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.
The algorithm has only made the site worse in my experience and I always go directly to my subscriptions to be able to at least see things I'm subbed to.
hell I would not be surprised if with in 5 years they remove the subscribe button completely, replacing it with just the notification bell
I've also noticed that many content creators are now offering email newsletters (such as Tom Scott) and encouraging subscribers to connect outside of YouTube, presumably as a response to this.
This is obnoxious since I tend to watch series of documentaries, and I prefer to watch many episodes in a row. Stuff just poofs out of existence.
The feed on the home page is recommendations. That may, by chance, include things you're subscribed to but it will also include other recommended content and possibly not recommend things you are subscribed to as it's not meant to be a second copy of the subscription feed.
If I subscribe to a youtuber with a back-catalog of several years of videos, I want recommendations of those prior videos, not only their brand new ones.
And yes, there is the subscriptions feed, but it only shows new videos from subscribed-to channels; it doesn't function as a 'recommended' list for your subscriptions, which is what I miss and want.
It's a hard problem to solve.
Changing the Algorithm would mean the content is less discoverable but could still spread outside the platform via alternative methods, such as Tweets, Links, emails, slack, etc.
There is a difference, and the effect is not the same
It’s just not on YouTube.
We don’t live in the reality where the local book store and media owner keeping information away actually had an impact.
This only effects YouTube. Of the millions of other sites out there.
I think even the smart people are a bit stuck on YouTubes marketing effects on their limbic brain versus the reality; the bad info is just a Google search or friend posting in private away for anyone still.
YouTube is not the center of the internet.
How many people died because of increased infections? Is that Youtube's fault or anyone else who repeated the CDCs guidelines?
Can as much be said for anti vaxxers? Did they make the mistake and recant it? Did they change their view with new evidence? No, they're misinformed and close-minded. They ignored millions upon millions of safe vaccine uses, pointing to unsubstantiated edge cases and ridiculous conspiracies. The CDC was not buying into such rubbish and I hope they never do.
Now in this case youtube is probably right "scientifically", but what if they weren't like with masks? You basically have 0 discussion or challenge allowed to the authorities position.
And lets just bring in the recent controversy here, a panel of scientists said third shots shouldn't be administered. Yet the government decided they should. Which position will youtube censor?
There’s no obligation for YouTube to give terrorists a platform. Regarding a booster shot, I’m sure they will make reasonable calls, nearly exclusively only silencing bad-faith actors. Much like their policy towards CP or terrorist content.
You didn't address a very important point that the parent comment made which is that trusted authorities like the CDC are more likely to correct their mistakes whereas anti-vax propagandists will never retract their statements. That's part of what makes the CDC trustworthy compared to the propagandists.
The fact that the CDC or any other trusted public organization has technically made a mistake in the past seems like an irrelevant distraction. Haven't you ever had an argument with a spouse or family member where you called out something they were doing and they came back with, "Look who's taking."? And that felt like a bullshit tactic, right?
Accusations of hypocrisy are a really common fallacy in debate. They contribute nothing to the discussion at hand and are basically just an appeal to emotion. And what you're doing is just a version of that.
Well good thing that'll never happen again, right? /s
Given the repeated failings and intentional or unintentional misinformation we've seen thus far, why do you believe them messing up is a "special case"?
See: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/05/health/covid-vaccine-firs...
From that article:
> Harald Schmidt, an expert in ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania, said that it is reasonable to put essential workers ahead of older adults, given their risks, and that they are disproportionately minorities. “Older populations are whiter, ” Dr. Schmidt said. “Society is structured in a way that enables them to live longer. Instead of giving additional health benefits to those who already had more of them, we can start to level the playing field a bit.”
In fact, if there was a supply problem, the best populations to give vaccines to first may have been some of the most "privileged" people in our society (even if we don't like them). Frequent travelers, college kids who are going to party anyway, etc. (Of course, people who work in retail stores, or front like health workers were obvious groups that nobody disagreed with.)
The point is, _who_ got the vaccine first wasn't decided by science, but by politics.
I admit to fudging my eligibility in order to get the vaccine early. I may do this again to get the booster if I decide I need it.
That's okay to you?
I think it's absolutely abhorrent. Governments technically have a full monopoly on violence/power and to have them lie to you for what - the "greater good?"
You're also putting the entirely of all people hesitant or unwilling to get the vaccination into a large group which you can then generalize (albeit foolishly)
I hate that the CDC did that action, only because it gave skeptics another reason to distrust them. But it is 100% clear to anyone who, you know, was alive when it happened that they did that to prevent a mask shortage for those who needed them most.
