much free to censor anyone on any basis they choose, and they owe no one any particular explanation for their decisions.

You ask, "Are the doctors in the video saying untruths or misrepresenting data? I think what they said in the video was eminently reasonable."

> The American Academy of Emergency Medicine (AAEM) and the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) jointly and emphatically condemn the recent opinions released by Dr. Daniel Erickson and Dr. Artin Massihi. These reckless and untested musings do not speak for medical society and are inconsistent with current science and epidemiology regarding COVID-19. As owners of local urgent care clinics, it appears these two individuals are releasing biased, non-peer reviewed data to advance their personal financial interests without regard for the public’s health.

> COVID-19 misinformation is widespread and dangerous. Members of AAEM and ACEP are first-hand witnesses to the human toll that COVID-19 is taking on our communities. AAEM and ACEP strongly advise against using any statements of Drs. Erickson and Massihi as a basis for policy and decision making.

https://www.aaem.org/resources/statements/joint-endorsed/phy...

I think the current scenario has to be treated as a special case. Spreading falsehoods on this topic can do too much damage to the whole community. We should separate the general discussion of companies having too much power vs. what needs to be done right now.

In other news fox news is censoring anyone who does not agree with their Conservative narrative.

IMO, this is a matter of public health and should be treated as such (as much as some politicians want to cast this as a partisan issue for political gain).

This is their math. See if you can see whats wrong...

  39,500,000 -- Pop. of California
  12.00%     -- Pct. of people who tested positive for covid
  4,740,000  -- Estimated cases (Pop. * Pct.)
  1,227      -- Reported deaths
  0.03%      -- Estimated chance of dying from covid in California (deaths/estimated cases)

That math seems correct, you do have an extra space on the fourth line of your statistics.

The positive cases aren't a representative sample, as has been said 30 times in this thread. So line 3 is bad statistical reasoning, and completely invalidates their conclusion.

The only people who are getting tested are those who believe they have symptoms. This is beginning to change as we get more tests, and as a result, the % infected by their reasoning is decreasing day by day.

The math does not reflect reality. Why do you think 12% of Californians have covid? What impact does that have on the chance of dying stat?

Also, I fixed the space on the fourth line.

Ignoring the context here, YT has every right to choose what to display, and what not to.

In context: they don’t want to be responsible for harm to others and they certainly don’t want to pay to broadcast that content.

If people really want to spew nonsense they can pay to do it themselves. No one is stopping them.

Youtube is responsible for the harm here IMO. The video is long and boring. If it wasn't being censored, nobody would care to pay any attention to it.

It was retweeted by Elon Musk like a day ago

I dont get this mindset.

They aren't stopping them voicing their opinions or views... they're just stopping them posting it on THEIR service.

Newspapers do that all the time, TV and Radio does it all the time. Why is this different?

It’s not like these are crackpot doctors that uploaded the video themselves. It was a press conference that a local news station uploaded to YouTube.

https://www.turnto23.com/news/coronavirus/video-interview-wi...

Yep. The video was a news conference from Dr. Dan Erickson, who along with Dr. Artin Massihi, own the largest testing site in Kern County, Accelerated Urgent Care, California. It wasn't some random joe making claims.

Imbalance. There has always been the assumption in media that all sides will have their champions, and this has traditionally been the case.

Unfortunately that no longer holds as certain entities have a stranglehold on online communication.

Perhaps the free market will fix this. Perhaps not. Are we willing to allow a small cadre of like minded individuals manipulate the internet in the meantime?

I believe that's an intolerant situation and am not willing to wait.

> Newspapers do that all the time, TV and Radio does it all the time.

And that's why newspapers are classified as publishers and therefore are able to be sued. "Platforms" like YouTube are can't be sued because they are supposed to act like platforms - which they are not. Right now YouTube is acting like publishers while using the advantage of being called a platform. This is the Communications Decency Act section 230.

That would mean compelling them to host all content, including child pornography and calls to commit terrorism.

That is clearly nonsense.

The CDA doesn’t say “in order to not be liable you must host everything regardless of what it is” it allows you to host potentially anything that is uploaded without being considered directly liable for that (which would be far more censorious)

No Platdforms still have to delete illegal content and react to take down notices.

