YouTube deletes rapper's 'Let's Go Brandon' song claiming medical misinformation
foxnews.com
foxnews.com
Search "Let's go brandon" and it should be the number 1 result, it's #23 on trending for music still, it was #1, and it peaked at #1 on itunes hiphop charts for US. But you don't get it unless you search for "let's go brandon song", which makes me think somebody messed with it.
[youtube] _2khAmMTAjI: Downloading webpage
[youtube] _2khAmMTAjI: Refetching age-gated info webpage
WARNING: unable to download video info webpage: HTTP Error 410: Gone
ERROR: Sign in to confirm your age
This video may be inappropriate for some users.
The following content has been identified by the YouTube community as inappropriate or offensive to some audiences.
Was it really "the community" though?
Anyway, that video doesn't seem very out there at all to me. That the CIA has committed various things most reasonable people would classify as "crimes" and "terrorism" seems like common knowledge to me.
I would put money on Rumble becoming a major force in social media over the next ten years. It feels more like early YouTube than YouTube itself has felt for a long time.
Case in point: this article[0] was removed from Wikipedia without good reasoning. It would seem that the name of the article itself was inflammatory enough to the powers that be.
[0] https://everipedia.org/wiki/lang_en/List_of_authoritarian_re...
There's a discussion of why it was deleted here - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletio...
Primarily because 'this "list" is inherently subjective and constitutes [synthesised conclusions]'; you'll also note on that page that "List of authoritarian regimes supported by the Soviet Union or Russia" was deleted at the same time - was that also at the behest of the US "powers that be"?
Censorbeast hit again.
https://twitter.com/potus/status/1451544259992203266
The goal of this is to reclaim “let’s go Brandon” and it’s obvious.
EDIT: for those who don’t know what “Let’s go Brandon” means, a child comment linked to a 40 second video: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kQ8asiDn2_A&feature=youtu.be
For those who don’t watch or attend sport events — this happens at many of the events lately.
> This whole thing got started earlier this month, at the Talladega Superspeedway. Brandon Brown had just won a NASCAR race. And sportscaster Kelli Stavast at one point commented during an interview with Brown afterward how the crowd seemed to be chanting in his honor: ‘Let’s go, Brandon!”
>Unfortunately, that’s not actually what they were chanting. Not even close. The crowd was very clearly addressing President Biden, not Brandon. Only, with an f-bomb in front of his name instead of “Let’s go!”
Video: https://youtu.be/kQ8asiDn2_A
Source: https://bgr.com/politics/lets-go-brandon-the-backstory-of-th...
"Dogwhistling" doesn't mean "saying something that means something else", it means using coded or indirect language to communicate something to a specific group of people while hoping that the general audience doesn't pick up on your meaning. Everybody knows what "let's go Brandon" is code for, and the people who say it aren't trying to hide what they really mean.
(And yes, I'm aware of the Brandon meme.)
"Let's go Brandon" was #1 on itunes for days. Another version was #3. Another version was #17. All at the same time! Huge swaths of people from from highly diverse backgrounds are unifing against what they see as poor leadership.
They are totally trying to sow FUD into the narrative form political purpose.
1) I think it's safe to assume that Joe Biden has no SEO expertise, which means that someone with the power to send the President of the United States out for a photo op does. They went out and found someone named Brandon for Biden to pose for a photo op with.
2) To me it's terrifying that Presidential actions are now being dictated by SEO concerns, but it is interesting.
3) I would have expected this kind of thing from Trump, since he was obsessed with his public image. But apparently Biden, or at least someone close to him, is similarly obsessed.
4) Reading between the lines, the fact they responded in this way makes it appear that the administration is becoming concerned with the the growing anti-Biden sentiment that has arisen in the wake of the Afghanistan debacle and issues with cognitive decline that are becoming increasingly harder to hide. That town hall was a disaster [1].
[1] https://www.newsweek.com/joe-biden-town-hall-strange-moments...
Would be interested to know other examples of prominent politicians doing this. I'm pretty sure I recall a British politician doing this a year or two ago. I can't remember exactly who it was or what it was about, but I recall it seemed very obvious what was going on - moreso than this Biden/Brandon instance.
Does this really surprise you?
- The opposing parties leadership is censored more than every authoritarian around the world.
- stories about Biden’s son is censored
- bad stories about Biden are censored
- every person connected to the opposing party is being “investigated”
- the DOJ literally sent out a statement saying they were going to investigate parents going to school boards as “domestic terrorists” (at worst, these are local crimes, if at all)
- anyone who has claimed election interference on the 2020 election has been threatened with lawsuits, lost jobs, etc
- a majority of the opposition media figures are censored
- no one could attend the inauguration even
What does this all have in common? They want the opposition to have no voice and theirs to be the only one you see. They try to intimidate and censor such that they have the only voice. “Let’s go Brandon” was too hard to censor, so they’re now doing this. Remove, rewrite, repeat
The reason I say that is now opposition content is removed, they can put out their content.
> - anyone who has claimed election interference on the 2020 election has been threatened with lawsuits, lost jobs, etc
I feel this is an especially interesting claim because the only people i've seen get hit with law suits for this have continually defamed specific companies and not just someone shouting in the street that it was fraudulent.
HN is not the place for this. Save this for reddit or facebook.
And yes, equal concern for any president. Trump largely cared mostly about stuffing his pockets full of money.
* Afghanistan pull out: Disaster. Many Americans STILL trapped in Afghanistan while Biden looks like cornholio on national TV
* 100+ days of crisis at the border. No law and order. No enforcement of law. Massive crisis that didn't exist on Jan 5th.
* Massive inflation under way. Unseen failure from the top
* Supply chain collapsing by corruption, shit laws and mandates
* Fauci has been undeniably shown the liar we all knew he was before. Corrupt POS with funding lies and experimentation on animals.
* FBI ignores violence across America and instead goes after "domestic terrorists"... aka parents who don't blindly obey the gestapo tactics.
And I didn't say America was destroyed... I said Biden was in the process of destroying - and the above scandals as a starting point... they show an inept or corrupt plan that is in effect destroying America as we speak.
Lets Go Brandon.
First and foremost, there's a reason why political discussion is not welcomed here, as it gets ugly really fast.
You made a simple point and I wanted to clarify it:
> biden gets a cut from his family making millions on his name
I'm not aware how Biden Sr. is cashing in on his son's "work". Please note that I'm not contesting the fact that his son's role was some degree of corruption, but I haven't seen compelling evidence that the money was flowing back to his dad.
Please stay on topic.
Hard to stay on topic with you moving the goal posts...
Can we get an itinerary so I know where the goal posts are going to be? That way we can try to synchronize what "on topic is" since it apparently changes from one post to the next with you...
Disclaimer, I voted for Biden but am willing to call out his failures at any time.
The reason why I'm ok with "censoring" the Hunter stories at that time is that it was purely whataboutism and a distraction. Just like with the buttery males, it was never about the professed concerns, it was about making them look bad.
If this issue (and others like it) could be discussed in a non partisan way I'd be all for it, but it's not. This hand wringing is insincere at best and should be ignored.
I've yet to see anything that indicates these concerned citizens care about principles rather than tribal politics. Happy to be proven wrong, but not holding my breath.
Even if there was truth to it (I do think a genteel corruption was in play but not to this extent), these arguments are being made in bad faith. There's no concern for actual corruption as they don't seem to care when it happens in any other context -- it's just "gotcha" politics.
US foreign policy in its very nature is corrupt (it's the lobbying arm of big business). Let's shine a light on it but that light needs to be colorblind to red and blue.
Without recognition of the corruption of the previous administration this dialog is simply partisan pandering. I'd be more than happy to share my criticisms for the administration and its party (including this aforementioned corruption) but if your concern does not cross party lines then it's no concern of mine.
And you will always find news articles telling you not to believe your lying eyes. Sadly most Americans have grown a default assumption that the media is lying to you, which at least in this case is true. Reading the first hand emails gives a very different impression.
"The scope of work should also include organization of a visit of widely recognized and influential current and/or former US policy-makers to Ukraine in November aiming to conduct meetings with and bring positive signal/message and support on Nikolay’s issue to the Ukrainian top officials above with the ultimate purpose to close down for any cases/pursuits against Nikolay [Burisma founder] in Ukraine."
https://thenewamerican.com/assets/sites/2/251024_1.jpg
It's very difficult to read that email and not come to the conclusion that Hunter was being paid to ask his dad to shut down the investigation into Burisma. Especially since later emails indicate that Joe Biden ultimately did meet with Burisma execs.
>but if your concern does not cross party lines then it's no concern of mine.
Make no mistakes I would love to see any elected official that engages in corruption -- Republican or Democrat -- dragged to prison.
While there are a large number of who are just using this to play political gotcha, it is going too far to accuse anyone concerned about this scandal.
I am among those that see another Trump presidency as an existential threat and am willing to look the other way if it helps prevent that.
As long as the political climate remains as it is I don't feel I have any other choice.
The fact checking suggests an entirely different interpretation - https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/10/21/fact...
Not least that everyone wanted Shokin out. And this is before you get to Shokin investigating Burisma re: the years 2010-12; i.e. before Hunter Biden even joined the company. Also Shokin's Burisma probe was in 2014; the international pressure to oust Shokin was in 2016.
It all just falls apart under the barest fact check. C'mon.
What gets conveniently overlooked by those pushing this story is the fact that the only interest was in the story itself, as an attack angle. To hell with that.
And did any of those stories relate to Joe Biden?
Stories about Trumps children trend for weeks if there's anything negative... they don't get suppressed, questioned or challenged.
Hunter is accused of being a Crack Addict, a pedophile, selling influence, etc... each enough to sit in the media for weeks and it's all swept under the rug.
Trump supposedly says shithole and it's a national emergency... Biden supposedly gets a cut from his son's business dealings in China/Russia/etc and it's nothing.
How does Hunter relate to Joe? are you fucking serious?
The WSJ investigated that story at the time and said that there wasn't sufficient evidence. If you have issues, you should blame the WSJ. https://www.wsj.com/articles/hunter-bidens-ex-business-partn...
Note the following quote "corporate records reviewed by The Wall Street Journal show no role for Joe Biden"
If the right leaning WSJ isn't willing to support a story like this, why do you think it's true?
likewise, the laptop story was stopped because "its russian disinformation" even though 1) it never was and 2) those reasons never stop bad stories about Trump and family.
The main point of my post is that rumors sit in the new for months on Trump & crew... but "Journalists" suddenly care about "evidence" when it comes to Biden and Democrats?
"Media" is suppressing bad "rumors" about Biden and running rumors about Trump without issue. THAT is the issue and if you don't see the hypocrisy then you're part of the problem.
And right leaning?
Center: https://www.allsides.com/news-source/wall-street-journal-med...
