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My wife is very vaccine hesitant, and every time they make a move like this to block content or take it down, it only strengthens her position. She thinks they’

My wife is very vaccine hesitant, and every time they make a move like this to block content or take it down, it only strengthens her position. She thinks they’re taking it down because they don’t want people to know the truth. The only thing worse than bad ideas is the suppression of bad ideas. It’s tragic that we knew this at some point, but are going to have to figure it all back out again the hard way.

commandlinefan 5y ago
> She thinks they’re taking it down because they don’t want people to know the truth. Hell, I always thought anti-vaxxers were looneys and was first in line for the COVID shot when it was available in March... but even I'm starting to be convinced that the anti-vaxxers might have a point because of all this effort to silence them. I'm becoming vaccine... remorseful?
- crazy_horse 5y ago
  They're making an effort to silence them after allowing rampant misinformation for a year and a half because in the US we still have over 30% of the population not vaccinated and the death toll continues to climb.
  - leetcrew 5y ago
    > after allowing rampant misinformation for a year and a half my recollection is that they started dealing with the "misinformation" early on. they've been ratcheting up the countermeasures the whole time.
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  I am remorseful at this point. By calculation taking the vaccine is sensible. But very closely so in my age group. There is currently a push to vaccinate children which is technically irresponsible since they won't suffer symptoms and would reach a better immunity they will never get with the vaccine. There is a lot of room for critique and much panic about a serious but not too deadly disease.
  - ridaj 5y ago
    Why do people fear long-term effects of the vaccine (which seem very unlikely in light of past vaccine history) but dismiss equally unknown long-term effects of covid? It is true that most children are not affected by covid in the short term compared with other age groups, but some get neurological disease, and others have gotten "long covid". Those are not the same as the typical vaccine side effects. Feels like maybe a case of the "trolley problem".
    - ekianjo 5y ago
      > dismiss equally unknown long-term effects of covid? If you believe vaccines have no potential negative effect beyond 1 week, you'll have to give a serious thought as to why you believe Covid can have long term effects. Also past vaccine history means absolutely nothing. You can't assume the next bridge is built safely just because you have never seen a bridge fall before.
      - shpongled 5y ago
        > If you believe vaccines have no potential negative effect beyond 1 week, you'll have to give a serious thought as to why you believe Covid can have long term effects ...because they are different? A localized, single dose mRNA vaccine that transiently produces spike protein will have a completely different effect than systemic infection with a virus.
      - jlebar 5y ago
        > If you believe vaccines have no potential negative effect beyond 1 week, you'll have to give a serious thought as to why you believe Covid can have long term effects. I mean, covid can kill you, which is kind of a long-term negative effect? Surely you're not arguing that the vaccine is equally likely to have that particularly long-term effect, so then I'd ask why you think it's equally likely to have other long-term effects? > Also past vaccine history means absolutely nothing. You can't assume the next bridge is built safely just because you have never seen a bridge fall before. Really? I mean, do you...generally avoid bridges where you live? It seems to me that if bridges don't collapse frequently, that would indeed be evidence that whoever is building / designing / approving them is doing something right, and that "the next" bridge is also unlikely to collapse?
- simonh 5y ago
  None of the material that's being pulled would in any way persuade me that getting vaxxed was a mistake. I'm very happy with my choice and highly recommend it. Most of the material being pulled is pernicious conspiracy rubbish, but too much legitimate discussion, some of which has a chance of persuading anti-vaxxers is being hoovered up in the cull.
- pstuart 5y ago
  Are you now more interested in child pornography because that's not allowed on youtube?
- goldenbikeshed 5y ago
  I don't get this. Here in Germany for example holocaust denial is illegal. Assume you are in a country where it's not, say the USA. Assume you slowly witness a rise of naziism that as usual comes with holocaust denial. Now the USA make holocaust denial illegal. Would that make you reconsider if the holocaust really happened? What the anti-vaxxers and their misinformation are doing has lead to the absolutely unnecessary loss of thousands of lifes. Depriving them of any platform is morally imperative.
  - angelzen 5y ago
    Who is the arbiter of good / bad speech? What is the process through society figures out what speech is good and what speech is bad?
    - duhast 5y ago
      Level of virality and black box algorithms.
  - gfodor 5y ago
    You don’t have a monopoly on truth. The “anti-vaxxers” are not a monolithic group, and some people who are skeptics of consensus views on the various questions involved will probably be vindicated as other non-consensus views have been so far, which is normal in any chaotic situation where data is limited.
    - LightG 5y ago
      Tell that to the regularly highlighted examples of Covid-19 and/or vax deniers who end up ... dead. Scientific, rational debate is ideal on these subjects ... but is that even possible anymore when people are jumping off the deep end so much. David Koresh would be envious.
      - burnafter182 5y ago
        Selection bias, plain and simple.
- coldpie 5y ago
  Please don't make medical decisions based on crap you read on the Internet, and especially not based on articles about crap other people are reading on the Internet. Talk to a doctor. That's what they're there for.
  - ekianjo 5y ago
    That goes both ways.
  - cybernautique 5y ago
    Devil;s advocacy: then why so much ad spend to push pro-vaxx media? Also vaccinated, not remorseful at all. Wouldn't the responsible messaging be a huge ad wave of "talk to your doctor?" My opinion: this isn't actually a feasible solution. There are not enough doctors for all millions of Americans, let alone all billions of humans, to consult with their doctor. It's also largely unnecessary. I did not consult my doctor. I looked at the situation, assessed my values, did my own cost-benefit analysis, and mediated all of this with a healthy amount of dialogue between my confidantes. As most people do. I think this almost necessarily has to be litigated largely through public engagement. You know your situation, your risks, and you know if a serious consultation is prudential for you. Even still, if the position is "don't make decisions based on biased media," why is the pro-vaxx media more valuable than anti-vaxx or vaxx-hesitant? I believe it resolves entirely to your individual values. The argument should be: why is it profitable to the individual to value one over the other? I can only make this argument from my previously-established values, and I'm already pro-vaxx.
  - Mountain_Skies 5y ago
    Talk to your doctor and then get your prescription rejected because Kroger corporate policy overrides your doctor's medical opinion.
- idiotsecant 5y ago
  Yes anti-vaxxers are looneys. No they shouldn't be removed from the modern public forum because of that. Don't let the two get confused. Just because someone is silencing people with stupid opinions doesn't somehow make those opinions less stupid.
  - mwigdahl 5y ago
    You know that, and I know that. But people who already distrust authority and feel that the mechanisms of culture, finance, and government are biased against them don't agree. They see money, time, and effort being expended by groups they already feel are against them to silence certain views. Of course they're then going to more prone to associate themselves with those views: "The enemy of my enemy is my friend."
    - bwship 5y ago
      MMR vaccine links to autism, total hog wash you smart, smart people say.
- scohesc 5y ago
  Welcome to the club! Almost two years of "two more weeks and we'll be out of this! just do your duty and we'll be free of this pandemic!" I was very vaccine hesitant and would say I was coerced by government, private businesses (and the governments mandates handed to them), and by my peers. I ended up getting the vaccine recently but I am very scared of the potential consequences. We need the world to rip off the bandaid and open up instead of our leaders prolonging this pandemic to gain more and more power.
  - hellojesus 5y ago
    I fixed any concern by buying long term disability insurance before I got it. May be worth checking out.
  - rightbyte 5y ago
    Wouldn't any long term effect show by now? E.g. Astra Zenica's was pulled after it was shown to give clots. I guess Youtube would supress reports of that now until it became official news ...
    - namibj 5y ago
