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> YouTube indicated that examples of the offending content in the video included the line: “Most of the masks you get over the counter don’t work. They don’t pr
by corndoge 5y ago
> YouTube indicated that examples of the offending content in the video included the line: “Most of the masks you get over the counter don’t work. They don’t prevent infection.”
> It also included the quote: “Trying to shape human behavior isn’t the same as following the actual science which tells us that cloth masks don’t work.”
Regardless of what you think about YouTube's misinformation policy, I don't think this is even misinformation! Seeing platforms control the narrative to this extent is truly fascinating. I never thought it would be as overt as it is. Tech companies feeling competent to dictate truth is scary.
- dtagames 5y agoIndeed. Tech companies now silence politicians unilaterally, while governments made up of the same politicians do nothing to stop the widespread flow of toxic misinformation on tech platforms. So, who is really in charge?
- javajosh 5y agoAt some point, the adults need to be in charge. I for one applaud YouTube for taking this step, because it's not an easy choice, because they'll get pushback like this. Misinformation about Covid is deadly. Rand Paul is spreading misinformation - masks stop the spread of everything because it prevents bodily fluid particles from getting on everything, and also stops people from touching their face. Both of these are key vectors for disease to spread. If corporations are to be treated as people, then it's good that they behave as if they have a conscience, and show an unwillingness to sacrifice real people on the alter of libertarian free-speech political correctness. If I worked at YouTube I would be proud of their stance.
- mimixco 5y agoLots of misinformation on YouTube is bad for people and isn't stopped. And I would hardly call Google, YouTube's owners, a "company with a conscience" since nearly their entire business is based on predatory surveillance advertising. In a democratic society, the elected leaders need to communicate their ideas, however wrongheaded. If they aren't allowed to communicate, how do they reach their electors and how do they tell potential voters they're right (or wrong)? When you are at the platform level like YouTube, you have a responsibility to carry information from the government even if you don't like it because you didn't elect Ron Paul, his constituents did.
- javajosh 5y agoYouTube is NOT the government. If Rand Paul was arrested for his speech, that would be a violation of his First Amendment rights and wrong. The right to speak does not compel a private platform to carry that speech. Certainly Fox News gives RP and his ilk plenty of opportunity to spread their harmful propaganda. So it's not like, even in a practical sense, his ability to express himself has been curtailed.
- lp0_on_fire 5y ago> Certainly Fox News gives RP and his ilk Tell us how you really feel about people on the right. Something tells me you'd be singing a different story if it were someone you agreed with.
- treeman79 5y agoLincoln was not even on the ballet In several states. That lead to a civil war.s We are reaching/past the point where open speech is no longer allowed. That makes next steps scary.
- rat87 5y agoYouTube doing the right thing and banning some stupid misinformation is nowhere near civil war.
- treeman79 5y agoMisinformation is the excuse. This is banning a political party on whatever reason they think they can get away with.
- selimthegrim 5y agoRand Paul is the GOP now? You might want to tell Trump that.
- 5y ago
- drstewart 5y ago>masks stop the spread of everything Do masks stop the spread of bullets? If not, you are spreading misinformation and need to be banned.
- dantheman 5y agoYou have no right to use someone else's printing press. The government can easily create their own video hosting platform. Just like the NYTimes doesn't need to allow any politician to submit an oped.
- mimixco 5y agoWe've lost the essence of journalism. Instead of a venue where multiple options are presented for review by the reader (along with editorial comment, of course), we now have platforms which are nothing but editorial. Not only individual people but individual comments are called out for censorship. This is not how news reporting was done in the past. It's sad because today, there isn't a single website where a curious individual can review all of the views on a subject (or all of the comments of opposing politicians, for examples) without the platform weighting or simply removing views it doesn't like. This is a loss of objective information and is detrimental to education and intellectual and social advancement. Instead of journalism, each "platform" now picks and chooses stories and voices that amplify its overlords' goals and nothing more. There is no truth to be delivered, only "my" truth as seen by my platform owners. It's a sad day.
- shadowgovt 5y agoIn my lifetime, we never had the essence of journalism as you're describing it. Even before the internet, my hometown had the left-leaning and right-leaning newspaper (and I was lucky enough to live in a town that offered both!).
- selimthegrim 5y agoWhat do you think journalism was like in Zenger's time?
- AnimalMuppet 5y agoThe tech companies may be trying to "control the problem" so that the government doesn't decide to legislate. Unfortunately for the tech companies, they're doing it so badly, so randomly, that they're probably making legislation more likely.
