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Suppose you're right. Does it justify censorship? Fauci can defend himself, and the docs are welcome to express their opinions. What gives Google/YouTube the ju

Suppose you're right. Does it justify censorship? Fauci can defend himself, and the docs are welcome to express their opinions. What gives Google/YouTube the justification to silence them?

aliminator8 6y ago
YouTube has the right to censor anything it likes. It's their platform. If you don't like it, don't use YouTube.
- crazy1van 6y ago
  > It's their platform But the real question is at what level of censorship to the cease to be a platform and become a publisher?
- dilap 6y ago
  Should they have that right though? YouTube is owned by a Google, a massive, publicly-traded corporation with near-monopoly power. Are the best interests of society served by allowing it to be governed in an authoritarian, totalitarian fashion, or would it make sense, considering it is one of the most powerful mediums of speech ever created, to let it be governed by rules somewhat approximating the much-lauded, traditional, western liberal values of free speech?
  - balls187 6y ago
    > Should they have that right though? Yes. Free speech does not grant the right for anyone to say whatever they want. The US Surpreme court has, as a matter of case law, ruled in specific areas to restrict free speech. These two doctors, under the pretense of medical expertise, provided false information, and used Youtube to do it. Google being a large massive publicly traded entity does not have any bearing as to it's responsibility to guard against violations on it's platform.
    - Gibbon1 6y ago
      The way I think of it is. Say my company makes high voltage transformers. And I get wind that one customer is using them to manufacture interrogation devices. I sure as shit can tell them to take their business elsewhere.
      - Dylan16807 6y ago
        But if you're selling electricity you generally don't get to refuse service to anyone.
        balls187 6y ago
        Google doesn't sell ip packets.
        Gibbon1 6y ago
        Also much of the world right now is operating under a state of emergency.
    - JackFr 6y ago
      > These two doctors, under the pretense of medical expertise, provided false information, and used Youtube to do it. Not according to the article. The local TV station interviewed them and the local TV station put the video on YouTube. Presumably as they are licensed to practice medicine in the State of California they do have some expertise greater than those of us without MDs so it's hardly 'pretense'. Is wearing scrubs on camera a ridiculous rhetorical device? Yes. Were these guys wrong on some facts? Absolutely. Were they wrong on policy recommendations? Much, much harder to say. What's astonishing though is the ease with which people seem to be willing to turn over their civil liberties and place themselves under house arrest. We have to sit through three years of the echo chamber telling us Donald Trump is a fascist, and then finally when our freedom to assemble is literally stripped from us by the police power of the state, people are complaining that he's not fascist enough. Geez.
      - 6y ago
  - montroser 6y ago
    The idea a private company should be forced to use their resources to host content they deem harmful to humanity seems obviously wrong. Of course they should have the right. YouTube is not a public service. "Free speech" does not mean you also are entitled to a platform and an audience.
    - autoexec 6y ago
      > "Free speech" does not mean you also are entitled to a platform and an audience. "Free speech" is a right but also an ideal. When speech is being silenced (de-platformed) or people (the audience) are forbidden from hearing it even when they want to, it violates those principles. > YouTube is not a public service. Youtube is a powerful and unique resource without meaningful competition which I think does give them a certain level of responsibility to uphold the ideals of free speech. Personally, I think that education is always better than suppression. Rather than remove these videos, a better option would simply be to inform users that the video contains false information and where they can find the truth.
      - snowwrestler 6y ago
        > When speech is being silenced (de-platformed) This is a ludicrous equivalency; by this standard YouTube is also “silencing (deplatforming)” people who don’t have computers because it’s not giving them resources to help them make and post videos. Deplatforming is not silencing. The default state of an individual in society is no platform. People who want platforms should build them. > Personally, I think that education is always better than suppression. You do not need to give people bad information to educate them. You only need to give them good information. I can teach you that 2+2=4 without spending hours belaboring all the numbers that 2+2 does not equal.
        stOneskull 6y ago
        These doctors have good points and common sense. They aren't motivated by money and power like most media, the WHO, and youtube.
        6y ago
  - shkkmo 6y ago