It's much worse than that.
Virtually all news stories in 2020/early 2021 about Trump have been retracted by cnn.com since then.
Almost all sound bytes from the White House and Squad today are the opposite of what they said pre-election, especially about corona - they said they would refuse a vaccine developed under the Trump administration, and that vaccine mandates were not going to happen.
The most striking is that "Trump's Muslim travel ban list" was originally drawn up by the previous Obama administration. (The list was created because there's several countries that have disorganized passport control, so ICE can't verify any of those documents when required, which means they don't know who is trying to enter the US, when that mattered. With Open Borders, those people can now just walk across the Mexico border.)
It was a Windows-based LG machine. I can totally see how a 70 year old grifter wouldn't want to spend the money on the correct prop for the media.
Somehow, I'm supposed to simultaneously believe that a guy with sensitive material on laptops worth literal millions is just going to drop off multiple machines and never pick them up.... and that a Mac repair guy isn't smart enough to identify what is and what is not a Macbook.
Maybe the reason nobody believes Trump or his henchmen is because they lie so much. Stranger things have happened. As it is, all evidence about this entire ordeal points towards Trump's team trying to Benghazi Biden. Biden wanted a corrupt prosecutor out of power for the same reason that virtually every other leader of the western world did: dude was corrupt.
You don't like Rudy? Okay... now... why are you silent about Hunter? Joe? other stories about their corruption?
Why do you accept at face value rumors about the right - when many of those rumors turn out to be false or their "lies" turn out to be true? and then you'll support "biden wants" despite the fact that he's every bit the corrupt grifter you claim to despise in Rudy?
"all the evidence" This is about rumors and support/suppression of those rumors.
Again... rumors about Trump spend weeks in the news without facts - or against facts... journalists care about "all evidence" with Biden when that evidence has been proven lies time and time again.
If you support the hypocrisy, then you're a hypocrite. You'll push rumors against Trump and hide rumors against Biden because you don't care about truth.
I'd say that's related!
My hot take: Probably because every politician likely does it. They wouldn’t want to set any ball rolling that could hurt them in the future.
I don't see how that could have been "suppressed" if it only came out very recently.
I’m skeptical of the argument that recent vindication of a suppressed story somehow justifies its original suppression.
https://news.yahoo.com/hot-water-emails-uncovered-show-10061...
The senate report has interesting stuff
https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/HSGAC_Finance_Rep...
There’s also that time biden got the prosecutor investigating burisma fired (by withholding funds).
https://www.wsj.com/video/opinion-joe-biden-forced-ukraine-t...
Seems an awful like what Trump was impeached for...
Further, an associate of the Biden family confirmed all the emails were real and he told the family not to take Chinese money.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/who-is-tony-bobulinski-hunt...
Do it twice. It's okay, we'll wait.
This is effectively a disingenuous argument when the evidence clearly suggests that so called "reliable sources" are colluding to suppress content that is inconvenient for their political leanings.
Incidentally it also ensures that all of wikipedia leans left, since any outlets which run counter to leftist politics are rejected as unreliable by definition. It's a dishonest, preemptive dismissal of any alternative perspective and it is absolutely toxic to national discourse. In practice you are relying on a circular argument, wherein the self proclaimed arbiters of truth have also defined themselves, and only themselves, as "reliable sources".
"Glenn Greenwald Says CIA Duped Media About Hunter Biden Story " https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/glenn-greenwald-says...
But you are making ridiculous absurd statements. No, not everyone in the other part is getting investigated. No, not anyone who claimed interference is getting threatened. How would that be possible if up until the last week (and going well into the future), we're discussing this stuff?
This absurd hyperbole ruins whatever valid points you have because you look like the kind of commenter that HN was supposedly above, but for some reason dang decided to bump this explicitly political bs (with the expected political comments) to the front page. We didn't even try to get a better source than fox news?
If you care about this stuff (and you should), you need to disconnect it from political stuff. You're jumping in bed with people that lie.
Not the OC, but this is quite the claim considering you're doing exactly the same thing
Oddly, it’s pretty well hidden in search, while other, older town halls came right up. I had to select a number of specific options in YouTube’s search just to find it.
News straight up lied to control the 2020 election narrative and outcome. We have watched an unprecedented fast fall into authoritarianism. Major networks are all but complete propaganda departments. Biden criticism was swept under the rug to protect him all the while the media held no punches for his opposition. Rational nuanced discussion of pandemic and related policies were off the table and we were just dictated mandates. People didn't vote for this. Our country has stumbled from one self inflicted crisis to the next as the coverage of the failures goes either unreported or censored. Kneejerk mistruths drive doomed to fail federal policy ( border control horse whips!)
This administration is so unbelievably incompetent.
People are rightly angry as hell. This discontent isn't limited to specific groups. It includes: Blacks, whites, lefts, rights, zoomer, boomer. It's not a small group either.
"Let's go Brandon" is being shouted across the country.
We should listen. We should ask why.
We were told successes were failures.
Now where told failures were successes.
People don't like being lied to or ignored.
"Let's go Brandon!"
Joe Biden doesn’t run the country. DC Establishment does. It always has. The very same thing they accuse others of such as causing big tech monopolies, wealth inequality, climate change etc, the same establishment protects those interests all.
He was the most backed candidate by the Wall St. for a reason. Enough said.
This is all they’re concerned about. Both the left and the right. They hire groups of people specifically to manage their public image. This is why MSM didn’t want negative coverage of Biden during the race.
Iirc, he gave an interview where he bizarrely and repeatedly mentioned the fact that he likes to paint wine boxes like buses...over and over. And it was thought (and, most likely, leaked) that he was doing this so that when people Googled "Boris bus" it would come up with this story, and not the story about the infamous "Brexit bus" (it also leaked that it was Lynton Crosby, a well-known political campaign manager, that suggested this...which does support the claim that it isn't total bs).
Leaving that aside this is yet another clear example of the power big tech wields over society and how they will abuse it due to their internal biases. We need renewed antitrust legislation (+ enforcement) to break up these companies, regulation to treat social media/Internet infrastructure as common carriers/public utilities, and the inclusion of political identity as a protected class under anti-discrimination laws.
We also shouldn’t exempt private organizations from upholding core American values like free speech. The largest platforms are as powerful as the government, and given they are under threat of legislative action on various issues and the current administration admitted to being in contact with tech companies regarding “problematic” content, it is also clear that an abusive party or administration can essentially outsource government-driven censorship to overly powerful private entities.
> The first difficulty results from the premise that deliberate lies can never have value. Exaggeration -- even clear falsification -- may arguably serve useful social purposes linked to the values underlying freedom of expression. A person fighting cruelty against animals may knowingly cite false statistics in pursuit of his or her beliefs and with the purpose of communicating a more fundamental message, e.g., `cruelty to animals is increasing and must be stopped'. A doctor, in order to persuade people to be inoculated against a burgeoning epidemic, may exaggerate the number or geographical location of persons potentially infected with the virus. An artist, for artistic purposes, may make a statement that a particular society considers both an assertion of fact and a manifestly deliberate lie; consider the case of Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses, viewed by many Muslim societies as perpetrating deliberate lies against the Prophet.
No, if you're simply liberal or conservative in the USA. They generally think that speech should be uncensored until it's directly causing legitimate violence (e.g., yelling "fire" in a crowded theater or threatening death).
YouTube is a private company. Them censoring someone is not an infringement on free speech.
And what’s so bad about medical misinformation vs say talking about murdering people? This is a rabbit hole and the left is gleefully throwing us down it.
Predominantly that I'm not aware of a huge number of people who listened to Stan and then committed a murder suicide, but I'm aware of a staggering number of people who watched some absolute moron's YouTube video about COVID-19 and then decided to ingest horse dewormer.
I'm not sure how much of this difference is because music is performative (a song about murders is not typically trying to convince its listeners to commit murders), or how much of it is just because the demographic watching conspiratorial YouTube videos are way more gullible than people listening to Eminem songs, but it's pretty clear that medical disinformation is causing a huge amount of harm, and it's not at all clear that this is the case for songs with aggressive lyrics.
It's evident that there's been political gain on the matter, which is a "manufactured" social phenomenon, but it's obvious that there's a physically propagating coronavirus that mutates and spreads via airborne transmission.
Unfortunately, I've seen people vacillate back-and-forth on the two depending on what they're trying to assert.
I'm very aware this was the same argument used to normalize white supremacist hand signals.
"Let’s go, Brandon, we know he cappin’ Patriots out in the street takin’ action Huntin’ us down for speakin’ the truth (Huh) Beat down the PEDO, let’s save all the youth (Uh huh) Media lyin’, ignore all the cryin’ They buildin’ back better, but only the Taliban (What?) Pilots on strike, but to Joe, it’s irrelevant Open the border, lose all the order Divide us up so they know what we never win But we united, we here in the stadiums (Let’s go) Everyone chantin’ it, CNN slanderin’ (Let’s go) Biden collaspin’ and Democrats stealin’ it (Facts) Ayy, we look at Joe, can we get a refund? (Brandon) How ‘bout some mean tweets? (Facts) Joe is a crook, and he knows how to decieve F.J.B. is the motto in these streets, let’s go, Brandon sing it with me"
I see a lot of claims but no questions. This wasn't written to question, it was written to enforce ideas already held by the listener. I agree that the song shouldn't be censored, but I also think it doesn't have any right to be promoted or distributed by third parties. YouTube has as much of a right to take the song down as Sound Cloud has to leave it up, which is exactly equal to any venue that chooses to let him perform on stage.
But yes, I totally agree – the song “Fuck Donald Trump” has been on YouTube for 5+ years with millions of views, and YouTube has every right to take it down.
The whole point of Section 230 immunity is to basically neutralize the platform's responsibility so in that case they shouldn't care who says what and let the opposing sides battle each other on the merits of what's being said.
So why do they maintain huge and cumbersome speech codes and rules of what can be said on their platforms?
It's simple. Threat of regulation. The tech monopolists are like the old time robber barons of the early 20th century with their mega corps (railroads, oil, tobacco, etc). They are trying to hang on to their behemoths' power and appease political forces at the same time.
From a press conference from July 15 2021
> Q Thanks, Jen. Can you talk a little bit more about this request for tech companies to be more aggressive in policing misinformation? Has the administration been in touch with any of these companies and are there any actions that the federal government can take to ensure their cooperation, because we’ve seen, from the start, there’s not a lot of action on some of these platforms.
> MS. PSAKI: Sure. Well, first, we are in regular touch with these social media platforms, and those engagements typically happen through members of our senior staff, but also members of our COVID-19 team, given, as Dr. Murthy conveyed, this is a big issue of misinformation, specifically on the pandemic.