Ok, pornography then, that’s legal. Content that promotes terrorism is (to my understanding) not illegal, because that we shut down all those freedom loving “militias”.

Section 230 of the CDA was written expressly to give YouTube-like companies the right to do this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communicati...

[. . .]

> Blumenthal v. Drudge, 992 F. Supp. 44, 49-53 (D.D.C. 1998).[71]

> The court upheld AOL's immunity from liability for defamation. AOL's agreement with the contractor allowing AOL to modify or remove such content did not make AOL the "information content provider" because the content was created by an independent contractor. The Court noted that Congress made a policy choice by "providing immunity even where the interactive service provider has an active, even aggressive role in making available content prepared by others."

Pretty sure you can't successfully sue a newspaper for printing an interview where misleading facts are promulgated either. They may dispute those facts or choose not to publish the interview, but if the newspaper prints the interview as is, you can't win a lawsuit over the interviewee having the data wrong. Likewise, a newspaper's editorial page is free to post incorrect opinions, or not, according to their editorial discretion. Are there any instances you're aware of where newspapers were successfully sued for incorrect reporting, except in the case of slander?

It's that youtube, reddit take on more of a public forum than TV, radio at least that was the feeling in the past.

The idea that anyone can be a content creator is, it's supposed to be as neutral as possible. Let the world battle it out against itself. Once you start taking sides of opinions (as opposed to legal ones) then you become a content curator.

For better or worse, America was built on the idea that I can have an absolutely stupid idea and that's my right. We'll fight to my death but it is my right to hold said stupid idea and voice it with youtube being my megaphone.

That's a core tenant of free speech and youtube was supposed to be able to help that. Now they're taking sides and it's not comforting

> America was built on the idea that I can have an absolutely stupid idea and that's my right.

Was it though? First Amendment says:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances”

Until YouTube joins the Senate, I think they’re fine doing whatever they want.

> Until YouTube joins the Senate, I think they’re fine doing whatever they want.

I think it's reasonable to assume that the American government contains the same kind of people that are in governments the world over and throughout history. And governments have always attempted to suppress speech: that's why the First Amendment was written.

Given Snowden's revelations, can you be sure that Youtube's censoring is simply a business decision by executives and not a result of government influence? How would things be different if the government were pressuring the big platforms to squelch speech?

Honestly I don’t care why YouTube censors what they censor.

The text of the amendment looks pretty clear to me. Pressuring big platforms is a world away from passing a law.

> Given Snowden's revelations

What did Snowden reveal about government influence over private sector censorship? I must have missed it.

Nothing?

It's certainly their right under ownership laws to censor on their platform. But just because it's your legal right to do something doesn't mean it's the right thing to do. The question isn't "do social media platforms have the right to censor?". The question is, "given social media platforms have the legal right to censor, should they censor?".

The bill of rights is a legal document, and it can only govern the actions of government. But I don't think that there's any debate that the first amendment came about because the founding fathers believed free speech was an inalienable human right. I don't think the founding fathers would say that inalienable rights are suddenly alienated because you put a corporation in charge of your communications platform.

Do you believe free speech is a human right? If so, then why do you care when it's violated by a government, but not care when it's violated by corporations who are arguably more powerful in the field of communication?

Is spam free speech?

Are bookstores required to stock every book ever published?

Are fraud and defamation free speech?

Must newspapers post every classified ad submitted to them?

Is medical advice free speech?

Are government clerks required to serve verbally abusive clients?

No, no, no... there are plenty of examples where the right to free speech is found to have limits. Especially when that speech violates other freedoms.

You have the right to make videos and distribute them. You do not have the right to compel anybody to watch them, receive them or redistribute them. A platform such as youtube has the right to curate -- otherwise it would be a useless mass of SEO'd spam.

Well, in that case, this is unacceptable going forward.

We’re going to need a Youtube clone that has a better charter for content creators, and viewers alike.

Nothing's stopping you from making ChanTube, GabTube, or whatever you find "acceptable". But, if it gets popular, be prepared to take down illegal content, filter spam, get sued by copyright holders, etc. until it looks a lot more like youtube than you intended. Or, y'know, break under the weight of the consequences of harmful speech without substantial ad income since most advertisers won't want to associate with your toxic platform.

