8 ms·

IMO, go further. Remove all medical recommendation and assertions from YouTube. Leave YouTube for entertainment, and have other platforms - perhaps ones better

IMO, go further. Remove all medical recommendation and assertions from YouTube. Leave YouTube for entertainment, and have other platforms - perhaps ones better regulated and better managed - for medical discussions in a scientific context. There's inherent difficulty in trying to judge between wackos and pros, because wackos do their best to masquerade as pros. This is basically a turing complete issue, because there's always people straddling the line between wacko and pro. YouTube has mostly avoided the difficulty with this issue until now by avoiding moderation entirely (aside from certain categories that suffer from the same problems, like copyright claims), so the issue with most of YouTube is that you can jump from pro to extreme wacko and not realize it as a non-professional yourself. Meanwhile, all content creators, wacko and pro, are given the same platform to promote their claims - one that incentivizes eyeballs, clicks, and engagement, not one that incentivizes accuracy or merit (or one that allows discussion in a context independent of monetization and ranking, which are known to poison good faith discussion). Similarly but unrelated, let's also ban drug ads on cable TV. These are much like buying a social media influencer to push your medical claims. It's disgusting.

LocalH 5y ago
Taken to its logical end, that would also prevent many very useful channels from existing. What about all the people who live with a mental illness and also have a Youtube channel documenting that experience? Should that be prohibited too? For which disorders? If you remove all ADHD-related individual content from YouTube, you're harming the platform and a crapton of people who have bettered their lives with the aid of such videos.
- paulryanrogers 5y ago
  It could be a slippery slope. Still I wonder if such a ban could also have positive effects by fostering smaller, more collaborative communities too. As it is YouTube is becoming a (mostly unidirectional) public commons that is captured by a single profit-seeking corporation.
- helen___keller 5y ago
  You're alluding back to the moderation problem. I claimed that discerning between pros and wackos is turing complete, and you have indeed shown that discerning between ANY kind of allowable content A and disallowed content B is also turing complete - you can get arbitrarily close to the line between A and B, so any algorithm (or human guidelines) is necessarily going to have issues on some edge cases. I agree, you're absolutely right. Still, I claim it should be done, and maybe the content you listed should also be disallowed. I'm not saying these videos and discussions shouldn't exist, I'm suggesting that perhaps it's time we dispelled the idea of a global Town Square - one platform for all content. It's a recipe for disaster. We've seen what can happen and what will continue to happen. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube - how many times do we have to watch a global town square devolve into shit flinging, disinformation, and hate? Let's stop pretending that there can be a global free speech forum and that we can have some fair minimum ruleset to moderate all content on that forum. We should opt for the opposite - a spectrum of platforms that appeal to different interests and are regulated in proportion to the severity of incorrect or bad-faith information in that interest. The entertainment that dominates Youtube is minimally severe if incorrect or bad faith, so YouTube would have minimal regulation. Content on personal health and experiences could go into HealthTube, where moderation exists to prevent making strong medical claims or pushing bullshit (the "pay an influencer to say that ElaMexaTrin cured my covid" problem), but people are otherwise allowed to post what they want about their personal experiences. Content with strong scientific claims on health would go into MedicalTube, which is regulated and heavily moderated to prevent commercial interests and disinformation. Really, if YouTube was forward thinking, all of these could be different subsets of the same platform. But instead we have one platform with the same erratic hand of moderation slapping things down left and right based on whatever changing ruleset seems convenient today.
