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Comment by meesterdude | Hacker News Reader

While I don't think Vitamin D is a covid cure - I think it's appalling that Youtube has banned anything that discusses vitamin D and covid. Especially when there is so much science behind it, and so much more that we need to do to understand it and covid better. I know there is rampant misinformation out there, but I fail to see how this censorship serves the public interest - and wonder what benefits google has to gain from this. People are dying from covid - we need to be firing on all cylinders, not trying to make a buck off a disaster.

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It's not always just public benefit. You have two choices:

1. Leave a video up published by a non-scientific person which has possibly harmful claims.

2. Take the video down, get decried for censorship, avoid spreading what we know is a problem right now: misinformation.

I leave option 3, policing content out of the picture. People mistake what is happening now as policing but really it's avoiding policing what they are doing now.

I am absolutely not on the side of just anyone with credentials being able to soapbox on platforms that don't want to spread misinformation whether it is or it isn't officially designated misinformation - better safe than sorry. I feel like I know the difference between band of fringe persons with Doctor in their name who have a controversial underdog belief and the official scientific sources for information.

> I feel like I know the difference between band of fringe persons with Doctor in their name who have a controversial underdog belief and the official scientific sources for information.

Possibly true if you yourself had credentials. If not, don't be so sure.

The funny problem with this one is that your local "official" memo is different from a local official memo 50, 500 and 5000 miles away.

Do you believe you are at the locus of the best science? I have medical experts in my family all over the world... They disagree.

They also agree though that the media is leading everyone (including politicians) around like puppets. I.e. they can see nonsense in the media being spouted, because they are experts.

Just had the idea of explicit music videos. They always had the annoying disclaimer. Very hard to ignore and miss.

Why not just be transparent in there actions. Add an icon to thing they deem offensive to there ethics. Dump it from the Main page algorithm feed. And make the icon clickable to a page where it shows why you added they censored or tagged the content. People need to see this stuff go down in real-time and why it happens. But leave free speech intact.

Or make everyone pay for it then they can do whatever they want. Disappear anything Lol

I'm far more risk tolerant than that. "Safe" is a watchword for me that reflexively makes me doubt the argument. I have no problem with the idea of disclaimers, ratings, whatever, but give adults a choice to engage the open information dream that the Internet was/is.

At least when the government tries to police something we can grab onto it, debate it as a matter of policy, and there's a process to change that policy. With private companies trying to do the work of the government (if that really is the case, and whatever their reasons - fear of formal regulation, etc), it's far harder to manage. I'd rather have a clear conversation about the government's ability to censor speech than have a few oligarchs working as shadow censors on behalf of the government.

I'm waiting for one of the big tech companies to end up getting sued for their self appointed role as arbiters of truth on all of human knowledge. Everyone hates politicians, even if not everyone hates the same politicians, so there's some appetite for tech companies favoring speech from one group or another. But now that they're wading into the territory of health, they're putting themselves into a precarious position, especially if some of their choices on what information they allow the public to see or not to see turns out to be incorrect.

Potential legal issues aside, the PR nightmare that would come from this if it turns out they've tried to suppress information that would have saved lives is going to be very ugly. Right now they're a spoiled kid eating whatever cookies they want because no one has ever told them no. Whether the stomach ache, rotting teeth, or parental wrath comes first remains to be seen but there will at some point be consequences for this overreach into areas they have no domain knowledge. They of course will act shocked that there is blowback and that their ever expanding intrusion into everyone's lives through information control ends up causing them harm.

There is no legal basis for such a lawsuit. For better or worse it's not illegal to be wrong or censor a private platform.

You speak like someone with the experience of parenting. :D

I wasn't aware they were doing this. Is this true? I couldn't find any info on this.

I've watched many videos on YouTube about Vitamin-D and COVID. Admittedly those were all discussing reputable scientific papers so perhaps that's the distinction.

Dr. John Campbell's videos are still there. He's been recommending vitamin D since the start. But he's a medical professional and he's not selling anything, which may have something to do with it.

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