10 ms·

People don't see what the actual problem here is - perhaps because they don't want to see. What is happening is very much the transformation from an open societ

People don't see what the actual problem here is - perhaps because they don't want to see. What is happening is very much the transformation from an open society to one where freedom of speech is limited and certain other individual rights are stripped away. Perhaps not de jure, but de facto. And sure, one might argue that it's for a good cause (even though it's a complex topic). However, the fact is that as this is done once, it becomes something that can be leveraged as the norm. There is a very real danger here, and nobody knows whether it will realize or not. The question is not whether you can post anti-vax content today. It's whether you can post anti-anything tomorrow.

IgorPartola 5y ago
Yes our freedoms are being eroded. It’s a slippery slope. All that bullshit. Come on. A private company doesn’t want to contribute to people dying. Oh and by the way don’t they have the right to do what they want? You want what, regulation to prohibit this?
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  Youtube doesn't give two shits about people dying. They care about not drawing the ire of advertisers or legislators.
  - IgorPartola 5y ago
    Is it not their right to pursue profits? Do you want someone to regulate them?
    - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
      It may be their right to pursue profits within the bounds of the law but that doesn't mean their actions along the way aren't distasteful.
      - IgorPartola 5y ago
        Well then we can all furrow our brows and move on. If you simply find YT distasteful, don’t use it.
        throwaway0a5e 5y ago
        "You simply find DuPont distasteful don't use plastics". "If you simply find the treatment of warehouse workers distasteful don't buy anything online" Just because someone or something's actions are within the letter of the law doesn't mean they are exempt from criticism.
        myaccounthaha 5y ago
        You didn't answer the question - Do you want someone to regulate them?
        throwaway0a5e 5y ago
        I didn't answer the question because it was a non-sequitur and it was obvious the question was being asked in bad faith to trip me up, like a cop who asks how many drinks you had after you just told him you hadn't had anything to drink. I don't have a strong opinion on the matter. If someone were to do a good job regulating them and make the situation better I'd approve. If someone were to do a bad job and make things worse I'd disapprove.
        IgorPartola 5y ago
        So your solution is for someone else to come up with a solution which you would find satisfactory by criteria you are unwilling to provide? Whether regulation should stop YT from doing this is a legitimate question. Nothing else will prevent it. Observe that the government telling a private company what they must host on their platform is potentially more dangerous than the government telling a private company to take down a piece of content (neither of these are happening here but if we entertain the notion of regulating YT then these are to be considered).
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - swayvil 5y ago
    Yes. When truth is tied to money we enter a world of infinite bullshit.
- mach1ne 5y ago
  When a private company with a market share of information as large as Youtube acts as an arbitrer of truth, regulation to prevent this would be nice, yes.
  - IgorPartola 5y ago
    So you trust the government to decide what is true and what isn’t but not YouTube?
    - eric_cc 5y ago
      Or we can move beyond the concept of trust. How about not banning content you don't like?
      - IgorPartola 5y ago
        Huh? That makes no sense.
        eric_cc 5y ago
        There is no need for trusting anybody. The concept that we must trust the government or YouTube to determine truth is ridiculous. How about neither of them ban content they don’t like? As individuals, we shouldn’t trust. We should verify.
        IgorPartola 5y ago
        OK great. So do you have a chemistry lab in your house to verify that the toothpaste you buy doesn’t contain heavy metals? Do you do your own testing of the meat you buy to ensure it doesn’t contain BGH, antibiotics, parasites? Do you manufacture your own water testing kits since you can’t trust sending samples to a lab? Do you manufacture your own computing devices since you can’t trust that others aren’t spying on you using your phone or laptop? This is the kind of answer a 14 year old who hasn’t yet grasped the concept of not-absolutism would give. It’s absurd.
- derbOac 5y ago
