Sky News Australia has been suspended from YouTube after a review of old videos

'Trusted News Initiative' 'which is committed to censor anything that would impede the vaccine rollout, including any early treatments.'

Also including censoring the official CDC.gov guidelines because somehow that is 'False Information' according to Facebook. [0]

I don't know about you but I think this initiative is going to give big tech companies the green light to mass sweep and ban anything that moves or crawls against any criticism of their guidelines.

This is just the beginning, with lots of users getting their accounts banned without reason. Oh dear.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27999720

Odysee is decentralized?

Useful

For even more context - Rupert Murdoch was actually born in Australia.

But at the same time Fox News [1] is still on Youtube.

I felt there is something missing in context. Is this something to do with Google paying for AUS News content or some other bad blood going on between the two?

[1] https://www.youtube.com/user/FoxNewsChannel

Sky News peddles everything from flat earth conspiracy to vaccine FUD. I blame a lot of the US's problems with polarisation and truth losing its meaning to its culture of cable news talking heads which pander to anything and invite anyone just to prop up their ratings. We in Australia have mostly avoided that, and Murdoch, via Sky News, is intent on changing that. As an Australian, I want Sky News to disappear because its success would bring a kind of politics to Australia that causes harm.

Australian's somewhat proudly consider themselves apathetic.

They often don't have strong convictions and if they like something they don't think it through.

When someone headbutted a former Australian Prime Minister, people generally thought it funny. To be fair most Australia thought it funny to call that Prime minister a cunt (The official reason given for the headbutt) even if they voted for his party. Jim Jefferies on the incident - https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1759051187728612

Generally a physical attack on a ex-leader of the county would be considered serious and a danger to democracy. Here the Ex-Prime Minister's only media recourse was to say the guy was a bad headbutter, he really said this. (The attacker did eventually get 2 months prison)

Overall if the apathy is good or bad is a hard call, it's somewhat anarchistic, but ironically gives those in power more control.

It's the intellectual class that are going to be generally supportive of this. The same people that are currently telling the people that have lost everything in the lockdowns that they're being selfish protesting.

While I was a little irritated that I was constantly getting their content pushed onto me and autoplayed even though I've blocked the channel, it's disgusting that a Yankee company is effectively playing politics here.

Excellent news! Now every Australian that visits youtube isn't recommended and suggested hateful rhetoric that contributes to right wing extremism.

> ... controlling what Australian individuals can see and hear on YouTube.

FTFY. It's important we remember that Google is exercising its rights to not host certain content and people on its own platform.

This is the Internet. Australians still have access to the Sky News website. There are other third-party video platforms too. This idea that because they're the biggest they have to operate like a public utility is utter nonsense.

>Sydney and other parts of NSW have been in lockdown since 23/06 and the case numbers have been either steady or increasing. Today over 230 cases.. A few days ago it was around 170. Isn't it reasonable then to question the lockdown?

Won't the numbers be way worse without the lockdown?

The lockdowns have been the least locked down lockdowns I've heard of, and they are weeks too late. Queensland has had 6 cases and entered a 3 day hard lockdown with no messing around, and I wouldn't be surprised if it is extended. Lockdowns do work. They stop people mingling and spreading the virus though the community. The videos that Sky News put out are dangerous to the larger community and cause issues like the completely over the top protests that have been happening, and result is further transmission of the disease.

Well after seeing that Facebook is now censoring links from CDC.gov [0] and now this, it seems that you are going to get banned regardless of whatever the algorithms say about the guidelines. [1][2] You can get banned for no reason other than 'guidelines' and they can edit and alter them ahead of the ban. Good luck trying to appeal this.

This is all fine right?

At this point, it is time to delete your accounts off of these websites.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27999720

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28003635

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28005238

>Today over 230 cases.

And now let's go to the other side of the world where the "lockdowns don't work" propaganda was shat out as an argument for months:

>29692 new cases for the US on July 31st.

Good job people.

> Essentially, an American private company led by un-elected individuals are controlling what Australian individuals can see and hear.

No sympathy from over here. Australia brought us the plague that is Fox News, and therefore Trump, etc. If starting a shooting war with the land of Murdoch would somehow repair the damage he has personally done, I’d be all for it.

(Edit: To be clear, I don’t have anything against Australia specifically, but Murdoch has done more economic damage and killed more Americans than any foreign aggressor since WWII. Actually invading Australia would be a pointless, but proportional response, aimed at the wrong people. Kind of like the second Iraq war, which was largely brought to us by Fox News.)