I would rather have seen some emergency declaration that N95s must be seized from stores and go to healthcare workers, but that would have caused perhaps an even bigger panic. Because then, everyone would have freaked out, vs. what they did. Now, we only have people who were already going to distrust government giving a shit about the mask declaration last year.
Back to good-faith vs. bad-faith: I'm not certain there is more than a hair's worth of anti-vaccine content that is produced with good intention or even attempted to be backed by statistics. Put simply, I wager there is no anti-vaccine content produced out of a legitimate, well-founded public interest. It's charlatans, fools, anti-science and anti-authority interests.
What is youtube's position? Will it delete all government communications because the scientists said on, or will it delete all scientific discussion because the government said yes?
Anyway, like I've said in another post and in a blog before, I think Youtube has less responsibility to be a neutral platform than ISPs and registrars do. If you want to host content, you should be able to do it yourself with Internet connectivity and DNS - IMO those should be "common carriers" that don't get the privilege of bias the same way platforms like Youtube do.
Think swallowing a tube of veterinary-grade medicine is safer than an injection that hundreds of millions of people have gotten with few problems? Go for it, on your home server with a domain name.
Now, I'm gonna get some coffee.
We should listen to ourselves. If we don't have enough information to make an informed decision, then study and acquire that information. No one is responsible for you except for you - with the caveats of children/dependents being not responsible for themselves.
What Youtube or any other internet information says is irrelevant until you decide otherwise.
Do you think that YouTube did a good thing by allowing that content?
So which hypothesis would have most likely been true at the time? Not to mention that Dr. Fauci himself had admitted that it was a noble lie (aka pure propaganda and falsehoods).
Especially because it usually brought up by people that are consistently wrong about pretty much everything, while propagating active lies, as a defense against anyone pointing out the utter BS they are spreading. That gets tiresome.
Or I would suggest that thought police should lock those with the above-mentioned opinions up.
They didn't do a good or a bad thing - they were a blank canvas someone put their art(video) on. Recently, that blank canvas is only willing to have certain art present on it - that's not a good thing. The only thing keeping it going is an inertial mass of subscribers, which over [possibly a long] time will dissipate.
Maybe a poorly thought out analogy but think about cars. There are a ton of car accidents every year, a good number of which result in death. But we don’t ban cars because they’re essential for the way many people live. But if 50% of all car journeys resulted in accidents? Maybe we’d be having a different conversation.
Although I do agree with you that anti-vaxers should be treated no different than common terrorists; as Americans, under the law, they have a right to declare that they are terrorists and give their little illogical terrorist rants. The First Amendment is very clear on what is not covered, and the courts have repeatedly confirmed that being wrong, being disingenuous, and lying is covered (as long as you are not committing perjury or other similar, actual, crimes).
Our founding fathers knew exactly what they were doing when they penned this: in their day, they also had their form of denialism. The first amendment is, essentially, "It is better to keep silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubts.", but weaponized against the idiots that shall forever plague us.
That said, if a rational adult, one that we have, as a society, cannot tell the difference between the truth and the lies, then we have both failed as a society, but also have trusted an adult to actually act like one and they, personally, made the choice to act like a spoiled brat; acting like a spoiled brat is not a victimless crime, and sometimes, but not always, they are punished like an adult for violating the trust of the society that they live in.
"Vaxxers", as you have so put it, (or as I like to call them, normal human beings) have reached a level of proof that vaccines are safe, and that, specifically, the COVID-19 vaccines currently in deployment are several magnitudes safer than, say, contracting COVID-19 itself.
"Anti-Vaxxers", however, have (un?)intentionally proved that vaccines work, performing one of the largest voluntary human drug trials in history as the placebo group. Their sacrifice shall, hopefully, not be forgotten (lest we repeat it).
No one has a right to harm another person. Knowingly transmitting an infectious disease, after being repeatedly informed that it is, indeed, an infectious disease, and that the victims, worldwide, total almost 5 million worldwide and continues to climb, and they still continue to spread it, that is what makes someone a terrorist: you harm, maim, and kill people to spread discord. Why you do it is immaterial, "I didn't know", "I didn't understand", "I was following orders", are not excuses in a court of law.
You can now make a non-emotionally decision whether removing it or not is actually a good idea because the arbitrary appeal to emotion evens out.
This is the way think about such stuff, not by making arbitrary emotional "arguments" which can not be proven or disproved and may as well be completely irrelevant or even in reverse.
Whenever the "logic" of "X people (less) die if we do Y" is used its an attempt to make it emotional instead of rational it should ring some bells and raise some flags. You can see this with autonomous driving or gun control an many other topics. Its some kind of appeal to emotion fallacy combined with false cause fallacy. And instead of convincing anyone or find common ground it just pushes people to more extreme opposition. Because you "literally kill people if you disagree with X".