      The initial study was very heavily affected by sampling bias (medical personnel with hallway rumors and unbureocratic access to screening techniques). Add to that that the risk of blood clots is strongly increased by typical isolation at home due to a lack of regular movement/exercise, and the (significant, but still very low) heightened incidence rate isn't enough to deny people vaccination.
  - wwweston 5y ago
    > I am very scared of the potential consequences Any particular reason? I'm someone who was told to be cautious about some vaccines by medical professionals due to a past condition, and so when the covid vaccines started to come available, I both consulted a doctor and did some of my own investigation of things other professionals have published before determining to get vaccinated as soon as possible. Also I've been following VAERS reports since, just to keep a heads up. As far as I can tell, adverse events from vaccination of any kind are orders of magnitude rarer than corresponding adverse effects from infection. And nobody who is saying anything about "long term effects" that might show up later has been able to advance any plausible model for how that would happen considering that's vanishingly rare from vaccination in general.
- belter 5y ago
  Employees, Scientists and Managers of Vaccine producers, when recorded with hidden cameras, also seem to be vaccine remorseful... "Johnson & Johnson: Children Don’t Need the ‘F*cking’ COVID Vaccine Because There Are ‘Unknown Repercussions Down the Road’ …" https://www.projectveritas.com/news/johnson-and-johnson-children-dont-need-the-f-cking-covid-vaccine-because/ https://www.projectveritas.com/news/johnson-and-johnson-chil...
  - packetslave 5y ago
    GTFO with your conspiracy theory bullshit. "Project Veritas", indeed.
    - belter 5y ago
      I made a statement of fact supported by secretly recorded videos that I invite you to watch. I am happy to engage in discussion with you. However, I would like to mention the attitude implied by your comment, is probably more appropriate for the YouTube-Truth-Defining department...
      - packetslave 5y ago
        You made a "statement of fact" supported by a link to a site where the headlines include: "Antifa indoctrination in the classroom" "Covid-19 Vaccine Exposed" "FDA Official: ‘Blow Dart’ African Americans with COVID Vaccine is ‘Where We’re Going" I think I can live without "engaging in discussion" with you.
        belter 5y ago
        Of course some of those titles and the agendas behind them are nuts. But you are confusing the veracity or not of certain facts, with how pleasant you find the messenger... If I see a video of a US President saying no Generals recommended that US troops should stay in Afghanistan, and days later, I see the top US General saying he did recommended to the president to leave 2500 to 3500 troops on the ground...If you happen to watch it on Fox News, it does not make it untrue... In the case of some of the videos I suggested, they relate to Johnson & Johnson vaccines. Lets review, for example, some of the current Lawsuits, including number of claimants they are currently engaged in... Pending Lawsuits Against J&J as of February 2021 ================================================= DePuy ASR XL Acetabular System and DePuy ASR Hip Resurfacing System Number of Lawsuits - 550 Injuries - dislocation, loosening, metallosis (metal poisoning), revision surgeries Pinnacle Acetabular Cup Number of Lawsuits - 7,056 Injuries - dislocation, loosening, metallosis (metal poisoning), revision surgeries Xarelto Number of Lawsuits - 13,511 Injuries - severe, sometimes deadly bleeding events, blood clots, wound leaks, infection Johnson’s Talcum Powder Number of Lawsuits - 27,168 Injuries - ovarian cancer, mesothelioma cancer "The company is facing smaller, emerging litigations for the interstitial cystitis (IC) drug Elmiron and DePuy’s Attune knee implants. Elmiron litigation is in the beginning stages with a handful of cases filed in state courts, but lawyers expect hundreds more. People who filed lawsuits say Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen Pharmaceuticals unit failed to warn them that the drug could cause vision problems, particularly a condition called pigmentary maculopathy." ================================================= Does it sound like you want to get a vaccine from them? According to the CDC, and most of this thread...you are a nutter and vaccine denier if you dont.
- HyperRational 5y ago
  Do you think the same about flat-earthers? Sometimes people are just plain wrong. Anyone smart enough to work in IT should be able to see the many flaws in anti-vaxx arguments and recognize how effective vaccines are at preventing diseases.
- Grim-444 5y ago
  I never once in my life considered an anti-vax position until now. I still think previous vaccines are fine as we have had decades of experience making and studying them, and only at the moment am concerned about the brand new mRNA vaccine, but the result of all of the recent events and all of the censoring really has thrown me for a loop and I actually have started reconsidering what I used to just assumed was true. I lost all faith in mass media years ago, haven't watched CNN/etc in years, and now I've lost any faith I had in our institutions such as the CDC and FDA. Censoring any opposition and using full on physical coercion, forcing people to do what they say or else they'll take your job away from you, or else you won't be able to provide for your family, ruins any remaining trust I had in them and now I'm questioning everything that I just blindly trusted was true. I don't know how many years it'll be before I ever trust them again. You may think I'm completely wrong and misled, and that's fine. But the actions these groups are taking are completely undermining themselves, they're completely screwing over their credibility. Not just for this issue, but for every issue into the future, and that is a serious issue. I no longer assume that what the FDA approves is good for use. I no longer assume what the CDC says we should do is what's best for me. The trust is gone. This dystopian situation of removing the voice of anyone who dares question them only further entrenches my doubt.
  - Domenic_S 5y ago
    You don't have to trust the FDA or CDC. The mRNA platform is quite old relatively, and millions of doses have been administered with profoundly low adverse effects.
TeMPOraL 5y ago
> She thinks they’re taking it down because they don’t want people to know the truth. The sad truth is, they do this just because of fucking ad revenue. There's no grand conspiracy against, or even for anti-vaccination movements. It's just people selling the world for a quick buck. And some people are still shooting me weird looks when I keep telling them that advertising is a cancer on modern society.
- BuyMyBitcoins 5y ago
  I’m not so sure. I can’t help but think a good proportion of Google/YouTube employees truly believe they are saving lives and fighting “misinformation” with this move. To me, citing lost ad revenue is a convenient scapegoat for what these partisan folks wanted to do the whole time.
  - TeMPOraL 5y ago
    Google is a multinational corporation, not a club. Those employees wouldn't get their way if it threatened their company's revenue stream.
    - BuyMyBitcoins 5y ago
      Google is also a Bay Area company and happens to have a sizable number of vocal/activist employees with lofty world-saving goals. I also can’t help but think that having so much revenue and de-facto monopolies means they are comfortable with alienating “the other side”. I think they know people aren’t going to switch en-masse to a YouTube competitor because of this.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - __blockcipher__ 5y ago
        Agreed. As one example, take Amazon banning Parler from AWS. That clearly isn't a positive move for revenue (at least ignoring any potential shady behind-the-scenes kickbacks they could have gotten for doing so), but they did it because it aligned with many of their employees' ideology (among other reasons). (As an aside Parler was idiotic for not running on their own hardware given they were billing themselves as the censorship resistant twitter, but that's neither here nor there)
mypastself 5y ago
In addition to playing into anti-vaxxers’ belief that they are being silenced for nefarious purposes, reducing their arguments’ visibility also reduces the likelihood someone will publish a well-reasoned counterargument. Skeptic videos might be disseminated on sites frequented solely by those willing to believe them, and they will be less exposed to dissenting opinions.
- MrRadar 5y ago
  I think by now we should understand that it usually takes an order of magnitude more effort to counter-act a false claim than it takes to make it in the first place. If your proposed approach was viable there shouldn't be people around today saying that vaccines cause autism, as the original paper that made that claim has been debunked many, many, times. And yet, that lie is still extremely pervasive in society and directly causing harm to people. Part of this is because of recommendation algorithms on social media sites like Youtube getting people into positive feedback loops. If you find a anti-vaxx video and Youtube recommends you two videos, one re-enforcing the video you've just seen (making you feel smart for having found and accepted the information in the original video) and one debunking it (which makes you feel stupid for having wasted your time on the original video), which do you think the average person is more likely to pick? Eventually the algorithm will "naturally" pick up that people watching anti-vaxx videos don't want to see videos debunking those views and will never show them to people watching anti-vaxx videos. The only way to solve this paradox is to blanket ban the anti-vaxx videos.
