12 ms·

Smart, this should change the media narrative from their utter bollocks of handling the comments thing. YouTube may be equal parts soulless and incompetent, but

Smart, this should change the media narrative from their utter bollocks of handling the comments thing. YouTube may be equal parts soulless and incompetent, but their PR strategy isn’t terrible sometimes. On the other hand, antivaxxing is one of those problems crying out to stamped into the dust. I don’t particularly care if some decides to eat lots of fruit instead of getting chemotherapy, because their cancer isn’t contagious. Immunization though, is a matter of public health, and my patience for precious fools on a mission is precisely 0 when it could hurt people I care about. Still... why the hell is this something we let YouTube decide? The problem with antivaxxers isn’t their YouTube channels, it’s the fact that our lawmakers are too cowardly to pass some laws around the issue. YouTube shouldn’t be in a position to exert this kind of power, and this isn’t how issues should be tackled. This doesn’t solve anything, it just obscures it. A solution involves restricting access to public spaces for selfish morons who don’t get vaccinated, and yes, their children. Edit: Sorry I just realized that my comment is on the border of being little more than a rant. Like a lot of people here I suspect that this is the intersection of two issues I care about deeply; a big tech company’s questionable, situational ethics and enormous power, and the horror of people facing debilitation or death because of pseudoscience. I’m angry, I’m frustrated, and while I know having the government intervene is fraught with danger, it seems necessary especially in cases of public health.