  I'm sort of sympathetic to that argument except: 1. I think at the end of the day, the problem isn't "does YouTube have the right to do this?" it's "should YouTube be doing this, given their status?" For me even though they have the right to, I think it's just the wrong thing to do. I personally am baffled by how the US as a society seems to be devaluing free speech principles in the private and public sphere due to some argument that it's needed to combat misinformation. This strategy never ends well, and it belies a lack of strength in promoting alternatives. The way to combat misinformation is with better information. Resorting to free speech restrictions is a sign of weakness in my opinion. In the end I'd rather have YouTube (and other platforms) modeling a different approach. 2. I also think, regardless of how they got there, at some point a private business functions as a monopoly and should be treated as such. I'm not so sure how I feel about regulations along those lines, but I do think anti-monopoly legal response to this sort of behavior wouldn't be unreasonable. I'm not at all sympathetic to the GOP in general, but if they started coming down on YouTube for this kind of thing under anti-monopoly regulation umbrellas I think it wouldn't be irrational or unreasonable to me. 3. As a more immediate issue, I think this sort of thing always backfires. If you have a bunch of people thinking there's a conspiracy to shove untested vaccines down people's throats, and then you have a major media distributor like YouTube censoring all anti-vaccine discussion, what do you think they're going to conclude? I'm as pro-vaccine as someone can get, and think arguments against them are usually pretty absurd, but I have to say that this kind of thing starts to look like a conspiracy, even if it isn't one. Why give them ammunition? If you can't convince people the vaccine is a good thing, how do you think that shutting down discussion is somehow going to work better?
  - goldenbikeshed 5y ago
    It's high time facebook, YouTube and Google get broken up like the Bell Corporation was (maybe even avoid some mistakes that were made with that company). Regarding 3.: I think it will radicalize some but it will also stop the misinformation of many more people. Overall I think it will lead to lives saved.
  - raxxorrax 5y ago
    One thing this became extremely visible was Brexit to me. There are really good arguments why not leaving the union is the better choice. I am critical of the EU, but not to a degree that I want to abolish it as I think reforms are possible. I am not from GB and think their critical stance was very important within the EU since it institutionally lacks a real opposition. Without that it is an inefficient and bureaucratic technocracy (those actually don't really get results at all). People asked questions about immigration, sovereignty, participation. These are completely valid topics and asking was basically decried as Russian propaganda. Meanwhile classical EU proponents never even argued that it isn't a compromise of sovereignty and participation! Denying that was denying reality. The thing is, if that is the wide spread stance on how to deal with "misinformation", the whole thing suddenly isn't worth it anymore and it is not even close. People just basically argue that they want a technocracy that treats them like children. This was the image the pro-Brexit group crafted. It is similar to what vaccination proponents do. I don't know how to tell them that they are part of what makes vaccination unattractive to many. I wouldn't advocate to ban them of course.
- eric_cc 5y ago
  > A private company doesn’t want to contribute to people dying. And the best action they can take to that end is to ban all anti-vaccination conversation?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
Loughla 5y ago
I genuinely don't get it. YouTube, a private entity and not a government entity, is saying they don't want certain content on their platform. This is not the end of your free speech. This isn't really even a movement away from free speech. It's YouTube exercising their right to freedom of speech by not allowing what they believe to be harmful or disagreeable on their platform. They already do this with other categories of thing. This is no different. You are more than able to start your own company and let whatever you want on that site. Or just go to your local city center with a megaphone and give people your thoughts - perfectly legal. If YouTube is THAT essential to getting your views heard, you need to take a lesson from business - don't rely on anyone else for critical infrastructure.
- prohobo 5y ago