You're right: this is a great example of the free market not solving a problem. Which is only a relevant point if you think the free market is the only way to solve problems.

A decentralized video platform not under the control of a centralized company would bypass all the issues you mention. There are technological challenges, but we've made slow progress toward solutions over the past few decades.

Did you actually read the post you're responding to? I'm confused on why you would view this as a response to what I said.

Again, the question isn't "do social media platforms have the right to censor?". The question is, "given social media platforms have the legal right to censor, should they censor?".

If you don't understand that there might be reasons to do something beyond legal obligation or profit, you're not equipped to participate in this conversation.

> Did you actually read the post you're responding to?

> ... you're not equipped to participate in this conversation.

Please review the site guidelines and take a more charitable approach to this conversation. There's some irony that your argument around ideologically pure free speech is punctuated by insinuation that I should self-censor because I'm not ideologically pure enough.

I provided a handful of reasons where speech can do harm, and where forced publication impinges other rights. I'm saying that yes, "platforms" (which are also publishers / promoters / marketers due to features such search, recommendation, featured content etc.) have an obligation, ethical or legal, to take certain content down. In the case of spam, that content is taken down or shadowbanned for the greater good. That's a free ethical choice, not a legal obligation.

By all means, there are cases where publishers should resist external pressure to censor, and I fully agree that Congress shall make no law. But youtube isn't the government. They have a right to curate the content that they distribute that is just as important as your right to produce and self-publish your content.

> There's some irony that your argument around ideologically pure free speech is punctuated by insinuation that I should self-censor because I'm not ideologically pure enough.

I said, "[J]ust because it's your legal right to do something doesn't mean it's the right thing to do."

Sure, you're allowed to say whatever you want, but that doesn't mean saying it was the right thing to do. Saying that you said the wrong thing isn't ironic: it's exactly what one would expect given what I actually said.

There can be no irony with regards to my argument around ideologically pure free speech, because I didn't make any such argument.

Additionally, there's a difference between me censoring you by force, and me asking you to say things that are relevant.

> I provided a handful of reasons where speech can do harm, and where forced publication impinges other rights.

I never suggested forced publication, so these cases are not a response to my post.

> They have a right to curate the content that they distribute that is just as important as your right to produce and self-publish your content.

I specifically said that YouTube has this right. I said, "It's certainly their right under ownership laws to censor on their platform."

I believe I shouldn’t go to jail or be killed for the things I say. I don’t believe I have the right to say whatever I want without consequence.

Me too.

Now that we've got that out of the way, care to discuss the question I asked?

> For better or worse, America was built on the idea that I can have an absolutely stupid idea and that's my right.

> That's a core tenant of free speech

I'd disagree heavily with this assessment based on these two points.

The founding fathers drew much of their inspiration from Hobbes who wrote that liberty involved ceding some "sovereign power" (liberty) to a state so that we could be free to do things without worrying about survival of the fittest.

I believe it was Jefferson that was vehemently against government officials making false claims / lying...which is a limitation of free speech, but results in a net surplus of free speech.

The idea that all speech should be free is a fairly ignorant one.

> and voice it with youtube being my megaphone.

And this is ABSOLUTELY against any sort of semblance of the ideas America was founded on. YouTube is a private platform. They can (and SHOULD) police their speech, because it is a private platform.

YouTube is ultimately socially responsible for the outcomes of what people say on it's platform. If someone is denying or minimizing a VERY REAL and VERY SERIOUS global pandemic, YouTube had a social obligation to curtail their free speech.

> If someone is denying or minimizing a VERY REAL and VERY SERIOUS global pandemic

Look, most people on HNews agree with you, myself included. That stupid speech and stupid acts are costing very real lives.

But the whole point of this thread is that protected speech does cost lives as well. That we should be debating, identifying and responding to bad/poor speech. It should not be simply removed.

> YouTube had a social obligation to curtail their free speech.

Put a banner up. Identify it with Mr Yuck sticker. Don't remove it as if it never existed. That's dangerous, no?

If you don't believe it's dangerous, is it because the thing that's being censored is in your favor/belief/alignment?

Tomorrow, if Youtube said, "We'll remove all content that does not agree with the POTUS." That's only a few letters away from the WHO, right? POTUS is authority.

But that's insane. That's absurd.

That's what this debate is about. Censoring goes both ways.