    > the much-lauded, traditional, western liberal values of free speech? Such as stopping people from saying bad words on radio/tv or stopping women from even accidentally showing a specific small part of their chest? We have a long history of direct censorship by liberal western governments for far worse reasons than saving lives. I don't see all these "free speech" advocates stepping up to stop the ongoing suppression of comparatively harmless expression like showing the female nipple. Yet, somehow the suppression of this actively harmful content is the rallying cry that pulls in so much attention. I am a free speech advocate, and I don't personally support the removal of this video, as I think the aims would be better served by alternate means, such as placing a strong disclaimer of inaccuracy alongside links to accurate rebuttals. However, I don't see how you stop Google from removing whatever content they want without creating laws that curtail other important aspects of free speech (e.g. creating a regulatory body that decides which groups do and do not have the right to control the content they publish).
    - stOneskull 6y ago
      I hope they do that with videos by cnn, fox, and the world health organisation too. This video by the doctors could be a refutation to certain pieces by others, even.
  - asdff 6y ago
    Of course they should. Youtube isn't bound by any law to be the standard video hosting site. They are simply the most popular over the past 10 years. Zero government mandate or anything. They can remove all hosted content tomorrow if they'd like, entirely up to them. If you don't like it, feel free to build your own platform. That's the beauty of disseminated knowledge of computer science and the internet, after all.
    - dependenttypes 6y ago
      > If you don't like it ... feel free to discuss about it on hacker news. Regardless, would you say the same if someone was banned from a super market over being gay?
      - skuthus 6y ago
        According to the current interpretation of the Civil Rights Act, you would not be able to prevent them from shopping
        dependenttypes 6y ago
        I am not in the USA, here it is legal to kick a gay person out. But the question is not if it is legal or not, but if it is moral.
      - asdff 6y ago
        No, because there are laws against discriminating protected classes (although sexuality is not quite a protected class per se and laws can vary between states). There are no laws against discriminating bigoted content or propaganda, these aren't protected classes.
        dependenttypes 6y ago
        See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23030141 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23030141
  - snowwrestler 6y ago
    Traditional western liberal values of free speech permit and require private citizens to make decisions about which points of view they will support and which they will not support. Which is what YouTube just did. There is not a “everyone likes your software platform so you’re not allowed to have an opinion” exception to the traditional western liberal values of free speech.
    - dependenttypes 6y ago
      I do not think that stopping me from viewing what they said is an opinion.
- GuiA 6y ago
  I look forward to a world where platforms are less afraid to kick off the voices they don’t like. The world would be better with 50 YouTubes rather than just one.
  - RonanTheGrey 6y ago
    If there were 50 YouTubes, that would be amazing. I wouldn't care ONE BIT if someone got kicked off RandomTube. It'd be hard to argue that their voice was being silenced. The 2nd player to YouTube, however, is a very distant second. YouTube has the power to decide if billions see a message. That's.... a power most governments would salivate to have. Personally I feel like the perspective that "they're privately owned so they can do what they want" while technically true, intentionally and dishonestly misses the point.
- dredmorbius 6y ago
  There are arguments that don't involve "private property, absolute authority" which permit both some censorship (in the public interest), and some guarantees of access most especially to under-served, unprivileged, and minority viewpoints (also in the public interest). That argument is public interest.
- dependenttypes 6y ago
  Just like a bakery has the right to refuse service to whoever they feel like, it is their shop after all, right? Anyway, they may be able to legally do what they want but this is not a free "get out of jail" card against any criticism.
- camccar 6y ago
  Bitchute is getting really nice and they don't censor stuff like this. I personally recommend it.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Barrin92 6y ago
>What gives Google/YouTube the justification to silence them? The fact that it is their platform. >Fauci can defend himself, Fauci is a 79 year old man busy working 20 hours a day trying to stop more people from dying, he doesn't have the time to debunk garbage on the internet. Youtube is completely within their rights to remove dangerous disinformation from their platform and I hope they take an agressive stance going forward.
- dapf 6y ago
  YouTube gets a tax exemption because it has "public forum" status, which puts some restrictions on them, basically they cannot censor anything they want, they must uphold free speech. So, they cannot have their cake and eat it. https://youtu.be/d6C6_NVj964 https://youtu.be/d6C6_NVj964
  - snowwrestler 6y ago
    Do not believe everything you see on YouTube.
  - iancarroll 6y ago
    YouTube is most certainly not tax exempt. Section 230 is about liability for user-generated content. And that video is a dubious interpretation of it, at best.
- thdrdt 6y ago
  I know it's their platform so they can do what they want. But why not show a warning like "the following content has false and dangerous information"? Now it is gone so it can't be discussed. And I also think you take away responsibility of the viewers if they don't need to be critical about any information.
  - loceng 6y ago