  - swader999 5y ago
    You can't expect people to be informed and able to vote without access to information, including dissenting views. The quacks do need to be out in the open facing ridicule. I think it gets worse if they are pushed to a telegram channel where they have no opposition.
    - 5y ago
photochemsyn 5y ago
Not a bad idea, although I'd start with a ban on medical - pharmaceutical advertising on Youtube. Most countries don't allow marketing of any kind of prescription drug (not sure about over-the-counter though), based on the very common-sense notion that only trained doctors (with no backdoor kickback deals with pharmaceutical outfits) should be advising patients on appropriate medicines for their condition.
- helen___keller 5y ago
  I agree strongly, but my point is that in modern social forums the only difference between advertising and content is who is getting paid. I can promote my drug through traditional advertising, or I can promote my drug by sponsoring channels, or I can promote my drug by hiring a "viral marketing" firm to try and spread rumors about how my drug is so much more effective than the competition but being held back by an evil shadowy cabal of big pharma.
  - Marsymars 5y ago
    I don't think regulators are powerless to deal with that tactic. If that tactic was adopted by tobacco companies to market cigarettes to children, would regulators just collectively shrug their shoulders?
    - occamrazor 5y ago
      Juul did market to teens through “influencers”.
raxxorrax 5y ago
That would be another sensible approach. Or Youtube would need to employ doctors that judge on a case by case basis and articulate their decisions. Anything else is a bad solution in my opinion and this current position warrants a lot of pushback in my opinion.
winternett 5y ago
>Similarly but unrelated, let's also ban drug ads on cable TV. Amen to that statement... Is there any more obvious cue that news is all a profit machine than a half hour repeating commercials about reverse mortgages and anti-depressants that cause diarrhea?
detcader 5y ago
Hope nobody against abortion is at the wheel in this scenario. Censorship is a shortcut to avoid doing the real work of de-radicalizing people and convincing the undecided. It's not even a working shortcut. For every issue liberals focus on, there has grown a loud minority who want to normalize Big Tech using their power to ban opponents because they don't see how it will always backfire, and/or they're bullies who crave power over other people.
- helen___keller 5y ago
  Not sure how this relates to my comment, sorry.
  - detcader 5y ago
    > Remove all medical recommendation and assertions from YouTube Should videos with content like "abortion is a human right and here's where you can access it" be removed? Do you trust Google to decide in your favor every time and for all time?
    - helen___keller 5y ago
      You're misunderstanding the premise of my suggestion. Please see my comment here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28694148 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28694148 where I recommend we have different platforms for more sensitive topics, as YouTube has proven incompetent at managing discussions that require any level of moderation, civility, or nuance. It's not a matter of Google deciding "in my favor". I want Google out of the picture entirely. Google is the problem here.
crooked-v 5y ago
> Similarly but unrelated, let's also ban drug ads on cable TV. I'm reminded of seeing anecdotes about British and Australian people watching US TV streams and them finding the prevalence of drug ads really bizarre.