- vntok 5y agoThe masks aren't there to prevent infection, they are there to limit transmission. They work just fine for this objective, which is why the video was indeed spreading misinformation.
- thaumasiotes 5y ago> Seeing platforms control the narrative to this extent is truly fascinating. I never thought it would be as overt as it is. Remember the Hunter Biden's laptop story?
- 1MachineElf 5y agoAdd to that, remember when a president was impeached over a "conspiracy theory" regarding Hunter Biden's time at Burisma? One year later, fact checkers had to admit that the FBI was indeed investigating him. Edit: From +5 points to -1 in one hour - I didn't realize so many Burisma employees read HN!
- MisterBastahrd 5y agoIt's fun to pretend and play make believe, but that's not why he was impeached.
- leereeves 5y ago>> Add to that, remember when a president was impeached over a "conspiracy theory" regarding Hunter Biden's time at Burisma? One year later, fact checkers had to admit that the FBI was indeed investigating him. > that's not why he was impeached. Yes, it was. The charge was "abuse of power" because the Democrats claimed that Trump had improperly pressured Ukraine to investigate whether Joe Biden had influenced Burisma to hire or to overpay his son, which is the "conspiracy theory" GP referred to.
- rootsudo 5y agoAnd at that point, the damage was done - the first expose was to discredit, eliminate and silence. And it works.
- MisterBastahrd 5y agoYou mean the one where Rudy Giuliani sat in front of a camera with a "Macbook" purported to be Hunter Biden's even though it was an LG and ole Rudy just wasn't smart enough to know the difference?
- contravariant 5y agoI would ideally like a little more justification for those statements, but right now it's not even possible to check if the video had any.
- fighterpilot 5y agoThey don't work? This article is claiming otherwise: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02801-8 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02801-8
- spiderice 5y agoSo what? It's easy to find a million articles that say whatever you need them to say. The point is that Youtube has decided which articles are "right" and "wrong", when they have no business deciding such things.
- fighterpilot 5y agoMy comment has nothing to do with whether Youtube should have the power to do what they've done. It has to do with the assertion in the GP that it's not misinformation to say unequivocally that cloth masks don't work. That appears to be nonsense since there's a handful of studies that at the very least leave open that question. Have a look at Fig 3.A from this study: https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/36/eabd3083 https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/36/eabd3083
- underseacables 5y agoTherefore they should lose sec 230 protections.
- b0sk 5y agoLosing sec 230 protections would mean more ban-hammer for lying politicians (about elections, vaccines etc.)
- lp0_on_fire 5y agoI'm fine with that. It would create an even playing field in theory and that's a hell of a lot better than what we have right now which is some politicans getting to lie with impunity and others having their content removed for wrongthink.
- makomk 5y agoYeah, it really doesn't seem all that plausible that cloth masks do much at this point. Not only was there never good evidence for them working, the best ones only block something like 90% of virus-bearing particles. To put this in context current estimates seem to be that people infected with Delta produce 100-1000x the amount of virus that previous variants did; the effect of mask wearing is absolutely miniscule compared to that.
- ALittleLight 5y agoHow is blocking X% of the virus particles less impactful if there's more of them? Fewer particles admitted means reduced chance of infection, no? Always better to less virus particles than more.
- Veen 5y agoBut almost no one is wearing the best sort of mask. They're wearing porous cloth masks that stop next to nothing.
- kube-system 5y ago> next to nothing. Not true. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-briefs/masking-science-sars-cov2.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-br...
- Veen 5y agoAre cloth masks any good? CDC says yes. BMJ says maybe, if you get the right masks. France says no and you should be wearing medical masks. DANMASK-19 says less than 50% effective and no significant difference in infections among populations who wear and don't wear masks. Who's a fellow to believe? - https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n432 https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n432
- chlodwig 5y agoFewer particles admitted means reduced chance of infection, no? The thing to keep in mind is that blocking 50% of the particles does not mean a 50% reduction in infection. It may mean a 50% reduction in infection -- or it may mean a basically zero percent reduction. It depends on the exposure. Say that in a particular covid-filled room you have a 50% chance of being infected after 5 minutes and a 99.9% chance of being infected after an hour. Under a simple model, if you wear a mask that blocks half the particles, your chance of getting coronavirus in 5 minutes would be reduced to 25%, but your chance of getting it after an hour would be 97%. So if cloth mask is your primary defense against covid, you are eventually going to get covid if you are trying to live anything close to a normal life. Blocking 50% of particles is like wearing an condom that only blocks 50% of the sperm or an umbrella that blocks only 50% of the rain.