bb88 8y ago
The problem with this trend now is that people have realized the truth they want can be the truth we all have if they're willing to yell loud enough about it.
- zeristor 8y ago
  Ironically that's postmodernism for you.
  - UncleMeat 8y ago
    Postmodernism does not mean "all truths are valid". Foucault was often unclear in his writing but he was clear on this.
    - dvtrn 8y ago
      Foucault also wasn't the only one with an opinion on postmodernism.
- Pharmakon 8y ago
  It’s always been true, but it used to require someone with resources and like minded people to start it. Now everyone is in the game, with predictably unpredictable results. Worse, with bits and content farms it’s possible to distort the perception of reality and popular opinion at the individual level. Governments enjoy unprecedented power to erode trust at home and abroad. People are understandably giving up and turning away, while,other get lost in a deep dark hole. How do we stop this without making matters even worse? I want to say “educate people” yet that’s a pat response. Some people won’t be educated, it takes a lot of time, and how do we even agree on what a good education is? To me it’s critical thinking, STEM, and meeting other people. To others it’s teaching their kids that people like me are the agents of the devil, that fossils are a test from god or a plot by the CIA. How can that gap be bridged without someone trampling all over the rights of the other? How can people in such separate relaities not undermine each other or seek to use the system against each other, only to see it turned back on themselves? How many times have you read a comment on a board and your first thought was, “That has to be a troll/shill/bot”? How often have you just given up on a discussion because the signal:noise ratio was intolerable? I know my answer is “too many times to count.” I worry that it means bad actors are winning, that I’ve fallen under the spell of Oh Dearism.
  - bb88 8y ago
    Many religious leaders believe that lying to people is immoral -- or at least they used to it until they made a moral judgement that abortion (e.g.) was so much worse than lying.
colechristensen 8y ago
The problem I see is what if there actually were a problem? Keep in mind I solidly believe that there is not. But there have been many drugs with serious side effects pulled from the market some of them after regulators and drug companies behaving badly. Is YouTube pulling them because of a sense of responsibility to open fair scientific inquiry? Or are they doing it as a PR stunt to distract from other bad behavior?
- UncleMeat 8y ago
  Then people would do a different thing. We aren't locked in forever to all decisions.
- vvanders 8y ago
  I'm sure if you lived in SW Washington with an infant you'd sing a different tune. More than a few friends and people I know are immunocompromised, for them it is a big deal.
- Felz 8y ago
  Case in point, vaccines can cause narcolepsy. https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/history/narcolepsy-flu.html https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/history/narcoleps... They don't cause autism, but what if we set up mandatory vaccinations with absolutely no opt-out because some parents were offensively wrong, and later a vaccination does start causing serious problems and the government doesn't move fast enough to change its rules?
  - olivermarks 8y ago
    We have a family friend whose young daughter developed serious issues with autistic similarities after a vaccination. This is not necessarily a topic to be 'stamped out', and free speech has to transcend censorship, search engine companies hiding materials and discouraging the creation of those materials.
    - reitanqild 8y ago
      > We have a family friend whose young daughter developed serious issues with autistic similarities after a vaccination. Isn't that because those issues usually aren't visible before around that time? (I am neither a GP nor a psycologist though so this is just trying to apply common sense.) I demand my kids gets all recommended vaccines. Because even if there was a (vanishingly small) chance of a kid getting autism like symptoms I can live better with that risk than the much bigger risk that that being unvaccinated presents. > This is not necessarily a topic to be 'stamped out', and free speech has to transcend censorship, search engine companies hiding materials and discouraging the creation of those materials. Free speech is important. I would like to use mine to point out that looking at some anti-vaxxers (I'm not singling out your relatives, they might very well be reasonable people) one might get the idea that any autism in their kids might have simpler explanation than a vaccine that millions of other kids take without issue every year ;-) Edit: that last paragraph really feels bad. My point is I mostly do defend peoples right to free speech (I might even pay close attention to people who argue against AGW as long as they are trying to be honest and have a discussion, not a sermon), but when it comes to vaccines it is actually pretty much settled science that they save millions of lives, millions of hours of suffering each year. If anyone still wants to debate it, I might even listen carefully, but it really helps a lot if the other part treat the subject with the respect it deserves.
NotAnEconomist 8y ago
It's a very sad state of affairs. The problem is partly caused by the medical establishment failing at their job and a healthy dose of hubris, followed by a campaign to shame people into submission. Now that shaming has failed (as shaming people into submission historically has), they're deploying soft power, in the form of censoring these people. I have trouble as seeing this as anything but a disaster: Google has validated the claims of anti-vaxxers. There's just no way to cut it besides that anti-vaxxers are right -- the medical establishment doesn't really have an answer, and is prepared to use force rather than debate the topic. This is evidence for the anti-vaxxer's longstanding claim that medicine was wrong, knew it, and was perpetuating a cover-up. They've just been censored by one of the largest corporations on the planet. Setting aside if you care about speech, if you care about children and rigorous medicine, rather than enabling the egotism and cargo-culting of the medical profession, this is bad.
- daeken 8y ago
  This is literally the worst argument I've read on Hacker News, and that is really saying something. They didn't in any way validate the claims of the anti-vaxxers. The medical community has repeatedly given the answers, these people are just too dumb, selfish, or gullible to believe them.
  - NotAnEconomist 8y ago
    You seem to have reading comprehension trouble: it literally validated some of their claims (about censorship rather than response), but not others (about medical facts). That said, your comment is an excellent demonstrating of my point: it's technically incorrect, and focuses on shaming me for my opinion while lacking a substantive reply.
    - creato 8y ago
      The idea that demonetization is equivalent to censorship needs to go away. That idea is the same thing as believing that advertisers are obligated to show ads on your content, which is obviously wrong.
Alex3917 8y ago