  This fallacy of "private entity" when talking about a corporation that's more powerful than most governments is truly ridiculous. It's okay if the East India Company enslaves and exploits the savages and mongrels, murders opponents, rigs elections, installs corrupt politicians and destroys communities; it's a private company and it only hurts stupid people! Just stop buying their tea if you don't like it, amirite? Start your own company!
  - zepto 5y ago
    Except not. Google isn’t more powerful than most governments. They can’t kill or imprison people, or seize land or property. This is simply a false analogy.
    - evv555 5y ago
      Google isn't a "private entity" in the sense of a small business either. More like a utility company. False analogy
    - prohobo 5y ago
      I recommend reading this article for a quick overview of the current political landscape: https://theconversation.com/who-is-more-powerful-states-or-corporations-99616 https://theconversation.com/who-is-more-powerful-states-or-c... The fact is that states and corporations collude and compete with each other for political control internationally, and corporate power outranks the vast majority of state powers. Weirdly though, I can't find Alphabet Inc. in the power rankings.
photochemsyn 5y ago
I can see the CEOs and politicians wanting to implement a Chinese-style 'social citizenship score' and if it falls below some level you get banned from all platforms and your travel rights are restricted, etc.
- GaryTang 5y ago
  Oh boy. MSM is going to jam the importance of it down our throats. “Social citizen scores are necessary to save lives. Get your score now! Lottery for people who register early.”
yibg 5y ago
Do you also feel it’s wrong of YouTube to not allow porn? Feels like people are laser focused on anti vax content due to the political nature of it, while not really caring about all the other moderation they already do.
- etchalon 5y ago
  Porn is a great counter example to the idea social media companies have some all powerful control over public information. Nearly all of them ban porn, a form of absolutely protected speech, but behold, it’s easy to find porn. The whole “death of free speech” argument is such nonsense
  - johnjj257 5y ago
    Not really because porn is evenly banned across the board. This is more like you can only watch CDC approved porn films and if your porn doesn't align with our CDC guidelines it will be removed. Which doesn't sound like much support of free speech.
- whiddershins 5y ago
  They need to ban all references to the vaccine, and then your analogy to porn would hold, and I would be fine with it.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
syshum 5y ago
Society is regressing back to a time where idea's like those in the Pre-Enlightenment era where prevalent, hopefully we do not regress all the way back to Dark Ages, where people will stoned and hanged for defying the church... In our time "the church" will likely be replaced with a new non-theistic religion of some kind, a Technocracy of "The Experts™" and "Authoritative Sources™" who are the ones that will tell us what "The Truth™" is today
- AlexandrB 5y ago
  > Society is regressing back to a time where idea's like those in the Pre-Enlightenment era where prevalent... I agree, people are denying vaccines work, taking fluoride out of tap water, and saying that the earth is flat. It seems like there's something seriously wrong with our media ecosystem when ideas like this are flourishing. I don't know if banning these ideas is good/effective, but we need some way to incentivize the veracity of ideas and not just their "engagement". What that mechanism might be, I don't know.
  - syshum 5y ago
    >>It seems like there's something seriously wrong with our media ecosystem I think that is a symptom of the problem not the root cause >>I don't know if banning these ideas is good/effective its not, never has been, in fact has been shown to make the idea's spread further and become more extreme as people enter into information echo chambers. >but we need some way to incentivize the veracity of ideas Why? in reality the root cause is decades and decades of coddling children and the removal of critical thinking education in favor of memorization education. The root cause is the failure to teach people how to use critical thinking and logic to assess the validity of data and claims made by people. The reality is that "Trust the Experts™" is an example of this and really does make the problem worse because people are taught to just trust an authority instead of being able to look at a claim or data set and deiced for themselves if that claim should be accepted. The problem become with the "authority" people trust is wrong, either because they are a charlatan, or just ignorant themselves. However because people have been training to alway trust authority