> Put a banner up. Identify it with Mr Yuck sticker.

I would consider this a form of censorship as well, and I would absolutely support it.

> That we should be debating, identifying and responding to bad/poor speech. It should not be simply removed.

I suppose I could agree in this particular circumstance that YouTube having some sort of banner over this content would suffice, I think it's the same thing as just removing it.

> If you don't believe it's dangerous, is it because the thing that's being censored is in your favor/belief/alignment?

(I think you mixed your words up here, but I am interpreting this as you asking I'm ok with censorship if furthers my beliefs, if I'm wrong please correct me)

I'm ok with any censorship/curtailing of free speech that: results in a net-surplus of free speech, endangers others ("fire" in a crowded theater), or incites violence.

> Censoring goes both ways.

Censorship that is used to silence legitimate opinions that do not cause harm to others is a terrible thing and shouldn't exist. This has nothing to do with "both ways" or any "way"

Here's a noted first amendment expert explaining why "fire in a crowded theater" is a very bad example to cite:

https://www.popehat.com/2012/09/19/three-generations-of-a-ha...

Interesting article! I'll try to pay more mind in the future. That said,

> First, they trot out the Holmes quote for the proposition that not all speech is protected by the First Amendment. But this is not in dispute.

Maybe not in the author's circles, but in this particular scenario, that point was in dispute.

> Maybe not in the author's circles, but in this particular scenario, that point was in dispute.

Sure, but that's not a useful thing to know. I recall when Ken compared saying that to something akin to the following conversation, which I'm reconstructing from memory:

Help! I've been bitten by a snake and I want to know if it's poisonous!

Unless you're eating the snake, it only matters if the snake is venomous.

Okay, so can you tell me if the snake is venomous then?

Not all snakes are venomous.

So the important point is not to dispute over whether any speech can be banned, but whether the speech in question fits one of the categories of unprotected speech:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...

> I think you mixed your words up here.

Yea, you're right, but thanks for getting the spirit.

> Censorship that is used to silence legitimate opinions that do not cause harm to others is a terrible thing and shouldn't exist.

That's your belief because "legitimate opinions". What is "legitimate opinions"? That is the crux.

Your sense of justice is driving your opinions. Someone else's is going to be slightly different. Okay that's obvious, but the high level is how do you decide what is right/wrong? It's a spectrum, a very wide and diverse one. What's simply stupid vs outright dangerous?

> I'm ok with any censorship/curtailing of free speech that: results in a net-surplus of free speech, endangers others ("fire" in a crowded theater), or incites violence.

FWIW, that's a contradictory statement. You cannot have a net-surplus of free speech by censoring. They're mutually exclusive ideas. You can have a net-surplus of "good done" via censorship. But what is "good done"? More lives? More freedom?

All I'm trying to get you to see is that censorship is one of the most powerful tools that exist for a society. A concrete example is Singapore's fake news law.

> You cannot have a net-surplus of free speech by censoring

Of course you can. The government banning a platform from moderating content is a form of government censorship. Yet you believe that this would lead to more free speech.

Either a platform moderating is more free speech, or not moderating is more free speech. In either case, someone is being censored. So some form of censorship leads to more free speech.

> That's your belief because "legitimate opinions". What is "legitimate opinions"? That is the crux.

I'd say this was a poor choice of words. All opinions are "legitimate" in that people actually hold them and believe in them.

> What's simply stupid vs outright dangerous?

I don't think this is hard to measure, especially since we already have tests for what is protected speech and what is not in the US. For instance, we have federal laws that stop employers or landlords from exercizing their right to free speech when it involves discrimination against certain protected classes of people. Or slander/libel, or inciting violence.

> FWIW, that's a contradictory statement. You cannot have a net-surplus of free speech by censoring. They're mutually exclusive ideas.

This is not the case, as explained above and in an earlier comment. In the US we already have laws that limit free speech, yet result in a more free society.

> But what is "good done"? More lives? More freedom?

Yes, both of these things are good and would be considered good under just about any normative ethical framework.

> All I'm trying to get you to see is that censorship is one of the most powerful tools that exist for a society. A concrete example is Singapore's fake news law.