> In terms of actions, Alex, that we have taken — or we’re working to take, I should say — from the federal government: We’ve increased disinformation research and tracking within the Surgeon General’s office. We’re flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation. We’re working with doctors and medical professionals to connect — to connect medical experts with popular — with popular — who are popular with their audiences with — with accurate information and boost trusted content. So we’re helping get trusted content out there.
https://mleverything.substack.com/p/what-would-government-ce...
we have instead a limited notion of free political when and where it does not immediately cause death of others as that would be denying them life and pursuit of happiness under the Declaration of Independence.
Big difference
I used to be part of the "its a private platform" group, but I asked myself the question, what would actual government censorship look like. And I couldn't think of an answer that would make what we have today not censorship.
https://www.npr.org/2021/07/07/1013760153/donald-trump-says-...
When songs promote robbing Asian people YouTube says “ In a memo to staff explaining the rationale for not barring the YG video, management wrote: “We’ll start by saying we find this video to be highly offensive and understand it is painful for many to watch, including many in Trust & Safety and especially given the ongoing violence against the Asian community. One of the biggest challenges of working in Trust & Safety is that sometimes we have to leave up content we disagree with or find offensive… Sometimes videos that otherwise violate our policies are allowed to stay up if they have Educational, Documentary, Scientific or Artistic context…
“In this case, this video receives an EDSA exception as a musical performance,” YouTube’s memo to staffers continued. “While EDSA is not a free pass for any content, there are likely thousands of music videos that would otherwise violate policies including Sex & Nudity, Violent or Graphic Content and Hate Speech were it not for these sorts of EDSA exceptions. As a result, removing this video would have far-reaching implications for other musical content containing similarly violent or offensive lyrics, in genres ranging from rap to rock. While we debated this decision at length amongst our policy experts, we made the difficult decision to leave the video up to enforce our policy consistently and avoid setting a precedent that may lead to us having to remove a lot of other music on YouTube.”
Edit: People keep responding to this comment claiming that the video didn't feature an impeach biden shirt, then deleting their comments when they realized what they saw was a video using the same name exploiting the fact that the real video is hidden. :) If you feel the urge to make that reply, instead just update this counter instead:
EDIT
Responding to person who wants to learn more, I'm going in good faith that you're not the ad hominem type. Given the climate of cancellation and censorship not a lot of people are speaking up, so take what you can get...
The recent Joe Rogan episode with Berenson is a review of quite a few papers and government data sets which they parse. Watch it on Spotify. You're going to get intro'd to data from Israel, UK, CDC, others about vaccine efficacy and about adverse events in young people due to inflammation from accumulation of spike protein.
CDC's most recent data shows 40% of covid deaths over last week were of the vaccinated, e.g. relevant screen shots from CDC's website via this random guy, https://twitter.com/SteveDeaceShow/status/145165375288951604...
You can certainly google Northern Europe's halt on Moderna (either for youth or for all). Sweden just halted today, e.g. Shttps://www.zerohedge.com/political/sweden-suspends-moderna-...
There's a lot on YT, round table discussions with medical professionals are the most interesting. I've observed the same censorious culture on HN as on social media when it comes to vaccines, so I'm not going to share links so they can stay up for others who are making difficult decisions. You can find them by poking around accounts on Twitter Gab Substack of people who are speaking out against vaccine mandates or related.
You can however read the CDC report that shows vaccines are still hugely effective in preventing death.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7043e1.htm?s_cid=mm...
> Increases in COVID-19 are unrelated to levels of vaccination across 68 countries and 2947 counties in the United States
It appears that the Moderna vaccine at least is very effective at reducing severity but does not prevent infection (or does not do so well enough).
This ironically makes it more dangerous to not be vaccinated since vaccinated people are more likely to be asymptomatic carriers.
I’ll take it over nothing. It’s damn good for getting a vaccine in a year. There will probably be better ones in 2-3 years.
Antibody drop off is supposed to happen, it’s different than reduced vaccine effectiveness. Childhood vaccination for measles for example provides near lifetime protection via the adaptive immune systems: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_B_cell Which cuts days from how quickly the body can respond to infections.
When people of similar age and health with and without vaccination die at similar rates then you can say their ineffective. There is a short term boost from antibodies after an infection or vaccination, but they don’t prevent infection they just reduce infections to the point where we don’t notice.
Over the past month, fully vaccinated individuals accounted for 29% of cases and 19% of hospitalizations (In British Columbia, Canada).
We have ~75% of the population vaccinated. So 25% of the people account for 71% of the cases and the case rate amongst vaccinated is significantly lower. What you really want to think about is what that says about the R number difference between those populations because our R is hovering around 1 so the vaccine is making a huge difference.
For example, if a flu vaccine was administered at the end of a seasonal peak, we'd think the vaccine caused the dropoff because we don't understand seasonality.
Note, the above applies both to natural infections and vaccination. Also note many childhood vaccinations are effective for decades.
I’m not sure what you’re trying to point out, sorry!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_reproduction_number
In epidemiology, the basic reproduction number, or basic reproductive number (sometimes called basic reproduction ratio or basic reproductive rate), denoted R 0 R_{0} (pronounced R nought or R zero),[1] of an infection is the expected number of cases directly generated by one case in a population where all individuals are susceptible to infection.[2] The definition assumes that no other individuals are infected or immunized (naturally or through vaccination). Some definitions, such as that of the Australian Department of Health, add the absence of "any deliberate intervention in disease transmission".
I assume your concerned about transmission, but that’s not a constant when you include vaccinations reducing infection severity.
There's indisputable evidence that the vaccination is impacting R. While it's true that the accuracy of estimates for R depends on many factors and certainly there have always been some cases flying under the radar (though that has been studied extensively via antibody studies and other means) proxies like the number of people dying, the number of people hospitalized, while controlling for things like vaccinations are accurate enough to detect this.
There are tons of studies, random e.g.: https://www.mdpi.com/2227-9032/9/10/1245/pdf
Trying to argue confounding factors vs. the observations is IMO very weak. Ofcourse we can't tell anything with certainty in this domain. It seems like the people who want proof here set the bar impossibly high, no proof will ever satisfy them.
EDIT: adding some more references...
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01316-7
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/vaccinated-people...
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/09/the-vaccin...
https://www.gavi.org/vaccineswork/mounting-evidence-suggests...
https://www.publichealthontario.ca/-/media/documents/ncov/ph...
> Ofcourse we can't tell anything with certainty in this domain
Which one is it?
I'm sorry - there are issues with nearly all the links and data you've provided, but I don't have the time to go through them with you.
I agree with you that the vaccine is very likely impacting R. I don't agree that it is enough to matter yet - we could vaccinate everyone and covid would still spread. The vaccines will keep people from dying. Any more benefit than that is still unclear.
We have lots of places, such as where I live, where the number of deaths and hospitalizations and daily cases is about level. Since you agreed with me vaccinations impact R you can also agree with me that going from 75% vaccinations to 100% vaccinations is going to cause that level trajectory to go down? What is your projection?
As to your question "which one is it" there is no conflict. The evidence is indisputable yet there is no certainty. Simply because in this domain there is no certainty. It's not a math proof. It is by far the most likely thing that's happening. I mean maybe aliens are curing people to coincide with the different levels of vaccinations but I've yet to hear some reasonable hypothesis how in place like where I live where seasonality dictates higher rates, restrictions have been relaxed, and there is clear correlation between higher vaccination rates and reduced other metrics (change in new cases/day, hospitalizations, deaths). I think if you disagree with the obvious you should at least offer some other hypothesis supported by some data.
When it comes to exponential growth, the difference in practice between an exponent of 1.5 vs 2 is negligible.
I think you are misusing the word indisputable, since clearly, people are disputing it.
> While it's true that the accuracy of estimates for R depends on many factors and certainly there have always been some cases flying under the radar (though that has been studied extensively via antibody studies and other means) proxies like the number of people dying, the number of people hospitalized, while controlling for things like vaccinations are accurate enough to detect this.
You just listed a number of proxies that are inaccurate, and/or, generally missing.
Why?
Simply because Covid is highly dangerous to the advanced in age, those that express ACE2, and those with multiple co-morbidities, in particular obese diabetics.
For example, a white male 6' 200 lbs with no comorbidities nonsmoker has the following mortality rate by age:
18: 2.1 per 1M
30: 2.1 per 1M
45: 1.6 per 100K
60: 4.3 per 100K
75: 2.2 per 10k
90: 0.7 per 10k
So, while covid may move through a retirement community like the Death Angel, across a team of 16 year old soccer players most will be asymptomatic, and a few may appear to have a cold.
As someone that has had access to a regional hospital system's covid counts, I can assure you that this is not a disease of the very young and fit.
Our surveillance numbers around covid antibodies is incredibly low because it is only a tiny percentage of the population that is getting tested for antibodies. There are more people being tested for active infections, than there are for antibodies.
Indisputable this is not.
Also are you suggesting that the relative portion of the population in certain age groups has changed dramatically? Because otherwise you can still look at the aggregate as indicators.
Sorry if I'm misusing the work indisputable. English is not my mother tongue. Looking at the dictionary I also don't think it means what you think it means. Someone can dispute anything. We could say gravity is indisputable but someone can come and say there's no gravity. People say the earth is flat. Possibly in this day and age nothing is indisputable.
From where I stand, given the evidence, the people who say something like "vaccination has no impact on R" are not far from people claiming the earth is flat. I mean maybe the earth is flat. Even the guy who responded to me saying I was wrong then changes his mind on that.
Judging from the statistics of high vaccination rate countries like Israel vs Sweden,[1] there are a few important questions to respond with such as:
Which vaccine, formulated against which variant?
Vaccinated When?
Against which infectious variant?
At what point was herd immunity hit?
Overall, it appears as though Sweden's approach was better as they are not having a 3rd wave, they hit herd immunity, because natural immunity > vaccination, they have more durable results against future variants, etc.
I'm not disputing whether we should vaccinate some that are old, or have comordibidities, or want to get it. But, pushing a leaky vaccine across a large population is a license to get mutations and cause new variants in a large population. In effect, adapting the virus to target the vaccinated.
[1] https://ianmsc.substack.com/p/why-does-no-one-ever-talk-abou...
But since you dragged me into a different debate, Sweden has 66% of the population vaccinated. So if they did so great on herd immunity why are they vaccinating? Is 66% of their population old and/or with co-morbidity? So clearly the Swedish disagree with the idea that you should only vaccinate the old or those with comorbidity? Are there any good examples of countries that are open, not vaccinating, and are doing well? I honestly lost track of what Sweden has been doing exactly but I think even early on the portrayal that they're just acting normally was wrong, they relied on recommendation rather than enforcement... and I think they did worse than their peers.
Fact check: vaccines do not cause variants.
Citation: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41577-021-00544-9
Sense check: most variants of concern emerged in countries prior to mass vaccination.
