YouTube is banning anti-vaccine activists and blocking all anti-vaccine content | Hacker News Reader

YouTube is banning anti-vaccine activists and blocking all anti-vaccine content

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I was hesitant for a while and the massive censorship was part of it. I got vaccinated in May and have convinced others to get the shot since the side effects, while existent, appear to be minor compared to the reduction in harmful symptoms. Talking to my doctor is what did it for me. He cleared up most of my concerns and pressed me that my remaining concerns were too nebulous to be useful. If he just said "shut up and take it" I wouldn't have.

My mother only got vaccinated last month. She and my father are both medical professionals (she's retired and my dad got it early on since he's super high risk). Her main hangup was the lies and coercion. She believed that if the vaccine was actually as great as they're saying they'd be able to make more objective goalposts and win arguments instead of stopping them because the other side is too stupid to make their own decisions. I'm confident there was also some element of "if I get it now I'm telling them their tactics worked."

> She believed that if the vaccine was actually as great as they're saying they'd be able to make more objective goalposts and win arguments instead of stopping them because the other side is too stupid to make their own decisions.

The problem I see here is that the (I hesitate to call it this) anti-vax "side" has been shifting goalposts since day n-1. If you've ever talked to someone who's shifted goalposts you'll see it's essentially an impossible situation; you can't convince someone who doesn't want to be convinced.

If I'm remembering the timeline correctly, it started with the vaccine being rushed and that we were essentially being experimented on. It's been six months since I – and many others – have had their first dose and we're completely fine. Some claimed to be concerned about the long term effects; do you think they know what the long term effects of a serious covid case is? (hint: it starts with a d and ends with "eath")

Oh, but it's also not FDA approved. I haven't looked at the numbers, but I bet vaccinations haven't gone up significantly since FDA approval. Obviously it's because the FDA isn't to be trusted, that's a given.

At some point it was too hard to get- yes, that's true. However, now you can walk into a Target and decide to get the shot in the middle of a shopping trip! I did that with a Flu shot a few weeks ago and it took about five minutes.

In short, you cannot argue in good faith with someone who does not. I don't have a good answer to this – I really wish I did – but that's the reality of the situation.

It sounds like both you and your mother have both adopted an epistemology that incorporates the perceived amount of censorship, lies, and coercion performed by proponents of some claim into your discernment of the truth value of that claim. Namely, you both seem to have adopted some level of doubt about pro-vaccine claims because you both perceive that proponents of pro-vaccine claims participate in censorship, lies and coercion, or that those proponents of these claims do not engage in reasonable arguments with their critics.

There are two problems with this type of epistemology. The first is that, like all claims, attributes of the people making the claims are not relevant to the truth value of the claim ("fallacy of irrelevance"). The second is more important and more unique to this particular epistemology: the actions you perceive to be conducted by perceived proponents of some claim will vary heavily based on your own behavior. For instance, how do you know that pro-vaccine people "can't win arguments" and instead "stop them because the other side is too stupid"? Or that there is "massive censorship" favoring the pro-vaccine viewpoint? Surely that is just based on your own "media diet." Surely that perception depends heavily on where you spend your time on Twitter, YouTube, cable news, etc. Would you perceive something differently if it were the case that the vast majority of medical and public health experts who are pro-vaccine in fact have engaged in numerous reasonable arguments with critics and have nonetheless come to the same conclusion? Is there ever a point in which litigation of existing criticisms can end so that we can move on to new criticisms?

> Her main hangup was the lies and coercion.

Can you provide examples of the lies you're referring to?

My wife’s theory is there would be less hesitancy if the vaccines were being distributed through people’s primary care physicians instead of at mass vaccination sites or Walgreens. People may distrust the media, the government and all sorts of other nebulous groups, but they largely trust their doctor.

Thank you. In my view you did everything appropriate, including seeking out advice from people with training and experience who could help you decide.

What kind of medical professionals?

I think the data alone is an objective argument. Using basic math (Bayes theorem) I can compute it reduce my chance of death by 668 time and Hospitalization by 116 times.

see below:

Covid Fact: - proportion on covid death that are unvaccinated p(not(vaccinated) | covid-death ) = 99% - proportion of population this is unvaccinated P(not(vaccinated)) = 14% - proportion of population this is vaccinated P(vaccinated) = 86% Basic math: - Probability of death from covid if not vacinated P(covid-death | not(vaccinated)) = 0.99 * P(covid-death) / 0.14 - Probability of death from covid if vacinated P(covid-death | vaccinated) = 0.01 * P(covid-death) / 0.86 - How many time more likely to die from covid if not vaccinated P(covid-death | not(vaccinated)) / P(covid-death | vaccinated) = 608 Fact: if you are not vaccinated, You are 608 times more likely to die from Covid 19 and you are 116 times more likely to be hospitalized.

The vast majority of people spend the vast majority of their lives being told what to do, in one way or another.

The problem with the vaccines (and lockdowns etc) is that these are new obligations, so making people realise how little control over their lives they actually have (in spite of the 'freedom' retoric so popular in the US).

1) People ARE too "stupid". "Stupid" here is a placeholder for a larger discussion on biological, antropological, social and psychological evidence. Which all could be summed up as: We are meant to be just smart enough to survive, then some more. Average human capability for evidence evaluation and independent reasoning is quite low.

2) Effort for winning in an unbounded argument space is practically infinite. Debunking bullshit takes several orders of magnitude more resources than coming up with more bullshit.

There needs to be a point at which you should disqualify an arguing party as not worthy of further evaluation. That's another way for the other party to "win the argument". In this specific case, pro-vaccine people has long won the argument, and by a mile.

I'm glad you got vaccinated. But... Can you expand on why you were hesitant because of censorship? Because if there were lots of serious problems with the vaccine, they'd be covered in a second on fox news. Meanwhile, a lot of people are hugely influenced by false stories on social media, it's just a fact, with recent examples being things like ivermectin and the 2016 presidential election conspiracies, and don't forget q-anon.

Since covid is so deadly if you get it, and there are basically almost no cases of serious health issues with vaccination and furthermore, vaccination is also almost guaranteed to protect you from serious cases, why wouldn't you get it? Have you heard rumors of some problems from vaccination?

You can’t really get objective goal posts (for herd immunity for example), given how unpredictable the virus and people’s clustering are though?

Does she get flu shots because that has been all about coercion since the ramp up of medical profiteering that started in the 90s. Nevermind that the lethality of influenza precipitously declined in the 40s and isn't a mass killer. Covid is a far more credible threat that shouldn't be ignored so readily.

> because the other side is too stupid to make their own decisions

The unfortunate reality is - that is the actual crux of the problem. Maybe say "incapable of making" instead of "too stupid to make", since that makes the scope wider. But that is the long and short of it.

when you say "medical professionals" do you mean nurse or doctor ? I have seen a huge amount of nurse refusing to get vaccinated but not so much for Doctor!

There are at least four people close to me who become more entrenched in their anti-vax stance the more this stuff happens.

It's so obvious to me how counter-productive these measures are. However I don't suppose increasing vaccination rates are part of the goal of these measures, but just protecting YouTube from having to do moderation or take responsibility for the content on their platform.

My mom for example, after many conversations and a great deal of effort on my part to present data and evidence that was free from shaming and judgement, has made two appointments to get vaccinated, and subsequently cancelled them. The second cancellation came after Biden's recent speech blaming unvaccinated people being directly responsible for killing the vaccinated, a nonsensical supposition.

This is scary stuff. The moral absolutism that the platforms endorse is creeping into more and more subjective areas, and essentially obliterating any hope of nuance or increased understanding about changing strategies and data.

I also find the censorship to be deeply disturbing, but for me that's counterbalanced by the fact that the arguments against vaccination are so dumb. The best argument is basically, "It's not researched enough and it might kill you." But so what, doing things that might kill you on the basis of limited data is like a basic part of being an adult.

Someone want to throw out there a better way to combat disinformation than just armchair criticizing their decision? I almost feel like people are siding with the anti-vaxxers out of "principle".

Just a no win situation. It's too easy for bad characters to screw up an entire system with little effort (look at trolls, spammers, etc). Either you moderate everyone and slippery slope down into censorship where the tools used to police are used on good actors, or you do nothing and watch the bad actors poison your entire ecosystem.

> Someone want to throw out there a better way to combat disinformation than just armchair criticizing their decision? I almost feel like people are siding with the anti-vaxxers out of "principle".

Social networks seem to be unable to optimize for anything other than "engagement," which inevitably leads to amplifying compelling but technically incorrect and outright dangerous content.

The thing to remember is that YouTube is essentially designed to boost disinformation. As implemented they have no effective counterbalance to this.

Is it also "censorship" when the YT recommendation system effectively buries factual and useful information for some people just because it's less engaging than the misinformation they currently consume? Maybe so?

The solution seems pretty obvious to me. There's a middle ground between banning and allowing to run rampant - and that's to add human reviewers to counterbalance the terrible job currently being done by their automatic recommendation system, and manually down-rank disinformation so it is less likely to be surfaced automatically in peoples' playlists.

Google will never do it, because it would 1) require paying humans to do work, which is expensive, and 2) it wouldn't drive engagement and generate clicks.

So they just take the easy way out, so they can keep on doing what they do.

> I almost feel like people are siding with the anti-vaxxers out of "principle".

I can confirm your suspicions in my case. I'm vaccinated (against COVID, the flu, and tetanus, and all the other things you can get vaccinated against), but I think YouTube is wrong here.

This isn't a new situation. Free speech debates are as old as civilization itself. The printing press was at least as disruptive as the Internet, precisely because relatively small players could sabotage power of huge organizations such as the Church relatively cheaply.

I think that the old classical liberal principles still apply. A certain fringe of the population will eat any propaganda unthinkingly, domestic or foreign. But if a majority was so uncritical, democracies would have collapsed a long time ago.

We might actually be over the crest of max poisoning in social media. Lots of people have realized that such channels are not to be trusted. This is partly masked by the fact that a lot of new content is still churned out by dedicated players; silent majorities are silent.

>Someone want to throw out there a better way to combat disinformation

Yeah. Don't do shit. Let the stupid run its course.

Trying to combat disinformation is like bombing villages in hope of hitting an ammo dump. The collateral damage is more damaging than ignoring the problem.

Why do we always have to be Doing Something(TM)?

> I almost feel like people are siding with the anti-vaxxers out of "principle".

You say that like it's a bad thing. If we don't stop the censorship now, it'll be too late to stop it in a year or two when we're the ones being censored for some reason.

> Someone want to throw out there a better way to combat disinformation than just armchair criticizing their decision?

Yeah, don't do anything? Why do we have to do anything about """disinformation"""? What'll happen in a few years when the things you stand for and believe in are labelled as disinformation? Because if you start censoring and combating "disinformation" now, it's only a matter of time until the same practices start affecting you and the things you stand for.

Besides, do you really think banning people off of platforms for wrongthink is more likely to make them change their minds? If anything, those kinds of actions cause resentment to fester, which only leads to more radicalization (for lack of a better term) in the future.

Misinformation, aside from being a rather subjective thing to define, isn’t the cause of the problem, it’s just a symptom of it.

The cause of the problem is people losing trust in their institutions. People not trusting pharmaceutical companies barely needs any explanation due to their history of scandals (any opioid crisis threads on HN today?).

People not trusting public health institutions is a bit more serious. But it’s a perfectly rational reaction given how much they’ve lied over the course of the pandemic. Looking to misinformation as the source of the problem is just a way to deflect responsibility.

If the problem you’re trying to solve is “how do we combat misinformation”, then “strictly controlling the information they’re allowed to consume, and the things they’re allowed to say” seems like a reasonable response to a lot of people.

But if your problem is “why have people lost trust in our institutions”, then “because we failed to strictly control the information they’re allowed to consume, and the things they’re allowed to say” is quite obviously a counterproductive KGB-style response.

Agree completely on a no win situation.

Censorship can keep good information out.

No censorship can make whoever yells the loudest be the most heard, which can snowball into millions of ramifications.

I'd like to go back to the early internet days where people had to at least make a geocities site to spread their word, with no financial incentives to getting more clicks or viewers. It wasn't perfect, but you had to be seeking that group / audience rather than having it thrown in your face everywhere.

"Someone want to throw out there a better way to combat disinformation than just armchair criticizing their decision?"

Yes. Combat disinformation by refuting it. This requires credibility, and censorship is one of the fastest ways to burn that down.

I think a big part of vaccine resistance is because of the insane levels of propaganda and censorship.