LocalH 5y ago

Taken to its logical end, that would also prevent many very useful channels from existing. What about all the people who live with a mental illness and also have a Youtube channel documenting that experience? Should that be prohibited too? For which disorders? If you remove all ADHD-related individual content from YouTube, you're harming the platform and a crapton of people who have bettered their lives with the aid of such videos.

paulryanrogers 5y ago
It could be a slippery slope. Still I wonder if such a ban could also have positive effects by fostering smaller, more collaborative communities too. As it is YouTube is becoming a (mostly unidirectional) public commons that is captured by a single profit-seeking corporation.
helen___keller 5y ago
You're alluding back to the moderation problem. I claimed that discerning between pros and wackos is turing complete, and you have indeed shown that discerning between ANY kind of allowable content A and disallowed content B is also turing complete - you can get arbitrarily close to the line between A and B, so any algorithm (or human guidelines) is necessarily going to have issues on some edge cases. I agree, you're absolutely right. Still, I claim it should be done, and maybe the content you listed should also be disallowed. I'm not saying these videos and discussions shouldn't exist, I'm suggesting that perhaps it's time we dispelled the idea of a global Town Square - one platform for all content. It's a recipe for disaster. We've seen what can happen and what will continue to happen. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube - how many times do we have to watch a global town square devolve into shit flinging, disinformation, and hate? Let's stop pretending that there can be a global free speech forum and that we can have some fair minimum ruleset to moderate all content on that forum. We should opt for the opposite - a spectrum of platforms that appeal to different interests and are regulated in proportion to the severity of incorrect or bad-faith information in that interest. The entertainment that dominates Youtube is minimally severe if incorrect or bad faith, so YouTube would have minimal regulation. Content on personal health and experiences could go into HealthTube, where moderation exists to prevent making strong medical claims or pushing bullshit (the "pay an influencer to say that ElaMexaTrin cured my covid" problem), but people are otherwise allowed to post what they want about their personal experiences. Content with strong scientific claims on health would go into MedicalTube, which is regulated and heavily moderated to prevent commercial interests and disinformation. Really, if YouTube was forward thinking, all of these could be different subsets of the same platform. But instead we have one platform with the same erratic hand of moderation slapping things down left and right based on whatever changing ruleset seems convenient today.
- swader999 5y ago
  You can't expect people to be informed and able to vote without access to information, including dissenting views. The quacks do need to be out in the open facing ridicule. I think it gets worse if they are pushed to a telegram channel where they have no opposition.
  - 5y ago

photochemsyn 5y ago

Not a bad idea, although I'd start with a ban on medical - pharmaceutical advertising on Youtube. Most countries don't allow marketing of any kind of prescription drug (not sure about over-the-counter though), based on the very common-sense notion that only trained doctors (with no backdoor kickback deals with pharmaceutical outfits) should be advising patients on appropriate medicines for their condition.

helen___keller 5y ago
I agree strongly, but my point is that in modern social forums the only difference between advertising and content is who is getting paid. I can promote my drug through traditional advertising, or I can promote my drug by sponsoring channels, or I can promote my drug by hiring a "viral marketing" firm to try and spread rumors about how my drug is so much more effective than the competition but being held back by an evil shadowy cabal of big pharma.
- Marsymars 5y ago
  I don't think regulators are powerless to deal with that tactic. If that tactic was adopted by tobacco companies to market cigarettes to children, would regulators just collectively shrug their shoulders?
  - occamrazor 5y ago
    Juul did market to teens through “influencers”.

raxxorrax 5y ago

That would be another sensible approach. Or Youtube would need to employ doctors that judge on a case by case basis and articulate their decisions. Anything else is a bad solution in my opinion and this current position warrants a lot of pushback in my opinion.

winternett 5y ago

>Similarly but unrelated, let's also ban drug ads on cable TV. Amen to that statement... Is there any more obvious cue that news is all a profit machine than a half hour repeating commercials about reverse mortgages and anti-depressants that cause diarrhea?

detcader 5y ago

Hope nobody against abortion is at the wheel in this scenario. Censorship is a shortcut to avoid doing the real work of de-radicalizing people and convincing the undecided. It's not even a working shortcut. For every issue liberals focus on, there has grown a loud minority who want to normalize Big Tech using their power to ban opponents because they don't see how it will always backfire, and/or they're bullies who crave power over other people.

helen___keller 5y ago
Not sure how this relates to my comment, sorry.
- detcader 5y ago
  > Remove all medical recommendation and assertions from YouTube Should videos with content like "abortion is a human right and here's where you can access it" be removed? Do you trust Google to decide in your favor every time and for all time?
  - helen___keller 5y ago
    You're misunderstanding the premise of my suggestion. Please see my comment here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28694148 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28694148 where I recommend we have different platforms for more sensitive topics, as YouTube has proven incompetent at managing discussions that require any level of moderation, civility, or nuance. It's not a matter of Google deciding "in my favor". I want Google out of the picture entirely. Google is the problem here.

crooked-v 5y ago

> Similarly but unrelated, let's also ban drug ads on cable TV. I'm reminded of seeing anecdotes about British and Australian people watching US TV streams and them finding the prevalence of drug ads really bizarre.