Short version: why would vaccine-induced immunity provide materially different selection pressure to naturally-acquired-via-infection immunity? Neither are 100% effective, and will therefore allow immune-escape mutations through.
> "Not all vaccines prevent infection. Some, known as leaky vaccines, prolong host survival or reduce disease symptoms without preventing viral replication and transmission. Although leaky vaccines provide anti-disease benefits to vaccinated individuals, new research by CIDD’s Andrew Read, David Kennedy and colleagues at the Avian Oncogenic Virus Group in the United Kingdom, and The University of New England in Australia, has demonstrated that leaky vaccines can make the situation for unvaccinated individuals worse. Leaky vaccines work by enhancing host immunity to a particular pathogen, without necessarily blocking or slowing viral replication. The result is that infected but vaccinated individuals have extended survival, allowing highly virulent pathogen that would normally reach an evolutionary dead-end in a dead host, can transmit. The evolutionary consequences of high virulence are thus reduced and these pathogens can be selectively favored as a result of leaky vaccination." [1]
> "Could some vaccines drive the evolution of more virulent pathogens? Conventional wisdom is that natural selection will remove highly lethal pathogens if host death greatly reduces transmission. Vaccines that keep hosts alive but still allow transmission could thus allow very virulent strains to circulate in a population. Here we show experimentally that immunization of chickens against Marek's disease virus enhances the fitness of more virulent strains, making it possible for hyperpathogenic strains to transmit. Immunity elicited by direct vaccination or by maternal vaccination prolongs host survival but does not prevent infection, viral replication or transmission, thus extending the infectious periods of strains otherwise too lethal to persist. Our data show that anti-disease vaccines that do not prevent transmission can create conditions that promote the emergence of pathogen strains that cause more severe disease in unvaccinated hosts." [2]
> "Over the past fifty years, Marek’s disease—an illness of fowl—has become fouler. Marek’s is caused by a highly contagious virus, related to those that cause herpes in humans. It spreads through the dust of contaminated chicken coops, and caused both paralysis and cancer. In the 1970s, new vaccines brought the disease the under control. But Marek’s didn’t go gently into that good night. Within ten years, it started evolving into more virulent strains, which now trigger more severe cancers and afflict chickens at earlier ages. Andrew Read from Pennsylvania State University thinks that the vaccines were responsible. The Marek’s vaccine is “imperfect” or “leaky.” That is, it protects chickens from developing disease, but doesn’t stop them from becoming infected or from spreading the virus. Inadvertently, this made it easier for the most virulent strains to survive. Such strains would normally kill their hosts so quickly that they’d die out. But in an immunised flock, they can persist because their lethal nature has been neutered. That’s not a problem for vaccinated individuals. But unvaccinated birds are now in serious trouble. This problem, where vaccination fosters the evolution of more virulent disease, does not apply to most human vaccines. Those against mumps, measles, rubella, and smallpox are “perfect:” They protect against disease and stop people from transmitting the respective viruses. “You don’t get onward evolution,” says Read. “These vaccines are very successful, highly effective, and very safe. They have been a tremendous success story and will continue to be so.”" [3]
> "Vaccination elicits immune responses capable of potently neutralizing SARS-CoV-2. However, ongoing sur- veillance has revealed the emergence of variants harboring mutations in spike, the main target of neutralizing antibodies. To understand the impact of these variants, we evaluated the neutralization potency of 99 indi- viduals that received one or two doses of either BNT162b2 or mRNA-1273 vaccines against pseudoviruses representing 10 globally circulating strains of SARS-CoV-2. Five of the 10 pseudoviruses, harboring receptor- binding domain mutations, including K417N/T, E484K, and N501Y, were highly resistant to neutralization. Cross-neutralization of B.1.351 variants was comparable to SARS-CoV and bat-derived WIV1-CoV, suggest- ing that a relatively small number of mutations can mediate potent escape from vaccine responses. While the clinical impact of neutralization resistance remains uncertain, these results highlight the potential for variants to escape from neutralizing humoral immunity and emphasize the need to develop broadly protective inter- ventions against the evolving pandemic." [4]
> "HIV patient had COVID for over 7 months, infection mutated over 30 times....It is noted that patients who have HIV are not more susceptible to contracting a coronavirus infection than those without, nor does it worsen the medical implications of the infection. Additionally, the fact that the disease stays present within the body of immunosuppressed patients for longer periods of time compared to healthier individuals could mean that HIV patients could be an incessant source of transmission and mutations of the coronavirus - almost like a factory of variants." [5]
If you have high viral transmission against a less effective variant, of course you will have natural selection of a virus for greater transmissibility within that specific environment. If the environment is now a conventional spike antibody human environment, this will promote changes to the spike, and, changes to the overall virus.
Furthermore, when you have a leaky vaccine distributed to a large population where viral spread is still occuring, you promote genetic transfer between viruses that are mutually infecting patients, as well
This is science 101, unless you disbelieve in adaptation?
[1] http://epidemics.psu.edu/articles/view/leaky-vaccines-promot...
[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4516275/
[3] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/leaky-vac...
[4] https://www.cell.com/action/showPdf?pii=S0092-8674%2821%2900...
[5] https://www.jpost.com/health-science/hiv-patient-had-covid-f...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/andreamorris/2021/08/08/joe-rog...
> Increases in COVID-19 are unrelated to levels of vaccination across 68 countries and 2947 counties in the United States
EDIT: "Notably, Israel with over 60% of their population fully vaccinated had the highest COVID-19 cases per 1 million people in the last 7 days. "
I follow Israel's Covid situations very closely because I have family there and this statement is misleading. The increase in cases in Israel was related to the delta variant arriving, the overall vaccine coverage being low (yeah, 60% isn't enough for Delta) and all restrictions being lifted. And yes, some waning of the effectiveness of the vaccines as well. With the reintroduction of some restrictions (such as vaccine passports e.g.), higher vaccine coverage, and some 3rd booster shots their cases have dropped significantly (by a factor of 8 over a month or so!).
I really struggle to think of any company for which it is important that their customers are not sceptical of vaccinations? Maybe airlines and hotels.
Since I can’t see how any company would want to reject customers for making certain decisions about their health or not, it appears to me that it rather is forces within Google, Facebook, and Twitter that do not want any voice critical of their line to be shown. For this reason they (shadow)ban people expressing forbidden or politically incorrect worldviews.
So you've never heard of the entire healthcare industry?
Aside from healthcare, every company of a reasonable size wants people to get vaccinated so that the supply chain can be repaired and they can go back to selling things the way they used to.
Advertisers have to be concerned about being associated with "personae non gratae".
I’m not sure how conspiracy theories are more harmful than just tons of other things.
Further, videos are not outright banned on behalf of advertisers, only demonetised. Also, whether you agree or not, there would be advertisers who wish to target this audience. There isn’t a shared moral code that all advertisers abide by.
Somethings very wrong when advertisers are acting as content moderators.
if i have q WordPress blog on a $5vps, and you post a comment saying my blog post is stupid. its my vps,im paying for it, i can delete the comment if i want right?
where do you draw the line? how big exactly does my blog have to get before this is considered big tech censorship?
When you have lobbyists working for you.
Or better yet, promote counter-anti-desintermediation: https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Counter-Anti-Disintermediatio...
> The idea of disintermediation was central to the emancipatory visions of the Internet, yet the landscape today is more mediated than ever before. If we are to understand the consequences of an increasingly centralized Internet, we need to start by addressing the root cause of this concentration. Centralization is required to capture profit. Disintermediating platforms were ultimately reintermediated by way of capitalist investors dictating that communications systems be designed to capture profit.
https://medium.com/@teamwarren/heres-how-we-can-break-up-big...
Many of us on different spectrums (libertarian here) did listen to what Elizabeth Warren said, and we agree with it.
I think there is a great deal of truth in what the anti-monopolist economic crusaders on the left (Sanders&Warren) have said. While I may not agree with everything they said about economics across the board, I do think they are correct in that we have permitted bigtech to become a monopoly. AND, I agree that overly favorable tax jurisdiction shopping is a massive problem.
We need to re-empower the DOJ to pursue antitrust again, and we need it now.
her proposals on how to deal with consolidated power and capital at the top are/were more reasonable, but that's because she's has a more visceral experience in that arena, rather than with poverty, housing, or immigration issues, for example.
At the end of the day there will be a concentration of audiences somewhere, so I don't think this problem goes away.
What I wonder is whether at a certain point we actually need to protect people from themselves. I get how ominous that sounds, but OTOH if large swaths of the population, say, fall prey to senseless conspiracy theories, do we just watch it play out?
Network effects can happen in a federated or decentralized way:
- Email is useful regardless of the software, OS, server or owner of the address you are sending emails to.
- The fediverse benefits from network effects and interoperability between instances with both different software and different communities.
I would even go further and argue that centralized "network effects" are in reality "captive costs" of "not being inside the walled garden" rather than a true network to begin with.
Through the magic of interoperability entities can set up their own servers or contract to external providers their email services.
There's no technical reason they can't, but practically, a central, easily discernible destination appeals to those looking to monetize their content.
Email is a one-to-one (or few) channel vs broadcast. Completely different.
The arguments about decentralization/federation remind me of the early days of the Net, wherein there was so much talk of democratization, but here we are (unfortunately).
That is very similar to what was mentioned up-thread:
> [..] we need to start by addressing the root cause of this concentration: Centralization is required to capture profit.
---
> Email is a one-to-one (or few) channel vs broadcast. Completely different.
ActivityPub / Diaspora / Friendica were also mentioned; email was about interop between software and service providers.
---
> The arguments about decentralization/federation remind me of the early days of the Net, wherein there was so much talk of democratization, but here we are (unfortunately).
Also mentioned up-thread:
> The idea of disintermediation was central to the emancipatory visions of the Internet, yet the landscape today is more mediated than ever before.
Yes, these are all examples of what's technically possible from a decentralization standpoint; yet have not flourished WRT adoption, relative to the centralized platforms.
>That is very similar to what was mentioned up-thread:
"[..] we need to start by addressing the root cause of this concentration: Centralization is required to capture profit.
I see the article you've quoted up-thread and the author's observation is so obvious as to add little to this discussion. That is, of course it's an issue of profit.
But, I suppose it does underscore that it's not the question of technology that advocates of Diaspora, etc. suggest.
So, sure, my original point that we'll always tend towards centralization on platforms that benefit from network effects relies on the assumption that we'll continue to have a capitalist economy.
This is a true symbiosis: the Party will see that no laws that harm the Company are passed, and Company will stop the spread of any information harmful to the Party.
Probably no relation with the 2014 Princeton study published on the Cambridge University Press that determined the United States of America to be an Oligarchy rather than a Democracy.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli...