    "And I also think you take away responsibility of the viewers if they don't need to be critical about any information." This is exactly the problem currently though - the general population doesn't have either the time or critical thinking developed to understand this. Daniel Schmachtenberger on Eric Weinstein's The Portal episode #27 said: “... and the most awesome thing of the current system [of suppressing unruly people] we don’t even have to deal with protestors with tear gas or bean bags or whatever mostly, because mostly addiction, and student debt, and information overwhelm and those things deal with the people adequately so they don’t actually understand enough or care enough or have the capacity to organize very meaningly." Eric replied: “We just legalize weed and make porn free and everyone’s de-motivated.." - timestamped link to talk https://youtu.be/_b4qKv1Ctv8?t=3780 https://youtu.be/_b4qKv1Ctv8?t=3780 - but I'd highly recommend watching the whole interview. The goal has to be getting the population healthy enough to be responsible and reasonable, rational enough, otherwise these hierarchal systems lead by people are guiding this like parents raise children until people are mature enough; the extreme of this would be CCP controlling China's population.
r0s 6y ago
> Suppose you're right. Easy to verify, why suppose anything? > censorship? On a privately owned site? Try again.
- 0xDEEPFAC 6y ago
  I would like to think about it another way. Suppose you are a "Youtuber" and you have tens of thousands of subs and use it as an income. You agree to their guidelines and they, in turn, become hugely popular due to your content and your fellows. But their guidelines grow more vague and harsh randomly and without warning. Now, Youtube closes your channel, again, without warning or explanation. You don't have the money for a lawyer to sue and contract laws continue to trend Youtube's favor to control creators - esp. if those that go against political narratives that are officially "untrue." Alphabet Inc censors results for China, you don't think they do it for the US? Does that sound fair and just? Look at what happened to Alex Jones. Was he a nut - yea, but he was shut down across every platform at once. Which is censorship - good or bad. There is a media cartel and they have grown to control the internet by waiting for good products and companys to come about and either killing them or corrupting them. Think Snapchat, Vine, Google, Youtube, Reddit, Ring, etc, etc.
- dependenttypes 6y ago
  > On a privately owned site? Yes, censorship is not exclusive to the government.
  - skuthus 6y ago
    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; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. It's pretty cut and dry that it's exclusive to government
    - ric2b 6y ago
      Do you think censorship is a concept exclusive to the United States? It's not: > Censorship can be conducted by governments, private institutions, and other controlling bodies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship
hatsunearu 6y ago
At what point do you say shit is objectively, legitimately harmful, and has literally negative value to society and humanity? Does this deserve punishment? I'd say yes.
- ric2b 6y ago
  It does not deserve punishement, it deserves correction. Punishing speech is a dangerous game.
zouhair 6y ago
> Does it justify censorship? Yes, they are wrong and they will cause deaths if they are allowed to peddle more unsubstantiated bullshit. This is not a philosophical debate, people are literally dying.
- MikeAmelung 6y ago
  People are literally dying all the time, and still, every single day, twice as many people are born as have died from COVID-19 over its entire course, worldwide.
- fwn 6y ago
  > This is not a philosophical debate, people are literally dying. That's a bit like "let's not think about what we're doing, people are literally dying". The gravity of the situation only increases the need for evaluation of our behavior as a society. Public discourse isn't an optional nice-to-have in times in which everything is fine, it's one of the cornerstones of democratic societies.
  - zouhair 6y ago
    No, public discourse in a technical matter is out of the question. Equating the opinion of 2 random doctors to the thousands of epidemiologists worldwide is not helping democracy in any shape or form. It actually destroys it. We need to stop this insanity. Ignorant people's opinion is not worth the opinion of an expert.
    - fwn 6y ago
      I don't even know what "equating opinions" is supposed to mean in that context? We're talking about removing videos. It's not about equating anything, but allowing people to express themselves. > Ignorant people's opinion is not worth the opinion of an expert. That's a very reasonable opinion to have but it's not what we're talking about. We're talking about whether we should let Google make the decision on an opinions worth by removing videos. Real discourse does not come with a bouncer, and even if we would try to dream up one that wouldn't outright delegitimize the discourse it certainly wouldn't be a US American for-profit without recourse or checks and balances. I think it's popular to argue that it's the free press that serves the role of an evaluating institution. ..but here again: not a singular tech monopoly and not by removing those opinions, which just makes every evaluation questionable by default.
tasuki 6y ago
I'm generally sympathetic to the doctors. I'm sure they're trying to do the best they can, going against the mainstream, potentially endangering their careers. However, "Dr Fauci hasn’t seen a patient in 20 years" is not an opinion - it's factually wrong. When making controversial statements, one should be very careful to avoid erroneous ones alongside.