Also, I would love to see what common ground looks like with anti-vaxxers. I don’t think they are willing to give an inch on this, but willing to be proven wrong.
Anyway you missed the point where I assumed the death evens out aka try make an argument that isn't based on emotion an "backed" by numbers we can not know.
>Also, I would love to see what common ground looks like with anti-vaxxers. I don’t think they are willing to give an inch on this, but willing to be proven wrong.
I'm not an anti-vaxxer but I'm p sure the common ground for most of them would be to let people decide. Anti-vaxxers who want to remove pro-vaccine information to prevent people from dying form the vaccine seem to be rather rare. As far as I know most are perfectly fine with anyone voluntary injecting toxic and dying. They might be wrong on almost everything but that doesn't mean common ground can not be found.
Also by picking the furthest away extreme position to proof no common ground is possible is kind silly. We wan common ground for the majority on both sides not with the extremists.
People who refuse vaccines for dangerous contagious diseases directly affect others: they may pass that disease to me, to my children, to my elderly family members, etc. At this point their choice is causing me harm. What is my remedy if this happens? I can’t sue them for the death of a loved one, I can’t hold them accountable criminally.
The only path forward I see is that if you choose to not vaccinate, that you also choose to fully isolate yourself until the pandemic is over: no going to work, school, social gatherings, etc. I would be comfortable with that common ground. But that’s not what is being offered by you or even those who refuse to get vaccinated. It is always the pro-vaccine/science/reason people that must give something up for the benefit of those refusing to get vaccinated, which is less common ground and more of a one sided demand.
If you dont want to be run over at any cost its your task to stay away form cars. Similarly if you dont wanna get covid at any cost its your task to hide in the basement and dont let anyone in vaccinated or not.
Alternatively you can accept that life is a deadly risk and do the common sense things to reduce the risk for you and your loved ones and move on. This may be taking the vaccine, putting on a mask, avoiding crowded places or even ware a warn west so you are less likely to be run over by a car. All of that is fine. It stops being fine if you demand others to do something so you can feel safe. Especially if what you demand infringed basic rights and/or is not solving the problem but just lowers the risk by an unknown possibly insignificant amount.
Its reasonable to demand that cars have working breaks because they need them anyway. The breaks aren't there to protect you from cars. Its however not reasonable to demand that all cars have advanced pedestrian detection that makes in impossible to run over people. It doesn't matter if you would feel safer that way or that it would safe X numbers of lives. Not because we dont care about lives but because making such a requirement would simply make most car driving people criminals and not actually save lives. Similarly if you demand unvaccinated people to stay at home, all you get is that you criminalizing people for leaving their home. It wont make them take the vaccine and it wont protect you from covid.
There is no both sides to the vaccine debate. COVID-19 vaccine information led to one of the first rabies deaths in a long time because the treatment involves a vaccine given after a bite, and all this anti-vaxx propaganda is doing nothing but sowing FUD about one of the most obvious cost-benefit analysis’s that can be done in the field of medicine. And during a pandemic no less. YouTube has no obligation to suffer these fools.
Bravo, YouTube.
So should we ban all junk food advertising on Youtube? Also, how about a ban on all pharmaceutical advertising on Youtube (which is the norm in most countries)?
People keep repeating that the solution to bad speech is more speech, and more speech is more money for YouTube.
Unsurprisingly, more speech on this subject has not managed to drown out the nonsense, but it has done a great job of amplifying it.
Aren't they already 'demonetised' (as Youtube terms its withdrawal of adverts and hence money)?
I agree though, simply not recommending them (i.e. you can be linked to them, or get them from search results only) would be better.
That affects only content creator. YouTube, even if not directly profiting from ads, profits indirectly from you staying on the site and moving on to other 'monetized' videos eventually.
Or maybe Google is concerned. And Facebook just doesn't care.
But the root cause is "algorithms for increasing engagement will prefer shock content." Solve that, and they wouldn't need to band-aid issues like this.
Is that overboard?
There are simpler explanations.
“You’re not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations.” - Joe Biden
there was never a basis for this statement, making it clear disinformation. Grass roots research doesn't fit the bill of what that word means.
Not to defend Biden, but the vaccine decreases the probabilities of getting COVID. You still get infected with sars-cov-2, and you are probably still contagious, but it's unlikely you get COVID (as in COronaVIrus Disease, the disease produced by sars-cov-2 virus (or coronavirus), that is the thing that eventually kills you and/or jeopardizes the public health system).