> But we believe that if policymaking is dominated by powerful business organizations and a small number of affluent Americans, then America’s claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened
Neither Bill Clinton or Obama came from or had money. Neither had fathers in their lives or immediate great families of consequence. Neither had long-tenured national political experience. Oh yeah, and Obama is half black. The oligarchy chose Obama over Hillary Clinton? They had no choice is what actually happened.
Just because the study came from Princeton, that doesn't mean it's not idiotic.
Additionally it is a very weird presidentialist take to criticize a study on only the presidential election outcomes of a two-party state.
but that our political system isn't a full-on autocratic aristocracy doesn't mean it isn't oligarchal. oligarchy implies an outsized influence by a small subset, not complete control, just as democracy doesn't mean complete control by the people. oligarchy seems a pretty apt characterization.
A true countercultural president is rare, and the overlooked people in the country got one. His policy could be anything, as long as it makes the coastal folks angry.
The power weilded by a government should be kept in check democratically by their constituents. As your blog grows into YouTube, you gain more and more power over people's lives and livelihoods... more political and economic reach with your decisions. That power should thus grow proportionally more limited by mechanisms of user empowerment, rights, and direct control.
There isn't a cutoff... there should instead be a sliding scale.
However American law requires bakers to bake cakes for events they as an individual disagree with. An old lady florist was individuals fined for refusing to do an event she thought was morally questionable.
It seems the only 'people' with rights to conscience are multi billion dollar companies conveniently doing the bidding of the party in power. So that's strange.
Compare with YouTube, where anyone can post a video saying the same and if Joe Rogan came after them, YouTube would claim section 230 protection, insisting it's not selecting content and hence it's not responsible for the user's content.
Many people would be fine with YouTube or any other social media company censoring whatever it wants if it also had been liable for the content it leaves uncensored. As of now, it's having the cake (censoring anything they want) and eating it too (not being liable for the content that's left).
How can someone place so much trust in this suppression without even seeing what's being censored? Is it just a deliberate blissful ignorance? Are these people really so naive from the comforts of modern western living?
https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/30/22358804/youtube-yg-song-...
I wonder how Chinese Googlers feel about this development.
I believe that the solution to incorrect or dangerous speech is only more speech and oppose YouTube's takedown. However, it's absurd to say this is "political" and thus not medical misinformation. It's clearly a political statement in support of a political movement that maliciously lies about public health.
Will I am the walrus be fact checked next?
And Sinclair really doesn't hold a candle to Nexstar and Gray Television, who have managed to buy up the vast majority of local affiliates over the past several years.
In the early 2000s I was always astonished by how utterly misinformed Fox News viewers were. In 2021 I am always astonished by how utterly misinformed MSNBC CNN and Fox News viewers are. On certain subjects like the statistical risk of a 35-year-old healthy person getting hospitalized for covid, Fox News viewers are actually the best informed. They still overestimate the risk but not by orders of magnitude that the other two sets of viewers succumb to. My father is a rabid MSNBC and CNN viewer, and like many of your typical resistance boomers is grossly ignorant about most things happening in the world. In December he was ranting to me about how the US could have had zero covid if someone else had been president. While I agreed with him that it had been mishandled I tried to explain to him that there wasn't any countries able to keep it out except for very isolated island nations. He was completely ignorant of this. He also freaked out when I contracted covid in February before I could give vaxxed. I was trying to explain to him that I'm very fit and healthy and relatively young but he really thought I was going to have to get hospitalized. This is when I started learning about the statistics on actual hospitalizations versus what the public thought. One difference between these groups of people who watch these utterly stupid channels is that Fox News viewers are pretty aware that they watch biased news. They weren't in the early 2000s though. MSNBC and CNN viewers think they're witnessing objective reporting in general. My father is always quick to say that he reads articles from the AP as if they are objective. They are absolutely not objective anymore. Ideological capture is a thing. And it was purely ideological when the AP told their reporters to call what was obviously rioting "mostly peaceful protests". The aftermath of that absurd line of thinking was me witnessing many family members who were right of center to completely lose any and all faith in journalistic institutions. It was a watershed moment in media becoming untrusted by most of the working class.
In some populations, a person has a better chance of catching covid and dying than they do of saying they watched Chris Cuomo last night.
The difference between lying and joking is always in context. If I dress as a police officer for Halloween it's fine, if I lead you to believe I actually am a police officer it is a crime. There's also a middle ground where someone could mistake my costume for impersonation.
I don't know what aspect of this video violated the terms of service, but I think political videos on all sides regularly make statements that aren't supported by 'mainstream' fact checking sources and therefore might fall outside the policies of services like Youtube.
If you want to argue that all speech with 'political intent' should be protected I am open to that conversation! But that is not the standard held by most services, including Youtube, which Bryson Gray agreed to when he uploaded his song.
One type of humor is known as "trolling". The basic idea is to see how much of a reaction you can get from something pointless and stupid. Now many people are making songs with the lyric "Let's go Brandon" and they are receiving hate mail, being banned, being demonitized, etc. This reaction is seen as outsized for a reference to a fairly well known piece of pop culture. Thus, to those who find outsized reactions funny, this is funny.
Ours not to reason why.
Note: Just curious. Didn't even know about this "Let's Go Brandon" thing until now.
As I have said elsewhere in this thread I don't agree with the lyrics in that video. I find the video itself to be childish and silly but that would basically be 99% of rap and pop music in general.
They have not halted the spread because of vaccine misinformation like this very video which you are defending.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8481107/
If I recall correctly, the Biden administration and the CDC both made public statements telling everyone that they would no longer need to continue wearing masks once they were vaccinated.
When US media reports on activities like this in countries like China and Russia they call it censorship. When they report on the same activities in the US they call it "protecting the public from misinformation".
It's a very very slippery slope to ban things. Who gets to choose what gets banned? Who gets to say what is misinformation or not?
It blows my mind how shortsighted most of my left of center friends are on this topic. They seem to have this delusion that these levers of power are only ever going to be controlled by the people they agree with. In the early 2000s a lot of people I argued with were totally supportive of the Patriot act. They were generally conservatives and were just completely confident it would never be used against US citizens. Now those same people are witnessing calls from people on the left who wants opposed to Patriot act to use it against US citizens with right-wing politics.
In case anyone else doesn't get the joke, the reporter (as most reporters do) was covering for Biden when she pretended his noisy opposition was something else [1]. In other words, it was an unusually obvious attempt at a tawdry cover-up. Thus, the mockery in calling Biden "Brandon".
[1] It might remind some of this classic scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Kpb8eu1pEY
probably that part?
But I'm not. The proper counter argument to this Stalinist "you can't say that," bullshit is to keep saying it, louder.
I would also like to quote NWA: "Fuck the Police"
So you don't dispute that it is disinformation. Is idea that is that someone refusing to host disinformation is a good reason to disinform, louder?
And I dispute the repute of those labeling things "disinformation", specifically.
>Are you truly the victim today, in this pandemic?
So give up freedoms, for the common good. Now that's rich.
Especially since COVID-19 spreads without symptoms, we have to prioritize prevention.
Besides, we've had our freedoms eroded time and again since the World Trade Centre attacks. Why are some Americans choosing now to draw a line in the sand? Because previously the laws were targeting brown skinned people. And now there's a Democrat in charge, so Republicans want to cause strife and division to get elected in 2022 and 2024.
The goals keep creeping but the justifications are always the same: People have to be saved from themselves!
This attempt to make COVID control measure into a scare story about a slippery slope where the "freedom" is vanishing over time is IMHO wrong (COVID control measures are not that) and misdirecting (pay attention to what FaceBook does, voter suppression, etc, if real examples that slope is what you are looking for).
If I wrote a rap song with "stick an artichoke in your butt" and magically a hundred people follow the advice and hurt themselves, someone for sure will at least attempt to censor my song. The imitation problem has been with us for thousands years, but social media made it a lot worse by dramatically augmenting the audience, then moving a lot faster than laws, and allowing some grey zones where a law prohibiting this and that would be too draconian and no law makes similar scenarios very possible. That's where we should be the ones who censor ourselves when we suspect that someone could be damaged by our words. That rapper didn't, because he pursuits fame and money, and Fox News by jumping in his defense acted exactly as one would expect from a source that has nothing to do with journalism.
The meaning and intent of the lyrics are open to interpretation, but I think the latter part of the lyric implies political commentary rather than medical commentary.
Also, I think we need a tighter definition of "medical misinformation." Is it to promote anything that is medically harmful? Well, then why can musicians sing endlessly about drugs and unsafe sex? What about videos on non-fda regulated vitamins and minerals, or weight loss solutions? Surely most doctors wouldn't advise taking recreational drugs, or jumping on to the latest weight loss magic pill.
And yes, YouTube is a private enterprise. But we can still, as a society, openly dialog on what we think is wrong with their practices.
There's a segment of the US population that believes and spreads the harmful misinformation in memes and YouTube videos. That's all well and good when talking about aliens building pyramids or whatever. But currently we have this same segment of the population refusing to get vaccinated, mask up, wash their hands, etc etc. Those actions are harmful to society as a whole and should be treated like the attacks they are.
As someone with lung issues, it angers me deeply that there's millions of Americans who couldn't give the tiniest shit to take actions that might save my life.
The parties go back and forth every so often - it used to be the conservatives who wanted to censor music, now its the liberals. Its tiring. I want off Mr. Bones Wild Ride.
As is their right. People should be able to make informed decisions about whether they get an injection. Especially right now in this pandemic. We're still studying the vaccines and their effects on people. Nobody knows for sure their risk/benefit profiles yet, there hasn't been enough time to draw definitive conclusions. It's entirely possible that these vaccines have risks we don't know about, or are only worth using on certain populations such as the elderly.
People who decide to take vaccines need to do so informed of these facts. Misleading the public about this will only strengthen conspiracy theories and lead to even worse outcomes.
> mask up, wash their hands, etc etc.
Yeah, I agree that's stupid. There's no risk to washing hands or wearing masks. Nothing wrong with refusing to associate with people who won't even practice basic hygiene.
> Those actions are harmful to society as a whole and should be treated like the attacks they are.
They may be harmful but that doesn't mean people should be oppressed because of it.
I'd prefer that, particularly in music, which has a rich history of slang, multiple meanings, and political commentary, we lean in the direction of permitting speech, to avoid censoring political commentary. In this particular case, when the chorus and title "Let's go Brandon" are CLEARLY political commentary, the chance that the work as a whole is political commentary (as opposed to "medical information") is further increased.
This is a weird video to target, and I feel like there's bigger fish to fry w.r.t. harmful misinformation edit: about COVID. Mostly that the most dangerous misinformation is that which can actually convince people to believe untruths, something I doubt this video can do (it seems to preach to the choir). But who am I to know how their algorithm works?