Suppose you're right. Does it justify censorship? Fauci can defend himself, and the docs are welcome to express their opinions. What gives Google/YouTube the justification to silence them?

aliminator8 6y ago

YouTube has the right to censor anything it likes. It's their platform. If you don't like it, don't use YouTube.

crazy1van 6y ago
> It's their platform But the real question is at what level of censorship to the cease to be a platform and become a publisher?
dilap 6y ago
Should they have that right though? YouTube is owned by a Google, a massive, publicly-traded corporation with near-monopoly power. Are the best interests of society served by allowing it to be governed in an authoritarian, totalitarian fashion, or would it make sense, considering it is one of the most powerful mediums of speech ever created, to let it be governed by rules somewhat approximating the much-lauded, traditional, western liberal values of free speech?
- balls187 6y ago
  > Should they have that right though? Yes. Free speech does not grant the right for anyone to say whatever they want. The US Surpreme court has, as a matter of case law, ruled in specific areas to restrict free speech. These two doctors, under the pretense of medical expertise, provided false information, and used Youtube to do it. Google being a large massive publicly traded entity does not have any bearing as to it's responsibility to guard against violations on it's platform.
  - Gibbon1 6y ago
    The way I think of it is. Say my company makes high voltage transformers. And I get wind that one customer is using them to manufacture interrogation devices. I sure as shit can tell them to take their business elsewhere.
    - Dylan16807 6y ago
      But if you're selling electricity you generally don't get to refuse service to anyone.
      - balls187 6y ago
        Google doesn't sell ip packets.
        Gibbon1 6y ago
        Also much of the world right now is operating under a state of emergency.
  - JackFr 6y ago
    > These two doctors, under the pretense of medical expertise, provided false information, and used Youtube to do it. Not according to the article. The local TV station interviewed them and the local TV station put the video on YouTube. Presumably as they are licensed to practice medicine in the State of California they do have some expertise greater than those of us without MDs so it's hardly 'pretense'. Is wearing scrubs on camera a ridiculous rhetorical device? Yes. Were these guys wrong on some facts? Absolutely. Were they wrong on policy recommendations? Much, much harder to say. What's astonishing though is the ease with which people seem to be willing to turn over their civil liberties and place themselves under house arrest. We have to sit through three years of the echo chamber telling us Donald Trump is a fascist, and then finally when our freedom to assemble is literally stripped from us by the police power of the state, people are complaining that he's not fascist enough. Geez.
    - 6y ago
- montroser 6y ago
  The idea a private company should be forced to use their resources to host content they deem harmful to humanity seems obviously wrong. Of course they should have the right. YouTube is not a public service. "Free speech" does not mean you also are entitled to a platform and an audience.
  - autoexec 6y ago
    > "Free speech" does not mean you also are entitled to a platform and an audience. "Free speech" is a right but also an ideal. When speech is being silenced (de-platformed) or people (the audience) are forbidden from hearing it even when they want to, it violates those principles. > YouTube is not a public service. Youtube is a powerful and unique resource without meaningful competition which I think does give them a certain level of responsibility to uphold the ideals of free speech. Personally, I think that education is always better than suppression. Rather than remove these videos, a better option would simply be to inform users that the video contains false information and where they can find the truth.
    - snowwrestler 6y ago
      > When speech is being silenced (de-platformed) This is a ludicrous equivalency; by this standard YouTube is also “silencing (deplatforming)” people who don’t have computers because it’s not giving them resources to help them make and post videos. Deplatforming is not silencing. The default state of an individual in society is no platform. People who want platforms should build them. > Personally, I think that education is always better than suppression. You do not need to give people bad information to educate them. You only need to give them good information. I can teach you that 2+2=4 without spending hours belaboring all the numbers that 2+2 does not equal.
      - stOneskull 6y ago
        These doctors have good points and common sense. They aren't motivated by money and power like most media, the WHO, and youtube.
      - 6y ago
- shkkmo 6y ago
  > the much-lauded, traditional, western liberal values of free speech? Such as stopping people from saying bad words on radio/tv or stopping women from even accidentally showing a specific small part of their chest? We have a long history of direct censorship by liberal western governments for far worse reasons than saving lives. I don't see all these "free speech" advocates stepping up to stop the ongoing suppression of comparatively harmless expression like showing the female nipple. Yet, somehow the suppression of this actively harmful content is the rallying cry that pulls in so much attention. I am a free speech advocate, and I don't personally support the removal of this video, as I think the aims would be better served by alternate means, such as placing a strong disclaimer of inaccuracy alongside links to accurate rebuttals. However, I don't see how you stop Google from removing whatever content they want without creating laws that curtail other important aspects of free speech (e.g. creating a regulatory body that decides which groups do and do not have the right to control the content they publish).
  - stOneskull 6y ago
    I hope they do that with videos by cnn, fox, and the world health organisation too. This video by the doctors could be a refutation to certain pieces by others, even.
- asdff 6y ago
  Of course they should. Youtube isn't bound by any law to be the standard video hosting site. They are simply the most popular over the past 10 years. Zero government mandate or anything. They can remove all hosted content tomorrow if they'd like, entirely up to them. If you don't like it, feel free to build your own platform. That's the beauty of disseminated knowledge of computer science and the internet, after all.
  - dependenttypes 6y ago
    > If you don't like it ... feel free to discuss about it on hacker news. Regardless, would you say the same if someone was banned from a super market over being gay?
    - skuthus 6y ago
      According to the current interpretation of the Civil Rights Act, you would not be able to prevent them from shopping
      - dependenttypes 6y ago
        I am not in the USA, here it is legal to kick a gay person out. But the question is not if it is legal or not, but if it is moral.
    - asdff 6y ago
      No, because there are laws against discriminating protected classes (although sexuality is not quite a protected class per se and laws can vary between states). There are no laws against discriminating bigoted content or propaganda, these aren't protected classes.
      - dependenttypes 6y ago
        See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23030141 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23030141
- snowwrestler 6y ago
  Traditional western liberal values of free speech permit and require private citizens to make decisions about which points of view they will support and which they will not support. Which is what YouTube just did. There is not a “everyone likes your software platform so you’re not allowed to have an opinion” exception to the traditional western liberal values of free speech.
  - dependenttypes 6y ago
    I do not think that stopping me from viewing what they said is an opinion.
GuiA 6y ago
I look forward to a world where platforms are less afraid to kick off the voices they don’t like. The world would be better with 50 YouTubes rather than just one.
- RonanTheGrey 6y ago
  If there were 50 YouTubes, that would be amazing. I wouldn't care ONE BIT if someone got kicked off RandomTube. It'd be hard to argue that their voice was being silenced. The 2nd player to YouTube, however, is a very distant second. YouTube has the power to decide if billions see a message. That's.... a power most governments would salivate to have. Personally I feel like the perspective that "they're privately owned so they can do what they want" while technically true, intentionally and dishonestly misses the point.
dredmorbius 6y ago
There are arguments that don't involve "private property, absolute authority" which permit both some censorship (in the public interest), and some guarantees of access most especially to under-served, unprivileged, and minority viewpoints (also in the public interest). That argument is public interest.
dependenttypes 6y ago
Just like a bakery has the right to refuse service to whoever they feel like, it is their shop after all, right? Anyway, they may be able to legally do what they want but this is not a free "get out of jail" card against any criticism.
camccar 6y ago
Bitchute is getting really nice and they don't censor stuff like this. I personally recommend it.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