they become locked into this unable to think for themselves. The more we move to a model of messenger over message, credential over data, the worse this problem will become. The additon of punishments for those that dare to resist "authority" is also going to end badly when that authority is wrong. Keep in mind I have countless examples of authority being wrong I can cite, a big on is that for decades and during my childhood the USDA pushed the food pyramid we now know to be wrong. They were the experts and anyone that dared say "hey maybe all these carbs are bad" were shunned... Vegetable oils are a another where the experts it seems may be been very wrong. The enlightenment in part was the removal of charismatic messengers in favor of data driven objective truth. It did not matter who the person was it matter what they were saying and if they could prove their claim. All individuals were the same. We have lost that in favor of personality, credentials and authority over data, and proof. Why is the vaccine safe? "Because the CDC and FDA said so"... that is not a valid response to me. Show me the data, show me the studies, show me the proof... that is the valid response.
md2020 5y ago
This trend in combination with the new wave of everything being a subscription really has me worried as a recent college grad who therefore does not own a home or have much in the way of savings. If you don’t own anything and your access to essential items is decided by some megacorp like Google or FB, you bet people will fall in line with the latest recreational outrage real fast. Connected cars with subscription features that show you ads even if you do own them (see the Ford Mach-E), and financial institutions buying up single-family homes to keep as many people as possible renting forever and never gaining equity in anything. The World Economic Forum came out and said it blatantly: “You’ll own nothing, and you’ll be happy.” That’s starting to read more like a command, not a prediction.
13415 5y ago
Personally, I don't care what Youtube bans and believe they should just do whatever they like. I don't care because Youtube does not provide any essential service to society. The content they serve is entirely expendable. The same holds for Twitter and Facebook. You could close these content distribution sites tomorrow and nothing substantial would change. A few of their competitors would gain a larger user base and that's it. If you rely for your income on some of these media channels (like ad revenue), you have a bad business model. Principally, however, there could be a quasi-monopoly that turns out so essential for society that they should be treated as a public utility with a right to access instead of a private company that can enforce whatever house rules they like within the boundaries of law. I just don't think YT (or FB or Twitter or Google...) are there yet and find it hilarious that butthurt Youtubers so grossly overestimate their own importance.
sneak 5y ago
...and we're still in peacetime. Wait until you see what you're not allowed to post once that changes.
whiddershins 5y ago
But is free speech dependent on YouTube being a platform for complex discussions between knowledgeable people on a topic? Maybe YouTube doesn’t want that role. Maybe we can have a sci-debate website that does want these discussions, and maybe that site could tailor the feature set for exactly this purpose. Maybe it would focus on citation and annotation features like thinkspot or Spotify or genius. Maybe the site could have multiple ways to evaluate the reputation of someone making claims. Maybe it could have education, popularity, endorsements from other people with high reputation, and like three other dimensions of reputation measurements. Maybe it could have tools to disclose conflicts of interest, the accuracy of past claims over time, and automatic linking to rebuttals. Maybe YouTube just isn’t a fit for this information.
- JasonFruit 5y ago
  I'd agree that YouTube isn't designed for useful debate. That being the case, I'd rather see them say they won't allow discussion of vaccines at all, rather than promote one viewpoint and suppress all others. That seems like a less troubling way to handle a disputed topic: opt out, don't pontificate.
palijer 5y ago
Freedom of speech doesn't mean other people have to listen or host what you say. https://xkcd.com/1357/ https://xkcd.com/1357/
- Prior8Channer 5y ago
  I really like the /pol/ version of this where they just edited in if you were of a certain race how this comic would read. Needless to say, it's wrong and everyone who agrees with that comic is wrong.
LdSGSgvupDV 5y ago
To simplify the question. Do we like to allow the social media to take parts of the position from court?