  - mypastself 5y ago
    Oh, I’m well aware how much easier it is to throw out random unscientific claims than it is to respond to them analytically. Which is actually part of why I’m opposed to a blanket ban. I’ve had to personally wade through papers and studies to determine whether a vaccine skeptic (an M.D., at that) had correctly interpreted the results. They hadn’t. So I’d rather have someone else, with some expertise and clout, spend some time on it and publish their counterargument.
    - 5y ago
ascar 5y ago
That line of reasoning doesn't make a lot of sense to me. One of my family members is also very hesitant to get the vaccine and gets all kind of anti-vaccine propaganda through various groups and channels. She takes that content as "reasonable" and "potentially true" even tho basically all of what I've seen is simply untrue. E.g. an article claiming there were more deaths due to covid vaccines than to covid, which is "backed up" by official NHS statistics. How did they arrive at this claim? Well they just said any recorded covid death with a recorded precondition didn't die due to covid but due to the precondition and any death that occured within 14 days after a vaccine shot was definitely because of the vaccine. I think I don't have to explain the logical fallacy in that argument, but it does make for a nice headline and many (most?) readers only read the headline. Who really takes the time to carefully read and see if the claim has any logical basis? To make things worse, this kind of "news" is regularly republished across multiple sites hiding the "data" multiple links deep (if directly linked to at all). That's the kind of content many anti-vaxxers are exposed to on a daily basis. For your line of reasoning to make any impact it would mean that not blocking this kind of content actually weakens the positions of anti-vaxxers. However, I strongly belief the opposite is the case. Being exposed to this kind of content and treating it with similar credibility as other news/media is strengthening their position too. So we have a situation where keeping the content is reinforcing the beliefs and where blocking the content is also reinforcing the beliefs, because "legitimate" content telling "the truth" is blocked "without reason". I'm also not convinced that outright blocking it is the right move. Hindering it's discoverability (e.g. by downranking it in the so dangerous social media reinforcement bubble algorithmns) and somehow making clear that it might be of very low credibility might be a better approach. It might also be equally hopeless.
- specialist 5y ago
  There's no silver bullet for cults and other addictions. Unwinding decades of malfeasance and indoctrination takes time and effort. Even those who snap out of it then spend decades coming to terms. Even worse: The liberal tendency to cult shame and scold backfires. (Am guilty as charged.) The only effective remedy I'm aware of is distraction and redirection. Like the guy who slow walked his wife out of the QAnon cult by encouraging her interest in the opera. Meanwhile, cockblocking the grifters helps too.
long_time_gone 5y ago
==She thinks they’re taking it down because they don’t want people to know the truth.== Sounds like she has already made up her mind, in which case I’m not sure it matters if the content is moderated or not. It’s possible she will find whatever reinforces the decision she’s already made. ==The only thing worse than bad ideas is the suppression of bad ideas.== This sounds good, but is it true? The bad idea exists today and is spreading, does limiting that spread actually cause more harm? Is there evidence of this or a study to support it? In schools, we suppress all sorts of bad ideas. Take eugenics, has suppressing that idea made the belief in eugenics worse?
- davidw 5y ago
  > The bad idea exists today and is spreading, does limiting that spread actually cause more harm? Is there evidence of this or a study to support it? In schools, we suppress all sorts of bad ideas. So this is sort of meta isn't it? The easy phrase that sounds good gets a lot of traction, but actually proving whether it's true, long term, is a difficult problem! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law - I'm not calling BS on the phrase we're discussing, just that we don't know! Meanwhile back in the real world, a friend of ours died of COVID yesterday, leaving behind a husband and son. Pretty sure she was not vaccinated. She was relatively young and in good shape.
  - orra 5y ago
    There's no simple answers. American has some of the strongest free speech rights, but also a scarily large anti vaxx population. (It's also worth noting that what YouTube decides to allow isn't a First Amendment issue.)
- mdp2021 5y ago
  > In schools, we suppress all sorts of bad ideas No, fortunately that is not worldwide practice. "Challenge", possibly, «suppress», not everywhere. Would suppressing the discussion about eugenics worsen the matter: yes, for example by having to restart the discussion from stage one. The naïve would retain naïve ideas, unchallenged.
SuoDuanDao 5y ago
Yup, the Streisand effect is real. Tyrion Lannister said it best - when you cut out a man's tongue, you're not proving him a liar. You're just proving that you fear what he has to say.
- 1cvmask 5y ago
  https://kidadl.com/articles/of-the-best-tyrion-lannister-quotes https://kidadl.com/articles/of-the-best-tyrion-lannister-quo...
woodruffw 5y ago
This is the same thing people said about vaccine mandates ("mandating vaccinations will only make people dig in!"), but we've had concrete evidence of the exact opposite behavior just this week: after weeks of grumbling, thousands of unvaccinated healthcare workers went and got their shots ahead of NYC's mandate[1]. Edit: because I realize this is an apples-to-oranges comparison, here's an appropriate one: we don't allow cigarette companies to advertise, since smoking cigarettes is manifestly unhealthy. There's been an extraordinary amount of reporting on the undisclosed financial relationships between prominent anti-vaxxers and snake-oil companies; it's not clear to me why forbidding this kind of manifestly dangerous profiteering on a global pandemic actually represents a risk to free expression. [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/28/nyregion/vaccine-health-care-workers-mandate.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/28/nyregion/vaccine-health-c...
- chasd00 5y ago
  when you tell someone "get vaccinated or be fired" what choice do they have? My job required us to all upload our vax cards or be fired. I resisted for a few days and even applied for an accommodation on the basis of "crisis of personal conscious" but was told if my accommodation was denied then i would be fired. I eventually relented and uploaded my vax card because i wasn't going to risk my family's wellbeing over a random piece of paper. i did file a formal HR complaint and asked for a list of other personal health information required for continued employment that was not in my offer letter. I expect no response though.
  - woodruffw 5y ago
    > when you tell someone "get vaccinated or be fired" what choice do they have? That's the point. You don't have a right to endanger the healths of other people, and you never have; the legal groundwork for vaccination mandates significantly predates the current crisis. > I eventually relented and uploaded my vax card because i was going to risk my family's wellbeing over a random piece of paper. Close to 5 million people have died worldwide, and your concern for their wellbeing only begins when you're required to get a vaccine that's been free & convenient for months? With all due respect: have a little perspective.
HyperRational 5y ago
Your wife is very irrational then.
downandout 5y ago
She thinks they’re taking it down because they don’t want people to know the truth. To some degree, that’s true. While the vaccines are overall relatively highly effective and safe, there is no denying that tens of thousands of serious injuries and deaths have occurred as a result of them. Overall the benefits strongly outweigh the risks, but there are risks nonetheless. This is not abnormal for anything that is injected into hundreds of millions of people. However, platforms like YouTube - cheered on by the CDC and an incredibly heavy handed Biden administration - have decided that people don’t have a right to learn about these cases of “adverse reactions”. As well intentioned as they may be, hiding obvious facts from people calls into question everything else that they are being told. It only emboldens the vaccine hesitant when the powers that be are less than honest and forthcoming about the potential negative outcomes of the vaccine, regardless of how rare they might be.
jaybrendansmith 5y ago
She might just die. I recently convinced a coworker to get the vaccine, and she did. And four weeks later contracted Covid-19, probably the delta variant, lost her taste and slept for 5 days straight. Had she not had the vaccine, it's quite likely she would now be dead.
- nradov 5y ago
  How likely would she to be dead? I encourage everyone to get vaccinated if they can, but even without vaccination the CDC estimated the fatality rate at only 0.6% for the population as a whole. We should take this seriously but exaggerating the risks isn't helpful. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burden.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burd...