- swashboon 5y agoExcept they are effective. They are not as effective as a N95 mask but all scientific data shows they are still effective and reducing transmission rate in a population.
- danhak 5y agoWhy haven't we seen significantly better outcomes in states with mask mandates vs. those without?
- jacquesm 5y agoThat's not how this works. You can only compare with the future that wasn't. People may decide all by themselves that wearing a mask is a good idea, mandate or not, and then there is the point that not all masks are created equal, which is the subject of this thread.
- danhak 5y agoIs your argument that outcomes of different policy decisions cannot be compared across different jurisdictions?
- jacquesm 5y agoNot without carefully controlling for all kinds of variables, demographics, geography, internal and external connectivity and so on. No two areas are closely alike in all those respects.
- danhak 5y agoDo you similarly feel that comparisons across different populations are invalid for arguing the affirmative? e.g. arguments like "we should try masking / UBI / $15 minimum wage / free healthcare / universal pre-k because it worked well in ${location}" are also "not how this works" because we can "only compare with the future that wasn't?" Do such arguments need to control for the infinite number of confounding variables before having any value?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- cvwright 5y agoMy wife and I were looking into traveling from the US to Europe this summer, if the borders had opened up earlier. At the time, Germany was not allowing cloth masks on public transport. N95, surgical masks, or stay home. So here we have a sitting US senator being censored for agreeing with the German health authorities. WTF?!?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- kube-system 5y agoIf he meant that "cloth masks aren't good enough" he could have said that. But he's a senator. His statement was a dog whistle to his base. They're not looking for an argument that people should be wearing N95s, they want to discredit all masking. The word "prevent" is a red herring -- nothing is 100% -- the goal is to decrease infection, not prevent it.
- ryandrake 5y agoThe phrases "doesn't work" and "doesn't prevent" have become staples of the COVID disinformation toolkit. Anything that is not exactly 100% effective transforms into "doesn't work" in the narrative. Educated experts will never say something is 100% effective, so this is always an easy way for detractors to "prove" that the experts agree XYZ doesn't work. EDIT: Other examples: Some people have gotten pregnant while on birth control, therefore birth control "doesn't work". Some people wearing seat belts still die in car crashes, therefore seat belts "don't work". This is a tried and true misinformation tactic.
- dublin 5y agoEven the pores in an N95 mask are not small enough to prevent viral transmission, so the actual science says your magic mask talisman is voodoo bullshit. People are even starting to do their own tests to show the impact of mask mandates on children, who have never been at significant risk from this virus, anyway: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ul5E5BUrII4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ul5E5BUrII4
- craftinator 5y ago> I don't think this is even misinformation! Having watched the original, I would say there is a mixture of truth, twisted truth, speculation, and complete misinformation (which is basically what we should expect from any politician). While it's clear that the messaging he was sending was BAD for people's health, because anything diverting airflow between a sick person and a healthy person helps the healthy person not become a sick person, I truly dislike the censorship being enacted.
- rsba 5y agoI read one study that indicated an N95/KN95 mask was 10 times more effective than the regular (non) medical masks. I always thought it was unusual that the US government just didn’t mail KN95 masks to people, or widely distribute them at cost. And encourage their use. If something is 10 times less effective, it’s basically not even effective in comparison to what’s possible.
- Covzire 5y agoN95's for daily long-term use just isn't feasible. I've had a bunch of them from long before COVID19 for working with some auto detailing chemicals and I can't wear one for more than 10 minutes. Breathing becomes extremely difficult, maybe it would get better with time but it gets to a point where I constantly feel like I'm about to pass out.
- fouc 5y agoThere are new ones made with nanofiber instead of the typical ones made of meltblown fiber. The nanofiber ones are more breathable, check out AirQueens, rated kn95.
- greedo 5y agoIsn't it amazing that medical professionals can work 12 hour shifts in N95s without having difficulty breathing and don't feel like they're going to pass out?
- fernandotakai 5y agoi've been wearing n95 masks for almost two years now and i had no issues with them. i can even workout with an n100 without any problems.
- aisengard 5y agoThe USPS had a plan in place to do just that. The Trump White House stopped it: https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucelee/2020/09/18/usps-covid-19-coronavirus-plan-to-send-every-household-face-masks-how-the-white-house-stopped-it/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucelee/2020/09/18/usps-covid-... Could argue the Trump administration is directly responsible for killing tens of thousands of Americans through that act alone.
