YouTube suspends Rand Paul over a video disputing the effectiveness of masks
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/vinay-prasad/93803
While Google (YouTube) is a private company and can censor whatever they want for any reason (or no reason at all) it is highly concerning that their near monopoly status gives them the power to shut down public debate. Even if you think Sen. Paul is wrong on this particular issue, how will you feel when YouTube decides to censor a political viewpoint that you support?
Pick up a history book. When has the side that's for censorship of opposing views and burning books EVER been the good guys?
YouTube is in the wrong here.
In this case, he is arguing that cloth masks don't work. If he wasn't playing politics, his argument would be, "we need to get n95 masks into the hands of the public". But he is pretending that option doesn't exist and keeps arguing that "masks don't work" just to contradict public health officials.
Many people that listen to Rand come away thinking masks don't work at all. But the fact is that n95 masks work pretty well. He's using misdirection to argue his point that governments shouldn't mandate masks, no matter what.
why do you think this is a legitimate comment? we're talking about medically prescriptive legislation intended to save lives. the fact that the laws arent specific enough is central to paul's problem with the federal government in the first place.
> But the fact is that n95 masks work pretty well.
as if to prove the point, you go straight to n95s. id wager the highest % of n95s worn by americans was <25. the cdc started by telling americand not to wear masks at all ffs.
> Many people that listen to Rand come away thinking masks don't work at all
...yeah thats kinda the point. limited efficacy in narrow circumstances. hardly seems worth the resources spent, including government reach.
It's obvious, bad faith handwaving.
Cloth masks don't work cough as well as n95 masks cough. So we shouldn't ask people to wear masks at all!
I wonder if the problem isn't that he's not from the correct end of the political spectrum.
Remember how you would get banned from Facebook for suggesting that the lab leak theory was a possibility? Then major social networks reversed their positions. What changed in the meantime, other than the president?
Well... of course that's the problem. A politician posting an unsupported video about how we need to wear masks even at home and outside to 'pull together and beat this thing' would not have their video pulled, because it's the _approved_ kind of nonsense.
For context, typically, I don’t go to YouTube for my public debate. I go to it for mindless entertainment and music, so my point of view might be alien to you.
I give money to politicians like Rand Paul, that I agree with, specifically so they can publish their views without being beholden to giant corporate sponsors. I feel he ought to publish this on his own website with the campaign funds that I gave him.
If he is somehow doing this in his capacity as a Senator, then he ought to use government funds to do the same.
I don’t think government officials should be allowed to strongarm or browbeat private citizens (i.e. YouTube) into giving them free publishing and promotion.
Youtube is very evidently not an open platform, they just edit their programming post-upload (should call it post-gramming)
You can upload a video right now to youtube and it is _immediately_ available to anyone who can access the site. It's also really hard to compare the two because one is a scheduled broadcast TV and the other is on demand.
The license isn't a function of random people submitting content it's a function of whether you're broadcasting to the airwaves on frequencies controlled by the FCC, which all the major networks do. Media companies that are cable-only or internet-only don't fall under the purview of the FCC.
That's why you can't swear on ABC, NBC, FOX, CBS, etc but you can show gratuitous explicative-laden orgies on HBO.
Indeed TV license is not the right word, i mean that they should be legally responsible for the content they broadcast the same way that classic broadcasters are. If not in the US, at least i would expect the rest of the world (which has stricter requirements for broadcast TV) to have done that already.
And you don't see how that's a much bigger reason that it's a problem, and not a reason it's ok?
It is hard to get good data to support a scientific consensus on how policy changes affect a large group of people. Running a controlled experiment is nearly impossible and looking at correlations is problematic because there are many confounding variables.
Masks could be very effective at controlling pandemic group (reducing R by 20% could change growth into decay); whereas masks not being effective would result in people being less comfortable and excess waste of masks. There are additional psychological effects of masks that are more majorly negative: encouraging people to social distance less, mask wearing as a political statement, etc, but if those were not an issue, the safe default would be to wear masks when infection a preventable possibility (interacting with people outside the home).
That said, I think that article is expecting far too high of standards. Is there scientific consensus on any public policy measures at the level of rigor the author is asking for? What I find annoying about that article is that he doesn't even hint that it is possible to make a study to get the data we need. How do you plan on doing a randomly controlled study on mask mandates? How do you make a placebo mask mandate?
My understanding is that even the hardest of the hardcore mask proponents agree that wearing a mask only stops you from transmitting it to others (if you already have it), not contracting it in the first place - that's why it's always been the doctors and nurses in the surgery room wearing masks and not the patient.
In infectious disease cases, medical personnel will absolutely don n95 respirators or better. Because they can absolutely protect you.
Medical staff wear surgical masks during surgery to keep from getting spittle in open wounds.
Regular cloth masks probably don't protect anyone that much. But the answer is not to say well, masks don't work. The answer is to tell everyone to get n95 masks or equivalent.
So it's gotten a significant step worse. It has gone from "do not question the science" to simply "do not question".
I tend to agree, although I'm far from being a conservative.
It is probably also safe to assume that YouTube didn't do their homework when taking him down, just like they did so many times honoring illegitimate DMCA takedown requests. Bias or not, YouTube just sucks.
He is being disingenuous by making that clear distinction in his follow up complaint video.
He said in his original video that we were all wasting our time because most of the masks you buy over the counter are useless. He then jumped on to his other complaints about Fauci. If he was trying to make the distinction of n95, he should have said so and said that we need to be using them instead.
It seems to me a bad faith effort to cloud the message of mask wearing when we need to be reinforcing it and educating the public to get n95 masks.
edit: I watched his original video a bit closer. He does mention n95, but in a different context and not comparing the two to say that we should use n95.
He's not against masking, he's against mask mandates. From what I understand, the efficacy of mask mandates, not masks themselves, is in fact scientifically disputed. If you think that's a logical contradiction; it's not. For example if people think that cloth masking is highly effective, when in fact it's only slightly effective, they may forgo actually effective solutions like vaccination.
---
Furthermore, society must balance measures to address Covid against other health-related and non-health-related concerns. Lockdowns slow the spread of infectious disease, but also cause death/suffering elsewhere through postponed surgeries, increased addiction/suicide, etc. We have to decide which risk to prioritize based on societal values. And by "we", I especially mean the senators/congressmen/ministers/etc to which we've delegated our political power. Therefore it's doubly stupid of Youtube to censor a current member of the Senate, of the very country Youtube is headquartered in, when he's acting in official capacity, giving an interview on a cable TV news channel. Just incredible.
There was a thread with way more comments and more points, and it just disappeared from the front page.
My guess is that it's flagged by users. You can send an email to the mods hn@ycombinator.com to ask for more details. Perhaps they decide to disable the flags in this case.