  - nobody9999 5y ago
    >but even without vaccination the CDC estimated the fatality rate at only 0.6% for the population as a whole. And so, at least for the US, that's ~2,000,000 dead people. I don't know where you come from, but that seems like a lot of people that don't necessarily need to die. Or am I missing something here?
- NDizzle 5y ago
  Uhh.. what makes you say that? What percentage of people who get covid actually get admitted to the hospital? What percentage actually die? Both answers are probably lower than you think. You convincing her to get the vaccine probably fucked up her immune system and led her to getting covid. That scenario is equally possible at this point.
- belter 5y ago
  Or you could have convinced Lisa Shaw: "Lisa Shaw: Presenter's death due to complications of Covid vaccine" https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-tyne-58330796 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-tyne-58330796 Or this lady in New Zealand: "New Zealand woman dies after receiving Pfizer vaccine" https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-58380867 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-58380867 Or the parents of this boy "Michigan boy dies 3 days after getting Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine, CDC is investigating" https://eu.freep.com/story/news/2021/07/02/jacob-clynick-pfizer-covid-vaccine/5323095001/ https://eu.freep.com/story/news/2021/07/02/jacob-clynick-pfi...
jmpman 5y ago
I have a similar friend, and whenever I provide links to peer reviewed articles, I’m told that I’m a sheep, and to search on DuckDuckGo, as they don’t hide the truth… so, a YouTube ban is going to do little to him.
SergeAx 5y ago
> The only thing worse than bad ideas is the suppression of bad ideas. I don't know. This on one hand, but people burning down 5G network towers on the other.
MisterBastahrd 5y ago
That makes zero sense. An action that has nothing to do with the vaccination itself does not "strengthen" anything unless you have decided that you are just in opposition to something for the sake of being in opposition. Which is entirely what the anti-vaxx movement is really about from a political standpoint. Same thing with anti-mask.
josefresco 5y ago
> She thinks they’re taking it down because they don’t want people to know the truth. I'm sorry to hear this. I hope she find the help she needs to understand how and why she's been led to believe this. You might want to talk to her about where she's spending time online, and maybe look into her social circle. Lastly, if she's susceptible to conspiracy theories this won't end with COVID for her or you.
w0mbat 5y ago
The tendency for anti-vaxxers to believe in their delusions more the more they are contradicted with facts is a thorny problem. However the flow of new misinformation also strengthens their beliefs, and draws in new people to the delusional cause. Overall I think deleting this misinformation channel is still a net positive. We need some psychologists on the case. Or advertising professionals.
- risk000 5y ago
  Yeah, 30-40% of the population needs psychologists and propagandists to evaluate or re-educate them. I think this viewpoint you're espousing might be part of the problem.
  - w0mbat 5y ago
    This is how hard it is to get any sense into indoctrinated anti-vaxxers. The actual facts are rejected as propaganda and reeducation. They won't trust eminently respectable sources of truth like the CDC or the WHO. However, wildly untrustable sources with dubious motives are accepted as truth with no filter. How did the adversaries hack their brains and lock the door behind them?
    - Zpalmtree 5y ago
      > respectable sources of truth like the CDC or the WHO. lmao
    - josephcsible 5y ago
      > eminently respectable sources of truth like the CDC or the WHO In 2019, the CDC and WHO could have been considered "eminently respectable sources of truth", but they've both said things to totally tank all of their built up credibility in the last year and a half.
snarf21 5y ago
I disagree. I think we can all agree that we don't need videos talking about how the "bad ideas" of slavery/child abuse/human trafficking/etc. are wonderful things. I think we are right to suppress them. You can make the same argument that allowing these videos validates that they must be telling the truth or YT wouldn't allow it. If all you are looking for is confirmation bias, it is all you will find. It sounds like you wife won't get a vaccine no matter what so let's not argue semantics about what will make her even less likely to get a vaccine.
deleted 5y ago
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dspillett 5y ago
> She thinks they’re taking it down because they don’t want people to know the truth. People already that far down the rabbit hole aren't going to be made more or less hesitant whether YouTube or others leave the content up or take it down because at this point they are already believing things that have been shown to be untrue (or at least highly unlikely to be true). But taking it down might stop a lot more people being drawn in to the conspiracy theories and becoming that hesitant in the first place and further perpetuating the problem by forwarding on the misinformation. Taking the information down saves a lot more from the misinformation than it pushes in the other direction. Not that I think we should abandon the latter of course, but they are going to need some other form of intervention anyway, whether this step is taken for the benefit of the others or not. We can't fix all the problems with one action, but needing other actions to help those more deeply entrenched doesn't mean we shouldn't perform this action to help those who are not yet there.
prpl 5y ago
Would the alternative, leaving it up, weaken her position? I don’t see a scenario where a decision by Youtube removes her hesitancy, TBH. Knowing some hesitant people, the only thing that changed their minds was their MD.
davesque 5y ago
I feel as though there's actually nothing that would convince people like your wife to get vaccinated. Or at least the ultimate deciding factor cannot be predicted or understood. The problem is that people begin to personally identify with an opinion that they hold. And then they'll find any reason or justification for holding onto it. CDC says get vaccinated? Oh, but they said not to wear masks early on. They can't be trusted. Medical researchers release studies showing vaccine effectiveness? Oh, but look at this random other study that shows otherwise. YouTube decides to moderate vaccine misinformation more strongly? Oh, what are they trying to hide? What are they scared of? You can keep asking questions and doubting as long as you want if you're emotionally attached to an idea. Welcome to the mind of an anti-vaxxer. What this all means is that we shouldn't take into account the effect YouTube's action will have on anti-vaxxers because we'd see the same effect regardless of what we do.
leepowers 5y ago
> She thinks they’re taking it down because they don’t want people to know the truth. 1) If they take false content down that will reinforce her beliefs. 2) If they leave false content up, she will keep consuming it, which will reinforce her beliefs. 3) So - when it comes to changing her mind (and the millions like her), 1 and 2 are a wash. She's adopted an unfalsifiable position. There is no policy Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, et al. can adopt to reason her out of this position. She will have to reason her self out of it at some point. 4) The purpose of taking down false content is not to change her mind, or change the mind of anyone else who has adopted an unfalsifiable position. The purpose is to stop the spread of false and untrue information. If there's 10 million people who have taken the unfalsifiable position the goal is to prevent another 10 million from adopting the same viewpoint. 5) However I can't be sure #4 will actually work. Its very difficult to lockdown information and prevent its spread. 6) And can these platforms moderate edge cases with accuracy? If they bungle the job users will lose trust in them as an information source. But - since these platforms are the main driver of misinformation, then discrediting them as information sources would be a net good. 7) So - no moderation means we continue the status quo of information and vaccine hesitancy. 8) Requiring moderation might combat hesitancy by a) preventing the spread of misinformation and b) discrediting platforms in the eyes of the hesitant or hesitant adjacent. 9) Because these platforms are public and performative they are ill suited for mea culpas. Rarely do people relish engaging with ideas that might prove you wrong, especially in a public setting. The work of helping people reason themselves out of unreason will be done outside these platforms.
fksadfji12 5y ago
The thing that worked where I'm from (Canada) was requiring proof of vaccination to do pretty much anything (eat indoors, play indoor sports, movie theatre, etc). Suddenly, this inconvenience has caused a surge in vaccinations.
stjohnswarts 5y ago
But your wife should realized that if she can have her free speech then so can facebook. She's free to peruse odysee and gittr and get all the antivax stuff she could possibly ever want to see.