Barrin92 6y ago

>What gives Google/YouTube the justification to silence them? The fact that it is their platform. >Fauci can defend himself, Fauci is a 79 year old man busy working 20 hours a day trying to stop more people from dying, he doesn't have the time to debunk garbage on the internet. Youtube is completely within their rights to remove dangerous disinformation from their platform and I hope they take an agressive stance going forward.

dapf 6y ago
YouTube gets a tax exemption because it has "public forum" status, which puts some restrictions on them, basically they cannot censor anything they want, they must uphold free speech. So, they cannot have their cake and eat it. https://youtu.be/d6C6_NVj964 https://youtu.be/d6C6_NVj964
- snowwrestler 6y ago
  Do not believe everything you see on YouTube.
- iancarroll 6y ago
  YouTube is most certainly not tax exempt. Section 230 is about liability for user-generated content. And that video is a dubious interpretation of it, at best.
thdrdt 6y ago
I know it's their platform so they can do what they want. But why not show a warning like "the following content has false and dangerous information"? Now it is gone so it can't be discussed. And I also think you take away responsibility of the viewers if they don't need to be critical about any information.
- loceng 6y ago
  "And I also think you take away responsibility of the viewers if they don't need to be critical about any information." This is exactly the problem currently though - the general population doesn't have either the time or critical thinking developed to understand this. Daniel Schmachtenberger on Eric Weinstein's The Portal episode #27 said: “... and the most awesome thing of the current system [of suppressing unruly people] we don’t even have to deal with protestors with tear gas or bean bags or whatever mostly, because mostly addiction, and student debt, and information overwhelm and those things deal with the people adequately so they don’t actually understand enough or care enough or have the capacity to organize very meaningly." Eric replied: “We just legalize weed and make porn free and everyone’s de-motivated.." - timestamped link to talk https://youtu.be/_b4qKv1Ctv8?t=3780 https://youtu.be/_b4qKv1Ctv8?t=3780 - but I'd highly recommend watching the whole interview. The goal has to be getting the population healthy enough to be responsible and reasonable, rational enough, otherwise these hierarchal systems lead by people are guiding this like parents raise children until people are mature enough; the extreme of this would be CCP controlling China's population.