> Immunization though, is a matter of public health Not necessarily. Human-to-human transmission isn't the primary vector (if even possible) for a lot of diseases we get vaccinated for, e.g. yellow fever, Japanese encephalitis, lyme disease, tetanus, shingles, rabies, etc.
- fibbery 8y ago
  Shingles is caused by the chicken pox virus.
  - Alex3917 8y ago
    Sure, but the primary transmission vector for chicken pox isn't adults with singles, it's other kids with chicken pox.
- Pharmakon 8y ago
  ...Measels, Mumps, Rubella, Polio, Varicella (i.e. what you need to contract to get shingles). We can both make lists of equal length back and forth, but we also both know that there are plenty of communicable diseases between humans. Would we be having this debate if the outbreaks weren’t measles, but Variola Major? ZEBOV?
paulddraper 8y ago
> it’s the fact that our lawmakers are too cowardly to pass some laws around the issue. There are laws on the books in the U.S. "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press;" The solution to bad speech is more speech, not less.
- mcphage 8y ago
  The laws would be for requiring vaccinations, not for silencing anti-vaxxers.
  - paulddraper 8y ago
    OP said "why the hell is this something we let YouTube decide?" And YouTube's decision was to silence anti-vaxxers, not mandate vaccines.
    - Pharmakon 8y ago
      YouTube demonetized them, they’re not silencing them. This is a hard enough conversation to have without inaccuracies.
      - paulddraper 8y ago
        You're right. They demonetized them. Point stands though.
  - rlt 8y ago
    I am pro-vaccination, but forcing anyone to anything to their body is in some ways worse than restricting their speech.
    - idDriven 8y ago
      The issue here is that these are parents making decisions for their minor children, not themselves. For example it has been ruled child abuse and illegal for Christian Scientists to deny their minor children life-saving medical treatment. The other issue here is that herd immunity or lack thereof can put other people's children at risk, not everyone is a responder to vaccination.
lmilcin 8y ago
Exactly. I don't think that a company that is supposed to be just providing a service to publish your videos should be unilaterally deciding what they like and what they don't even if it majority opinion. Free speech is there exactly to protect minority opinions because sometimes it happens people in minority are right. Every major movement started as minority, by definition. Free speech protection is there to make sure we can have smart people notice a problem and then express their concern and be allowed to voice it so that if they can gather enough movement to make a change there can be a good change. It is sad that this can sometimes lead to aberrations like anti-vac movement but it would be a horrible idea to argue this is a reason to throw free speech protection out. Instead we should demand lawmakers to grow a spine and recognize there is no basis for anti-vac movement and enough is enough. Sadly, vote counting is much more important nowadays than sound medical advice.
- zanny 8y ago
  > just allowing you to publish your videos should be unilaterally deciding Youtube is a not a public institution nor is it public land or space. Google can allow, or deny, whomever or whatever they want on their platform so long as their motivates for denying service are not due to regulated prejudice such as racism or sexism.
  - lmilcin 8y ago
    Ah, what if your phone company or internet provider decided to filter your ability to voice your opinions? At some point a private company that allows you to post amateurish videos or 140 character messages becomes public utility used by millions and if they decide not to allow you to express your opinion your opinion becomes effectively unavailable to others.
    - munk-a 8y ago
      There are still some filters on what they will allow over their lines but as a carrier of communication they have been regulated by the government to allow everyone's data across (mostly). There is the option to buy a domain and host your opinions yourself, google and youtube are not preventing that from being an option (and google will even index your site and help people find it)... So theoretically this isn't an issue. In actuality I think society has reached a point where the ability to post something to facebook or youtube is actually a specific form of expression that should be protected as a public institution. That said, spreading dangerous misinformation is not wholly protected by free speech, if you are a weatherman and advise (with malintent) commuters fleeing an incoming storm to take a highway that is known to be dangerous then your speech is not protected, the government may silence your speech and you will likely face legal repercussions for doing so. I think freedom of speech is very important and I do acknowledge that this issue is littered with slippery slopes but, not all speech is free and there are some forms of speech that should be controlled. The problem of how to do that as a society while not impeding free speech is extremely hard and unsolved, the best current solution might be to assume all speech is free until a court rules otherwise but that is not an ideal solution.
rlt 8y ago
> A solution involves restricting access to public spaces for selfish morons who don’t get vaccinated, and yes, their children. I'm certainly not an antivaxxer. I receive vaccines and will vaccinate my children. But the government mandating people vaccinate themselves or their children in order to participate in society crosses a line for me. It may be reasonable in specific circumstances, which I haven't fully thought through, but not by broadly restricting access to public spaces.
- fzeroracer 8y ago
  Do you believe it's a bad idea for governments to mandate that you're up to date on your vaccinations before entering their country? Should you be allowed to lie about your vaccination history because you believe it's unfair for them to force that upon you? Is it your right to potentially threaten their population by bringing in dangerous diseases? Or does this only apply to your current government?
  - rlt 8y ago
    I have a choice to travel to other countries or not. I don't really have a choice to not live in (or not pay taxes to) the country I was born into.
    - fzeroracer 8y ago
      No, but you do live with other people. As part of that, we all sign the social contract when we're born which stipulates how we can and cannot behave around other people. As part of that, people that disregard vaccination are putting the lives of those around them in very real danger. Which is exactly why people believe anti-vaxxers are a problem, and why there's an increasing push to deny them the public sphere.
      - rlt 8y ago
        > putting the lives of those around them in very real danger If thousands of people were dying of vaccine-preventable diseases I may reconsider my stance, but we are currently nowhere close to justifying crossing that line. IMHO it's a self-correcting problem. If more people do start dying of these diseases some of the holdouts will get the vaccines.
patmcc 8y ago