Anyone who is even slightly suspicious of authorities will be much more hesitant to take a vaccine when any criticism of it is effectively forbidden.

Put it the other way around, how many will be convinced to get vaccinated thanks to censorship? Here in Scandinavia, I'm sure at least 99% of people happily give their children the standard childhood vaccines, so it's not like people are anti-vaccines in general.

YouTube's algorithm actively pushes people down rabbit holes towards fringe content.

The best way to combat this is not invest billions of dollars in infrastructure meant to do exactly the thing it just did.

Bad actors didn't poison the system, youtube covered itself in lacerations and jumped into sewer water. They stand back watching their algorithm divide and extremize everyone on every side of every debate, and now that the flame wars are starting to turn into mass graves they're hoping they can stop the whole thing by banning a few extremes here and there.

> Just a no win situation

I think there is a clear win here: AI should not be allowed to do what it is doing. Humans can't handle it. And the cost of lives is on Facebook and YouTube, plenty of employees took a stand to say exactly what was/is happening and were ignored.

A simple question: do you beleive that suppressing freedom of speech will seriously inclrease a number of vaccinated? I beleive that the best outcome is it will stay around the same. Some sensitive people will calm down and eventually vaccinate, others will become stronger anti-vaxxers, because "if it is forbidden by authorities, it should be somehow true".

> I almost feel like people are siding with the anti-vaxxers out of "principle".

Part of the issue is the blanket characterization of everyone who doesn't verbatim repeat the preferred rhetoric of Youtube/Google as "anti-vaxxers". As everyone informed and intelligent knows, the government, the corporate media and the "intelligence agencies" have been, by far, the greatest disseminators of "disinformation" for decades. From the Bay of Tonkin to babies pulled from incubators to WMD in Iraq to Hunter Biden's laptop being a Russian plot. The problem is that this sort of disinformation is not only allowed, but amplified by these same corporate media outlets (and their government handlers) who claim that we desperately need to eliminate free speech. You want to fight disinformation? Teach people how to think critically and be necessarily skeptical of everything they are told, no matter what the source. Teach people how to examine evidence that underlies assertions, and reject assertions that are made without evidence (or, worse yet, claims of "secret evidence" that are rampant in corporate media and government sources). Except this is the opposite of what Google/Youtube and the government want. They want total control over the information flow, along with a low-information population that uncritically soaks up whatever propaganda they are saturated with. They don't want a population that is equipped with the tools needed to sort through the lies and bullshit - they just want to control which lies and what bullshit they are exposed to.

I believe that tradeoffs between individual freedom and the common good are necessary. So I am biased in favour of intervening when it's necessary.

But it's very hard to see how these social network interventions are well thought out and have considered all the possible side effects, many of which are mentioned in other comments. I suppose they're tracking the data and will change course if this doesn't work how they expected..

Still, rather than being a case of deplatforming harmful speech, these look like amputations of entire conversations from the service, maybe to take the spotlight off the degenerate nature of Youtube as a human communication platform.

It's clear that the ability of bad characters to screw up an entire system, as you say, is at least partially enabled by Youtube's incentives, and the features those lead to (the old radicalization = engagement fiasco for example). A better way to combat disinformation would be to understand how Youtube often brings the worst out of its viewers, and to fix that. But it's not clear who has the incentive or the obligation to do it.

The alternative is to move the conversation to other types of social networks, with other incentives. But that seems even harder.

What is clear to me is that having most of the world get their news from a service that algorithmically (I think, it's unclear from the article) bans a fully vaccinated, pro-vaccine M.D. for suggesting people who have been infected have immunity (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28693407), to give an example, is not ideal. If they choose to do this instead of tackling the problems in their recommendation system, which rewards disinformation and other harmful types of content in all sorts of topics, not just vaccines, then it's even worse.

"Misinformation" should not be combatted by anything other than better, more persuasive information.

Standing by people you don't agree with is a pretty hallmark demonstration of "principle."

Yes, exactly. It's just so similar to forum spam. Free speech absolutists were far less in favour of free speech when it came to banning viagra-salesmen.

Like the forum moderators, it's perfectly okay for Google to just not want the headache of dealing with pests.

I got the vaccine and I'm pro-vaccine in general (for vaccines that are long term preventative, not single-year preventative, ex: never gotten flu vaccine) however I keep finding myself wanting to defend the anti-covid-vaxxers as they're fighting a fight I sort of feel like I understand.

Hypothetically, what do you do when there isn’t enough quality information to gauge “disinformation” from “information?”

> siding with the anti-vaxxers out of "principle".

A large media company like Google banning content that is heavily politicized by partisan politics is a big threat.

I was quiet about it until the mandate and planning to get vaccinated once everything child out.

After that I’ll die before I get vaccinated and I’ve been posting about it under my real name which is something I almost always avoid doing with non-software politics.

Provide a better education for the poor. I don’t mean education about a particular subject; better education in general.

In almost all conspiracy theories, one side has a lot of facts, the other has a lot of “feelings”. If you try having a conversation with someone who believes in some conspiracy you’ll eventually get to “I just don’t feel…”

If you have a formula to infallibly decide that A is a "bad actor" for any A in actual practice, you have solved the organizational problem of the past few millennia.

You don’t, like you’re not supposed to lead war on drugs. It’s a battle against the symptoms not the cause.

...or you just do some actual moderating instead of offloading your workload on machines. People worry about idiots and disinformation yet ignore and allow way more non conspiracy nutjobs all the time. Big Tech has such a cognitive dissonance its dizzying

> Someone want to throw out there a better way to combat disinformation than just armchair criticizing their decision?

Censorship is always bad. Always. When people accept it on a broader scale, more censorship will be applied eventually. People already accept it. At some point, broad censorship becomes the norm.

What needs to be disregarded completely is the fact that it's about a vaccine. People shouldn't talk about censorship in context of what's being censored. Censorship itself should always be the topic.

The fact that there's people dumb enough to believe things they shouldn't, isn't a problem that censorship solves. Furthermore are these people only so dumb, because politics made them dumb. They went to schools that made, or kept, them dumb.

By "dumb" I mean "incapable of thinking critically", which - to be fair - also applies to a lot of people on the vaxing side of the equation.

What they need is education. Locking them out of the public is only going to make them grow "underground". That's definitely not preferrable.

> I almost feel like people are siding with the anti-vaxxers out of "principle".

I know I am. As someone with 2 shots that sympathizes quite a lot with the people who are commonly and ridiculously maligned as "anti-vaxxers", as though their position is even remotely similar to the people that term accurately described pre-2020, this will make my people dig their heels in even more. Good.

Sunshine is the best disinfectant, remember? Democracy dies in darkness, remember? The left has morphed into a censorious dictatorship that castigates anyone who doesn't think specific thoughts and punishes wrongthink by making pariahs out of those who wronglythink it. This is just a prominent example of the same authoritarian movement expressed through the burgeoning hegemony of big tech. Shit like this doesn't convince anyone, we'll just leave you to fester in your echo chamber, oblivious as you are to the fact that we'll be festering in our own.

Speaking of which, this announcement doesn't bother me at all. Youtube is over, it's just corporate sponsored tepid garbage at this point. It's not interesting anymore because creators aren't permitted to speak freely - not just w/r/t COVID. We are already moving to platforms where free expression is allowed and supported, and I hope Google does even more to hasten the exodus.

Well, that's the entire point of principles.

(I do actually not hold this one principle as absolutely, because Youtube is designed for public manipulation, so they have the onus of ensuring their manipulation isn't a bad one. But I do surely hold it for a neutral channel and that governments must ensure neutral channels exist.)

> I almost feel like people are siding with the anti-vaxxers out of "principle".

This is called "spite". Turns out that the aphorism about one cutting of their nose to spite their face is incredibly apt.

Yes? If we continue to allow explicit censoring this will become normal.

I don't know myself; however Steven Pinker published yesterday a new book called "Rationality". He promises to give the readers tools to cope with exactly this type of situations. I don't know if he delivers on it, I just started the book, but I really hope he does.

https://www.amazon.com/Rationality-What-Seems-Scarce-Matters...

there is definitely a better way. i am building that right now

Great point!

> Someone want to throw out there a better way to combat disinformation than just armchair criticizing their decision? I almost feel like people are siding with the anti-vaxxers out of "principle".

No, because it's pointless to legitimatize conspiratorial or fascistic views by engaging in a one-sided debate where one side is backed by scientific fact and the other is backed by Karen on facebook's idea that the election was stolen and that a COVID vaccine will kill you.

I would argue that there is no reason why freedom of speech should apply when you are actively trying to undermine the country (treason) and sow chaos/fear among the populace (terrorism).

> Someone want to throw out there a better way to combat disinformation than just armchair criticizing their decision?

Actually, people have, we've just moved on from the more important discussion which is whether YouTube (and other similar forms of social media / UGC) should exist in its current form.

I personally do not like regulation, but this is a situation in which the harm of social media / UGC is starting to outshine its benefit. I'm not sure if an outright ban of sites like YT is warranted but I think the frictionless experience of uploading/commenting/etc. on YT should be questioned.

Principles aren't worth anything if people don't stick by them when expediency would recommend another course of action.

... This is why I chucked this particular principle overboard years ago. I don't personally think it holds water in light of irrational human actors and an under-informed public, given the immense power of modern bidirectional communications media.

People don't see what the actual problem here is - perhaps because they don't want to see. What is happening is very much the transformation from an open society to one where freedom of speech is limited and certain other individual rights are stripped away. Perhaps not de jure, but de facto.

And sure, one might argue that it's for a good cause (even though it's a complex topic). However, the fact is that as this is done once, it becomes something that can be leveraged as the norm. There is a very real danger here, and nobody knows whether it will realize or not.

The question is not whether you can post anti-vax content today. It's whether you can post anti-anything tomorrow.

I genuinely don't get it. YouTube, a private entity and not a government entity, is saying they don't want certain content on their platform. This is not the end of your free speech. This isn't really even a movement away from free speech. It's YouTube exercising their right to freedom of speech by not allowing what they believe to be harmful or disagreeable on their platform. They already do this with other categories of thing. This is no different.

You are more than able to start your own company and let whatever you want on that site. Or just go to your local city center with a megaphone and give people your thoughts - perfectly legal.

If YouTube is THAT essential to getting your views heard, you need to take a lesson from business - don't rely on anyone else for critical infrastructure.

Do you also feel it’s wrong of YouTube to not allow porn? Feels like people are laser focused on anti vax content due to the political nature of it, while not really caring about all the other moderation they already do.

Society is regressing back to a time where idea's like those in the Pre-Enlightenment era where prevalent, hopefully we do not regress all the way back to Dark Ages, where people will stoned and hanged for defying the church... In our time "the church" will likely be replaced with a new non-theistic religion of some kind, a Technocracy of "The Experts™" and "Authoritative Sources™" who are the ones that will tell us what "The Truth™" is today

Yes our freedoms are being eroded. It’s a slippery slope. All that bullshit.

Come on. A private company doesn’t want to contribute to people dying. Oh and by the way don’t they have the right to do what they want? You want what, regulation to prohibit this?

This trend in combination with the new wave of everything being a subscription really has me worried as a recent college grad who therefore does not own a home or have much in the way of savings. If you don’t own anything and your access to essential items is decided by some megacorp like Google or FB, you bet people will fall in line with the latest recreational outrage real fast. Connected cars with subscription features that show you ads even if you do own them (see the Ford Mach-E), and financial institutions buying up single-family homes to keep as many people as possible renting forever and never gaining equity in anything. The World Economic Forum came out and said it blatantly: “You’ll own nothing, and you’ll be happy.” That’s starting to read more like a command, not a prediction.

I can see the CEOs and politicians wanting to implement a Chinese-style 'social citizenship score' and if it falls below some level you get banned from all platforms and your travel rights are restricted, etc.

But is free speech dependent on YouTube being a platform for complex discussions between knowledgeable people on a topic?

Maybe YouTube doesn’t want that role.

Maybe we can have a sci-debate website that does want these discussions, and maybe that site could tailor the feature set for exactly this purpose.

Maybe it would focus on citation and annotation features like thinkspot or Spotify or genius.

Maybe the site could have multiple ways to evaluate the reputation of someone making claims. Maybe it could have education, popularity, endorsements from other people with high reputation, and like three other dimensions of reputation measurements.

Maybe it could have tools to disclose conflicts of interest, the accuracy of past claims over time, and automatic linking to rebuttals.

Maybe YouTube just isn’t a fit for this information.