commandlinefan 5y ago

> She thinks they’re taking it down because they don’t want people to know the truth. Hell, I always thought anti-vaxxers were looneys and was first in line for the COVID shot when it was available in March... but even I'm starting to be convinced that the anti-vaxxers might have a point because of all this effort to silence them. I'm becoming vaccine... remorseful?

crazy_horse 5y ago
They're making an effort to silence them after allowing rampant misinformation for a year and a half because in the US we still have over 30% of the population not vaccinated and the death toll continues to climb.
- leetcrew 5y ago
  > after allowing rampant misinformation for a year and a half my recollection is that they started dealing with the "misinformation" early on. they've been ratcheting up the countermeasures the whole time.
raxxorrax 5y ago
I am remorseful at this point. By calculation taking the vaccine is sensible. But very closely so in my age group. There is currently a push to vaccinate children which is technically irresponsible since they won't suffer symptoms and would reach a better immunity they will never get with the vaccine. There is a lot of room for critique and much panic about a serious but not too deadly disease.
- ridaj 5y ago
  Why do people fear long-term effects of the vaccine (which seem very unlikely in light of past vaccine history) but dismiss equally unknown long-term effects of covid? It is true that most children are not affected by covid in the short term compared with other age groups, but some get neurological disease, and others have gotten "long covid". Those are not the same as the typical vaccine side effects. Feels like maybe a case of the "trolley problem".
  - ekianjo 5y ago
    > dismiss equally unknown long-term effects of covid? If you believe vaccines have no potential negative effect beyond 1 week, you'll have to give a serious thought as to why you believe Covid can have long term effects. Also past vaccine history means absolutely nothing. You can't assume the next bridge is built safely just because you have never seen a bridge fall before.
    - shpongled 5y ago
      > If you believe vaccines have no potential negative effect beyond 1 week, you'll have to give a serious thought as to why you believe Covid can have long term effects ...because they are different? A localized, single dose mRNA vaccine that transiently produces spike protein will have a completely different effect than systemic infection with a virus.
    - jlebar 5y ago
      > If you believe vaccines have no potential negative effect beyond 1 week, you'll have to give a serious thought as to why you believe Covid can have long term effects. I mean, covid can kill you, which is kind of a long-term negative effect? Surely you're not arguing that the vaccine is equally likely to have that particularly long-term effect, so then I'd ask why you think it's equally likely to have other long-term effects? > Also past vaccine history means absolutely nothing. You can't assume the next bridge is built safely just because you have never seen a bridge fall before. Really? I mean, do you...generally avoid bridges where you live? It seems to me that if bridges don't collapse frequently, that would indeed be evidence that whoever is building / designing / approving them is doing something right, and that "the next" bridge is also unlikely to collapse?
simonh 5y ago
None of the material that's being pulled would in any way persuade me that getting vaxxed was a mistake. I'm very happy with my choice and highly recommend it. Most of the material being pulled is pernicious conspiracy rubbish, but too much legitimate discussion, some of which has a chance of persuading anti-vaxxers is being hoovered up in the cull.
pstuart 5y ago
Are you now more interested in child pornography because that's not allowed on youtube?
goldenbikeshed 5y ago
I don't get this. Here in Germany for example holocaust denial is illegal. Assume you are in a country where it's not, say the USA. Assume you slowly witness a rise of naziism that as usual comes with holocaust denial. Now the USA make holocaust denial illegal. Would that make you reconsider if the holocaust really happened? What the anti-vaxxers and their misinformation are doing has lead to the absolutely unnecessary loss of thousands of lifes. Depriving them of any platform is morally imperative.
- angelzen 5y ago
  Who is the arbiter of good / bad speech? What is the process through society figures out what speech is good and what speech is bad?
  - duhast 5y ago
    Level of virality and black box algorithms.
- gfodor 5y ago
  You don’t have a monopoly on truth. The “anti-vaxxers” are not a monolithic group, and some people who are skeptics of consensus views on the various questions involved will probably be vindicated as other non-consensus views have been so far, which is normal in any chaotic situation where data is limited.
  - LightG 5y ago
    Tell that to the regularly highlighted examples of Covid-19 and/or vax deniers who end up ... dead. Scientific, rational debate is ideal on these subjects ... but is that even possible anymore when people are jumping off the deep end so much. David Koresh would be envious.
    - burnafter182 5y ago
      Selection bias, plain and simple.
coldpie 5y ago
Please don't make medical decisions based on crap you read on the Internet, and especially not based on articles about crap other people are reading on the Internet. Talk to a doctor. That's what they're there for.
- ekianjo 5y ago
  That goes both ways.
- cybernautique 5y ago
  Devil;s advocacy: then why so much ad spend to push pro-vaxx media? Also vaccinated, not remorseful at all. Wouldn't the responsible messaging be a huge ad wave of "talk to your doctor?" My opinion: this isn't actually a feasible solution. There are not enough doctors for all millions of Americans, let alone all billions of humans, to consult with their doctor. It's also largely unnecessary. I did not consult my doctor. I looked at the situation, assessed my values, did my own cost-benefit analysis, and mediated all of this with a healthy amount of dialogue between my confidantes. As most people do. I think this almost necessarily has to be litigated largely through public engagement. You know your situation, your risks, and you know if a serious consultation is prudential for you. Even still, if the position is "don't make decisions based on biased media," why is the pro-vaxx media more valuable than anti-vaxx or vaxx-hesitant? I believe it resolves entirely to your individual values. The argument should be: why is it profitable to the individual to value one over the other? I can only make this argument from my previously-established values, and I'm already pro-vaxx.
- Mountain_Skies 5y ago
  Talk to your doctor and then get your prescription rejected because Kroger corporate policy overrides your doctor's medical opinion.
idiotsecant 5y ago
Yes anti-vaxxers are looneys. No they shouldn't be removed from the modern public forum because of that. Don't let the two get confused. Just because someone is silencing people with stupid opinions doesn't somehow make those opinions less stupid.
- mwigdahl 5y ago
  You know that, and I know that. But people who already distrust authority and feel that the mechanisms of culture, finance, and government are biased against them don't agree. They see money, time, and effort being expended by groups they already feel are against them to silence certain views. Of course they're then going to more prone to associate themselves with those views: "The enemy of my enemy is my friend."
  - bwship 5y ago
    MMR vaccine links to autism, total hog wash you smart, smart people say.