Wow. Ok. A lot to unpack here.

Sydney's current virus problems are due to a slow, reluctant, partial and piecemeal lockdown. Meanwhile, other states doing a rapid, hard, comprehensive lockdown have far fewer cases, with some that had to deal with infections spreading from Sydney already out of hard lockdown and just keeping an eye on things with masks required for a little extra time.

If Sky Australia is, in fact, using Sydney's disaster to question lockdowns (and your post isn't satire), they absolutely should be de-platformed.

Lying to the public to maintain power, keeps their hands on the government purse. Loss of trust in institutions. Loss of sense of prestige in the traditional tracks, they make up for it by becoming authoritarian to maintain sense of utility.

YouTube is an American company.

I'm not sure. I'm not sure it is authoritarian, but there is support for this action. It might be something to do with its general classless style of politics or it could be due to a very recent coronavirus scare in the major city after months of peace. I also suspect that culturally users there don't have the same history of freedom of expression as other places. I'm guessing but it's interesting.

I hope a disinterested and calm australian user can see through what's going on and educate the rest of us.

Australians, for whatever reason, don't have the same concern for civil liberties that Americans have. I can't explain why, but as a citizen it's a little troubling.

There are no soldiers nor even police enforcing my COVID curfew. And YouTube hasn't blocked me access to videos theorising about the lab source.

This long Twitter thread from yesterday by Gray Connolly (who is quite libertarian/conservative himself) addresses this question directly:

https://twitter.com/GrayConnolly/status/1421461574389145600

I'm Australian, and one thing I've noticed is when people from other countries describe working with us, they say we are some of the loudest biggest wingers on the planet. Perhaps that gets the nuance slightly wrong, but the general complaint is if an Australian thinks something is wrong, he will tell you long and loudly, and most importantly he will do so regardless of his relative rank to you. I gather other cultures are taken by surprise when a Australian worker tells his boss to his face exactly what he is doing wrong.

I suspect he fundamental difference between US citizens is while both cultures aren't authoritarian, unlike the USA Australian's don't hold authority in disdain either. They aren't scared it - they are happy to delegate responsibility and decisions to a central authority where that makes sense. I suspect that is precisely because they are confident in questioning it, and confident they can overturn it if it isn't working out.

The lock down's were far more controversial at the start, when nobody had an idea what the cost of them where compared to the alternative. There were vigorous discussions in the media and elsewhere about the right approach, to the extent that different states took very different approaches, one literally shutting it's borders to all other states.

A lot of water has passed under the bridge since then. It is now clear what the right approach both economically and health wise - and that is to stop the disease dead in it's tracks so you can re-open the economy a soon as possible. That's obviously is the best approach health wise, and it turns out it's also the best approach economically. We know that because the state that locked down hardest and returned to growth before everyone else, and Australia is now growing economically faster than it has in years, and this happened before just about every other country on the planet.

Lock down's are highly intrusive on personal liberties of course. You have to stay at home unless you have a reason, you have to wear masks, you have to "check in" at every shop you visit by scanning a bar code. The rules are policed. It is with a light touch you will get several warnings and you will be given a mask if you don't have one, but if you continue refuse to comply the law you will be prosecuted.

Still, it's acknowledged by everyone except nutters it works exceptionally well (and in fact it appears to be the only thing that does work short of full vaccination), and the governments are very careful to lift the restrictions as soon as the threat passes. And as I said, Australian's aren't afraid of authority. It's just a tool - you deploy it when it works.

Does anyone know why sky news UK seems, at least on the surface, far from a right wing rag compared to the Australian version?

Edit : something to do with UK broadcasting rules?

Full context: he was talking about how children get their news: if they wanted to find out about if there are men on the moon, etc., would they go to tik tok or newspaper?

So, in other words, the Sky propoganda piece was not accurate reporting.

Deplatforming can work. r/fatpeoplehate and other right wing hate subreddits pretty much fizzled out after they went to Voat and couldn't be on the front page of Reddit anymore.

They all do.

That is what you get for airing neutral opinions.

In neutral journalism, all sides are interviewed and given grounds to discuss the matter fairly. You don't for example just interview Arabs when it comes to Israel, you interview all sides. But with Youtube's Covid censorship policy in place, each time a so to speak "Jew" was interviewed, the journalist would receive a strike for it and just be banned after 3 strikes.

That people didn't go out and instantly boycott Youtube for this anti-democratic experiment is ridiculous.