IgorPartola 5y ago

Yes our freedoms are being eroded. It’s a slippery slope. All that bullshit. Come on. A private company doesn’t want to contribute to people dying. Oh and by the way don’t they have the right to do what they want? You want what, regulation to prohibit this?

throwaway0a5e 5y ago
Youtube doesn't give two shits about people dying. They care about not drawing the ire of advertisers or legislators.
- IgorPartola 5y ago
  Is it not their right to pursue profits? Do you want someone to regulate them?
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    It may be their right to pursue profits within the bounds of the law but that doesn't mean their actions along the way aren't distasteful.
    - IgorPartola 5y ago
      Well then we can all furrow our brows and move on. If you simply find YT distasteful, don’t use it.
      - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
        "You simply find DuPont distasteful don't use plastics". "If you simply find the treatment of warehouse workers distasteful don't buy anything online" Just because someone or something's actions are within the letter of the law doesn't mean they are exempt from criticism.
        myaccounthaha 5y ago
        You didn't answer the question - Do you want someone to regulate them?
        throwaway0a5e 5y ago
        I didn't answer the question because it was a non-sequitur and it was obvious the question was being asked in bad faith to trip me up, like a cop who asks how many drinks you had after you just told him you hadn't had anything to drink. I don't have a strong opinion on the matter. If someone were to do a good job regulating them and make the situation better I'd approve. If someone were to do a bad job and make things worse I'd disapprove.
        IgorPartola 5y ago
        So your solution is for someone else to come up with a solution which you would find satisfactory by criteria you are unwilling to provide? Whether regulation should stop YT from doing this is a legitimate question. Nothing else will prevent it. Observe that the government telling a private company what they must host on their platform is potentially more dangerous than the government telling a private company to take down a piece of content (neither of these are happening here but if we entertain the notion of regulating YT then these are to be considered).
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- swayvil 5y ago
  Yes. When truth is tied to money we enter a world of infinite bullshit.
mach1ne 5y ago
When a private company with a market share of information as large as Youtube acts as an arbitrer of truth, regulation to prevent this would be nice, yes.
- IgorPartola 5y ago
  So you trust the government to decide what is true and what isn’t but not YouTube?
  - eric_cc 5y ago
    Or we can move beyond the concept of trust. How about not banning content you don't like?
    - IgorPartola 5y ago
      Huh? That makes no sense.
      - eric_cc 5y ago
        There is no need for trusting anybody. The concept that we must trust the government or YouTube to determine truth is ridiculous. How about neither of them ban content they don’t like? As individuals, we shouldn’t trust. We should verify.
        IgorPartola 5y ago
        OK great. So do you have a chemistry lab in your house to verify that the toothpaste you buy doesn’t contain heavy metals? Do you do your own testing of the meat you buy to ensure it doesn’t contain BGH, antibiotics, parasites? Do you manufacture your own water testing kits since you can’t trust sending samples to a lab? Do you manufacture your own computing devices since you can’t trust that others aren’t spying on you using your phone or laptop? This is the kind of answer a 14 year old who hasn’t yet grasped the concept of not-absolutism would give. It’s absurd.
derbOac 5y ago
I'm sort of sympathetic to that argument except: 1. I think at the end of the day, the problem isn't "does YouTube have the right to do this?" it's "should YouTube be doing this, given their status?" For me even though they have the right to, I think it's just the wrong thing to do. I personally am baffled by how the US as a society seems to be devaluing free speech principles in the private and public sphere due to some argument that it's needed to combat misinformation. This strategy never ends well, and it belies a lack of strength in promoting alternatives. The way to combat misinformation is with better information. Resorting to free speech restrictions is a sign of weakness in my opinion. In the end I'd rather have YouTube (and other platforms) modeling a different approach. 2. I also think, regardless of how they got there, at some point a private business functions as a monopoly and should be treated as such. I'm not so sure how I feel about regulations along those lines, but I do think anti-monopoly legal response to this sort of behavior wouldn't be unreasonable. I'm not at all sympathetic to the GOP in general, but if they started coming down on YouTube for this kind of thing under anti-monopoly regulation umbrellas I think it wouldn't be irrational or unreasonable to me. 3. As a more immediate issue, I think this sort of thing always backfires. If you have a bunch of people thinking there's a conspiracy to shove untested vaccines down people's throats, and then you have a major media distributor like YouTube censoring all anti-vaccine discussion, what do you think they're going to conclude? I'm as pro-vaccine as someone can get, and think arguments against them are usually pretty absurd, but I have to say that this kind of thing starts to look like a conspiracy, even if it isn't one. Why give them ammunition? If you can't convince people the vaccine is a good thing, how do you think that shutting down discussion is somehow going to work better?
- goldenbikeshed 5y ago
  It's high time facebook, YouTube and Google get broken up like the Bell Corporation was (maybe even avoid some mistakes that were made with that company). Regarding 3.: I think it will radicalize some but it will also stop the misinformation of many more people. Overall I think it will lead to lives saved.
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  One thing this became extremely visible was Brexit to me. There are really good arguments why not leaving the union is the better choice. I am critical of the EU, but not to a degree that I want to abolish it as I think reforms are possible. I am not from GB and think their critical stance was very important within the EU since it institutionally lacks a real opposition. Without that it is an inefficient and bureaucratic technocracy (those actually don't really get results at all). People asked questions about immigration, sovereignty, participation. These are completely valid topics and asking was basically decried as Russian propaganda. Meanwhile classical EU proponents never even argued that it isn't a compromise of sovereignty and participation! Denying that was denying reality. The thing is, if that is the wide spread stance on how to deal with "misinformation", the whole thing suddenly isn't worth it anymore and it is not even close. People just basically argue that they want a technocracy that treats them like children. This was the image the pro-Brexit group crafted. It is similar to what vaccination proponents do. I don't know how to tell them that they are part of what makes vaccination unattractive to many. I wouldn't advocate to ban them of course.
eric_cc 5y ago
> A private company doesn’t want to contribute to people dying. And the best action they can take to that end is to ban all anti-vaccination conversation?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