r0s 6y ago

> Suppose you're right. Easy to verify, why suppose anything? > censorship? On a privately owned site? Try again.

0xDEEPFAC 6y ago
I would like to think about it another way. Suppose you are a "Youtuber" and you have tens of thousands of subs and use it as an income. You agree to their guidelines and they, in turn, become hugely popular due to your content and your fellows. But their guidelines grow more vague and harsh randomly and without warning. Now, Youtube closes your channel, again, without warning or explanation. You don't have the money for a lawyer to sue and contract laws continue to trend Youtube's favor to control creators - esp. if those that go against political narratives that are officially "untrue." Alphabet Inc censors results for China, you don't think they do it for the US? Does that sound fair and just? Look at what happened to Alex Jones. Was he a nut - yea, but he was shut down across every platform at once. Which is censorship - good or bad. There is a media cartel and they have grown to control the internet by waiting for good products and companys to come about and either killing them or corrupting them. Think Snapchat, Vine, Google, Youtube, Reddit, Ring, etc, etc.
dependenttypes 6y ago
> On a privately owned site? Yes, censorship is not exclusive to the government.
- skuthus 6y ago
  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; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. It's pretty cut and dry that it's exclusive to government
  - ric2b 6y ago
    Do you think censorship is a concept exclusive to the United States? It's not: > Censorship can be conducted by governments, private institutions, and other controlling bodies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship

hatsunearu 6y ago

At what point do you say shit is objectively, legitimately harmful, and has literally negative value to society and humanity? Does this deserve punishment? I'd say yes.

ric2b 6y ago
It does not deserve punishement, it deserves correction. Punishing speech is a dangerous game.

zouhair 6y ago

> Does it justify censorship? Yes, they are wrong and they will cause deaths if they are allowed to peddle more unsubstantiated bullshit. This is not a philosophical debate, people are literally dying.

MikeAmelung 6y ago
People are literally dying all the time, and still, every single day, twice as many people are born as have died from COVID-19 over its entire course, worldwide.
fwn 6y ago
> This is not a philosophical debate, people are literally dying. That's a bit like "let's not think about what we're doing, people are literally dying". The gravity of the situation only increases the need for evaluation of our behavior as a society. Public discourse isn't an optional nice-to-have in times in which everything is fine, it's one of the cornerstones of democratic societies.
- zouhair 6y ago
  No, public discourse in a technical matter is out of the question. Equating the opinion of 2 random doctors to the thousands of epidemiologists worldwide is not helping democracy in any shape or form. It actually destroys it. We need to stop this insanity. Ignorant people's opinion is not worth the opinion of an expert.
  - fwn 6y ago
    I don't even know what "equating opinions" is supposed to mean in that context? We're talking about removing videos. It's not about equating anything, but allowing people to express themselves. > Ignorant people's opinion is not worth the opinion of an expert. That's a very reasonable opinion to have but it's not what we're talking about. We're talking about whether we should let Google make the decision on an opinions worth by removing videos. Real discourse does not come with a bouncer, and even if we would try to dream up one that wouldn't outright delegitimize the discourse it certainly wouldn't be a US American for-profit without recourse or checks and balances. I think it's popular to argue that it's the free press that serves the role of an evaluating institution. ..but here again: not a singular tech monopoly and not by removing those opinions, which just makes every evaluation questionable by default.

tasuki 6y ago

I'm generally sympathetic to the doctors. I'm sure they're trying to do the best they can, going against the mainstream, potentially endangering their careers. However, "Dr Fauci hasn’t seen a patient in 20 years" is not an opinion - it's factually wrong. When making controversial statements, one should be very careful to avoid erroneous ones alongside.