The irony is that the incoming Streissand Effect will generally be meaningless. The increased exposure to this song is unlikely to convert people (there's really only one verse about COVID) and the outrage from the Right is unlikely to budge YT policy because there's a strong argument for it being misinformation. So it's pointless, circuitous outrage.
How about I listen to what I like and you fry your fish elsewhere?
> This is a weird video to target
So we can all agree that YT isn't arbitrarily censoring anti-authoritarian conspiracy theories, but is specifically censoring conspiracy theories related to COVID? This seems like a good thing, that they are casting a narrow net, no? Would you prefer they censor ALL anti-authoritarian conspiracy theories?
Of all the scenarios where censorship could be called for, fighting misinformation harmful to public health in a global pandemic seems like a reasonable fish to fry.
I have 0 problem whatsoever with large, public information clearing houses suppressing anything that is counter factual during the emergency.
If they were taking down information about a doctor challenging Health Authorities in a very Scientific manner, that would be something else.
And of course, we have to make sure that we do come out of this 'crisis' and that institutions don't use it as a means for perennial control, but I'm not really worried about that. We're all sick of this and as COVID passes out of reality, people just won't care what people have to say about it, just like any other mundane subject.
So once COVID has passed, we can sing dumb songs about dumb things, if they take them down then, I suggest that would amount to undue censorship.
That's precisely the problem though. The rule at Youtube is any content that goes against CDC/WHO guidelines is considered "misinformation". So to your point:
> If they were taking down information about a doctor challenging Health Authorities in a very Scientific manner, that would be something else.
Yeah unless that doctor comes to the exact same conclusion as the CDC, and parrots the exact same info, that doctor is spreading misinformation according to Youtube. I've even seen instances where the CDC would say something, Youtuber would cover it, the next week the CDC reverses that policy and Youtube will hit the Youtuber for "misinformation".
If someone went on YouTube to articulate the current scientific consensus of Ivermectin, which is that "There is no evidence to support it as a therapy for COVID, but that there are currently studies in progress which could yield important information, and in the meantime, people should definitely not be taking it as it can be dangerous unless administered by Health professionals" - I'm doubtful such a video would be taken down.
Anyone talking about COVID 'cures' in public forums for which there is no scientific consensus, during a pandemic, should definitely come under heavy scrutiny.
Aren’t these the organizations that lied to the public in March 2020, saying masks were not effective?
They later justified their deception, at the cost of how many lives (?), by suggesting it was to prevent a shortage of masks for medical personnel.
These organizations are not promoting the science to shape policy, they’re promoting policy with filtered science.
A simpler explanation, that is consistent with data, is that community masking was never very effective, and that the current mask guidelines are 100% about politics and signaling.
At the start of the pandemic, the efficacy of masks in the commons was still debatable, more so than is now.
Public Health Policy issues around getting 100's of millions of Westerners, not acclimated to wearing masks (as they are in some Asian countries), was a daunting concern, as we can see with all the anti-mask idiots even to this day.
N95s in particular were acutely necessary in Healthcare settings and the supply chains from China towards the start of the pandemic in the US were not quite ramped-up, and were just becoming secure by the time the CDC switched to a pro-mask footing. Otherwise, any call by the CDC for 350M Americans to 'wear masks' would have likely overran the Healthcare supply chain.
As the availability of PPE to Healthcare became secure, as Asian health officials urged Westerners to adopt mask policies, as we understand a bit more about masks, the policy shifted towards mask wearing.
Obviously, masks are a marginal tactic in the fight against COVID, but there is a systematic benefit, especially over 350M people million people, wearing them when they are interacting wit others. If there is ambiguity in their efficacy, it's rational to err on the side of caution, not the other way. Because we are 'going with the policy' then it has to be supported and enforced, like anything else.
When the context shifted, they changed policy.
Public Health Policy is based on Science, but it's not the same as Science.
It's a strategy, a general policy and set of communication principles, based on facts, designed to get a large variety of people moving towards better health outcomes.
Some of those facts are not pretty, much of it is too complicated for public consumption, and necessarily not going to be directly part of the communication.
Obviously, in the interest of transparency, those facts and other bits of information (such as study results) are definitely publicly available to anyone who can Google - but what you're going to hear from Fauci, CNN, the 'papers of record' is the basis of a Public Policy.
If everyone acted conscientiously, in accordance with CDC guidelines, even while remaining vigilant to the extent they choose (i.e. verifying information as they so chose), this pandemic might very well have been already over.
CDC: Masks should be worn by children aged 2 and up: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/schools-...
WHO: In general, children aged 5 years and under should not be required to wear masks: https://www.who.int/news-room/q-a-detail/q-a-children-and-ma...
ECDC: In primary schools, the use of face masks is recommended for teachers and other adults when physical distancing cannot be guaranteed, but it is not recommended for students: https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/covid-19/questions-answers/que...
Doesn't seem very consistent to me.
WHO and CDC act in generally accordance with what we know i.e. 'consistent with the science'.
The science itself is of course fuzzy, moreover, your example ignores the fact that in different conditions (i.e. cultures, relative access to healthcare, % vaccinated), public policy is going to be different even if the science itself were clear.
So in varying conditions, it's reasonable that there's going to be varying policy implementations. Those implementations are not 'inconsistent' with the science, even if they are 'inconsistent' with one another.
This is not hard to understand, so it begs the question, what kind of person would make the conclusion:
"Different places have different public health policies, therefore these groups must be acting unscientifically"
We generally know what's going on, and have a good idea of what we don't know - so most of this inanity boils down to psychology, self awareness, antagonism, magical thinking etc.. The answer to our problems lies more in understanding why people believe 'QAnon' conspiracy theories than it does anything else.
Sure, but what we're discussing here is YouTube's single global standard that is being used to determine whether or not something is "misinformation" and should be prohibited on their platform.
You argued that what YouTube is doing is good, because they're following CDC and WHO guidelines. I gave you one example of where the WHO and the CDC and the ECDC are completely at odds with each other, so what should YouTube do in that case? Which science should they follow?
If I make a video on YouTube, talking about what a barbaric practice it is to force small children to wear masks, pointing out all the ways it is harmful for them, and talking about how little is gained from it, it would be seen as completely normal by most European viewers, because it is in line with public health recommendations from the ECDC.
If I make a video on YouTube, talking about what a barbaric practice it is to re-open schools without mask mandates, pointing out the risk to teachers and staff, and talking about how much is gained from it, it would be seen as completely normal by many American viewers, because it is in line with public health recommendations from the CDC.
Which video should be removed by YouTube for medical misinformation? The first? The second? Both? None? Or should YouTube apply different standards depending on your geolocation?
YouTube has already done exactly this:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/youtube-cancels-the-u-s-senate-...
Later, Pierre Kory himself contracted Covid, from his daughter. Both of them had been on Ivermectin, obviously. He doesn't mention this publicly. Only thanks to someone who was watching closely do we now have proof this even happened.
So no, this isn't "in a very scientific manner." He creates a good illusion of being scientific, but he's not.
These are dangerous falsehoods, that are used by millions as part of their justification for not getting vaccinated, which allows the virus to continue spreading. YouTube isn't perfect, but they are making an attempt to compensate for all the lies that are spread on their platform and others. This is important during a crisis that has already killed 700,000 Americans. I get the "freedom of speech" thing, I really do. But Americans are still dying at a rate of 2 fully loaded 747s a day crashing, and YouTube would prefer not be contributing to that.
So I support YouTube's decision on that one.
But the example you gave doesn't help make your case, just the opposite, Dr. Kory's information indicating that Ivermectin is helpful in treating COVID is not scientific and the net result of his communication is de facto misinformation, and can definitely cause harm.
If this Doctor wants to put information up on his own, personal website, that's a different story. He's free to do that. YouTube has no obligation to carry those videos. His liberties are not infringed.
What evidence do you have that this is what drives people to not believe the things the public health establishment wants them to believe?
You don't have any evidence because it's not possible to prove this.
I should also point out that you have misinformation in your statement.
You are stating that covid will eventually pass. This virus is now endemic and is not going to go away. You do realize this, right?
The vaccine is very effective in minimizing the risk of hospitalization and/or death but it is a leaky vaccine. Leaky vaccines will never eradicate any virus and instead will simply promote various mutations.
Blame unvaccinated people for many things but you can't blame them for the persistence of this virus. It's not going to go away.
If you work in the field of Marketing, PR or Communications for just a few days, it becomes pretty clear how people come to believe what they do.
What is 'impossible' - is for a material portion of the population to arrive at the specific conclusion that 'XYZ drug is beneficial for ABC disease' without having popular sources for that information: they have to hear it or read it somewhere. The greater the voice, the greater the credibility of the source in the mind of the recipient, the greater the likelihood that information becomes sticky. While there are other factors, the primary vehicle of the message is paramount. It's also measurable.
In fact it is your statement that miscommunicates the ongoing nature of the pandemic:
While COVID may linger for some time, there is no evidence as of yet that it will remain endemic - we don't know that.
Also - pandemic itself will definitely pass - as all pandemics in history.
COVID may or may not linger around in one form or another, but we will, at some point, back off from public health emergency status.
(A) any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=false+pandemic...
Let's not pretend that this is about lyrics that promote misinformation and instead admit that this is about lyrics which go against the current gated institutional narrative.
Decentralized : Odysee(LBRY), Peertube
"You can't find it on Youtube, but it's hosted on Gab",
The listener draws enough conclusions about the media and it's intended audience for it to be dead on arrival.
If it were F@ck Donald (whatever) and everything else the same it would still be up.
The rest is nothing but naked excuse.
There are so many medically misleading things on YouTube —just look at dieting. They cause harm. Let me see them pull those.
Nah, they won’t.
Honestly, I think “Pravda” would be proud of the gall.
>Pandemic ain't real, they just planned it, ayy, ayy (They just planned it)
>Biden said the jab stop the spread, it was lies (I remember)
That is all I can see as far as "medical information" goes. What a joke. This song is bad, it would have fallen off the charts if they just let things go.
[0] https://mychords.net/en/bryson-gray/157414-bryson-gray-lets-...
Thing is, if I remember rightly Biden did spread outright misinformation that falsely claimed the vaccine was a lot more effective than it actually is using his platform as president, and got checked on it by the BBC (though maybe not the mainstream US media)...
It was rather cool to be anti vaccine 1 year ago. Now its verboten.
I do not intend for this post to be anti Biden. Trump is also a hypocrite, just not on his pro covid vaccine stance.
"I personally believe X, but my constituents overwhelmingly support Y, so I will be voting for Y."
But, I’ve heard the “planned” argument levied against the CCP, and that it was a bio weapon, and this was a planned release. That argument, while still far fetched, is at least in the realm of possibility for me.
Check this song out, it gives practical advice for carrying out burglaries. People have screamed and kicked but YouTube won't remove the song.