Loughla 5y ago

I genuinely don't get it. YouTube, a private entity and not a government entity, is saying they don't want certain content on their platform. This is not the end of your free speech. This isn't really even a movement away from free speech. It's YouTube exercising their right to freedom of speech by not allowing what they believe to be harmful or disagreeable on their platform. They already do this with other categories of thing. This is no different. You are more than able to start your own company and let whatever you want on that site. Or just go to your local city center with a megaphone and give people your thoughts - perfectly legal. If YouTube is THAT essential to getting your views heard, you need to take a lesson from business - don't rely on anyone else for critical infrastructure.

prohobo 5y ago
This fallacy of "private entity" when talking about a corporation that's more powerful than most governments is truly ridiculous. It's okay if the East India Company enslaves and exploits the savages and mongrels, murders opponents, rigs elections, installs corrupt politicians and destroys communities; it's a private company and it only hurts stupid people! Just stop buying their tea if you don't like it, amirite? Start your own company!
- zepto 5y ago
  Except not. Google isn’t more powerful than most governments. They can’t kill or imprison people, or seize land or property. This is simply a false analogy.
  - evv555 5y ago
    Google isn't a "private entity" in the sense of a small business either. More like a utility company. False analogy
  - prohobo 5y ago
    I recommend reading this article for a quick overview of the current political landscape: https://theconversation.com/who-is-more-powerful-states-or-corporations-99616 https://theconversation.com/who-is-more-powerful-states-or-c... The fact is that states and corporations collude and compete with each other for political control internationally, and corporate power outranks the vast majority of state powers. Weirdly though, I can't find Alphabet Inc. in the power rankings.

photochemsyn 5y ago

I can see the CEOs and politicians wanting to implement a Chinese-style 'social citizenship score' and if it falls below some level you get banned from all platforms and your travel rights are restricted, etc.

GaryTang 5y ago
Oh boy. MSM is going to jam the importance of it down our throats. “Social citizen scores are necessary to save lives. Get your score now! Lottery for people who register early.”

yibg 5y ago

Do you also feel it’s wrong of YouTube to not allow porn? Feels like people are laser focused on anti vax content due to the political nature of it, while not really caring about all the other moderation they already do.

etchalon 5y ago
Porn is a great counter example to the idea social media companies have some all powerful control over public information. Nearly all of them ban porn, a form of absolutely protected speech, but behold, it’s easy to find porn. The whole “death of free speech” argument is such nonsense
- johnjj257 5y ago
  Not really because porn is evenly banned across the board. This is more like you can only watch CDC approved porn films and if your porn doesn't align with our CDC guidelines it will be removed. Which doesn't sound like much support of free speech.
whiddershins 5y ago
They need to ban all references to the vaccine, and then your analogy to porn would hold, and I would be fine with it.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

syshum 5y ago

Society is regressing back to a time where idea's like those in the Pre-Enlightenment era where prevalent, hopefully we do not regress all the way back to Dark Ages, where people will stoned and hanged for defying the church... In our time "the church" will likely be replaced with a new non-theistic religion of some kind, a Technocracy of "The Experts™" and "Authoritative Sources™" who are the ones that will tell us what "The Truth™" is today