scohesc 5y ago
Welcome to the club! Almost two years of "two more weeks and we'll be out of this! just do your duty and we'll be free of this pandemic!" I was very vaccine hesitant and would say I was coerced by government, private businesses (and the governments mandates handed to them), and by my peers. I ended up getting the vaccine recently but I am very scared of the potential consequences. We need the world to rip off the bandaid and open up instead of our leaders prolonging this pandemic to gain more and more power.
- hellojesus 5y ago
  I fixed any concern by buying long term disability insurance before I got it. May be worth checking out.
- rightbyte 5y ago
  Wouldn't any long term effect show by now? E.g. Astra Zenica's was pulled after it was shown to give clots. I guess Youtube would supress reports of that now until it became official news ...
  - namibj 5y ago
    The initial study was very heavily affected by sampling bias (medical personnel with hallway rumors and unbureocratic access to screening techniques). Add to that that the risk of blood clots is strongly increased by typical isolation at home due to a lack of regular movement/exercise, and the (significant, but still very low) heightened incidence rate isn't enough to deny people vaccination.
- wwweston 5y ago
  > I am very scared of the potential consequences Any particular reason? I'm someone who was told to be cautious about some vaccines by medical professionals due to a past condition, and so when the covid vaccines started to come available, I both consulted a doctor and did some of my own investigation of things other professionals have published before determining to get vaccinated as soon as possible. Also I've been following VAERS reports since, just to keep a heads up. As far as I can tell, adverse events from vaccination of any kind are orders of magnitude rarer than corresponding adverse effects from infection. And nobody who is saying anything about "long term effects" that might show up later has been able to advance any plausible model for how that would happen considering that's vanishingly rare from vaccination in general.
belter 5y ago
Employees, Scientists and Managers of Vaccine producers, when recorded with hidden cameras, also seem to be vaccine remorseful... "Johnson & Johnson: Children Don’t Need the ‘F*cking’ COVID Vaccine Because There Are ‘Unknown Repercussions Down the Road’ …" https://www.projectveritas.com/news/johnson-and-johnson-children-dont-need-the-f-cking-covid-vaccine-because/ https://www.projectveritas.com/news/johnson-and-johnson-chil...
- packetslave 5y ago
  GTFO with your conspiracy theory bullshit. "Project Veritas", indeed.
  - belter 5y ago
    I made a statement of fact supported by secretly recorded videos that I invite you to watch. I am happy to engage in discussion with you. However, I would like to mention the attitude implied by your comment, is probably more appropriate for the YouTube-Truth-Defining department...
    - packetslave 5y ago
      You made a "statement of fact" supported by a link to a site where the headlines include: "Antifa indoctrination in the classroom" "Covid-19 Vaccine Exposed" "FDA Official: ‘Blow Dart’ African Americans with COVID Vaccine is ‘Where We’re Going" I think I can live without "engaging in discussion" with you.
      - belter 5y ago
        Of course some of those titles and the agendas behind them are nuts. But you are confusing the veracity or not of certain facts, with how pleasant you find the messenger... If I see a video of a US President saying no Generals recommended that US troops should stay in Afghanistan, and days later, I see the top US General saying he did recommended to the president to leave 2500 to 3500 troops on the ground...If you happen to watch it on Fox News, it does not make it untrue... In the case of some of the videos I suggested, they relate to Johnson & Johnson vaccines. Lets review, for example, some of the current Lawsuits, including number of claimants they are currently engaged in... Pending Lawsuits Against J&J as of February 2021 ================================================= DePuy ASR XL Acetabular System and DePuy ASR Hip Resurfacing System Number of Lawsuits - 550 Injuries - dislocation, loosening, metallosis (metal poisoning), revision surgeries Pinnacle Acetabular Cup Number of Lawsuits - 7,056 Injuries - dislocation, loosening, metallosis (metal poisoning), revision surgeries Xarelto Number of Lawsuits - 13,511 Injuries - severe, sometimes deadly bleeding events, blood clots, wound leaks, infection Johnson’s Talcum Powder Number of Lawsuits - 27,168 Injuries - ovarian cancer, mesothelioma cancer "The company is facing smaller, emerging litigations for the interstitial cystitis (IC) drug Elmiron and DePuy’s Attune knee implants. Elmiron litigation is in the beginning stages with a handful of cases filed in state courts, but lawyers expect hundreds more. People who filed lawsuits say Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen Pharmaceuticals unit failed to warn them that the drug could cause vision problems, particularly a condition called pigmentary maculopathy." ================================================= Does it sound like you want to get a vaccine from them? According to the CDC, and most of this thread...you are a nutter and vaccine denier if you dont.
HyperRational 5y ago
Do you think the same about flat-earthers? Sometimes people are just plain wrong. Anyone smart enough to work in IT should be able to see the many flaws in anti-vaxx arguments and recognize how effective vaccines are at preventing diseases.
Grim-444 5y ago
I never once in my life considered an anti-vax position until now. I still think previous vaccines are fine as we have had decades of experience making and studying them, and only at the moment am concerned about the brand new mRNA vaccine, but the result of all of the recent events and all of the censoring really has thrown me for a loop and I actually have started reconsidering what I used to just assumed was true. I lost all faith in mass media years ago, haven't watched CNN/etc in years, and now I've lost any faith I had in our institutions such as the CDC and FDA. Censoring any opposition and using full on physical coercion, forcing people to do what they say or else they'll take your job away from you, or else you won't be able to provide for your family, ruins any remaining trust I had in them and now I'm questioning everything that I just blindly trusted was true. I don't know how many years it'll be before I ever trust them again. You may think I'm completely wrong and misled, and that's fine. But the actions these groups are taking are completely undermining themselves, they're completely screwing over their credibility. Not just for this issue, but for every issue into the future, and that is a serious issue. I no longer assume that what the FDA approves is good for use. I no longer assume what the CDC says we should do is what's best for me. The trust is gone. This dystopian situation of removing the voice of anyone who dares question them only further entrenches my doubt.
- Domenic_S 5y ago
  You don't have to trust the FDA or CDC. The mRNA platform is quite old relatively, and millions of doses have been administered with profoundly low adverse effects.

TeMPOraL 5y ago

> She thinks they’re taking it down because they don’t want people to know the truth. The sad truth is, they do this just because of fucking ad revenue. There's no grand conspiracy against, or even for anti-vaccination movements. It's just people selling the world for a quick buck. And some people are still shooting me weird looks when I keep telling them that advertising is a cancer on modern society.