>>A solution involves restricting access to public spaces for selfish morons who don’t get vaccinated, and yes, their children. Easier than that - you either vaccinate your kids or we take them away, period. We're ok taking kids away from parents who starve their kids or beat them or let their wounds get terribly infected. Why do we allow parents to keep children if they're not willing to vaccinate for bullshit reasons?
creato 8y ago
> Still... why the hell is this something we let YouTube decide? The only thing YouTube has decided here is that they aren't going to take money from advertisers and give it to anti vaccine channels.
- poilcn 8y ago
  Content creators say that demonetization is not only about the profits as such videos have less exposure as well (they won't go trending, they won't be recommended if you are not subscribed, etc.)
User23 8y ago
I assume you support enforcing vagrancy laws then and removing vagrants from public spaces? Because vagrants defecating in public and leaving used drug needles and other filth lying around certainly is a matter of public health[1][2]. [1] https://www.cnn.com/2017/09/14/health/hepatitis-a-outbreak-san-diego-county/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2017/09/14/health/hepatitis-a-outbreak-s... [2] https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/Typhus-Epidemic-Worsens-in-Los-Angeles-505166301.html https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/Typhus-Epidemic-Wor...
papadog 8y ago
>Immunization though, is a matter of public health, and my patience for precious fools on a mission is precisely 0 when it could hurt people I care about. Aren't the people you care about vaccinated?
- creato 8y ago
  Vaccines aren't 100% effective. Google herd immunity.
- ar0 8y ago
  > Aren't the people you care about vaccinated? It is not that easy. Some people cannot be vaccinated, for example measles vaccination isn't licensed for babies younger than 6 months AFAIK. So they will still be at risk from others who could have gotten vaccinated but didn't.
  - papadog 8y ago
    That's a bit of an edge case.
    - rincebrain 8y ago
      A major benefit of herd immunity is to help with the edge cases - people who cannot, or should not, be vaccinated, but would be in danger from these infections should they be exposed.
- amanaplanacanal 8y ago
  Vaccinations are not 100% effective, and some people cannot be vaccinated.
  - papadog 8y ago
    The threat of disease isn't news, yet the constant propaganda against anti-vaxers is. People got exposed to measles in the past and the vast majority were fine. You can only get measles once and the odds of dying of measles is akin to the annual odds of choking to death.
illumin8 8y ago
Wait, you mean they just barely demonetized them? As in, they've been paying them for clicks this entire time, even after all of the measles outbreaks the last few months? Crazy... to think YouTube execs had no clue that there is a direct correlation to the media they help propagate and the outbreak of previously cured diseases!
TheAceOfHearts 8y ago
What are your thoughts on the Amish? As I understand it they don't get vaccinated, but they also don't interact much with the rest of society. Where do you think the line should be drawn in your hypothetical government intervention?
- c0nducktr 8y ago
  Their right to practice their region shouldn't supersede everyone elses' rights to live a safe society. If someone's religion said you needed to disobey red traffic lights, or shoot guns wildly into the air, we'd tell them to knock it off real quick.
  - RedComet 8y ago
    Okay, I’ll bite. How would it endanger people if I weren’t vaccinated?
    - c0nducktr 8y ago
      Well, I guess there's this one thing here... https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/father-vancouver-measles-outbreak-1.5022891 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/father-vanco... Was that even a serious question? http://vk.ovg.ox.ac.uk/herd-immunity http://vk.ovg.ox.ac.uk/herd-immunity
      - RedComet 8y ago
        Yes, it was. And those links didn't address it in the slightest. Your first link is completely unrelated, that is, of course I understand that I am far more likely to contract a disease that I am not vaccinated for, particularly if traveling. And if anything, your second link ("herd immunity") underlines my question. I'm vaccinated. Everyone I know is vaccinated. The country I live it essentially requires that people be vaccinated. So again I pose the question, how would I endanger others if I weren't?
        8y ago
existentialhalt 8y ago
Why don't you take responsibility for your own health instead of expecting others to risk their lives so you can be lazy? I was vaccine injured. I battled crippling physical pain and brain damage for over a decade. Do I not have a right to try and survive? Or are you willing to sacrifice people like me so you can be safe with minimal effort?
- jjjensen90 8y ago
  Can you clarify your point? Are you implying that the alternative of pre-vaccine history (which is very clearly documented) is preferable to the miniscule and heavily studied risk of negative vaccine effects? Back when many children routinely died from diseases which cause huge suffering which don't even exist in statistically significant rates in the US now? In medicine, we understand that there are risk calculations to every treatment and preventative decision. You weigh them against each other. When public health at large is the question, you certainly do have to consider the risks that come with public health policy. For example, diabetics with retinopathy receive injections of medication that can help stop the condition from causing blindness. There is a 1/3000 chance that the injection can cause an infection which can lead to permanent blindness in the eye that was treated. You have to weigh the risks in this case personally when you're a diabetic with retinopathy, but imagine that the decision was instead that refusing the eye injection because of the tiny, well studied risk to yourself meant you were risking blinding someone else's child. It's not a perfect analogy but I hope it may help some understand that we aren't talking about a sacrifice in the way you seem to portray it in your questions. Also, regarding your health issues, I am truly sorry. I also have some debilitating medical issues that have affected my daily life for almost 20 years, but when having discussions about policy or philosophy around medicine I try not to use them as an appeal to emotion because that can cloud your judgement and logic.
  - existentialhalt 8y ago
    Here is Coleen Boyle, Director of the National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, testifying before congress that a double-blind placebo-controlled trial has never been done to evaluate the safety of any vaccine. This is the gold standard of clinical trials that every other drug on the market must complete before FDA approval. https://youtu.be/uNWTOmEi_6A?t=145 https://youtu.be/uNWTOmEi_6A?t=145
stunt 8y ago
If you look into the history of the countries with censorship, everything started by making decisions on what content should be allowed and what not. And it’s funny because a lot of them actually started with health related concerns.
franciskim 8y ago
If you're immunised and they're not, doesn't it mean you're safe and they're not? Maybe I'm missing a big part of the picture here.