AlexandrB 5y ago
> Society is regressing back to a time where idea's like those in the Pre-Enlightenment era where prevalent... I agree, people are denying vaccines work, taking fluoride out of tap water, and saying that the earth is flat. It seems like there's something seriously wrong with our media ecosystem when ideas like this are flourishing. I don't know if banning these ideas is good/effective, but we need some way to incentivize the veracity of ideas and not just their "engagement". What that mechanism might be, I don't know.
- syshum 5y ago
  >>It seems like there's something seriously wrong with our media ecosystem I think that is a symptom of the problem not the root cause >>I don't know if banning these ideas is good/effective its not, never has been, in fact has been shown to make the idea's spread further and become more extreme as people enter into information echo chambers. >but we need some way to incentivize the veracity of ideas Why? in reality the root cause is decades and decades of coddling children and the removal of critical thinking education in favor of memorization education. The root cause is the failure to teach people how to use critical thinking and logic to assess the validity of data and claims made by people. The reality is that "Trust the Experts™" is an example of this and really does make the problem worse because people are taught to just trust an authority instead of being able to look at a claim or data set and deiced for themselves if that claim should be accepted. The problem become with the "authority" people trust is wrong, either because they are a charlatan, or just ignorant themselves. However because people have been training to alway trust authority they become locked into this unable to think for themselves. The more we move to a model of messenger over message, credential over data, the worse this problem will become. The additon of punishments for those that dare to resist "authority" is also going to end badly when that authority is wrong. Keep in mind I have countless examples of authority being wrong I can cite, a big on is that for decades and during my childhood the USDA pushed the food pyramid we now know to be wrong. They were the experts and anyone that dared say "hey maybe all these carbs are bad" were shunned... Vegetable oils are a another where the experts it seems may be been very wrong. The enlightenment in part was the removal of charismatic messengers in favor of data driven objective truth. It did not matter who the person was it matter what they were saying and if they could prove their claim. All individuals were the same. We have lost that in favor of personality, credentials and authority over data, and proof. Why is the vaccine safe? "Because the CDC and FDA said so"... that is not a valid response to me. Show me the data, show me the studies, show me the proof... that is the valid response.

md2020 5y ago

This trend in combination with the new wave of everything being a subscription really has me worried as a recent college grad who therefore does not own a home or have much in the way of savings. If you don’t own anything and your access to essential items is decided by some megacorp like Google or FB, you bet people will fall in line with the latest recreational outrage real fast. Connected cars with subscription features that show you ads even if you do own them (see the Ford Mach-E), and financial institutions buying up single-family homes to keep as many people as possible renting forever and never gaining equity in anything. The World Economic Forum came out and said it blatantly: “You’ll own nothing, and you’ll be happy.” That’s starting to read more like a command, not a prediction.

13415 5y ago

Personally, I don't care what Youtube bans and believe they should just do whatever they like. I don't care because Youtube does not provide any essential service to society. The content they serve is entirely expendable. The same holds for Twitter and Facebook. You could close these content distribution sites tomorrow and nothing substantial would change. A few of their competitors would gain a larger user base and that's it. If you rely for your income on some of these media channels (like ad revenue), you have a bad business model. Principally, however, there could be a quasi-monopoly that turns out so essential for society that they should be treated as a public utility with a right to access instead of a private company that can enforce whatever house rules they like within the boundaries of law. I just don't think YT (or FB or Twitter or Google...) are there yet and find it hilarious that butthurt Youtubers so grossly overestimate their own importance.

sneak 5y ago

...and we're still in peacetime. Wait until you see what you're not allowed to post once that changes.

whiddershins 5y ago

But is free speech dependent on YouTube being a platform for complex discussions between knowledgeable people on a topic? Maybe YouTube doesn’t want that role. Maybe we can have a sci-debate website that does want these discussions, and maybe that site could tailor the feature set for exactly this purpose. Maybe it would focus on citation and annotation features like thinkspot or Spotify or genius. Maybe the site could have multiple ways to evaluate the reputation of someone making claims. Maybe it could have education, popularity, endorsements from other people with high reputation, and like three other dimensions of reputation measurements. Maybe it could have tools to disclose conflicts of interest, the accuracy of past claims over time, and automatic linking to rebuttals. Maybe YouTube just isn’t a fit for this information.

JasonFruit 5y ago
I'd agree that YouTube isn't designed for useful debate. That being the case, I'd rather see them say they won't allow discussion of vaccines at all, rather than promote one viewpoint and suppress all others. That seems like a less troubling way to handle a disputed topic: opt out, don't pontificate.

palijer 5y ago

Freedom of speech doesn't mean other people have to listen or host what you say. https://xkcd.com/1357/ https://xkcd.com/1357/

Prior8Channer 5y ago
I really like the /pol/ version of this where they just edited in if you were of a certain race how this comic would read. Needless to say, it's wrong and everyone who agrees with that comic is wrong.

LdSGSgvupDV 5y ago

To simplify the question. Do we like to allow the social media to take parts of the position from court?