...and we're still in peacetime. Wait until you see what you're not allowed to post once that changes.

Freedom of speech doesn't mean other people have to listen or host what you say.

https://xkcd.com/1357/

To simplify the question. Do we like to allow the social media to take parts of the position from court?

Personally, I don't care what Youtube bans and believe they should just do whatever they like. I don't care because Youtube does not provide any essential service to society. The content they serve is entirely expendable. The same holds for Twitter and Facebook. You could close these content distribution sites tomorrow and nothing substantial would change. A few of their competitors would gain a larger user base and that's it. If you rely for your income on some of these media channels (like ad revenue), you have a bad business model.

Principally, however, there could be a quasi-monopoly that turns out so essential for society that they should be treated as a public utility with a right to access instead of a private company that can enforce whatever house rules they like within the boundaries of law. I just don't think YT (or FB or Twitter or Google...) are there yet and find it hilarious that butthurt Youtubers so grossly overestimate their own importance.

I think we have to ask if this won't have a chilling effect on open discussion by moderate voices. I'm subscribed to the channel of an M.D. on YouTube who discusses COVID-19, vaccines, etc. He is very careful to (repeatedly) point out that he is vaccinated, he has personally vaccinated hundreds of patients, he encourages everyone to speak to their doctor and follow their recommendations, believing that the vaccine is beneficial for the overwhelming majority of people. But, for all that, he has had videos taken down, and worries that it will happen again.

Months ago he was insisting that the people who had contracted COVID-19 and who had antibodies in their system may not need the vaccine. Now, we have a number of studies coming out to support that. But months ago that was "anti-vax" (employing the slanderous use of the term).

People are going to cheer that "wackos" will no longer have a platform. It's not the wackos we should be worrying about. It's the stifling of legitimate public debate, the stifling of legitimate voices who find themselves in the minority.

I was banned from a Reddit sub for saying that a previous Covid infection probably infers some immunity. This was around 8 months ago. Now EU vaccine passports accept a recovery from infection as being sufficient proof of immunity.

On top of that now it's coming out that the Canadian military/government (and likely others) was intentionally deploying propaganda to make the populace more compliant.

This is why moderate voices are being drowned out. I got vaccinated pretty much as soon as it was available to me. Yet to some on the left, I'm a rabid anti-vaxxer (!?!) and to my anti-vaxx friends, a sell-out (ironically, they're far less angry, just disappointed in me for not pushing back against government overreach).

There's an overwhelming tendency now to boil down all opinions to either "right side of history" or "wrong side of history", "anti-science" or "pro-science". This is especially true on social media, YouTube. etc.

Out in the real world there is so much nuance. There are actually black people who don't agree with BLM. There are intellectual people who don't think they need the vaccine. There are Democrats who are pro-life. There are Republicans who support gay marriage. There are bunch of undecided people on a bunch of topics.

We are not all on one side or the other. There is so much middle ground. I still believe most people are in the vast expanse of middle ground.

It just doesn't look that way on the Internet.

Society in general has been making chilling moves away from free speech, and this has been accelerated by the pandemic. I hope the pendulum will swing the other way, but it's also possible to cross a tipping point where we just lose our way.

> It's not the wackos we should be worrying about.

It's really amazing to me how easily the "left" was able to be tricked in the same death of critical thinking as the "right".

The "stick to the libs!" angle is far more responsible for the rise in support of Trump leading up to the election. People on the "right" were manipulated for decades into reducing their political beliefs to defending themselves from a fictitious adversary (this is why I put quotes around these terms). If you listen to any radical Trump supporter you'll quickly see that a large part of their logic is based on a deeply held belief that roughly half the country is mind washed, irrational liberals that seek to destroy their way of life.

This rewriting of people skeptical of the vaccines as "wackos" serves the same purpose for the "left" and mainstream progressives have gobbled it up without hesitation. They now see roughly half the country as a bunch mind washed, irrational "wackos" that are a threat to the foundations of our society.

Both the "left" and "right" (terms which honestly don't make any political sense any more, evidence by exactly this irrational support for corporate suppression of voices on the "left" and it's dissent on the "right") are currently structured so that any real, meaningful political discourse about the future of the country is dissolved into two insane groups of people throwing rocks at each other.

If you find yourself defined by either of these major narratives, then you are being played.

Thank you for presenting the nuance.

It’s easy to condemn the quacks and extremely ill informed, but all sorts of opinions get swept away. Skeptics, those who want to study the details, exceptions, oddities, etc., get swept up by the system thus stifling legitimate debate and learning of a critical topic.

The stifling seems to be by design, or at the very least it's being considered acceptable collateral damage. Our modern censorship infrastructure does not see minority voices as legitimate.

That infrastructure may not even be capable (as evidenced here) of allowing for minority voices or any form of nuanced dissent, because it has been outsourced to a combination of incompetent "AI" (or dumb algorithms) as well as underpaid, understaffed, undertrained humans.

We are reaping the benefits of tech companies prioritisation of "scale" above all else.

> People are going to cheer that "wackos" will no longer have a platform. It's not the wackos we should be worrying about. It's the stifling of legitimate public debate, the stifling of legitimate voices who find themselves in the minority.

My opinion is that we didn't need YouTube/Facebook to conduct public policy debate before, and we don't need it now. It has brought nothing to the table except the, as you put it, "wackos". I really challenge the idea that there is value to them at all in the public debate.

Take this example you gave (by the way I agree that the doctor in question was doing good work). This doctor, 20 years ago, had direct influence in his own practice, some influence in his hospital, and maybe some influence in the health agency, although that is mostly reserved to the politically connected "big doctors" who sit at the top.

What is his influence to enact public policy change today? The exact same as it was then. He's no closer to personally convince his health agency or Hospital administration than he was 20 years ago. The difference is that now he has direct influence over millions of people, outside of any nuanced structure or supervision.

We may argue this isn't great, or democratic, that is true. But it is also true that YouTube videos and Facebook commenters have contributed nothing of value to public health debate. No single life was saved because of YouTube, except for videos where people were urged to see a "real doctor" and not follow Internet advice.

---

As a more general note, I always find the idea that YouTube/Facebook are free speech enablers disturbing. They are companies, they have nothing to do with rights. We have to perform a simple test: If YouTube went bankrupt tomorrow and had to close doors, would someone's right to Free Speech be diminished? They would suddenly not be able to reach as many people, but they'd still hold the exact same rights.

One of the reasons we find ourselves even in such a predicament is so odd: while governments the world over were (and are) quite willing to put very strong curbs, shut-downs etc. in place, they are hesitant to generally mandate vaccination. So now we are in these proxy campaigns on vaccinations.

Of course, one could argue that governments should not/cannot mandate vaccination, but then we also generally accept that governments can send you off to die in wars. Generally speaking, this whole mess actually brings some much deeper issues on state vs the individual to the surface. Those are the ones that will eventually need proper debate much more than finer points on immunology.

> Months ago he was insisting that the people who had contracted COVID-19 and who had antibodies in their system may not need the vaccine. Now, we have a number of studies coming out to support that. But months ago that was "anti-vax" (employing the slanderous use of the term).

If you're claiming something that hasn't been demonstrated through peer-reviewed scientific research, then you're offering your opinion. If you present that opinion as a fact, then that's misinformation. I don't know what form his "insistence" had, but I've seen plenty of similar cases so far, and all of them have been from people pushing their own narratives, instead of informing people responsibly.

If you're pushing a narrative that implies that you shouldn't get vaccinated, then yes, that's "anti-vax".

> It's the stifling of legitimate public debate, the stifling of legitimate voices who find themselves in the minority.

Being in a minority does not absolve one of responsibility. If you're publishing your opinion, or if you're discussing your research before it's been peer-reviewed, you have the responsibility to make that clear, and even to point out that it does not agree with the current scientific consensus (if any exists).

This is my concern as well. How many people refrain from saying anything about Covid at all for fear of triggering some mindless algorithms?

Human review of such blunders is unreliable at best.

Agreed shutting down discussion is not helping matters and we appear to be moving in an autocratic dystopian direction as a nation.

The FDA advisory panel was overridden to endorse a booster shot. Even mentioning FDA officials resigning and the board being overridden gets you labeled as anti-vax and blocked.

Future not looking good :/

> People are going to cheer that "wackos" will no longer have a platform.

And if you deplatform wackos, you just create incentive to decry everything as wacko in order to ban it.

The way to combat misinformation is in the free market of ideas and discourse. Not by banning it. That's just might-makes-right.

People need to get it through their skulls that "tech companies" have _no place_ "moderating" scientific debate.

If you've ever found yourself typing "Should X give Y a platform?" you are part of the problem.

Be better, be a part of the solution.

Free speech used to mean the right to say anything without persecution. Does it now mean the right to have ones opinion be actively globally distributed by a third party?

This is very much about fighting two viruses: one biological and the other one informational. We agree to limit contacts between people to stop the one but do not accept the same method to stop the other. Why? In both cases it is vital to ensure the measures to not cross certain boundaries and are rolled back.

I live in Iceland. Recovery from cov-sars-2 infection is considered as valid as a vaccine here. The same goes for Norway and ( to the best of my knowledge) Sweden, Denmark and Finland. They all recognize recovery from covid-19 as sufficcient protection.

Looking at US and Canada, along with a slew of terrifying commenters in this thread, the entire Nordic region consist of misinformed anti-vaxxers that have fallen prey to fake news by this definition.

We have also never put masks on our 24 month old toddlers. US and Canda WTF is wrong with you? We have a very high vaccination rate here in Iceland but that did not stop hospitalisations, or deaths. But definetly decreased them. Our high vaccination rate has had 0 effect on the spread of infections though. Even if hospitalizations have reaped the benefits because of it. If anything we got the highest wave of infections we have ever encountered this summer. But with a clear decrease in hospital load. We went back to mandates after only a very brief 4 week reopening because our high vaccination rate did absolutely nothing to stop the spread.

When this fact hit us in Iceland, when the summer wave hit, we as a country went into a state of mild shock. As so many nations we declared victory way, way too soon.

No one mentions this in the news though. Crickets. We might not even exist for all CNN, Times, all the Posts and vox cares.

I am not in any high risk group. Got moderna 2 shots, I still have PTSD from the side effects of the second shot. I sincerely thought I took the vaccine to help prevent the spread. But I most likely went through one of the worst nights of my life for no good fucking reason whatsoever. I statistically never needed the extra protection, I can still very much catch cov-sars-2 and still very much infect and kill another fully vaccinated vulnerable human being.

I guess I am now a misinformed anti-vaxxer

The problem is that questions about the vaccine are being labeled as anti-vaccine. Real data about the side effects of the vaccine constitutes science not anti-vax propaganda. It is distressing that supporters of informed consent are being lumped in with QAnon.

It's ironic (or maybe not?) that the comments section here is filled with exactly the kind of anti-vax misinformation that YouTube is trying to take down.

To respond to one point I keep reading in here over and over: Getting and recovering from covid does not necessarily give you better protection from disease than getting the vaccine.

1/3 of people who get covid develop no antibodies at all, as compared to 0% of (non-immunocompromised) people who get the vaccine. https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/574284-natural-covid-...

Also, of course, if you get covid...you got covid which was kind of the thing that we were trying to avoid. Not just for ourselves, but for our communities.

Another point I keep reading is, we don't know the long-term effects of these vaccines. And, it's undeniably true that we don't know with the certainty of evidence what will happen in ten years. But:

- 2.5 billion people have gotten at least one covid shot. This is one of the most-studied medical interventions in the history of medical interventions.

- There is no known and plausible mechanism by which the shot suddenly has bad effects years down the line. Historically, any side effects from vaccines show up within a few weeks, https://www.muhealth.org/our-stories/how-do-we-know-covid-19...

- We also don't know what will happen in ten years to people who caught long covid, and we do know that people who die from covid will not be alive in ten years.

Stay safe, everyone.

My wife is very vaccine hesitant, and every time they make a move like this to block content or take it down, it only strengthens her position. She thinks they’re taking it down because they don’t want people to know the truth.

The only thing worse than bad ideas is the suppression of bad ideas. It’s tragic that we knew this at some point, but are going to have to figure it all back out again the hard way.

Age old follow-up question. Who decides what anti-vaccine content is? Who is going to draw the fine line? How simple (i.e. black and white) is to make this distinction? Do you trust that person / entity making these decisions for you and your peers?

But even without defending free speach, looks to me that when you start censoring you just create multiple new problems with zero solution. So even from a design point of view it's clearly a bad thing.