- 34679 5y agoI have to wonder if the people who made this decision even have a medical degree. Software engineers banning doctors for making medical statements seems wrong.
- rvz 5y ago> I never thought it would be as overt as it is. It has been known that they have been doing this randomly to multiple accounts every day and it is clear that YouTube will never change. They will point you to their guidelines and suspend your account at anytime. > Tech companies feeling competent to dictate truth is scary. These tech companies are not your friends and are on no-one's side other than the side of profit. They can get anyone and use their slippery guidelines as cover for their suspensions. They are never going to change and it's only going to get worse.
- VelkaMorava 5y agoIn before "If Rand Paul doesn't like it, he can create his own platform." Next step is banning video for any usage of "he" or "she", because only monsters assume someone's gender. edit: as my ego is bruised from the downvotes here, I'll quote Sir William Sidney when he was imprisoned by Napoleon: "Fortune's wheel makes strange revolutions, it must be confessed; but for the term revolution to be applicable, the turn of the wheel must be complete. You are today as high as you can be. Very well. I envy not your good fortune, for mine is better still. I am as low in the career of ambition as a man can well descend; so that, let this capricious dame, fortune, turn her wheel ever so little--I must necessarily mount, for the same reason you must descend." So, people clapping blatant this censorship, don't be surprised when future Trump-like figure takes the lead and uses the same tools for censoring your own side. I hope you will at least have the integrity to say "fair enough".
- treeman79 5y agoIs the point to stop misinformation, or to silence people.
- NonContro 5y agoHow much of this is about 'masks' and really about Rand Paul calling for mass civil disobedience against COVID restrictions? Here's the full video: https://twitter.com/RandPaul/status/1424399282447298563 https://twitter.com/RandPaul/status/1424399282447298563
- natural219 5y agomass civil disobedience against COVID restrictions is not only awesome, it a very explicit and central civic value of the American political mythology. I can't emphasize enough how bizarre and soviet-esque that this is even on the table as a contentious issue these days.
- kingTug 5y agoProbably has something to do with the 600k+ dead Americans.
- NonContro 5y agoNot much evidence that any of these interventions would have prevented that: https://www.covidchartsquiz.com/state-vs-state https://www.covidchartsquiz.com/state-vs-state The major underlying factor behind the deaths (apart from just old age) is obesity, secondly probably air pollution, but these factors are ignored.
- __blockcipher__ 5y agoEvery year, ~647,000 Americans die from heart disease alone. Even if the COVID death numbers aren't over-inflated, I guarantee you that if I were to time-travel to 2019 and ask you if you think that it would be worth precipitating a global supply chain disruption, missed schooling and medical appointments for children around the globe, both first and third world, and the greatest erosion in civil liberties in Western society since at least WW2 (since we've already eclipsed 9/11 in loss of liberty, shockingly)...all over 4 million and change deaths globally, you would think that was crazy
- mbesto 5y ago> Tech companies feeling competent to dictate truth is scary. What's scarier, the fact that tech companies feel competent to dictate truth or the fact that we let them?
- Ygg2 5y agoLet them? First rule of internet is don't trust things on the Internet. Cross reference and double check. Everyone makes mistakes or lies.
- iammisc 5y agoHow can you cross reference and double check if only one side is presented and the internet is the main means by which one double checks? This is the conundrum I haven't figured out.
- wizzwizz4 5y agoGo to the library. (Hopefully you still have one.)
- iammisc 5y agoNo the democrats shut mine down and are taxing us for them anyway
- wizzwizz4 5y agoCan you write to your local representative?
- iammisc 5y agoAfter several calls with my Oregon house representative, she no longer responds to my e-mails or calls. Can't contact her via social media because I've been blocked there. I've thought about going to her office but those are closed down too. Of course, if you just block constituents you can just ... do nothing and in Oregon, you'll be re-elected because there's a big D next to your name. Of course, there's also no non-D candidate running, because it's a one party state. I imagine this is what it must be like to vote in North Korea. Oregon law mandates that one must run under the purview of a political party. Forming a party requires a large set of requirements that means only the democrats can run in many places because there's simply not enough of an opposition to form a cohesive opposition. This prevents independent candidates from running. There is no incentive for my representatives to change the status quo. Eventually, I'm guessing I'll vote with my feet, but I don't understand why I should have to move to an area in which the GOP runs unopposed in order to experience the 'other' side. I mean... it's not like the GOP is perfect and a uni-party GOP jurisdiction would be much better. What I want is actual politics with people competing for my vote, instead of people who assume they'll get it.