After the reading the news article in full, I found the video and watched it once in full. After that, I searched and found the lyrics to the video. I'm over explaining, but I'm rate limited.
I dont see much that would support the reason YouTube gave for banning it.
FWIW, I am against censorship.
[Intro: Joe Biden & Bryson Gray] The various shots the people are getting now cover that They're-, they're-, they're okay You're not gonna-, you're not gonna get COVID if you have these vaccinations Somebody gotta do it Ayy
[Chorus: Bryson Gray] Let's go, Brandon I keep a drum like I'm Nick Cannon, ayy, ayy, ayy, ayy (Brrt, brrt) Let's go, Brandon Pandemic ain't real, they just planned it, ayy, ayy (They just planned it) Let's go, Brandon When you ask questions, they start bannin', ayy, ayy (Facts) Let's go, Brandon, ayy, ayy (Ayy, let's go, Brandon) Let's go, Brandon, ayy, ayy (Ayy, let's go, Brandon) Let's go, Brandon I keep a drum like I'm Nick Cannon, ayy, ayy (Pow, pow) Let's go, Brandon Pandemic ain't real, thеy just planned it, ayy, ayy (They just planned it) Lеt's go, Brandon When you ask questions, they start bannin', ayy, ayy (Facts) Let's go, Brandon, ayy, ayy (Let's go) Let's go, Brandon, ayy, ayy (Ayy, let's go)
[Verse 1: Bryson Gray] Biden said the jab stop the spread, it was lies (I remember) How you woke, but you haven't opened your eyes? (You ain't see) These politicians are demons, just in disguise (Facts) Look at Kyrie Irving and Nicki Minaj (Let's go) Look at Australia, that's what's comin' next if we don't stand up Stop complyin' with them takin' our rights, it's time to man up 'Publicans votin' for red flag laws, that's just what I can't trust If you ask questions 'bout the vax, then they gonna ban us (It's true) Ayy, this is 'bout control, everybody knows Everyone complies weigh the cons and pros I don't need a plane, I just hit the road I do what I want, I can't sell my soul Market 'bout to crash, this is what you chose Ruinin' the country, I think that's the goal You gon' take the mark, I take narrow roads I'm a man of God, I can never fold
Disclaimer: I am not supporting either side here - and the lyrics are not really the issue in this situation imho - it is more meta than that.
OK but to drop the sarcasm, I guess it is true there is a certain resource y'all lack that other people have.
Sounds like medical misinformation to me.
I disagree with that conspiracy theory, but you can hardly call it medical misinformation in my judgment.
1 example - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FjPeF4lkEeQ
- Stream: https://soundcloud.com/bobatl/bob-flatline-feat-neil-tyson
- Lyrics: https://genius.com/Bob-flatline-lyrics
- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatline_(B.o.B_song)
Flatline wasn't removed by the platform it was published on (SoundCloud), but it was widely ridiculed.
I think you could argue "Pandemic ain't real, they just planned it" is not medically accurate and might discourage the fans from taking precautions against the thing.
I think I'm better off judging this book by it's cover and not telling Youtube how to run their house.
But these companies are a lot less respectable than YouTube has been to date, and people know what they are getting.
The issue here is YouTube's standards are changing and that deserves to be discussed. And condemned, it is change for the worse (even if in some sense it is probably inevitable).
It's also within people's rights to criticize them for it.
They have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders.
Have no idea what this Brandon song was about. Watched it couldn’t understand lyrics. 2 weeks later it’s on HN. Read comments, people saying it should be banned. Saying it should be number 1 - that it was - but now is 23 and shadow banned. Don’t believe a word. Someone posts lyrics saying pandemic was planned and not real “or serious”
Realise it’s a political Comment. Suddenly understand all the above is probably true and that it was shadow banned.
I love the way communities seem to learn more about the real narrative by shadow bans than otherwise.
Not that I’m right.
Welcome 1984!
As Chesterton argues to the contrary "To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it."
Digital platforms want to have it both ways - they want to (in some cases manually!!!) curate and censor recommendations, search results, and plain uploads, while also retaining their platform protections.
The libertarian stance on this issue is completely untenable. I know an Olympic gymnast who can’t perform gymnastics that well.
"Libertarians share a skepticism of authority and state power, but some libertarians diverge on the scope of their opposition to existing economic and political systems."
You can repeal section 230, and the first amendment will still protect every company in the US from doing what you want them to do. There is no version of this where you win, and anti-vax or overtly hateful/conservative content sticks around on YouTube.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratton_Oakmont,_Inc._v._Prod....
Repealing 230 would just trigger a new set of lawsuits, one of which would end up in front of the Supreme Court, who would then rule it as unconstitutional to force YouTube to publish content it doesn't want to, and we'll be right back where we started, just now with precedent in a Supreme Court case.
https://harvardlawreview.org/2018/05/section-230-as-first-am...
https://www.lawfareblog.com/wall-street-journal-misreads-sec...
https://scholarship.law.nd.edu/ndlr_online/vol95/iss1/3/
https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/section-230-critics-are-...
You are tilting at a windmill, friend.
Also political feasibility in the USA isn’t the end-all be-all. YouTube certainly wants to do business in other countries/regions - such as the EU. Google is a public company, and as such it’s executives have a fiduciary responsibility to the shareholders. Right now, since other megacorps want Google to censor content so their ads don’t run alongside XYZ content that you don’t like, Google is following their fiduciary duties. But if a regulator steps in, it becomes a matter if “oh shit doing business in the EU is more important than doing business with cocacola”
Your entire argument hinges on people not realizing there's a specific legal definition of the word "publisher", which means that no matter what politicians you convince to do what you want, it will never function as expected in the judiciary.
Remember, Stratton Oakmont, Inc. v. Prodigy Services Co. "held that Prodigy was liable as the publisher of the content created by its users because it exercised editorial control over the messages on their bulletin boards in three ways: 1) by posting Content Guidelines for users, 2) by enforcing those guidelines with 'Board Leaders', and 3) by utilizing screening software designed to remove offensive language."
The State removed the above liability via Section 230, which paved the way for YouTube to become the monolith it is today. Reattaching liability to YouTube would force it to choose between an editorial model (Prodigy) or a platform model (CompuServe). It would not get the luxury of the editorial model without paying the corresponding costs of that model. In other words, it would put YouTube on the same playing field as the Washington Post and other traditional news sources.
I notice you ignored completely the articles I linked, and didn't even bother to address the myriad arguments put forward by legal experts on this issue. I assume that's because you have no legal standing whatsoever, and would prefer to just say, "This is what I want and I don't care if the country has to cease to exist first."
Additionally, I find it highly hypocritical that you post such an opinion on a platform that would be shut down, were you to magically get your way. When you have to express your opinion in a way that wouldn't be allowed if your opinion were shared, you might want to rethink your position. It makes your position look wholly unconsidered, which it apparently is.
The big flaw is revealed in the Lawfare blog:
"[CDA 230] merely ensures that courts will quickly dismiss lawsuits that would have been dismissed anyway on First Amendment grounds—but with far less hassle, stress and expense. At the scale of the billions of pieces of content posted by users every day, that liability shield is essential to ensure that website owners aren’t forced to abandon their right to moderate content by a tsunami of meritless but costly litigation."
The principle here isn't whether all the cases have merit or not; it is that every individual gets their day in court. That is, it is up to the courts to decide the merit of a case based on fact, which, of course, is case-dependent [1].
Denying individuals access to the courts makes them bear a cost. That cost should, in truth, be borne by Big Tech and subtracted from its profits.
As for Hacker News, it might not survive in its present form should CDA 230 be repealed. That's OK, though. Perhaps it would become PG's blog, and I would have to start my own blog to comment on matters of the day. That's entirely acceptable, and I don't find it hypocritical.
[1] https://www.rcfp.org/supreme-court-will-not-hear-letter-edit...
There would be one case, it would go to the Supreme Court, and would reinforce the key components of Section 230. YouTube, as a concept, will never go away, no matter what you want, because the 1st Amendment exists. Every individual would not get their day in court, as a precedent would be set and future lawsuits would be thrown out quickly, just as they are today.
Honestly, this smacks of bitter childishness; you want to hurt Google and you think this is the best way to do it. It is not, because it would not. It hurts no one, and would be re-resolved within the very next Supreme Court session, so no more than ~6 months. This childishness is reinforced by your acceptance that the platform you're writing on would not exist. You may not see that as hypocritical, but I and nearly everyone else who reads this does. It, alone, weakens your argument substantially.
https://scholarship.law.nd.edu/ndlr_online/vol95/iss1/3/
Newspapers do not enjoy CDA 230 protection. They face actual liabilities and carry liability insurance, a cost. Without CDA 230, these liabilities will not disappear for Big Tech by one case going to the Supreme Court in 6 months. We've seen the opposite with the Supreme Court not hearing at least one letter-to-the-editor libel case for newspapers [1].
Finally, It is not guaranteed that Hacker News would cease to exist. It might need liability insurance or change in some other way. All I know is that things would be different and better.
[1] https://www.rcfp.org/supreme-court-will-not-hear-letter-edit...
This is a temper tantrum, and will never pass legislative or judicial muster. Enjoy YouTube, because its kind of site is sticking around forever.
This reminds me of a temper tantrum someone else threw on Twitter, claiming to leave the platform for an "a censorship-resistant technology: RSS". Did HN suddenly become exclusively based on RSS? No? Interesting. It's almost as if this is a post-hoc argument concocted to try and justify a childish fit.
Edit: You also shared propaganda on your Twitter feed about Hunter Biden's laptop, so it's pretty clear where your allegiances lie. Yet again, another conservative cries foul when an institution doesn't support his ideas.
I'm done here, I only engage with adults, which you clearly are not.
You're right that YouTube will exist as long as CDA 230 exists. However, if CDA 230 is ever repealed, YouTube will have to change as its business model is not protected by the 1st Amendment but by an act of Congress.
Ad hominem arguments are ignored.
— Your source, not mine (not that matters).
Your argument seems to be that CDA 230 doesn't matter, but it is imperative that it not be repealed, which is kind of a nonsensical position.
At this point I'm giving you a way to respond further to demonstrate how unreasonable, fundamentally, people who hold your position actually are. It's clear from what you've written that this isn't a rational position you hold, and so then anyone reading this will have to guess at why, other than rationality, would you want YouTube, Twitter, and HN to cease to exist.
Your Twitter account, in your profile, should give anyone reading this all the information they need to understand your bias.
One of your sources says: No, that is wrong. CDA 230 is a superset of First Amendment protections. I agree with your source. However, I think these additional protections are a bad idea because they absolve YouTube and the like from certain responsibilities:
"Because we [YouTube] are not in a position to adjudicate the truthfulness of postings, we do not remove video postings due to allegations of defamation." [1]
That absolution is ridiculous.