I agree with this fully, and would condemn anyone using censorship to remove free speech that isn't harmful. I advocate for similar positions in that I am generally ok with the government jailing people (which is an act of violence) that commit crimes. The right to jail people is an even more powerful tool than censorship, but most people are ok with this being done.

> Put a banner up. Identify it with Mr Yuck sticker. Don't remove it as if it never existed. That's dangerous, no?

You misunderstand how wrong information, identified as such, is received.

https://www.politico.com/story/2017/09/11/facebook-fake-news...

Pointing out something is false either has no effect, or makes people double down on wrong ideas / beliefs. Continuing to host said ideas will cause them to spread.

The responsible thing was removal, but perhaps with more transparency around how and why.

Conversely, America was also founded on the rights of private property, and the shareholders of Google has delegated the power to control their property to the management team at Google, who have then implemented this policy to remove this content from their property.

Its arguable just as important for the concept of America to let owners of private property not be deprived of their freedom and liberties.

> they're just stopping them posting it on THEIR service. Newspapers do that all the time, TV and Radio does it all the time. Why is this different?

Newspapers, TV programs, and radio programs are publishers. In contrast, Youtube, Facebook, and other services like them are platforms. They are more like the theater building, the radio/TV station, or a telephone company. This gives them some legal protection against being held responsible for the conduct of their users. See [1]. Without this distinction, these services could not have taken off, because Youtube and Facebook would have had to sign off on each user's post.

But advancing technology is making it possible to police speech automatically. So the distinction between the publisher and platform is fading. Because platforms can regulate their users' speech now in almost real time, very cheaply, they are kind of forced to do it. Some speech is very hard to defend. The best, and easiest argument for allowing offensive speech on these platforms has been that the offensive speech could not be technically prevented without squelching a lot of acceptable speech. But now that argument is going away.

[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=youtube+publisher+or+platfor...

In what sense is a radio station a platform? Most commercial radio is just piped playlists from a corporate office and a few DJs on top. Newspapers don't have to publish your letter to the editor and your local TV station won't publish your sternly worded letter either...

> They aren't stopping them voicing their opinions or views... they're just stopping them posting it on THEIR service.

It's certainly their right under ownership laws to censor on their platform. But just because it's your right to do something doesn't mean it's the right thing to do. The question isn't "do social media platforms have the right to censor?". The question is, "given social media platforms have the right to censor, should they censor?".

Like it or not, these platforms make up a significant portion of how our society communicates, and if you believe that free speech is a human right that's important for a free society, I don't see how you can say that it suddenly doesn't matter because we put a corporation in charge of a huge portion of our communications.

I don't think that social media platforms should allow free speech because they're obligated to, I think that social media platforms should allow free speech because free speech has importance and inherent value.

> Newspapers do that all the time, TV and Radio does it all the time. Why is this different?

Newspapers, TV, and radio didn't sell themselves as platforms for conversation. They've always created their content (or paid someone else to create it) and curated it. Op/eds and viewer/listener calls are only a small fraction of the service these media channels provide, and frankly, these are usually more valuable for the producers of the media than the consumers in most cases. And even op/eds and viewer/listener calls are curated, with no pretense of anything else.

Social media initially gained traction on the false idea that they were platforms where anyone could have a conversation. Many people (myself included) warned that we shouldn't be giving up so much of our communications to corporations, but here we are decades later and everyone is using these as communications platforms.

It's YOUtube, not CNN. Or maybe that's what they ultimately want to become?

This is an existential threat to a free society in any times of crisis involving the military, not just pandemics:

https://sneak.berlin/20200421/normalcy-bias/

> censor whomever they want for whatever reason they choose

As long as "whomever they want" includes only people pushing cherry-picked and dangerous bullshit, and "whatever reason" includes saving the lives that would have otherwise been spent had that bullshit spread further, then I have absolutely zero qualms about this bending of the free-speech rules, the same way I have zero qualms about there being rules against someone yelling "FIRE!" in a crowded theater.

You're missing the forest for the trees, man.

Perhaps they need to leave it but flag it extremely visibly with something like this: "The information this video purports to be true has been in dispute due to <reason> and <reason>, as pointed out by <rebuttal> and <rebuttal>." But doing that for every single video would be extremely laborious, and during the week it might take for the work behind such a change to take effect, hundreds of people might die who might not otherwise.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com