bb88 8y ago

The problem with this trend now is that people have realized the truth they want can be the truth we all have if they're willing to yell loud enough about it.

zeristor 8y ago
Ironically that's postmodernism for you.
- UncleMeat 8y ago
  Postmodernism does not mean "all truths are valid". Foucault was often unclear in his writing but he was clear on this.
  - dvtrn 8y ago
    Foucault also wasn't the only one with an opinion on postmodernism.
Pharmakon 8y ago
It’s always been true, but it used to require someone with resources and like minded people to start it. Now everyone is in the game, with predictably unpredictable results. Worse, with bits and content farms it’s possible to distort the perception of reality and popular opinion at the individual level. Governments enjoy unprecedented power to erode trust at home and abroad. People are understandably giving up and turning away, while,other get lost in a deep dark hole. How do we stop this without making matters even worse? I want to say “educate people” yet that’s a pat response. Some people won’t be educated, it takes a lot of time, and how do we even agree on what a good education is? To me it’s critical thinking, STEM, and meeting other people. To others it’s teaching their kids that people like me are the agents of the devil, that fossils are a test from god or a plot by the CIA. How can that gap be bridged without someone trampling all over the rights of the other? How can people in such separate relaities not undermine each other or seek to use the system against each other, only to see it turned back on themselves? How many times have you read a comment on a board and your first thought was, “That has to be a troll/shill/bot”? How often have you just given up on a discussion because the signal:noise ratio was intolerable? I know my answer is “too many times to count.” I worry that it means bad actors are winning, that I’ve fallen under the spell of Oh Dearism.
- bb88 8y ago
  Many religious leaders believe that lying to people is immoral -- or at least they used to it until they made a moral judgement that abortion (e.g.) was so much worse than lying.

colechristensen 8y ago

The problem I see is what if there actually were a problem? Keep in mind I solidly believe that there is not. But there have been many drugs with serious side effects pulled from the market some of them after regulators and drug companies behaving badly. Is YouTube pulling them because of a sense of responsibility to open fair scientific inquiry? Or are they doing it as a PR stunt to distract from other bad behavior?

UncleMeat 8y ago
Then people would do a different thing. We aren't locked in forever to all decisions.
vvanders 8y ago
I'm sure if you lived in SW Washington with an infant you'd sing a different tune. More than a few friends and people I know are immunocompromised, for them it is a big deal.
Felz 8y ago
Case in point, vaccines can cause narcolepsy. https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/history/narcolepsy-flu.html https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/history/narcoleps... They don't cause autism, but what if we set up mandatory vaccinations with absolutely no opt-out because some parents were offensively wrong, and later a vaccination does start causing serious problems and the government doesn't move fast enough to change its rules?
- olivermarks 8y ago
  We have a family friend whose young daughter developed serious issues with autistic similarities after a vaccination. This is not necessarily a topic to be 'stamped out', and free speech has to transcend censorship, search engine companies hiding materials and discouraging the creation of those materials.
  - reitanqild 8y ago
    > We have a family friend whose young daughter developed serious issues with autistic similarities after a vaccination. Isn't that because those issues usually aren't visible before around that time? (I am neither a GP nor a psycologist though so this is just trying to apply common sense.) I demand my kids gets all recommended vaccines. Because even if there was a (vanishingly small) chance of a kid getting autism like symptoms I can live better with that risk than the much bigger risk that that being unvaccinated presents. > This is not necessarily a topic to be 'stamped out', and free speech has to transcend censorship, search engine companies hiding materials and discouraging the creation of those materials. Free speech is important. I would like to use mine to point out that looking at some anti-vaxxers (I'm not singling out your relatives, they might very well be reasonable people) one might get the idea that any autism in their kids might have simpler explanation than a vaccine that millions of other kids take without issue every year ;-) Edit: that last paragraph really feels bad. My point is I mostly do defend peoples right to free speech (I might even pay close attention to people who argue against AGW as long as they are trying to be honest and have a discussion, not a sermon), but when it comes to vaccines it is actually pretty much settled science that they save millions of lives, millions of hours of suffering each year. If anyone still wants to debate it, I might even listen carefully, but it really helps a lot if the other part treat the subject with the respect it deserves.