BuyMyBitcoins 5y ago
I’m not so sure. I can’t help but think a good proportion of Google/YouTube employees truly believe they are saving lives and fighting “misinformation” with this move. To me, citing lost ad revenue is a convenient scapegoat for what these partisan folks wanted to do the whole time.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  Google is a multinational corporation, not a club. Those employees wouldn't get their way if it threatened their company's revenue stream.
  - BuyMyBitcoins 5y ago
    Google is also a Bay Area company and happens to have a sizable number of vocal/activist employees with lofty world-saving goals. I also can’t help but think that having so much revenue and de-facto monopolies means they are comfortable with alienating “the other side”. I think they know people aren’t going to switch en-masse to a YouTube competitor because of this.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - __blockcipher__ 5y ago
      Agreed. As one example, take Amazon banning Parler from AWS. That clearly isn't a positive move for revenue (at least ignoring any potential shady behind-the-scenes kickbacks they could have gotten for doing so), but they did it because it aligned with many of their employees' ideology (among other reasons). (As an aside Parler was idiotic for not running on their own hardware given they were billing themselves as the censorship resistant twitter, but that's neither here nor there)

mypastself 5y ago

In addition to playing into anti-vaxxers’ belief that they are being silenced for nefarious purposes, reducing their arguments’ visibility also reduces the likelihood someone will publish a well-reasoned counterargument. Skeptic videos might be disseminated on sites frequented solely by those willing to believe them, and they will be less exposed to dissenting opinions.

MrRadar 5y ago
I think by now we should understand that it usually takes an order of magnitude more effort to counter-act a false claim than it takes to make it in the first place. If your proposed approach was viable there shouldn't be people around today saying that vaccines cause autism, as the original paper that made that claim has been debunked many, many, times. And yet, that lie is still extremely pervasive in society and directly causing harm to people. Part of this is because of recommendation algorithms on social media sites like Youtube getting people into positive feedback loops. If you find a anti-vaxx video and Youtube recommends you two videos, one re-enforcing the video you've just seen (making you feel smart for having found and accepted the information in the original video) and one debunking it (which makes you feel stupid for having wasted your time on the original video), which do you think the average person is more likely to pick? Eventually the algorithm will "naturally" pick up that people watching anti-vaxx videos don't want to see videos debunking those views and will never show them to people watching anti-vaxx videos. The only way to solve this paradox is to blanket ban the anti-vaxx videos.
- mypastself 5y ago
  Oh, I’m well aware how much easier it is to throw out random unscientific claims than it is to respond to them analytically. Which is actually part of why I’m opposed to a blanket ban. I’ve had to personally wade through papers and studies to determine whether a vaccine skeptic (an M.D., at that) had correctly interpreted the results. They hadn’t. So I’d rather have someone else, with some expertise and clout, spend some time on it and publish their counterargument.
  - 5y ago

ascar 5y ago

That line of reasoning doesn't make a lot of sense to me. One of my family members is also very hesitant to get the vaccine and gets all kind of anti-vaccine propaganda through various groups and channels. She takes that content as "reasonable" and "potentially true" even tho basically all of what I've seen is simply untrue. E.g. an article claiming there were more deaths due to covid vaccines than to covid, which is "backed up" by official NHS statistics. How did they arrive at this claim? Well they just said any recorded covid death with a recorded precondition didn't die due to covid but due to the precondition and any death that occured within 14 days after a vaccine shot was definitely because of the vaccine. I think I don't have to explain the logical fallacy in that argument, but it does make for a nice headline and many (most?) readers only read the headline. Who really takes the time to carefully read and see if the claim has any logical basis? To make things worse, this kind of "news" is regularly republished across multiple sites hiding the "data" multiple links deep (if directly linked to at all). That's the kind of content many anti-vaxxers are exposed to on a daily basis. For your line of reasoning to make any impact it would mean that not blocking this kind of content actually weakens the positions of anti-vaxxers. However, I strongly belief the opposite is the case. Being exposed to this kind of content and treating it with similar credibility as other news/media is strengthening their position too. So we have a situation where keeping the content is reinforcing the beliefs and where blocking the content is also reinforcing the beliefs, because "legitimate" content telling "the truth" is blocked "without reason". I'm also not convinced that outright blocking it is the right move. Hindering it's discoverability (e.g. by downranking it in the so dangerous social media reinforcement bubble algorithmns) and somehow making clear that it might be of very low credibility might be a better approach. It might also be equally hopeless.

specialist 5y ago
There's no silver bullet for cults and other addictions. Unwinding decades of malfeasance and indoctrination takes time and effort. Even those who snap out of it then spend decades coming to terms. Even worse: The liberal tendency to cult shame and scold backfires. (Am guilty as charged.) The only effective remedy I'm aware of is distraction and redirection. Like the guy who slow walked his wife out of the QAnon cult by encouraging her interest in the opera. Meanwhile, cockblocking the grifters helps too.

long_time_gone 5y ago

==She thinks they’re taking it down because they don’t want people to know the truth.== Sounds like she has already made up her mind, in which case I’m not sure it matters if the content is moderated or not. It’s possible she will find whatever reinforces the decision she’s already made. ==The only thing worse than bad ideas is the suppression of bad ideas.== This sounds good, but is it true? The bad idea exists today and is spreading, does limiting that spread actually cause more harm? Is there evidence of this or a study to support it? In schools, we suppress all sorts of bad ideas. Take eugenics, has suppressing that idea made the belief in eugenics worse?

davidw 5y ago
> The bad idea exists today and is spreading, does limiting that spread actually cause more harm? Is there evidence of this or a study to support it? In schools, we suppress all sorts of bad ideas. So this is sort of meta isn't it? The easy phrase that sounds good gets a lot of traction, but actually proving whether it's true, long term, is a difficult problem! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law - I'm not calling BS on the phrase we're discussing, just that we don't know! Meanwhile back in the real world, a friend of ours died of COVID yesterday, leaving behind a husband and son. Pretty sure she was not vaccinated. She was relatively young and in good shape.
- orra 5y ago
  There's no simple answers. American has some of the strongest free speech rights, but also a scarily large anti vaxx population. (It's also worth noting that what YouTube decides to allow isn't a First Amendment issue.)
mdp2021 5y ago
> In schools, we suppress all sorts of bad ideas No, fortunately that is not worldwide practice. "Challenge", possibly, «suppress», not everywhere. Would suppressing the discussion about eugenics worsen the matter: yes, for example by having to restart the discussion from stage one. The naïve would retain naïve ideas, unchallenged.

SuoDuanDao 5y ago

Yup, the Streisand effect is real. Tyrion Lannister said it best - when you cut out a man's tongue, you're not proving him a liar. You're just proving that you fear what he has to say.

