Hacker News Reader

Comment by krapp | Hacker News Reader

>Remember when they were wringing their hands as they hemmed and hawed about removing content by a certain ex-politician they loathed. It took them a while to work up the nerve to censor the then president of the US.

No? Donald Trump's official Youtube channel is still up and running[0].

And you seriously think the only reason other social media platforms didn't ban Trump for four years is that they needed to "work up the nerve?" Not because he went a little unhinged and started ranting conspiracy theories and undermining the integrity of the election?

[0]https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAql2DyGU2un1Ei2nMYsqOA

View on HN

That was one example everyone knows about. Talk about Ivermectin, or previously, WIV lab release hypothesis... all censored at the time. (now they have allowed some discussion again, but the damage is done and agenda realized).

What damage was done, and what agenda realized? I thought censorship alone was the agenda.

what do you mean “what damage was done”?

mc32 claimed damage was done, and I'm asking for clarification as to what specifically that damage was.

Ivermectin? Actual studies now prove it effective. YouTube banned people for talking about it and people died because of it. How’s that?

There are too many one sentence questions on these issues of censorship. I would say they provide no value to the conversation.

>Ivermectin? Actual studies now prove it effective. YouTube banned people for talking about it and people died because of it. How’s that?

I haven't seen the studies you're talking about, but the FDA claims Ivermectin hasn't yet been proven effective, and the WHO says it should only be used in clinical trials. But assuming for the same of argument you're correct, your claim is that the only available source of knowledge about Ivermectin anywhere would have been videos which were deleted from Youtube, making it impossible for anyone to avail themselves of this miracle cure due to Youtube's "censorship", and that there are people who avoided taking any of the other existing and effective COVID vaccines and who died of COVID as a result, and that Youtube is therefore to blame.

That's pure speculation based on an already far-fetched premise.

I hope it's not rude for me to point out that that is a very direct question.

Do you know much about the MMR vaccine autism scandal? I make no assumption that you do, just curious.

This was a case where the (obviously from the start) bad science was propagated, primarily through mainstream media, leading to basically the entire anti-vaccine movement we see today.

The question I think this raises is: can we trust typical journalists to do their due diligence when they make claims about very serious public health issues? In the context of the Wakefield MMR scandal, I think we were shown that the answer is no. Following that, the question is what to do about it.

I think they were referring to the removal, almost a week after January 6th, of Trump videos and the suspension of uploads to his YouTube account. It looks like the newest videos on there are from 7 months ago.

YouTube deletes Trump video and suspends new uploads: A new video on the president’s account violated YouTube policy on inciting violence. https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2021/1/12/22218757/you...

Either way, Youtube didn't ban him, which contradicts the premise that they were just looking for an excuse to ban him because they loathed him. If that were the case, his content wouldn't exist on the platform anywhere.

It doesn't seem like much of a slippery slope if it goes down then comes back up again.

How has it came back up again? Are you saying that some social media site that banned Trump has since unbanned him?

>It doesn't seem like much of a slippery slope if it goes down then comes back up again.

once a precedent is set, a transient acceptance of the action is established as a prior act.

you don't re-cork that genie, that's the whole idea of the slippery slope argument.

forever-more when YouTube considers an action towards something it can always now be said .. "Well in the case of X we did Y."

The 'slippery slope' isn't referring to the actions committed themselves, it's referring to a pattern of acceptance and renormalization that occurs after which biases the decision-making group into further actions of a similar vein.

I do feel compelled to point out that the slippery slope argument is in fact a type of fallacy. Like, if you look up a list of fallacies there it is, the "slippery slope argument".

Reply on news.ycombinator.com