NotAnEconomist 8y ago

It's a very sad state of affairs. The problem is partly caused by the medical establishment failing at their job and a healthy dose of hubris, followed by a campaign to shame people into submission. Now that shaming has failed (as shaming people into submission historically has), they're deploying soft power, in the form of censoring these people. I have trouble as seeing this as anything but a disaster: Google has validated the claims of anti-vaxxers. There's just no way to cut it besides that anti-vaxxers are right -- the medical establishment doesn't really have an answer, and is prepared to use force rather than debate the topic. This is evidence for the anti-vaxxer's longstanding claim that medicine was wrong, knew it, and was perpetuating a cover-up. They've just been censored by one of the largest corporations on the planet. Setting aside if you care about speech, if you care about children and rigorous medicine, rather than enabling the egotism and cargo-culting of the medical profession, this is bad.

daeken 8y ago
This is literally the worst argument I've read on Hacker News, and that is really saying something. They didn't in any way validate the claims of the anti-vaxxers. The medical community has repeatedly given the answers, these people are just too dumb, selfish, or gullible to believe them.
- NotAnEconomist 8y ago
  You seem to have reading comprehension trouble: it literally validated some of their claims (about censorship rather than response), but not others (about medical facts). That said, your comment is an excellent demonstrating of my point: it's technically incorrect, and focuses on shaming me for my opinion while lacking a substantive reply.
  - creato 8y ago
    The idea that demonetization is equivalent to censorship needs to go away. That idea is the same thing as believing that advertisers are obligated to show ads on your content, which is obviously wrong.

Alex3917 8y ago

> Immunization though, is a matter of public health Not necessarily. Human-to-human transmission isn't the primary vector (if even possible) for a lot of diseases we get vaccinated for, e.g. yellow fever, Japanese encephalitis, lyme disease, tetanus, shingles, rabies, etc.

fibbery 8y ago
Shingles is caused by the chicken pox virus.
- Alex3917 8y ago
  Sure, but the primary transmission vector for chicken pox isn't adults with singles, it's other kids with chicken pox.
Pharmakon 8y ago
...Measels, Mumps, Rubella, Polio, Varicella (i.e. what you need to contract to get shingles). We can both make lists of equal length back and forth, but we also both know that there are plenty of communicable diseases between humans. Would we be having this debate if the outbreaks weren’t measles, but Variola Major? ZEBOV?

paulddraper 8y ago

> it’s the fact that our lawmakers are too cowardly to pass some laws around the issue. There are laws on the books in the U.S. "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press;" The solution to bad speech is more speech, not less.

mcphage 8y ago
The laws would be for requiring vaccinations, not for silencing anti-vaxxers.
- paulddraper 8y ago
  OP said "why the hell is this something we let YouTube decide?" And YouTube's decision was to silence anti-vaxxers, not mandate vaccines.
  - Pharmakon 8y ago
    YouTube demonetized them, they’re not silencing them. This is a hard enough conversation to have without inaccuracies.
    - paulddraper 8y ago
      You're right. They demonetized them. Point stands though.
- rlt 8y ago
  I am pro-vaccination, but forcing anyone to anything to their body is in some ways worse than restricting their speech.
  - idDriven 8y ago
    The issue here is that these are parents making decisions for their minor children, not themselves. For example it has been ruled child abuse and illegal for Christian Scientists to deny their minor children life-saving medical treatment. The other issue here is that herd immunity or lack thereof can put other people's children at risk, not everyone is a responder to vaccination.

lmilcin 8y ago

Exactly. I don't think that a company that is supposed to be just providing a service to publish your videos should be unilaterally deciding what they like and what they don't even if it majority opinion. Free speech is there exactly to protect minority opinions because sometimes it happens people in minority are right. Every major movement started as minority, by definition. Free speech protection is there to make sure we can have smart people notice a problem and then express their concern and be allowed to voice it so that if they can gather enough movement to make a change there can be a good change. It is sad that this can sometimes lead to aberrations like anti-vac movement but it would be a horrible idea to argue this is a reason to throw free speech protection out. Instead we should demand lawmakers to grow a spine and recognize there is no basis for anti-vac movement and enough is enough. Sadly, vote counting is much more important nowadays than sound medical advice.