YouTube is a private company, not a public service. Anti-vax is not a protected class of people, and so there is no law that says YouTube cannot discriminate against them.

As a company, they've decided to take this path. They don't have to justify it.

If that makes you angry, boycott them. Don't conduct business with them, which includes watching their content and ads.

And if you think that YouTube is large enough and a big enough monopoly that it should be treated as a public service and subject to the rules that apply to public services, then either nationalize it so that it is, or break it up so that there's competition in the market.

I myself am vaccinated, but I hold no ill will towards those who do not get it; whatever their reason. And yet, the media is conditioning all of us to hate those people. To shame them. To ignore their reason and free-will.

The same people who are rabidly pro-vaccine are generally rabidly pro-choice when it comes to abortion. How does that reconcile? How come the government can sometimes tell you what to do with your body but not others?

And the same people who are in favor of the vaccine mandates are almost universally supporters of BLM and social justice. And yet... the majority of the vaccine hesitant are non-white. That doesn't square either.

The whole thing is absolutely fucking outrageous. I hate what the media has done to the United States. And I hate all the moral self-righteousness I see on display here and everywhere else.

Once again YouTube is standing against free speech.

Yes, most of you will cheer for it just as you did when Twitter banned Trump. You will say it's a private company, they have the right to do that. Don't expect people like me to support you when you complain about YouTube banning e.g. Russian activists.

Part of supporting free speech is that you have to support the speech you don't agree with.

“All censorships exist to prevent anyone from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions.” George Bernard Shaw

“Freedom of expression is the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom.” U.S. Supreme Court Justice Benjamin N. Cardozo in Palko v. Connecticut

"If you believe that the arguments against slavery in their time and against Jim Crow laws more recently could only have been expressed when people had the freedom to voice unpopular opinions, then you can’t now say that free speech is inherently dangerous." Stephen Pinker

“Goebbels was in favor of free speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you’re really in favor of free speech, then you’re in favor of freedom of speech for precisely the views you despise. Otherwise, you’re not in favor of free speech.” Noam Chomsky

"To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the right of the hearer as well as those of the speaker. It is just as criminal to rob a man of his right to speak and hear as it would be to rob him of his money.” Frederick Douglass

Enough. This sort of large-scale systematic suppression of human rights (in this case the right to the free exchange of ideas) is fundamentally evil and needs to be stopped.

That it's "for a good cause" is no excuse. Neither is the fact that the perpetrator of these mass-scale human rights violations is a corporate oligopoly rather than a government, nor that the target of these abuses is "them" rather than "us". All of that is a distraction. They. Are. Trampling. Your. Rights. This cannot be allowed to continue.

Someone I follow on instagram had opened up a conversation for women about irregular periods as a side-effect of the vaccine. They had to carry on the conversation using an emoji code to avoid getting banned.

The basic idea behind these bans is that authorities decide what is right, and common people should not have a forum to discuss the decisions.

It's basically soft-censorship, a partnership between government and large tech companies to make conversations contra government policy much more difficult to have.

Seems unfortunate, to me.

Social media companies are stifling freedom of speech in America. Have you seen the "Who's banned from Twitter and who's not" meme with Donald Trump and the Taliban? Unpopular or non-conformist opinions are censored, and it's dangerous.

"But it's private companies! They can do whatever they want!" The telephone companies are private. Do they have a right to kill your connection when you talk about unapproved subject matter? Twitter, Youtube, Facebook, and so on are the modern de-facto means of communicating long distance and to wide-spread audiences.

"But it's dangerous to let these opinions reach the ears of the masses." Open discourse and trusting society to (eventually) make the right decision, given all available information, is something we've done (or attempted to do) in modern democracies. This is important.

Remember Wuhan lab outbreak ? It took 9 months for mainstream media to present it as plausible (France). Before that, it was called a "conspiracy theory", synonym to a fable. What did you think happened to people speaking about it on twitter, facebook or youtube before mainstream media greenlighted this theory ?

I'm normally against this kind of thing, but then I read the comments, even here on HN, and kind of see it as the lesser evil.

I wish I could find the post now, but a few months ago on /r/science, research showed that people who didn't believe in global warming were more likely to change their minds when presented with balanced evidence for and against.

YouTube has no idea how damaging this is to the cause.

Folks who think that policy is a war do not understand people very well or are more interested in grandstanding and point scoring than changing minds. Viewing those who disagree with you as villains or children makes life harder for everyone.

At this point I'm not hesitant about the vaccine, but getting it would only validate the heavy-handed approach we're seeing wrt censorship.

I saw someone post an antivax video in the comments about the toxicity of the spike protein the mRNA vaccine causes the body to manufacture.

If you have such concerns, read this: https://health-desk.org/articles/what-do-we-know-about-the-t...

The vaccine is injected into muscle and causes a localized immune reaction. The protein doesn't really escape the muscle. So it might damage some muscle cells and capillaries, but those are stressed all the time anyway and will regenerate.

With the traffic and gravity that YouTube etc have, they're almost as powerful news broadcasting tools as the classic news media.

True, they're a private company and liable for some things, but they all try to squeeze out every last cent before a government intervention.

Banning content like crypto, anti vax, gambling etc is understandable, but all the people without a voice will think they are silenced because they know the truth.

If we as society accept that, we should not claim to be any better than china, Russia, Cuba, it's just a slightly different approach, the end result is the same, undesired content is deplatformed.

By the way, I am a rationalist and never believe conspiracy theories, but I do get a good laugh out of them at times and how the people use counter arguments helps me to think in more perspectives.

Recently I spoke with two senior scientists with decades of experience who specialise in pharmacology, biology, and vaccines, who both work at high-level labs that inspect all types of drugs.

They both were extremely sceptical of the vaccine, with one being openly antagonistic towards it.

YouTube's new rules allow them to post content, but they both say they've been warned by their jobs about speaking out - that they will lose their careers if they say anything against the vaccines.

Where is the room for their opinion? Because they are the top of the tree scientifically. What the hell is going on when we are silencing senior scientists who are extremely worried about an experimental drug that we're giving to the entire world??!

To clarify - the first scientist told me that her lab is not allowed to look at or test the vaccine, even though they test every other drug that comes into the country. She has only found a report from one other non-Pfizer lab that has looked at it under a microscope. To me, that is really scary.

The one thing you can do to ensure vaccine hesitancy and distrust is to ban that very topic.

This standard they are setting up, already started with warnings and bans for in any way contradicting the WHO, is impossible to maintain in a consistent fashion.

I can still find thousands of videos on homeopathy, ranging from debunkings to lecture-style videos. There are people who would advocate using this rather than modern health services.

In fact, there are people who would advocate the use of witchcraft to treat cancer.

Will YouTube ban them all? Or will they just ban certain topics based on a whim?

They're a private company and can do whatever they want. However, one only needs to see the trending page in any country to see the kind of crap YouTube promotes and profits from. So, please spare me of the corporate propaganda for YouTube's rationale of this decision.

As much I condemn anti-vaxxers: “I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”

Big Pharma and Marxist Google working hand in hand.

Remember Volkswagen diesel emissions scandal? The lawyer who exposed it, who also fought Deutsche Bank in the US now exposes Covid as fraud and mass murder. https://odysee.com/@Corona-Investigative-Committee:5/Reiner-...

It used to be that I didn't want to work for Google because I'm not a fan of surveillance capitalism and all of the second order effects. I'm now realizing that there is a second, just-as-important reason: the level of censorship that Google enables.

A few years ago I wouldn't have thought there could possibly be a second reason just as important to me as the centralized, pervasive surveillance... but here we are.

Heard this anecdotally from the following link, can't confirm it: Youtube had taken down a video from the creator of mRNA, Dr. Robert Malone.

http://www.padrak.com/coronavirus/Dr.%20Sean%20Brooks%20at%2...

YouTube and Google just joined the most brutal regimes on Earth in suppressing different opinions than what is government given propaganda. I am from former communist Czechoslovakia, never believed that again in my life I will have to challenge news and meet with censorship on such a big scale.

If I recall correctly, the internet was born from a DARPA project to enable resilient communications that would ensure a nuclear missile launch order would always get through.

If so, then it is indeed contrary to the spirit of the internet to block messages on the basis that they guide people to actions which cause harm to existing structures. The internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.

My question is: How wise is the spirit of the internet? Does it lead to human flourishing?

IMO, go further. Remove all medical recommendation and assertions from YouTube. Leave YouTube for entertainment, and have other platforms - perhaps ones better regulated and better managed - for medical discussions in a scientific context.

There's inherent difficulty in trying to judge between wackos and pros, because wackos do their best to masquerade as pros. This is basically a turing complete issue, because there's always people straddling the line between wacko and pro. YouTube has mostly avoided the difficulty with this issue until now by avoiding moderation entirely (aside from certain categories that suffer from the same problems, like copyright claims), so the issue with most of YouTube is that you can jump from pro to extreme wacko and not realize it as a non-professional yourself. Meanwhile, all content creators, wacko and pro, are given the same platform to promote their claims - one that incentivizes eyeballs, clicks, and engagement, not one that incentivizes accuracy or merit (or one that allows discussion in a context independent of monetization and ranking, which are known to poison good faith discussion).

Similarly but unrelated, let's also ban drug ads on cable TV. These are much like buying a social media influencer to push your medical claims. It's disgusting.

This is worrying. I still remember, in March 2020 believing that face masks work was still the contrarian opinion. Large Western countries such as USA, Germany, changed their official position in April. WHO changed their position in June. My country (Finland) only in the end of August. If contrarian voices had been efficiently suppressed, would the medical mainstream have changed their position at all?

I'm against censorship. But I'm also against algorithmic promotion of dubious information.

As an example, several people I know personally told me they saw videos of black lives matter activists and antifa starting fires here in Oregon. It's ridiculous. But, there is enough evidence to show that those videos were created and promoted in the right way such that YouTube and Facebook put them into their viral loops and lots of succeptible people thought they were the truth.

How do we strike a balance between letting information be free and at the same time prevent black box algorithms and evil actors from hacking our society?

I know this comment will be lost in the shuffle, and I notice this was submitted by danso, so I imagine there's an intentionality here, but I very strongly believe submissions like these are a substantial and growing threat to HN.

Just remove them! Let's talk tech, startups, science! Submissions like these distract from the stuff I like on HN, but more importantly I worry they chase away the people I like from HN.

I flag each of these, hoping enough of us can get content like this removed, and I'm willing to be outvoted on that count, but I personally think HN is better off without this content.

The article is pay-walled to me. But I am interested - do they mention where the line for being "anti-vaccine" currently is? For example - is someone who is making a video about why he/she will not be taking a 3rd booster shot anti-vaccine and therefore banned?

Not sure if everyone has read the actual policy (https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/11161123) but for those who hasn't:

    Don’t post content on YouTube if it includes harmful misinformation about currently approved and administered vaccines on any of the following:
    * Vaccine safety: content alleging that vaccines cause chronic side effects, outside of rare side effects that are recognized by health authorities
    * Efficacy of vaccines: content claiming that vaccines do not reduce transmission or contraction of disease 
    * Ingredients in vaccines: content misrepresenting the substances contained in vaccines

Also, the policy states some exceptional cases such as countervailing views with a support from medical experts, firsthand experiences, etc.

One of The Osterholm update's video (a podcast) was censored for spreading "misinformation".

I hope they can survive this.

I'm surprised other major platforms haven't done this yet.

Time for repeat showing of the free speech debate we’ve already had a dozen times, whoopee!

As ever, IMO, the problem isn’t the hosting or the banning, it’s the algorithms. I don’t care whether YouTube hosts anti-vaccine activists, I care that they actively promote anti-vaccine content to users simply because it’s proven to get clicks and earn them money. Bans like this look incredibly stupid when you realise YouTube itself is responsible for this disinformation getting so much traction.

Once again, we found a way to get rid of those we don't like by censoring them completely based on any utterance of a Topic or Viewpoint That Can Not Be Expressed Out Loud. Any open discussion or criticism on any sensitive topic could be enough to close down the participant's account, take away their right to be heard and even effectively erase them.

This is not a defense of any particular opinion as much as it is the right for people to be heard by those willing to listen and hopefully keep communication open to foster better education and understanding.

I have an honest question to all of the honest people recommanding their relatives to get vaccinated:

I've had covid twice, with very mild effects (stay in bed for one day or two). I'm young, no comorbidity, not obese etc. Clearly I won't die of covid, as experimental science goes.