[1] https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6154230?hl=en&co=G...
And no, my source agrees with me, it literally does not say what you claim. Considering you have a track record of lying about citations, this is unsurprising.
Anything else you feel like lying about? Would prefer more lies that are immediately and obviously false, such as the Notre Dame article not agreeing that Section 230 provides a litigation shield.
I've quoted you twice and paraphrased your argument once by saying that it "seems to be that CDA 230 doesn't matter." Perhaps that was an oversimplification; however, let's be clear, CDA 230 is a stronger litigation shield than the First Amendment. For that reason, it needs to go.
It's not defamation if it's true, which it is. You have lied (made an untrue statement with intent to deceive) about what I've written, and what's been written in cited articles, to further your argument. That, definitionally, makes you a liar (a person who tells lies).
Section 230 being removed will not achieve the goal you desire, which is to hurt Google/Twitter/YCombinator. Any relevant protections that allow them to discretionarily host content that isn't produced by them without liability will remain. This is repeatedly explained in the above cited articles, as well as many additional articles easily found through a quick search of the topic.
As I said before, your opinion is not based in reality, and you are tilting at windmills. I will repeat this for as long as you reply, because bullies like you need to be stood up to and told no.
Besides, the two cases you keep citing are from 91' and '95. They're not relevant now because of how many of the facts are different (as I've said, YouTube and NYT are fundamentally different businesses, with or without Section 230), and could not be used as precedence even if Section 230 were repealed.
My goal isn't to hurt Google/Twitter/YCombinator, but to interject some responsibility.
That responsibility is coming as common law works through systems outside the USA. For instance, consider George Galloway, a far-left UK politician, and his push towards making Google pay for keeping defamatory videos online [1].
Hopefully, once people understand that, to quote the article, "an intrinsic part of freedom of speech is the right to be heard if one thinks one's character has been falsely impugned," the USA will take a serious look at either reforming or, ideally, repealing CDA 230.
[1] https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/colum-kenny-george-gallow...
Again with the lies. Nobody said you were bullying Big Tech, I said you were bullying HN users (me, specifically). You're a bully, and I don't like bullies.
> My goal isn't to hurt Google/Twitter/YCombinator, but to interject some responsibility.
I literally do not believe you. It's clear you don't apply this consistently (hello HN user), and it's clear you have a specific political leaning that undermines your credibility here (Hunter Biden's laptop is something you apparently think is a credible news story, and not blatant propaganda to try and recreate the "Hillary's emails" for the 2020 election cycle).
You apparently want to hurt Big Tech because you are angry your team got censored.
> the USA will take a serious look at either reforming or, ideally, repealing CDA 230.
They will not, no matter how many times you state it as if it were fact.
You tried this "Repeat a bunch of nonsense long enough and hopefully people will eventually let your nonsense go." strategy with your claims about the efficacy of introducing fake rhino horn into the Asian black market to drive down prices, and that didn't work (though honestly wholly on brand, you wanted to lie to admittedly bad people about what you were selling, and as far as I can tell you were attempting to make a profit off of these illicit sales).
You tried again, when you attempted an ICO to (I assume) fund your company in 2017, and your state's government found out and seemingly shut you down, so that nonsense about whether PembiCoin qualified as a security or not (I guess it did qualify, despite your claims) didn't work either.
Now you try to misrepresent your way through a conversation about Section 230, and it's not working, either.
Maybe stop lying? It isn't working for you.
There is a valley of nuance between Cubby, Inc. v. CompuServe Inc. [1] and Stratton Oakmont, Inc. v. Prodigy Services Co. [2]. All of this nuance was being worked out in the courts via common law principles before Congress short-circuited the process with CDA 230, which turned out to be one of the things that helped facilitate the rise of the Big Tech oligopoly that Congress now decries.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubby,_Inc._v._CompuServe_Inc%...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratton_Oakmont,_Inc._v._Prod....
There's no such thing as nuance when it comes to corporate liability via third party participation. Companies are going to do the thing which reduces the surface area for litigation as much as possible. Youtube would nuke political speech entirely so fast from anyone not paying them a fee to be broadcast that heads would spin.
"X is a rapist." (Where X is a private figure for simplification.)
The nuance is as follows:
A) Under Cubby without proactive moderation.
The website is not liable for the above speech. All the website needs to do is remove the offending speech once it is made aware of its defamatory nature, maybe via a court order.
B) Under Stratton with proactive moderation.
The website is making an effort to determine the truthfulness of content. As such, letting a defamatory post go through subjects the website to liability.
C) Under CDA 230.
As per YouTube, "Because we are not in a position to adjudicate the truthfulness of postings, we do not remove video postings due to allegations of defamation." [1]
Option C is the worst. It is akin to letting an oil company pick and choose which spills are worth cleaning up. Websites can remove things they think are defamatory to certain people and leave up other things that are defamatory to others with no repercussions.
Ideally, we would live in a world governed by A and B. In that world, sites could choose between moderation and no moderation and the corresponding legal and financial burdens. What we have right now is a mess that works to the advantage of Big Tech.
[1] https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6154230?hl=en&co=G...
Because Youtube exists in the real world, and because earning money through ads is a hell of a lot better for business than trying to get people to pay for content, C is always the best option for them and for every other content provider AND virtually all small and independent content producers.
Otherwise, companies like Youtube would be forced to gate entrance to supplying content by charging hosting fees for content. You are seeing the tree and missing the rest of the forest.
1.) A and B are not my proposals; They're case law that has been preempted by C.
2.) Copyright falls under the DMCA, which pretty much follows A's procedures (i.e., a takedown notice model) even though the DMCA is a statutory provision. Why are copyright holders so special?
3.) There is no constitutional right to an ad-based business model. Ad-based models evolved under rules similar to B's, but for newspapers, and B is what should govern said models online (unless someone can demonstrate a successful ad-based model under A).
4.) CDA 230 is the golden goose; hence, it won't be repealed. Everyone gets paid to the detriment of society and the individuals who are denied their day in court.
YouTube is fighting a problem with disinformation that has significant implications on a public health crisis.
I don't see why they should respond any differently, simply because someone is singing the disinformation.
You didn't answer my question.
For example, should Youtube start banning all modeling videos because is taking the life of young teeneagers with eating disorders?
What about smoking, drinking and illegal drugs on musical videos by very, very popular singers? Should Youtube start banning them too?
As far as I know, the example issues are taking way more lives than the current ONE. It's a double standard just to comply with the status quo.
Don't mess with art, it's just art, we all agree.
All art is political, even (especially) the CCP recognizes that power as it crushes art. What is really interesting, though, is the fact that the powers-that-be feel threatened by this art. Why would a mere rap video be so threatening?
It may not be 1984, maybe something from Neuromancer or Snow Crash (I forget which) where big corps control the information that is considered acceptable for the plebs.
If a distributed network ends up displacing Youtube, what's going to inevitably happen is one section of the network is going consume the vast majority of the viewership and content, and they're going to start repeating the same shit that Youtube is doing right now.
I'm not saying we shouldn't promote alternatives, but I am saying we haven't really figured out how to properly integrate social media into our society without it disintegrating into what we're seeing now (or worse).
Many of you defending censorship in the last few years (and very much so on HN) on political grounds are going to be changing your minds in the coming years due to stuff like this.
I also have a great deal of dread that we will not. We are not guaranteed to have nice things, and a few bad actors can do quite a lot of harm.
Sure, big platforms censoring stuff is bad, but people still have the choice of renting a server and hosting whatever they want.
If your website, hosted on a dedicated machine that you rent from OVH or whatever (and probably Amazon, but I wouldn't trust them) or co-locate in a datacenter, can be taken down on claims of misinformation, that's it, RIP free Internet. It was nice knowing you.
Why Parler didn't use a "normal" hosting provider, I don't know.
https://gizmodo.com/godaddy-is-giving-texas-abortion-snitchi...
So seeing some people complain about censorship after being against regulation has very much "you wanted this, serves you right" vibe.
Which really just goes back to the two party, my enemy or my friend trope. Tribalism etc.
I used to be like that and I remember defending YT censorship as I thought I would probably wanted to be able to do the same had my project took off. It took me a long time to realise I was wrong.
The tech giants are unregulated. They can do what they want. They want this for some reason, so they do it.
What is the alternative?
Not sure if "they should be hosting dangerous antivaxx content during global pandemic" (that some people claim doest actually exist because of previous content) is a good way to kick that discussion off.
(I realize this particular video possibly isnt that dangerous.)
I would rather live in this world than the alternative.
It's beyond parody. If this was twitter, I'd be bringing out the clown emoji.
As of writing this I count one banned user who was clearly banned a long time ago, and the majority of flagged comments not saying that at all. Some flagged comments even take the opposite side.
Also iTunes Hip Hop top 100 had 5 "Let's go Brandon" songs in it a couple of days ago, including #1.
Why are ... why are we quoting Fox News credlously again?
Has HN not learned, yet?
I see that for shorthand that the whole response wasn’t managed properly as the “spread” still happened.
I don’t think it’s a fair criticism of Biden, but it’s a rap song, which tends to encourage a bit of hyperbole.
> Pandemic ain't real, they just planned it
Banning alternative points of view is a slippery slope.
But this is still silly. It's a song. Rage Against The Machine has a song claiming the FBI staged the murders of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X and it's the most popular song from The Matrix soundtrack. And an iconic, great song that I love, for what it's worth, even though I doubt the truth of that claim.
site:fda.gov pfizer approval
I haven't been able to find it myself but maybe worth considering.
Ew. I just defended YouTube.
Mostly just the rappers waving their hands around and showing their guns.
I mean, I know there are pockets of people who believe that saying vaccines don’t work is telling the truth, but broadly speaking, saying that vaccines are fake and don’t work is considered misinformation related to medicine.
But that's not what he's saying, is it?
— Matthew Harrison Brady in Inherit the Wind
We now know of vaccinated people dying of covid, some right after being vaxxed, some months after, some after getting a second dose.
The lyrics can be interpreted a few ways. Was the vaccine then supposed to absolutely stop the spread and give absolute protection to a vaccinated person?
He said vaccines don't work. You also said vaccines don't work. And that's just simply not true.
But they work often enough and to a high enough degree of efficacy that we still should bother.
In specific cases, vaccines may not prevent you from contracting a disease.
In general, vaccines do work. Even if they didn't work in your specific case.
Now, to bring this back around to being on-topic to the thread it's in, whether or not vaccines "work" is actually irrelevant. Either they do work and therefore stop the spread, or they don't work and they therefore don't stop the spread. A vaccine can not work without doing its job.
> Biden said the jab stop the spread, it was lies (I remember)
That's medical disinformation.
I'm not getting confused. I'm discarding facile positions based around inappropriate literalism
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/oct/14/joe-biden/...