- phendrenad2 5y agoExcept it is literally misinformation. "Most of the masks you get over the counter" ARE at least somewhat effective.
- Bud 5y agoThis is unquestionably misinformation, and Rand Paul needs to have a permanent muzzle installed until covid is extinct. Masks DO WORK. Yes, N95s work better than cloth masks, usually, but cloth masks work very well for reducing the likelihood that a covid-positive person will transmit the virus. This isn't controversial. Rand Paul needs to stop spreading lies on purpose, and if he won't, I fully support YouTube telling him that he can use someone else's platform to do so. This is NOT an example of "tech companies dictating truth". And it's not scary, either. What's scary is the results of letting charlatans like "Rand" Paul speak on this in public.
- superkuh 5y agoAn unfit mask with anything more than a single centimeter^2 aperture gap is effectively <N40. That means more aerosol particles are let out/in than are blocked. Unfit masks do a pretty terrible job but they do help a little bit. What doesn't help is censoring people pointing out this nuance. What we need is N95/ffp2 mask mandates for indoors. That would really help mitigate sars-cov-2 spread. Now, unfit masks do do something. They block the spittle for sure and less than half the aerosols. But if you look at how influenza stopped spreading almost completely the last year and a half you have to conclude that either unfit masks with gaps do help significantly versus respiratory viruses, or, sampling for influenza cases has been borked due to the overloading need to test for sars-cov-2. It's probably the former.
- rwcarlsen 5y agoDecreased influenza was influenced by loads of changes - not just masks. Various social distancing measures, schools closing, travel being restricted, etc. I don't think you can conclude anything empirically about influenza and masks without controlling for this dearth of other variables.
- __blockcipher__ 5y ago> But if you look at how influenza stopped spreading almost completely the last year and a half you have to conclude that either unfit masks with gaps do help significantly versus respiratory viruses, or, sampling for influenza cases has been borked due to the overloading need to test for sars-cov-2. I think it's three effects: (1) Acute infection with respiratory virus X is protective against respiratory virus Y. This is because of the cellular interferon response (see https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/778995/); https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/778995/); basically the non-specific component of the immune system gets "revved up" and thus subsequent pathogens don't stand a chance. This might be further accentuated by the fact that SARS-2 specifically can acutely downregulate interferon response (see https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.16.252973v1 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.16.252973v1), presumably to suppress the immune response against it, which would/could lead to a rebound upregulation in interferon after the initial phase of SARS-2-mediated interferon suppression (2) Some people who actually had Influenza would have tested for COVID first, and been PCR positive because the PCR tests in the real world can stay positive for a couple months after resolution of the infection (due to the absurdly high cycle threshold that is often used). This is what you said, I'm just elaborating a bit more on how it actually happens (3) Influenza spreads less easily than SARS-2, so it's possible the NPIs had some effect. This is my least favorite theory because the NPIs were so poor against SARS-2 and measures like school closures haven't been shown to reduce Influenza. My guess is stuff like people avoiding family members during 2020 holidays etc did decrease the connections between social nodes a bit, so there was some effect but not a huge one from the altered behavior
- zR0x 5y agoHe’s just polluting the airwaves to keep his voters wound up. A single layer of cloth doesn’t stop it. There’s a reason why those scarfs aren’t allowed in airplanes (well they say that, still see them in use). But it can help reduce the distance it travels. It’s semantic wank, which is all politicians are good at.
- IIAOPSW 5y agoIt is misinformation. Masks (cloth or otherwise) were meant to reduce infectiousness, not completely prevent the possibility of infection. Masks (cloth or otherwise) do in fact reduce infectiousness. The misinformation is the implication that masks are pointless because you can still get infected. The point of masks is to get the probability of spreading it down by some multiple, not to be a personal not-my-problem-anymore pass. This is like saying seat belts don't work because you can still die in a crash.
- convery 5y agoHis comment was on masks reducing the risk of you getting infected, not infecting others. Which is a selfish point, but nonetheless a correct one.
- rhizome 5y agoThe masks work, but he only mentions a narrow use that isn't the current reason for wearing them. That's the misinformation; he got you, too. Think of it this way: "Don't wear a seatbelt because they don't keep other cars from hitting you."
- kevinpet 5y agoAh, I see, you're using "misinformation" to mean "came to a different conclusion than I did".