zanny 8y ago
> just allowing you to publish your videos should be unilaterally deciding Youtube is a not a public institution nor is it public land or space. Google can allow, or deny, whomever or whatever they want on their platform so long as their motivates for denying service are not due to regulated prejudice such as racism or sexism.
- lmilcin 8y ago
  Ah, what if your phone company or internet provider decided to filter your ability to voice your opinions? At some point a private company that allows you to post amateurish videos or 140 character messages becomes public utility used by millions and if they decide not to allow you to express your opinion your opinion becomes effectively unavailable to others.
  - munk-a 8y ago
    There are still some filters on what they will allow over their lines but as a carrier of communication they have been regulated by the government to allow everyone's data across (mostly). There is the option to buy a domain and host your opinions yourself, google and youtube are not preventing that from being an option (and google will even index your site and help people find it)... So theoretically this isn't an issue. In actuality I think society has reached a point where the ability to post something to facebook or youtube is actually a specific form of expression that should be protected as a public institution. That said, spreading dangerous misinformation is not wholly protected by free speech, if you are a weatherman and advise (with malintent) commuters fleeing an incoming storm to take a highway that is known to be dangerous then your speech is not protected, the government may silence your speech and you will likely face legal repercussions for doing so. I think freedom of speech is very important and I do acknowledge that this issue is littered with slippery slopes but, not all speech is free and there are some forms of speech that should be controlled. The problem of how to do that as a society while not impeding free speech is extremely hard and unsolved, the best current solution might be to assume all speech is free until a court rules otherwise but that is not an ideal solution.

rlt 8y ago

> A solution involves restricting access to public spaces for selfish morons who don’t get vaccinated, and yes, their children. I'm certainly not an antivaxxer. I receive vaccines and will vaccinate my children. But the government mandating people vaccinate themselves or their children in order to participate in society crosses a line for me. It may be reasonable in specific circumstances, which I haven't fully thought through, but not by broadly restricting access to public spaces.

fzeroracer 8y ago
Do you believe it's a bad idea for governments to mandate that you're up to date on your vaccinations before entering their country? Should you be allowed to lie about your vaccination history because you believe it's unfair for them to force that upon you? Is it your right to potentially threaten their population by bringing in dangerous diseases? Or does this only apply to your current government?
- rlt 8y ago
  I have a choice to travel to other countries or not. I don't really have a choice to not live in (or not pay taxes to) the country I was born into.
  - fzeroracer 8y ago
    No, but you do live with other people. As part of that, we all sign the social contract when we're born which stipulates how we can and cannot behave around other people. As part of that, people that disregard vaccination are putting the lives of those around them in very real danger. Which is exactly why people believe anti-vaxxers are a problem, and why there's an increasing push to deny them the public sphere.
    - rlt 8y ago
      > putting the lives of those around them in very real danger If thousands of people were dying of vaccine-preventable diseases I may reconsider my stance, but we are currently nowhere close to justifying crossing that line. IMHO it's a self-correcting problem. If more people do start dying of these diseases some of the holdouts will get the vaccines.

patmcc 8y ago

>>A solution involves restricting access to public spaces for selfish morons who don’t get vaccinated, and yes, their children. Easier than that - you either vaccinate your kids or we take them away, period. We're ok taking kids away from parents who starve their kids or beat them or let their wounds get terribly infected. Why do we allow parents to keep children if they're not willing to vaccinate for bullshit reasons?

creato 8y ago

> Still... why the hell is this something we let YouTube decide? The only thing YouTube has decided here is that they aren't going to take money from advertisers and give it to anti vaccine channels.

poilcn 8y ago
Content creators say that demonetization is not only about the profits as such videos have less exposure as well (they won't go trending, they won't be recommended if you are not subscribed, etc.)

User23 8y ago

I assume you support enforcing vagrancy laws then and removing vagrants from public spaces? Because vagrants defecating in public and leaving used drug needles and other filth lying around certainly is a matter of public health[1][2]. [1] https://www.cnn.com/2017/09/14/health/hepatitis-a-outbreak-san-diego-county/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2017/09/14/health/hepatitis-a-outbreak-s... [2] https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/Typhus-Epidemic-Worsens-in-Los-Angeles-505166301.html https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/Typhus-Epidemic-Wor...

papadog 8y ago

>Immunization though, is a matter of public health, and my patience for precious fools on a mission is precisely 0 when it could hurt people I care about. Aren't the people you care about vaccinated?