I'm the only provider for my family (wife, kid). If I take the vaccine and get crippled, meaning I can't work anymore, will the pro-vaccine people that recommend it pay my family a pension to compensate the financial loss caused by their advice?

This is why I prefer Rumble. Given how woke politically Google has become it is no longer a platform I want to support.

Whenever information is censored I am naturally suspicious around the motivations. Censorship also gives the censored opinion more credibility because if that opinion was so objectively false and crazy it would be easy to convince people about the craziness of it. But when your ideas are so weak that the only way you can convince people you are right is to censor, ban, violently crush etc. the opposing view this is what you get.

Even though I got the vax, given all of the authoritarian thinking etc. around the pro-vax stand, lockdowns etc. I often wonder if I made the right decision.

The lockdowns, vaccines etc. have mostly been a massive over-reaction. As a software engineer I have benefited from them economically, but I still don't think the devastation from the cure, which was been far worse than the sickness was the right thing and really have never supported it.

Life is risky and dangerous. Many anti-vaxers have a philosophy where they would rather live in a dangerous democracy instead of a "safe" authoritarian government. Trying to ban their ideas does nothing to win their hearts and minds.

Also, ironically, while everyone is making a big deal about hospitals being at capacity etc. when there is a surge of cases, why is it that nobody is putting as much energy into discussing the spiraling cost of health care of why it is that we have a system with so little slack for emergencies.

Not unlike the censoring any discussion of the lab leak hypothesis they (the censors) better be perfectly accurate every single time.

The moment they get it wrong and censor something that turns out to be the truth they lose 100% of their credibility and become a part of the conspiracy.

Despite being a medical doctor, this disappoints me a great deal.

This sort of authoritarian non-discussion is exactly what's caused vaccine resistance to become an "activist movement" in the first place.

Some tinfoil-hat part of me wonders if that's actually the plan...

Can anyone recommend a good book on the balance between free speech versus disallowing harmful ideas to propagate?

Or even one book from each side of the argument?

I don’t think I’ve even begun to comprehend a robust position on what might make sense, or the arguments involved.

One of the things that gets lost in the arguments around this sort of censorship (and, before I lose you, it is censorship and that is fine; we all engage in forms of censorship in determining what we will or will not ingest - the danger comes when some third party is acting as the censor for others) is the distinction between legality and morality.

Legally, it seems self-evident that YouTube should be permitted to curate their own content however they deem fit, whether it is fair in the abstract or not. I wouldn't want to live in a world where anyone was compelled to publish, disseminate or engage with content against their will.

Morally, this sort of mass banning of a position ought to be a taboo if we want a free society. We, as free citizens, have every right to petition that an open stance be adopted even if YouTube is well within their rights to refuse.

The other thing I tend to think important is to always ask one more question - would I support this action if it was taken if the sides of the issue were reversed? Sometimes the answer is 'yes', but I've found it a warning sign when the mental response is 'but....'

So big tech have become the holders of "truth". I don't care whose legitimacy they claim, governments are not the holders of truth either, and science changes daily. Suppressing freedom of information is not alright.

I've already banned youtube, along with all tyrannical platforms. People should be more proactive.

> The moves come as YouTube and other tech giants like Facebook Inc. (FB.O) and Twitter Inc. (TWTR.N) have been criticized for not doing enough to stop the spread of false health information on their sites.

Why not also state the opposite that they have been criticized for doing too much censorship of even valid and factual information? This clearly shows that the media lives in their own bubble.

Here's a thought experiment.

Suppose we were at war with a hostile adversary, and that adversary had killed over 700,000 people already, and thousands more each day.

I can scarcely believe that any reasonable person would argue that blocking propaganda or misinformation that harms the war effort would be an egregious imposition on free speech. Once the imminent threat is over, those efforts can and should stop, but not while the destruction is immediate.

Covid-19 has killed more people in the United States than US combat casualties every war since World War 2 combined. It is the the worst mass casualty event any living American has ever experienced.

Why is it unreasonable that serious and extraordinary measures should be taken? Misinformation about the pandemic has surely massively contributed to that death total. The chilling effect on free speech is worse? No, it's not. It simply isn't true that free speech won't return. But those 700,000+ and counting dead are not coming back.

> Misinformation researchers have for years said the popularity of anti-vaccine content on YouTube was contributing to growing skepticism of lifesaving vaccines in the United States and around the world. Vaccination rates have slowed and about 56 percent of the U.S. population has had two shots...

I assume 20% of the US population can't take the vaccine or something, maybe because they are kids. That suggests YouTube is coming out as a political opponent of ~25% of their customer base. This is an unwise course of action.

Also, the mandate part of vaccine mandate is legitimately scary. It is reasonable not to trust a big pharma-big government alliance actively controlling our medical life with no ability of the patient to opt out. It is easy to see this ending badly, US healthcare is not known for being full of angelic, selfless and friendly actors. These opinions should be aired.

YouTube frontpage promoted and is still promoting crypto scams. A family member lost $4000 to it, and they are still ongoing, and YouTube is too overwhelmed to pull them.

Good. It's long past time we stop humoring the destructive delusional narcissism of anti-vaxxers. Let them build their own fucking YouTube to host their bullshit.

The problem is all down to the cost of moderation, nothing else. Maintaining YouTube profitability.

Troll farms are spamming all of social media with misinformation, and that makes it hard to filter out the actual rational voices in the discussion.

I don't know the solution, I really don't. Without some form of 'trust' label that gets vetted to drown out mere 'views' and 'likes'.

Just read an article that in 2019, 19 of the top 20 Christian sites on Facebook were generated by Troll farms in Eastern Europe.

It is all messed up (disclosure, I don't have a Facebook account) and I don't know how it gets fixed.

I am all for factual vaccine information, pro and con, but I am opposed to people learning any topic from trolls with an adversary agenda.

The anti-vax crowd has been very effective in killing off Trump supporters for the last two months, for example.

I think a better solution would be to ban algorithmic media distribution. Let people post whatever they want on YouTube. If there wasn’t a toxic engagement algorithm radicalizing people this wouldn’t be a problem. That would kill the social media business model, which is an added bonus IMO.

I think people outraged at the content censorship on YouTube can look at the media landscape overall and consider that, compared with Hulu, CBS, MSNBC or Fox News, it's still a extremely permissive environment, an outlier in the world of ad-supported media companies. This looks like regression to the mean - as it becomes bigger and forever needs to get more money from advertisers to sustain growth, it gets pushed to provide a product that emphasizes middle-of-the-road views. YouTube of 10 years ago was so much smaller that it got away with a lot worse (eg terrorism apology and recruitment), but as it's grown, it's going to be increasingly difficult for controversial content to live on ad-support.

Google: from 'Don't be evil' to 'Support the genocide' in one decade.

Reading the comments here is freaking terrifying to me. This is supposedly an educated and scientifically oriented subset of the human race and the levels of ignorance, dishonesty, and flat out lying going on here make me very, very sad. SMH.

2 points by deadalus 22 minutes ago | parent | edit [–] | on: YouTube removes “I Can't Believe You've Done This”...

Youtube Alternatives : Centralized : Dailymotion, Bitchute, Rumble, DTube, Vimeo, Vidlii, DLive, Triller, Gab TV

Decentralized : Odysee(LBRY), Peertube

Trust the science...or else.

These people act like mRNA vaccines are 100% understood and there is no room for debate

As the moderate and wholesome voices get drowned out by the push of “the algorithm” towards engaging (read: polarizing) content, YouTube will sadly become like Facebook for me- obsolete and deleted. Once I’m convinced that your product is unhealthy, especially in this time, I’m out, and I won’t be back.

Sex, hate, anger, violence, political extremism- so over it.

How about a tech platform that actually does good for once?

What alcoholism and obesity were to the precious generation, we are on a fast track to a mental health crisis of epic proportion if something isn’t done. I don’t know how people work at places like fb/ig/yt in good conscience.

The real problem is with the discovery algorithm. If the algorithm sees a user watching subject XYZ, it keeps suggesting more XYZ to that user. The goal of the algorithm is to own the users eyeballs as long as possible. This results in more ad-views and a more accurate profile of the user.

So if a user watches one anti-vax video, YouTube then suggests a bunch of other anti-vax videos. Many people will start believing it, after being bombarded with misinformation.

Fixing the algorithm is hard. Instead, as usual, YT is just removing videos that cause the problems. This is just a bandaid

The whole private sector censorship reminds me of a very good piece by Matt Taibbi:

> "People in the U.S. seem able to recognize that China’s censorship of the internet is bad. They say: “It’s so authoritarian, tyrannical, terrible, a human rights violation.” Everyone sees that, but then when it happens to us, here, we say, “Oh, but it’s a private company doing it.” What people don’t realize is the majority of censorship in China is being carried out by private companies.

> Rebecca MacKinnon, former CNN Bureau chief for Beijing and Tokyo, wrote a book called Consent of the Network that lays all this out. She says, “This is one of the features of Chinese internet censorship and surveillance—that it's actually carried out primarily by private sector companies, by the tech platforms and services, not by the police. And that the companies that run China's internet services and platforms are acting as an extension of state power.”

> The people who make that argument don’t realize how close we are to the same model. There are two layers. Everyone’s familiar with “The Great Firewall of China,” where they’re blocking out foreign websites. Well, the US does that too. We just shut down Press TV, which is Iran’s PBS, for instance. We mimic that first layer as well, and now there’s also the second layer, internally, that involves private companies doing most of the censorship."

https://taibbi.substack.com/p/meet-the-censored-matt-orfalea

Heck, I view it all as 'misinformation', and I certainly don't need some cubicle drone at youtube to decide for me.

Certainly the average person is smart enough to understand the statistics of the thing, after all that's something of the point of epidemiology.

There should be enough data points by now to tell me a few things.

. What is the real value of a cloth mask worn inside in a crowd with strangers? What is the value of a properly fitted N95 mask? Give it to me as an odds calculation.

. Just what percentage of covid is picked up in bars? grocery stores? schools? at home? Our local health department is notably mum about that preferring only to hand out the county-wide ages and that's it.

.Actual strong data on value of vaccine in terms of infection and symptoms. 1st, 2nd, 3rd dose. How long are these valuable? How long will they remain so due to mutations? Odds.

.Actual data on nasty side effects of vaccine including odds.

.Fairly presented value of home remedies, anti-virals, etc.

.etc.

You can twizzle out some of this, but rarely. Cut down to the essentials, it wouldn't take up a single sheet of paper. Post that sheet of paper whenever anyone feels the need to opine.

Instead I'm treated to shaming and scolding and peoples' fear about their precious bodily fluids and I'm sick of everyone. Somehow this has become a proxy for the 2016/2020 elections complete with all the religious overtones. Please stop.

Time to switch to https://odysee.com/ - It's been growing very fast. You can buy LBRY tokens to align your incentives on the financial side: https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/library-credits/

You can profit from doing the right thing and taking a stance against censorship.

The funny part of this whole thing. Is that the same people that all they do is complain about privacy concerns by Apple and Alexa etc. here on HN are the same people that consistently downvote anything I say that is anti-vaccine. I thought this community knew no blind spots. Even if I am dead wrong on my stance, the concept that it gets downvoted just because I have a differing opinion is pathetic.

All this does is justify the anti-vaccine activists.

I think having a small percentage of the population who are anti-vax adds to the robustness of the species. What if, odds unlikely, that there was some problem with the vax where it killed or sterilized everyone who got it? It would be extinction except for the anti-vaxxers. Now this is an super unlikely event, but there's a non-zero chance this could happen.

Meanwhile, it seems that Russia has complained in the past 24 hours against some censorship on YT, based on "the fight against covid related misinformation", and raised a diplomatic issue accusing Germany to have supported the censorship.

Some may find curious or even amusing this odd paragraph on Le Monde:

> A la fin de janvier, le président Poutine avait jugé que les entreprises majeures du secteur de l’Internet étaient « en concurrence » avec les Etats. Il dénonçait leurs « tentatives de contrôler brutalement la société ».

The main online enterprises being in competition with the states - in the attempt to brutally control society?! The formulation could probably have been less "suggestive".

https://www.lemonde.fr/pixels/article/2021/09/29/moscou-mena...

Good thing they told us yesterday that ‘free speech is a 'core value'’

https://www.businessinsider.com/youtube-google-russia-putin-...

Well, not that kind of speech, of course!

Youtube can do whatever it wants, but by taking this political stance, it creates a precedent that other actors will use to ask it to censor other political content.