- WalterBright 5y ago> Tech companies feeling competent to dictate truth is scary. The government has been telling them to censor or else.
- suyash 5y agoTotally agree, YouTube is in the wrong here. They are no arbitrator of truth or facts, leave that to the courts and allow 'real free speech' in online platforms.
- bcrosby95 5y agoSo 'real free speech' is about requiring private companies to carry the message of a politically powerful agent of the government?
- rat87 5y agoNo what is scarier is that a Senator who's also a doctor would be putting out such dangerous misinformation about the pandemic. I used to respect Senator Paul before the Trump era but he's gone over the deep end. YouTube did the right thing here
- sp332 5y agoThe article links to YouTube's copyright strikes policy, but the relevant one is this: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/9891785?hl=en https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/9891785?hl=en Content moderation is the default, expected behavior of any host. Unmoderated places turn into shitholes like 4chan that no one wants to visit, or used to coordinate violence like when Facebook wasn't moderating content in the Burmese language. If someone posts something to my computer that I don't want there for any reason, including conscience, I will delete it. That's not controversial at all really.
- boredumb 5y agofascinating is the nicest way I can imagine this being put.
- bamboozled 5y agoI think (I hope) it’s a side effect of the legal system pushing them to do this. These platforms are now basically the Internet. If they don’t police misinformation, maybe they’re worried the government will come after them ? Maybe people who care about hosting alternative views should host their own websites? Like how the Internet was designed ?
- throwaway5752 5y agoThey don't dictate truth and their job is not to spread truth. There job is to make money, and letting the loudest fringe people drive off lucrative sane people is against their best interests. Nobody has a first amendment right to have a WSJ OpEd column or a Youtube account. There are platforms that allow you to say anything as a policy, like 8chan, and they are cesspools because of it. Rand Paul can use one of those. Sociopathic liars love attention and are great at manipulating systems in ways to generate sympathy.
- throwaway5752 5y agoTo downvoters, I'm curious who should force a platform what content they should be compelled to carry. Government? Should YouTube be compelled to carry anything permitted by law? They don't allow pornography, graphic violence, or hate speech. Should they be forced to carry those? What freedom does YouTube have to decide what sort of platform they have? Allowing them to suspend people at their discretion is far better than the alternative.
- lhorie 5y agoThis thread feels like a game of broken telephone: you're literally quoting a quote of a quote. Rand Paul's overall stance is basically "let's revolt against masks because freedom". Whether Rand Paul's carefully cherrypicked arguments are technically medically/factually correct doesn't really matter, you need to consider the narrative as a whole. Youtube deemed that promoting his overall message is a threat to public health, regardless of whether he made factually correct statements or not. It strikes me as unfortunate that the rationale Youtube gave tried to add legitimacy to their decision by quoting Rand Paul as "evidence" for their case (under the presupposition that a "bad" position must necessarily be supported by factually incorrect arguments), when they could just have said that his anti-mask position goes against CDC guidelines or something along those lines that is easier for a non-expert to verify. If anything the lesson here is for Youtube to be careful of snake talk that employs half truths as weapons. In other words, if they are not experts enough to determine whether specific quotes are factually true, then don't base decisions on your ability to determine accuracy, and instead defer to the language of the official guidelines.
- kcplate 5y agoYou realize you are advocating thought policing here, right?
- lhorie 5y agoI'm not advocating for anything though? I didn't even claim to agree w/ Youtube in the first place. I merely said that the way they went about this specific case could've been far less controversial if they deferred explaining rationales to the proper health authority rather than taking it upon themselves to decide what "evidence" is factually correct. Besides, thought, speech, broadcasting and individual rights on private and public spaces are all very different things. At the end of the day, Youtube's platform is their own turf and they ultimately have the physical power to take down whatever the heck they want. Twitter, Facebook and self-hosted wordpress instances all exist as alternatives for Rand Paul, and he'll certainly be back on YT with his same agenda next week. Countries can (and do) hit Youtube with whatever fines they think are appropriate. Rand Paul's constituents will be Rand Paul's constituents. Every party in this saga is basically just doing whatever they want. Where does thought policing fit into any of this?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- uwagar 5y agoyour use of the word fascinating is fascinating. sounds like you self censored.
- hnrj95 5y agopeople seem to forget that paul is a board certified surgeon (not just a canonical politician), and his post cited 2 peer reviewed articles that ostensibly passed muster. i don’t have expertise on the science, here, but people are making it out to seem that he’s some nut job science denier. i don’t think that narrative is fair