creato 8y ago
Vaccines aren't 100% effective. Google herd immunity.
ar0 8y ago
> Aren't the people you care about vaccinated? It is not that easy. Some people cannot be vaccinated, for example measles vaccination isn't licensed for babies younger than 6 months AFAIK. So they will still be at risk from others who could have gotten vaccinated but didn't.
- papadog 8y ago
  That's a bit of an edge case.
  - rincebrain 8y ago
    A major benefit of herd immunity is to help with the edge cases - people who cannot, or should not, be vaccinated, but would be in danger from these infections should they be exposed.
amanaplanacanal 8y ago
Vaccinations are not 100% effective, and some people cannot be vaccinated.
- papadog 8y ago
  The threat of disease isn't news, yet the constant propaganda against anti-vaxers is. People got exposed to measles in the past and the vast majority were fine. You can only get measles once and the odds of dying of measles is akin to the annual odds of choking to death.

illumin8 8y ago

Wait, you mean they just barely demonetized them? As in, they've been paying them for clicks this entire time, even after all of the measles outbreaks the last few months? Crazy... to think YouTube execs had no clue that there is a direct correlation to the media they help propagate and the outbreak of previously cured diseases!

TheAceOfHearts 8y ago

What are your thoughts on the Amish? As I understand it they don't get vaccinated, but they also don't interact much with the rest of society. Where do you think the line should be drawn in your hypothetical government intervention?

c0nducktr 8y ago
Their right to practice their region shouldn't supersede everyone elses' rights to live a safe society. If someone's religion said you needed to disobey red traffic lights, or shoot guns wildly into the air, we'd tell them to knock it off real quick.
- RedComet 8y ago
  Okay, I’ll bite. How would it endanger people if I weren’t vaccinated?
  - c0nducktr 8y ago
    Well, I guess there's this one thing here... https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/father-vancouver-measles-outbreak-1.5022891 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/father-vanco... Was that even a serious question? http://vk.ovg.ox.ac.uk/herd-immunity http://vk.ovg.ox.ac.uk/herd-immunity
    - RedComet 8y ago
      Yes, it was. And those links didn't address it in the slightest. Your first link is completely unrelated, that is, of course I understand that I am far more likely to contract a disease that I am not vaccinated for, particularly if traveling. And if anything, your second link ("herd immunity") underlines my question. I'm vaccinated. Everyone I know is vaccinated. The country I live it essentially requires that people be vaccinated. So again I pose the question, how would I endanger others if I weren't?
      - 8y ago

existentialhalt 8y ago

Why don't you take responsibility for your own health instead of expecting others to risk their lives so you can be lazy? I was vaccine injured. I battled crippling physical pain and brain damage for over a decade. Do I not have a right to try and survive? Or are you willing to sacrifice people like me so you can be safe with minimal effort?

jjjensen90 8y ago
Can you clarify your point? Are you implying that the alternative of pre-vaccine history (which is very clearly documented) is preferable to the miniscule and heavily studied risk of negative vaccine effects? Back when many children routinely died from diseases which cause huge suffering which don't even exist in statistically significant rates in the US now? In medicine, we understand that there are risk calculations to every treatment and preventative decision. You weigh them against each other. When public health at large is the question, you certainly do have to consider the risks that come with public health policy. For example, diabetics with retinopathy receive injections of medication that can help stop the condition from causing blindness. There is a 1/3000 chance that the injection can cause an infection which can lead to permanent blindness in the eye that was treated. You have to weigh the risks in this case personally when you're a diabetic with retinopathy, but imagine that the decision was instead that refusing the eye injection because of the tiny, well studied risk to yourself meant you were risking blinding someone else's child. It's not a perfect analogy but I hope it may help some understand that we aren't talking about a sacrifice in the way you seem to portray it in your questions. Also, regarding your health issues, I am truly sorry. I also have some debilitating medical issues that have affected my daily life for almost 20 years, but when having discussions about policy or philosophy around medicine I try not to use them as an appeal to emotion because that can cloud your judgement and logic.
- existentialhalt 8y ago
  Here is Coleen Boyle, Director of the National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, testifying before congress that a double-blind placebo-controlled trial has never been done to evaluate the safety of any vaccine. This is the gold standard of clinical trials that every other drug on the market must complete before FDA approval. https://youtu.be/uNWTOmEi_6A?t=145 https://youtu.be/uNWTOmEi_6A?t=145

stunt 8y ago

If you look into the history of the countries with censorship, everything started by making decisions on what content should be allowed and what not. And it’s funny because a lot of them actually started with health related concerns.

franciskim 8y ago

If you're immunised and they're not, doesn't it mean you're safe and they're not? Maybe I'm missing a big part of the picture here.