I'm not anti-vax, I've had dozen of vaccines including covid, but I still think anti-vaxers should be able to express themself. Who knows, one day I may realize some doubts were justified.

Youtube is also banning content that incites racial violence, and that is not an issue, so why is this? Both cause immense harm.

I have an anti-vax person in my family. As disturbing and wrongheaded as their opinions are, I find it significantly more disturbing that they are being censored.

The irony is that this censorship doesn't even work. It just strengthens their resolve and deepens their conviction that they have found The Truth in their conspiracy theories.

Would they have blocked the lab leak theory when it was less popular?

I wish Google had not done this sort of thing.

I am not an anti-vaxxer but I think we should not silence those who question vaccines, their studies and their effectiveness. By banning vaccine criticism in public domain we essentially ensure that only FDA is responsible for calling a vaccine fake, once they approve we all have to fall in line and not be skeptical about them. This gives too much power to FDA (hence a higher possibility of corruption) and a free pass to pharma companies who might push more and more ineffective vaccines with the help of their friends in FDA and CDC.

Google is pretty good at content recommendation and I am sure if they want they can solve this problem much better by identifying diversity in the vaccine criticism and accordingly give it exposure.

Anti-vaccers have limited amount of claims. Instead of shutting them down and feeding into conspiracy if governments and big corps are so concerned they should make web sites where they disprove said claims with valid data in a way understandable by mere mortals. For interested there can be also list of references for further reading. Youtube and the likes are then free to promote / put on first page headlines from this websites.

Instead what I see when opening youtube (I am Canadian) is the pic of Theresa Tam: our Chief Public Health Officer. She is known to change her opinion every other day to the point that whatever she says can be ignored - she'll come up with something different tomorrow.

People don't get vaccinated because of the evidence but because they chose to believe in some authority. Heavy handed censors (or fact checkers in newspeak) and other coercive tactics lead people to distrust these authorities even more.

It'd be cool if this would decrease the number of antivaxxers, but actually it probably won't and Google really shouldn't be able to do this anyway.

Perhaps if YouTube didn't have almost total market dominance it would be less problematic.

I'm for freedom of speech, people should be able to make their own choice with all the information available. There should be a right to be a "conscientious objector"[1] for vaccination. But to be fair, it would work only for an educated population that is capable to distinguish facts from misinformation. And for me, science should always be questioned, if not there is no research and no discoveries.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscientious_objection_in_the...

Self defense against people that want you dead is not censorship.

The rumor spreaders are clearly trying to do the maximum damage as possible in the society for money. Many of them ended being victims of the virus also, so nobody can't claim ignorance at this point or say that they were just joking. If they can't understand even the most basic facts explained by science is their problem, not twitter's problem or society's problem. Science is real. Deal with it.

The snake puppeteers poisoning and driving this people to their own demise are evil. Twitter is not obligated to help them to kill more people.

Censoring ideas just makes them more popular. If YouTube wanted to do the right thing they'd let people debate openly, instead this will just push people further into their respective echo chambers.

We live in a world where the rat that heads the NIAD cannot bring himself to publicly say that natural immunity (i.e. you’ve recovered from COVID) provides substantial protection and instead says things like “we’re still looking at the data on that…”: https://twitter.com/drsanjaygupta/status/1436133536239599619

If we’re going to let that continue unchallenged then banning dissenting voices is a drop in the bucket.

YouTube/Facebook/Twitter have proven that anonymized free speech doesn't work. You have no way of knowing if the discourse is being generated by trolls/bots/foreign actors.

I live in BC. I'm double vaxxed. We know the military, recently back from fixing Afghanistan, is using their proven effective propaganda techniques to make everything better at home.

My ex's mom is a real-ass epidemiologist, albeit not a pandemic person but you know on gov't boards and stuff. She was recommending my ex not get astrazenica, purely on the evidence.

Now, I have to have a passport to go to a restaurant. I have the card they gave me, but they will be requiring an app soon.

This is insane, it looks like pure divide-and-conquer tactics to me.

Neo-fascism, plain and simple. If this feels hyperbolic, I’m just applying definitions. The government has already admitted it colludes with these companies to censor. Time to build. Time to exit.

I guess I be spending more time on odysee and telegram. At worst it is censorship, at best youtube (meaning whoever random peoples are behind the compagny) think they know better than you and me.

Big Pharma worshipping elitist shills see that they're losing the argument, so instead of thinking harder or changing their minds, they ban their opponents. These people are the worst.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

Free speech! As long as we are in agreement with each other.

People give them absolute control and then wonder why they would use it. Stop watching youtube, there are numerous viable p2p alternatives.

I don't understand the approach of banning certain content. It feels like the root cause here is self reinforcing filter bubbles that social media creates. Is it not possible for YouTube to instead change their algorithm around this to recommend a blend of videos for topics like this one? Kinda like labeling approaches used elsewhere but a little more subtle.

Americans are arguing about the vaccine even here on HN. Seems like Russian social media manipulators really did a number on ye.

How will we tell if it works? A decrease in anti-vax sentiment and an uptick in vaccine take-up? How will we tell that it was due to YouTube?

What if it doesn’t move the needle at all (pun intended) - does it mean YouTube is much less influential than we (and they, apparently) think? Or that they waited too long and the anti-vax message had already embedded?

It’ll be very interesting to watch.

YouTube's business model is based on the free speech rights that have been secured by flesh-and-blood citizens for 245 years. The same benefits they don't see fit to extend to those citizens. They are like a beverage bottling company that draws clean water upstream before dumping their toxic waste back into the same river downstream.

First of all I am fully vaccinated.

It is believed that Vaccine supporters are dumb and ignorant, could be, but how can you prove that the other party is small and well educated.

Such carpet will fuel further the conspiracy theorists and they would say to their followers, "See, we were right! they do not want you to learn the truth about vaccine"

Fuckin Nazis

look on https://bitchute.com or https://brandnewtube.com and you will lots of information why I will not being taking an injected experimental medical procedure . No way no how!

YouTube is banning anti-vaccine activists and blocking all anti-vaccine content

Which will, of course, galvanize those who are skeptical of the vaccine and the intentions of our bureaucratic overlords. And because that's so obvious, it makes the conspiracy-theorist squirrel part of my brain wonder if that's the point.

Wrote an article about this and how AI is used to enforce these bans: https://telepath.io/blog/youtube-bans-vaccine-misinformation...

What parties motivate Google? For example: does the US Government make requests to Google directly? Do advertisers? Lobbyists? Wealthy individuals? Friends and family of higher-ups? Is the source completely internal to Google? I'd love to see more about the process these ideas go through.

People keep arguing about the facts about side effects and long covid and death rates and hospital capacity. One side shows some facts in their favor and another “better” facts in another favor. This is pointless. If covid killed 10% or .00000001 of the population, censoring things like this is a terrible precedent.

Just as china has “private companies” do their censoring this is no different.

Just because the “facts” are very strong in favor of vaccination, and a majority of people are likely pro vax, this is a dangerous road.

Effectively the message, the story told about those facts is being dictated from government guidelines. You do not know what future stories will be forced to be believed in the future regardless of the “facts”.

Seriously just try and imagine a society who believes something you’re opposed too, where the facts don’t matter to you, and having it happen. Do you think you will never be on the other side?

This power will one day be wielded by those who you are adamantly opposed to.

The drug war was a huge misinformation campaign. can we ban anything that says marijuana has no medical benefit since the science is there like actual peer-reviewed articles saying that most of the negative information spread about cannabis is false

...after they've been autoplaying those videos to millions of users' TVs after they fell asleep, for the past 6-9 months?

Guess we really are getting to the end of COVID attention in the news if the Google ad algo says there's no more money in it.

I guess someone is part of gigantic political kickback collusion scheme with big pharma.

It's interesting to see people labeled as "anti-vaxxers" or "vaccine hesitant" or "unvaccinated".

If I was not looking to purchase a medication because I had no ailment, and then a medical professional came up and showed me the following chart and told me "Vaccines have cured most of the calamitous diseases of yesteryear, and here is a new one that you should take.", I would not then decide to get a vaccine. Would you? Look at the chart.

https://learntherisk.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/diseases...

No need to argue with me; why bother. I didn't create the data used to make the chart. When that feeling starts to come back look at the chart once again. The data doesn't change. Your feelings might change, but facts will stay the same each time you load the chart. Try it out.

Labeling people, because they haven't made a choice to do something that you think they should do, is a strange phenomenon.

First they came for Alex Jones, and I did not speak out

Because I was not an Alex Jones viewer.

This won't end well. Suppression drives people to seek it more --and where they find it, they will have stronger investments in the ideas and it all will be harder to discuss to a rational conclusion.

All this for a virus with a 99% survival rate [1]. Nevermind the fact that media and government forces completely ignore natural immunity which has been shown to provide 27x more resistance to covid infection by a recent study [2].

You can't really be surprised at the general distrust and hesitancy. You can get a "Vaccine Passport" but you can't get a "Immunity Passport"?

Ridiculous

https://apnews.com/article/fact-checking-970830023526 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v...

Amazing YouTube! Finally, some good news!

I am really pumped for what this means for alternative platforms like rumble and odysee. This is the boost the independent web needs! YouTube was way too centralized.

The network is healing!

> YouTube will ban any videos that claim that commonly used vaccines approved by health authorities are ineffective or dangerous.

> ineffective or dangerous

Either you don't care if I get it, or they're ineffective.

The more wrong they are the more they n down. One of these days that strategy may pay off. Better than admitting you're incompetent egotistical dumbasses who have been acting like nazis.

You’d think they might try a softer approach first like slapping a strongly-worded warning on the video.

“This video contains incorrect information and should be watched for entertainment purposes only.”

On one hand, you can claim that YouTube is being proactive against what they perceive to be a problem and that's something.

On the other hand, they don't choose to be proactive against copyrighted material - they just comply with the law when the law comes knocking and that's that. It simply doesn't make sense for them to allow the law to do its job in one place and then be overly proactive in another. At the very least, it undermines their argument that they're only doing this to comply with the law. They're not. They actively want to censor material that they don't agree with and they'll use whatever excuse they need to do it.

Are people mad about censorship on YouTube also mad about all the censorship that occurs on this site? Stuff gets deleted and manipulated by the mods all the time.

they better be perfectly right every time or else they become a part of the conspiracy. You would think they would learn after the lab-leak censorship fiasco.

Free speech on Youtube is like being in the audience of a sitcom, you can't just yell out swear words, it could cost the production company money...

They don’t need to ban flat-earther videos, just saying.

I wonder when they start banning people who don't want a not-compatible with the EU vaccine passport jab (for example Sputnik and Sinopharm)

They are doing it wrong. They should ban all discussions about vaccines.

Then it wouldn’t be censorship. It’s just asking that those discussions happen elsewhere.

The scandal is that it has taken this long. YouTube is not a public platform and should be held responsible for the content they promote.

one major concern i have is when things like religion get blocked as misinformation, or the whole fake it til you make it crowd gets blocked. part of growing is seeing yourself differently than how you previously saw yourself, what is stopping youtube in 10 years from becoming stricter because of pressure from some new movement? imagine presenting your product in the most professional way possible and then getting flagged by you aunt who you never got along with saying the content is disinformation and you are just some try hard who can't code? or what about your dating profile? you decide to put your best foot forward by dressing nice and then you get flagged as misinformation? or here's one, what if the mainstream narrative is wrong? about something major? that most people consider the truth but its harming a certain minority group. if the internet existed during slavery times, and someone were to post a video saying black men and women are equal to white men and women and deserve to be treated equally, now you and i both know this is absurd but, that's because there was a lot of work done that changed the narrative. that work done was started by small groups and grew into a movement, imagine that movement today never getting off the ground because of it's seed content being plucked out of circulation due to it being "misinformation". sometimes social and science references are completely off, and for someone to question that mainstream narrative can appear to be misinformation for those believing a lie. don't tell me it doesn't happen; there are plenty of people who are gullible enough to hold a faulty mainstream narrative in place. look at all the crazy videos from last year and tell me if you think most people are intelligent enough to come to the right conclusions. no hate, it's just a reality.

Anybody know of examples/precedent where an entity covered by Section 230 lost that protection?

Maybe I’d be more okay with this if the vaccines weren’t owned by multi billion dollar companies who stand to make billions of dollars by requiring the world to use their products.

Can you imagine that for anything else? You MUST use the product of ours, and we are actually going to make it illegal for you not to, and ban any discussion about not using it.

What if the government figured out it could just use private companies to do what it can't?

How about banning any videos that present literal Bible content, for example.

Decentralized p2p video ftw!

One would think YouTube could hear the Rumble-ing happening right now.

Monopolies like Youtube should be prevented from censoring content.

So is Joe Rogan gone from Youtube? Or only his "only fat people need to get the vaccine" videos are going to be banned? I wonder what other companies like Spotify would do to the big influencers that are spreading misinformation, etc.

How about those scammy financial advisers and history rewriters?

Another day another ban-hammering from YouTube; so what.

It is their private platform and if you sign up you agreed to their T&Cs and they can choose to ban or remove whoever they want. Mistake or not, robot or not.

They will never change and it will only get worse.

I support the vaccine, but this feels like a dangerous play.

Awesome! Finally. I think they should ban all anti-Facebook content as well. Facebook is a good company and never makes mistakes, to think otherwise is simply dangerous for the whole tech industry and must be removed.

What's the thing where things are either nazi bars or supplement pyramids? YouTube* already disallows nazi bars.

Your whole host getting banned when you make your own youtube is the issue at hand, methinks.

It's a start.

Why does Africa have the lowest vaccination rate and the lowest death rate?[1]

[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33075535/

Corporations like Youtube shouldn't be in the business of arbiting the truth, because they have time and time again proven themselves utterly incompetent at it.

So, capitalism has no relation to democracy. It is the worst enemy when gain is the target.

Why didn't hey do it before? Because it is not about anti vaxxers, but about freedom.

Thank god, praying that this includes those vagabond anti-booster folks (JUST BECAUSE YOU'RE VACCINATED DOESNT MEAN YOU'RE FULLY VACCINATED!!!)

I see we’re going to spend another day talking about “the death of free speech” because a private company doesn’t want to pay to host someone’s content.

I have wondered lately whether the anti-vax movement gains much of its power from the fact that most Americans don’t have a primary care physician anymore. I think almost any skeptic is convinced once they speak with a doctor they trust, who has read their chart. But most folks just visit doc-in-a-box places for their medical needs, especially in the last 10 years. I think this is bad for a lot of longer-term (public) health outcomes, one example being vaccination rates.

Anti vaccine content is just posting pro-vaccine content from six months ago next to pro-vaccine content from today.

It worries me when far right libertarians and the authoritarian left agree. Nothing has meaning anymore.

Cut off their revenue/ability to become a micro-celebrity /reward mechanism for incendiary garbage and these anti-vaccine activists will fade to obscurity. Too bad they didn't do this earlier so they could infect the general population with their deranged ideas.

This is simply wrong. Now, we are slowly moving towards to communist regimes.

This should have happened months ago. The damage is done

Fucking good.

also one thing to add, what if this is a gateway to censorship in order to hide information about certain elites legally? i am not advocating pizzagate conspiracy but this could be a way of silencing journalists doing their job and getting the news out oon one of the most powerful media distribution sites, people can build another site but when it comes to social change you want high impact.

What we're seeing is essentially the Death of the Free Flow of Information on the Internet;coming concomitant with a pervasive social slide towards Elitism when the whole point of the original revolution was to break down the siloes of power aggregated into gatekeeper hands.

In the Assault on Reason, AL Gore talked about the ability to craft systems that could enable people to create and engage with content in meaningful ways. No doubt viewing YouTube as an antidote to taking people out of a passive TV watching role and towards an active, civically engaged citizen.

The problem is, when anybody can say anything, Everyone will say Everything. YouTube's Really Dumb Idea here is to "mitigate the problem by eliminating discussion." We see how well that worked for the Catholic Church and sexual abuse allegations, the Silent Generation and LGBTQIA rights, etc.

Right after the web exploded in the early 2000s and we were all chanting "Information Wants to Be Free", a large number of us enthusiastically believed in Democracy and Reason. We believed in rational argumentation, with point, counter-point, analysis of biases and nuances, leading towards an ultimately acceptable conclusion.

Instead we got Flat Earth, Anti-vax, and Donald Trump. It's not hard to see why the enthusiasm is failing.

The problem is, it's not The Big Dumb Idiot Public's Fault. It's Ours, as technologists building these platforms.

A +/- button and free-text fields in 2021 is exactly the same technology we were using to talk in 2001, now with far more robots and malicious actors adding noise.

An Obvious Question that has been around since the advent of these technologies, that is in fact inherent in information itself, is "how do we identify Signal from Noise?"

Treating all Anti-Vax view, and even Donald Trump's banned accounts, as just "Noise" are bad precedents.

Rather, we should be leveraging Machine Learning and all the obtrusive user data we're gathering from ad farms to Actually Do Useful Things For Humanity like:

* identifying a user's background and their "conceptual distance" from the topic at hand. Aside from pointing someone to an arcane Wikipedia article likely last edited by an expert into incomprehensible oblivion, how can we determine a "learning path" series of links that can take someone from "completely ignorant" to "common knowledge educated?"

People love anonymity on the internet, but there are times when they don't, as well. (see Facebook's success)

On a random Hot Topic thread in a non-anonymous platform (FB, Twitter), the commenter's background could be probabilistically calculated to inform readers about how likely they are to know what the fuck they're talking about. I. E. If a random computer scientist blowjob like me is mouthing off about how inefficient the vaccine process has been and someone with a PhD in Molecular Biology from a reputable institution that's actively working in a lab developing in a proximal space replies to my comments with counters, that level of expertise needs to be highlighted.

"water flows uphill" and things that are just counter-factual can be detected and auto-flagged.

Actively elevating the discourse by both teaching people And giving easy tools to identify sources, evaluate their credibility, learn the argument space by highlighting the authorities and hubs of different views related to a topic, and ultimately lead to better discussions is Hard... But an infinitely better direction than draconian choices/policies that directly undermine trust in public discourse --which is a core tenet of democracy--.

YouTube has been cracking down on anything Covid related for over a year. Any discussion about Covid that has gone much past saying stay safe or get vaccinated has been instantly demonitized and hidden from people's subscriptions. This is just the next obvious step they were obviously going to take. The thing is, this is an incredibly complicated topic.

Legislation that could result in YouTube being held liable for user posted content that deseminates misinformation has been more than lightly discussed. The problem of misinformation is frequently made worse by the fact that studies have shown around 80% of misinformation of major topics can generally be traced back to fewer than a dozen unique users. It's not the same dozen people on every topic of discussion, but once some of the misinformation has gone viral it's extremely difficult to stop it getting shared again and again. This may seem like a matter of freedom of speech, but on some topics viral misinformation spreading can end up being deadly to thousands of real people.

Consider an analogy. If a person sets up to pull a prank by changing the words on a billboard, with only the intention of just surprising some people. But 3 car crashes occur where the drivers blaim the billboard for being a distraction. How much responsibility would you say the prankster has? How much should the billboard owner have for failing to prevent the prankster?

Now consider that instead of changing a billboard he changes the speed listed on a sign that cautions people not to take a blind turn at greater than 25 mph. Say he changes it to just be the same as the posted speed limit for the road and several cars spin out or there are minor fender benders. Then say he changes it to be even faster than the speed limit. How much responsibility should the prankster have for those accidents? How much should the city have for failing to prevent the prankster from being able to change their official signs?

There are strong points for debate in all of these situations. How easy was it for the prankster to access the billboard and make changes? What else were the drivers doing that a billboard could cause them to crash? What was so distracting about what they put on the billboard?

Why didn't the city post a sign that was more difficult to tamper with? How much effort did the prankster put into their fake? Why didn't local people notice the change and report it? How quickly did the city respond? How believable was the speed he put on the sign?

My point isn't to ask for the answers to these specific questions, but to point out that there is a difference between circumstances that requires greater responsibility from the medium the prankster changed. The contents of a billboard is just an advertisement, speed limits and road hazard signs are more important. Speed limits and road hazards also have to display probably true information that has some degree of validation that relying on them is safe.

This is a particularly tricky subject for YouTube because they are essentially a billboard, but people have started treating what's on it like road signs. How responsible should YouTube be when people use their platform to post complete nonsense that has the potential to get thousands or even millions killed?

Good.

Paywall

Thank god.

Vaccination was developed over 200 years ago, and it saved millions of lives ever since. Only the most crazy people would dispute its effectiveness or insinuate that some sort of hidden powers wanted to poison humanity.

Now when did this group of crazy people become so large that they start confusing people who don‘t have the intellectual capacity to get informed by reading serious sources.

My gut feeling tells me it is not about vaccination per se. But that‘s another topic.

Who will check the fact checkers?

Of course it will. Welcome to the new propaganda. Same as the old propaganda.

Free speech is the act of standing up for those who you disagree with simply because you believe they have the right to be heard. In today's world of "woke" content creators, everyone seems to miss this point. What started out as fairly clear cut issues such as racism and homophobia has now bled into grey areas around vaccines and gain of function research.

On the latter, should we not be concerned about this? We're in the middle of a global pandemic and we're not allowed to discuss whether GoF research is too risky? We're not allowed to discuss the nuances of what a "lab leak" may really entail? For example, I think the theory that a researcher collecting specimens from the wild accidentally infecting people in wuhan or themselves holds a lot of merit. Yet, it cannot be discussed.

We should be outraged. And, back on the topic of anti-vaxers. They kind of have a point. Why should they trust the government, the CDC, the WHO and the like? What have they done to prove they are trustworthy at this point? Shutting down open discussion around this topic will only make the situation worse, not better.

I am American, but I believe the American view of "we must allow everything so that important things aren't censored" is wrong. I believe it is possible to avoid the slippery slope and just ban certain things. For example, Nazi images are banned in Germany. In a sense, banning anti-vaccine propaganda is an even more important issue.

on the one hand, i think that calling this "censorship" is wrong because, in my understanding, "censorship" is an activity of the government in an attempt to remove the (presumably dissenting) voice of the populace. this is simply a company refining its product in an attempt to make it more attractive to current, or potential, consumers.

on the other hand, masks and vaccines have been so conflated with political ideology that it's easy to see why people immediately make the leap to "censorship" and it does highlight the critical reality that internet corporations either do, or believe they do, own your content and can remove it in order to suit their ends.

What an awesome idea. People who have consistently been wrong and censored the correct people are making more rules to censor more. More censorship and coercion will definitely convince people to take the shots. As someone who's fully vaccinated against polio, smallpox, chickenpox, measles etc., I still get called an anti-vaxxer. My buddies in the military who have more vaccinations than the general public get called anti-vaxxer because they don't want to take the COVID vaccine since they have already had covid infection. Amazing.

Currently, the government of Canada has misinformation on their own YouTube page and government site:

1. The Canadian government uploaded "How do I know COVID-19 vaccines are safe without long-term data?" on March 25, 2021, 4 months after vaccine was authorized under the interim order and when merely 4.45% of Canada was fully vaccinated. The government's video completely sidesteps the entirely valid question about lack of long-term safety data and stated: "Clinical trials for COVID-19 vaccines have been taking place since the spring of 2020 and millions of people around the world have already been vaccinated. The vast majority of side effects from vaccines are minor and occur soon after vaccination." The video obviously doesn't answer the actual question about lack of long-term safety data because it's impossible to know this in the very short period that the vaccines have been in the market. Without knowing this data, it is also impossible to give informed consent to the treatment.

One-Third of the drugs approved by the FDA and (by inference) Health Canada from 2001 through 2010 had major safety issues years after the medications were made widely available to patients. 71 of the 222 drugs approved were withdrawn, required a "black box" warning on side effects or warranted a safety announcement about new risks. The median follow-up period was 11.7 years and it took a median of 4.2 years after the drugs were approved for these safety concerns to come to light and issues were more common among psychiatric drugs, biologic drugs, drugs that were granted "accelerated approval" and drugs that were approved near the regulatory deadline for approval. Drugs ushered through an accelerated approval process were among those that had higher rates of safety interventions.

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/26253...

So when the median follow-up period was 11.7 years and it took a median of 4.2 years after the drugs were approved for these safety concerns to come to light and this was more common for those given "accelerated approval", is it not a valid for people to be concerned about long-term safety tests? With such a horrible track record for drug approvals and delayed withdrawals and discoveries of side effects, coercing young, fit and healthy people with negligible risks to inject an irreversible, involuntary, non-long term safety tested, short-lasting, unaccountable and rushed vaccine without any guarantees of how many and how often boosters will be required is wildly unreasonable.

https://youtu.be/f4lJHthI0tE

2. The government also uploaded a video titled "Do I need to get the vaccine if I've already had and recovered from COVID-19?" on September 3, 2021. The video shows Dr. Marc-André Langlois, Executive Director of the Coronavirus Variants Rapid Response Network (CoVaRR-Net) and Professor, Faculty of Medicine, University of Ottawa, state that you should still receive both COVID-19 vaccine doses even if you’ve previously had a COVID-19 infection. The video completely fails to explain the rationale behind inoculating those with prior infection induced natural immunity when over 15 studies have now demonstrated that individuals with natural immunity from prior infection have longer lasting and stronger protection against infection, symptomatic disease and hospitalization compared to the vaccine-induced immunity. We have had over 18 months and millions of cases to work with world wide to study natural immunity and yet, Dr. Langlois, claims that it is still unclear how long natural immunity protection from an infection lasts and unclear of the reinfection from variants. Health officials had a 1 year head start to study natural immunity from infection before the vaccine was even rolled out, and yet they are falsely claiming that they know more about the vaccine than natural immunity. This, clearly shows that the government's claims are not based on any science or logic.

https://youtu.be/wGbZc7q9Dpk

3. The government also uploaded a video titled "How long does it take for the COVID-19 vaccine to work after I receive it?" on September 3, 2021. The video again shows Dr. Marc-André Langlois, state that the second dose of the vaccine "boosts" the immune response and is essential "for longer lasting protection and better protection against the variants." This is also misleading because we know now that the fully vaccinated effectiveness declines to anywhere between just 16% to 66% in 3-6 months.

https://youtu.be/1jUh0VvG-b4

4. Even Health Canada's September 16, 2021 approval for the Pfizer vaccine misleadingly claims it prevents COVID even though they know that it is now uncontested that the vaccine does not "prevent" COVID in any meaningful way. It's just a potential severe symptom mitigator, not a prevention:

> "COMIRNATY is indicated for active immunization to prevent coronavirus disease 2019"

https://covid-vaccine.canada.ca/info/regulatory-decision-sum...

5. Health Canada approved Pfizer on September 16, 2021 using 6 month old outdated data (data cut-off dated March 13, 2021) claiming the vaccine showed a vaccine efficacy of 91.3%. Why use 6 month old data? They also said it's to "prevent coronavirus disease 2019". We know it does not "prevent" COVID. We know it's a potential severe symptom mitigator, not a prevention.

https://covid-vaccine.canada.ca/info/regulatory-decision-sum...

6. Quebec’s July 25, 2021 onwards "Being vaccinated, it’s a win Contest" lottery makes misleading and false claims such as "reap the benefits of optimal long-term protection, including protection from the variants of the virus." It is uncontested that the vaccine efficacy declines in 3-6 months and this doesn’t provide "optimal long-term protection". So Quebec is clearly offering such monetary benefits under false promises.

https://cdn-contenu.quebec.ca/cdn-contenu/sante/documents/Pr...

Plus informed consent requires the consent to be provided without coercion and without undue inducement and unfair incentives. Yet governments are running multi-million dollar lotteries to violate informed consent.

7. Ontario government also makes false promises when mandating vaccines stating: "You can protect yourself, your loved ones and your community by getting the COVID-19 vaccine." This is similar to the Federal government's misleading claims saying "You’ll have very good protection against infection, including against most current variants of concern."

The vaccine neither prevents you from catching COVID, not spreading it and the effectiveness declines in 3-6 months. Yet governments continue to mislead people.

8. Similarly, in the US, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) changed the definition of a "vaccine" after August 26, 2021:

CDC defines Immunity as "Protection from an infectious disease. If you are immune to a disease, you can be exposed to it without becoming infected."

On August 26, 2021, CDC defined a vaccine as: "A product that stimulates a person’s immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease, protecting the person from that disease."

https://web.archive.org/web/20210826113846/https://www.cdc.g...

However, by September 2, 2021, CDC changed the definition of a vaccine to: "A preparation that is used to stimulate the body’s immune response against diseases.

https://web.archive.org/web/20210902194040/https://www.cdc.g...

These 2 have very different meanings. Till August 26, vaccines were supposed to "produce immunity to a specific disease, protecting the person from that disease" whereas now they claim it only "stimulates the body’s immune response against diseases" - i.e. it doesn’t produce immunity, nor protects the person from the disease.

Based on these new changes, any therapy that boosts the immune system would meet the new pseudo-definitions of "vaccine" and "protect". Even a smoothie with healthy fruits and vegetables such as spinach, yoghurt and garlic would qualify as vaccines as they "stimulate the body’s immune response against diseases."

9. Even though Pfizer and Federal government states that the Pfizer vaccine is effectiveness starts "1 week after the second dose", yet their data continues to use 2 weeks for detailing the breakthrough cases.

https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/drugs-health...

The number 1 principle of doctor-patient relationship is informed consent. All this misleading messaging by the governments makes people give "misinformed" consent. Imagine you were told a medical procedure is 95% effective at preventing you from catching HIV without any disclosures that this effectiveness declines rapidly. 3 months later, you realize that you still caught HIV, it was only around 16-66% effective and few months from now, you have an even higher chance of catching and spreading COVID. Would you be okay with this?

I have countless such examples. Those pushing for censoring misinformation are the biggest purveyor of misinformation.

For those who were keeping track:

The virus is just like the flu it's not a problem

. The ICUs aren't that overloaded, theres no reason to worry

.. -> We shouldn't have a lock down that is this strict allow people to make decisions on their own

... -> Restaurants shouldn't be required to be closed for indoor dining

.... -> Let people chose to wear the mask or not (Considering the US/CDC's terrible stance on masks that wasn't safe on a society level [The US gov ignored and discouraged stronger masks such as KN95, KF94, FFP2 for civilian usage])

.... -> The vaccine is too new, need more info

..... -> It's not fda approved, can't take it

...... -> My freedoms/won't get it/don't have more info

It's not just citiziens that are spouting nonsense about this. It's government officials spouting this. I talked with an liqour board agent about why fining a lady operating a bar with live music during the peak of the pandemic is the correct thing to do. (Executive order banned indoor dining and alcohol consumption in the state) He literally try to discredit me at every step of the way. This was an executive order + strict liqour board rules put down.

A little off topic, but I wish we could stop using this nice-sounding "hesitant" euphemism. Hesitant implies that people are weighing options and open to changing their minds. With the amount of time they have been available and the overabundance of evidence that the COVID vaccines are safe, effective, and that they decrease hospitalizations and death, I find it very hard to believe that anyone is still "on the fence" about it.

> She thinks they’re taking it down because they don’t want people to know the truth.

And there it is--this doesn't sound like a person who is weighing their options in good faith. It sounds like someone who is already convinced of what the truth is. Let's stop calling them "hesitant".

The only solution as I see it is to stop using YouTube.

Another reason to NOT by YouTube Premium, and leave my spare phone on autoplay when going out, so that youtube ad customers get to pay for supporting the biggest scam operation ever. 80% of the ads I get would never pass a sanity-check in my home country, such ads are simply illegal on our TV. But hey, the american is spreading scam ads, so lets just accept that.

I had to wait for 7 hours at the ER last night. People who choose to not vaccinate shouldn’t be allowed entry to the hospital.

Should read "Activist tech company bans doctors and scientists."

This site is disgusting.

good

Good!

It would be useful for people to look up what the definition of a cult is and try and determine which side of the Covid vaccine debate that applies to.

Never thought I'd see so much anti-vaccine rhetoric on hacker news. Very disappointing.

@dang, maybe it's time to follow YouTube their example before this forum encourages more deaths?

Don't be evil, eh?

why not set the terms for anti-vax or “vaccine hesitant” behavior where people are deprioritized in terms of getting medical treatment for diseases they refuse to get vaccinated for?

Not rejected of course but if you deny Covid-19 vaccine you are behind in line after people who did get it.

“Reap what you sow”.

YouTube set to win coveted heel-dragging award 2021. Yes protecting free speech on anything but science and public health.

"Freedom of speech is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or a community to articulate their opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation, censorship, or legal sanction. The right to freedom of expression has been recognized as a human right in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and international human rights law by the United Nations."

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

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/principle

It is hard to sympathize with people who sow disinformation that costs people lives.

But it is also hard to watch principles being ignored for immediate benefit.

Principles are tested not when it is convenient for you to follow them.

What I think is needed is people spending more time to figure out how it is possible to reconcile fight against misinformation with preserving basic human right which is ability to express your opinion.

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

"In the United States, some categories of speech are not protected by the First Amendment. According to the Supreme Court of the United States, the U.S. Constitution protects free speech while allowing limitations on certain categories of speech.[1]

(...)

Categories of speech that are given lesser or no protection by the First Amendment (and therefore may be restricted) include obscenity, fraud, child pornography, speech integral to illegal conduct, speech that incites imminent lawless action, speech that violates intellectual property law, true threats, and commercial speech such as advertising. Defamation that causes harm to reputation is a tort and also an exception to free speech."

So in short. There are existing laws that can be used to decide what is and what is not protected by freedom of speech.

These laws should in my opinion be applied by judicial system, not invented on the spot by corporations.

People should understand they are responsible for what they say online just as if they used other methods of communication.

And if the exceptions to free speech are incorrect or incomplete, we should demand that the law is corrected in a democratic process rather than having companies act on their own.

This is so dumb, vaccine proponents doesn't have anything to hide (like censoring information from vaccine opponents gives the impression of).

The challenge is to determine how misinformation is defined. Would peer reviewed scientific papers that come to different conclusions than the current CDC guidelines be considered anti-vaccine? Should we consider conflicts of interest or sources of funding when determining misinformation? Are open ended questions about the safety and efficacy allowed? What about other medications?

We know vaccinated people still replicate and transmit the virus. So the only reason to get the vaccine is to potentially lessen the symptoms. With lessened symptoms you will be less likely to add to the clogged up the hospital system. Should we also ban food ads that contribute to obese or diabetic folks clogging up the hospitals? What about people choosing to ride motorcycles? Kids trampoline ads? Why do we still have cigarettes?

Given that youtube looks, walks and quacks precisely like the classic "public forum where free speech is valued" that we all know and love, this move is clearly a massive act of deceit.

Who's next? People who are pro-vax, fully vaccinated, but skeptical of proprietary software (ie https://shitposter.club/notice/ABq6GiHXERyKEqCCqO or https://stallman.org/archives/2020-nov-feb.html#16_February_... )?

>YouTube is banning anti-forced Sars COVID2 mRNA drug activists and blocking all anti-forced Sars COVID2 mRNA drug content

FTFWaPo

I'm not an anti-vaxxer. I'm happy to have my measles, mumps, rubella, and other vaccines. I'm looking forward to getting the new HPV vaccine (gardasil) now that they've started recommending it for adults and you can actually get your doctor to give it to you (a couple years ago they would refuse if you asked and said you'd pay for 100% of it).

Resisting this latest moneygrab by big pharma and power grab by authoritarians is not "anti-vaccine".

That's incredibly disingenuous. Because this drug is fundamentally different from what a vaccine is.

If the authoritarians and their followers pushing this can't even admit that it so radically different from a vaccine as to be outright lying to call it one, how can we even talk about it?

I can't tell if I'm more disgusted by the anti-vaxxers or the censorship.

IMHO no content should be banned, ever. The only thing is to be held responsible for the content if you are not going to be impartial.

For example, instead of banning videos of anti-vaxxers, put a claim progress list clearly visible together with the video that can be maintained by those of opposing views.

For example, according to some anti-vaxxers, people with mRNA vaccines are about to die en mass. In places like Portugal, full vaccination rate approaches %90. Wouldn't be good to keep the video and see if Portuguese are dying?

Content moderation by elimination is one of the biggest sins of the internet era. The internet has become a place where history doesn't exist because you can't have a history without having the artefacts that make it. We should be able to look back a few years back and see who said what.

Techno-fascism rears its ugly head once more. These mRNA shots aren't flawless medications with zero side effects. People are getting strokes. People are getting heart inflammation. It's not even working against new variants. The emperor really doesn't have clothes. I've had dozens of vaccines in my life. The Covid vaccine might be the worst-performing vaccine of all time as far as effectiveness goes. You need 3 booster shots apparently in less than 9 months and you'll probably still get Covid. But meanwhile lets throw out all human rights that hundreds of millions died for and many more suffered for.

The reason freedom of speech is a must in a free society is that speaking is the same as thinking. Who watches the watchmen? There is no amount of "misinformation" that could ever hold a candle to the absolute evil that has been perpetrated throughout history by outlawing or banning or shunning free speech.

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