1cvmask 5y ago
https://kidadl.com/articles/of-the-best-tyrion-lannister-quotes https://kidadl.com/articles/of-the-best-tyrion-lannister-quo...

woodruffw 5y ago

This is the same thing people said about vaccine mandates ("mandating vaccinations will only make people dig in!"), but we've had concrete evidence of the exact opposite behavior just this week: after weeks of grumbling, thousands of unvaccinated healthcare workers went and got their shots ahead of NYC's mandate[1]. Edit: because I realize this is an apples-to-oranges comparison, here's an appropriate one: we don't allow cigarette companies to advertise, since smoking cigarettes is manifestly unhealthy. There's been an extraordinary amount of reporting on the undisclosed financial relationships between prominent anti-vaxxers and snake-oil companies; it's not clear to me why forbidding this kind of manifestly dangerous profiteering on a global pandemic actually represents a risk to free expression. [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/28/nyregion/vaccine-health-care-workers-mandate.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/28/nyregion/vaccine-health-c...

chasd00 5y ago
when you tell someone "get vaccinated or be fired" what choice do they have? My job required us to all upload our vax cards or be fired. I resisted for a few days and even applied for an accommodation on the basis of "crisis of personal conscious" but was told if my accommodation was denied then i would be fired. I eventually relented and uploaded my vax card because i wasn't going to risk my family's wellbeing over a random piece of paper. i did file a formal HR complaint and asked for a list of other personal health information required for continued employment that was not in my offer letter. I expect no response though.
- woodruffw 5y ago
  > when you tell someone "get vaccinated or be fired" what choice do they have? That's the point. You don't have a right to endanger the healths of other people, and you never have; the legal groundwork for vaccination mandates significantly predates the current crisis. > I eventually relented and uploaded my vax card because i was going to risk my family's wellbeing over a random piece of paper. Close to 5 million people have died worldwide, and your concern for their wellbeing only begins when you're required to get a vaccine that's been free & convenient for months? With all due respect: have a little perspective.

HyperRational 5y ago

Your wife is very irrational then.

downandout 5y ago

She thinks they’re taking it down because they don’t want people to know the truth. To some degree, that’s true. While the vaccines are overall relatively highly effective and safe, there is no denying that tens of thousands of serious injuries and deaths have occurred as a result of them. Overall the benefits strongly outweigh the risks, but there are risks nonetheless. This is not abnormal for anything that is injected into hundreds of millions of people. However, platforms like YouTube - cheered on by the CDC and an incredibly heavy handed Biden administration - have decided that people don’t have a right to learn about these cases of “adverse reactions”. As well intentioned as they may be, hiding obvious facts from people calls into question everything else that they are being told. It only emboldens the vaccine hesitant when the powers that be are less than honest and forthcoming about the potential negative outcomes of the vaccine, regardless of how rare they might be.

jaybrendansmith 5y ago

She might just die. I recently convinced a coworker to get the vaccine, and she did. And four weeks later contracted Covid-19, probably the delta variant, lost her taste and slept for 5 days straight. Had she not had the vaccine, it's quite likely she would now be dead.

nradov 5y ago
How likely would she to be dead? I encourage everyone to get vaccinated if they can, but even without vaccination the CDC estimated the fatality rate at only 0.6% for the population as a whole. We should take this seriously but exaggerating the risks isn't helpful. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burden.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burd...
- nobody9999 5y ago
  >but even without vaccination the CDC estimated the fatality rate at only 0.6% for the population as a whole. And so, at least for the US, that's ~2,000,000 dead people. I don't know where you come from, but that seems like a lot of people that don't necessarily need to die. Or am I missing something here?
NDizzle 5y ago
Uhh.. what makes you say that? What percentage of people who get covid actually get admitted to the hospital? What percentage actually die? Both answers are probably lower than you think. You convincing her to get the vaccine probably fucked up her immune system and led her to getting covid. That scenario is equally possible at this point.
belter 5y ago
Or you could have convinced Lisa Shaw: "Lisa Shaw: Presenter's death due to complications of Covid vaccine" https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-tyne-58330796 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-tyne-58330796 Or this lady in New Zealand: "New Zealand woman dies after receiving Pfizer vaccine" https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-58380867 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-58380867 Or the parents of this boy "Michigan boy dies 3 days after getting Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine, CDC is investigating" https://eu.freep.com/story/news/2021/07/02/jacob-clynick-pfizer-covid-vaccine/5323095001/ https://eu.freep.com/story/news/2021/07/02/jacob-clynick-pfi...

jmpman 5y ago

I have a similar friend, and whenever I provide links to peer reviewed articles, I’m told that I’m a sheep, and to search on DuckDuckGo, as they don’t hide the truth… so, a YouTube ban is going to do little to him.

SergeAx 5y ago

> The only thing worse than bad ideas is the suppression of bad ideas. I don't know. This on one hand, but people burning down 5G network towers on the other.

MisterBastahrd 5y ago

That makes zero sense. An action that has nothing to do with the vaccination itself does not "strengthen" anything unless you have decided that you are just in opposition to something for the sake of being in opposition. Which is entirely what the anti-vaxx movement is really about from a political standpoint. Same thing with anti-mask.

josefresco 5y ago

> She thinks they’re taking it down because they don’t want people to know the truth. I'm sorry to hear this. I hope she find the help she needs to understand how and why she's been led to believe this. You might want to talk to her about where she's spending time online, and maybe look into her social circle. Lastly, if she's susceptible to conspiracy theories this won't end with COVID for her or you.

w0mbat 5y ago

The tendency for anti-vaxxers to believe in their delusions more the more they are contradicted with facts is a thorny problem. However the flow of new misinformation also strengthens their beliefs, and draws in new people to the delusional cause. Overall I think deleting this misinformation channel is still a net positive. We need some psychologists on the case. Or advertising professionals.

risk000 5y ago
Yeah, 30-40% of the population needs psychologists and propagandists to evaluate or re-educate them. I think this viewpoint you're espousing might be part of the problem.
- w0mbat 5y ago
  This is how hard it is to get any sense into indoctrinated anti-vaxxers. The actual facts are rejected as propaganda and reeducation. They won't trust eminently respectable sources of truth like the CDC or the WHO. However, wildly untrustable sources with dubious motives are accepted as truth with no filter. How did the adversaries hack their brains and lock the door behind them?
  - Zpalmtree 5y ago
    > respectable sources of truth like the CDC or the WHO. lmao
  - josephcsible 5y ago
    > eminently respectable sources of truth like the CDC or the WHO In 2019, the CDC and WHO could have been considered "eminently respectable sources of truth", but they've both said things to totally tank all of their built up credibility in the last year and a half.

snarf21 5y ago

I disagree. I think we can all agree that we don't need videos talking about how the "bad ideas" of slavery/child abuse/human trafficking/etc. are wonderful things. I think we are right to suppress them. You can make the same argument that allowing these videos validates that they must be telling the truth or YT wouldn't allow it. If all you are looking for is confirmation bias, it is all you will find. It sounds like you wife won't get a vaccine no matter what so let's not argue semantics about what will make her even less likely to get a vaccine.

deleted 5y ago

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dspillett 5y ago

> She thinks they’re taking it down because they don’t want people to know the truth. People already that far down the rabbit hole aren't going to be made more or less hesitant whether YouTube or others leave the content up or take it down because at this point they are already believing things that have been shown to be untrue (or at least highly unlikely to be true). But taking it down might stop a lot more people being drawn in to the conspiracy theories and becoming that hesitant in the first place and further perpetuating the problem by forwarding on the misinformation. Taking the information down saves a lot more from the misinformation than it pushes in the other direction. Not that I think we should abandon the latter of course, but they are going to need some other form of intervention anyway, whether this step is taken for the benefit of the others or not. We can't fix all the problems with one action, but needing other actions to help those more deeply entrenched doesn't mean we shouldn't perform this action to help those who are not yet there.

prpl 5y ago

Would the alternative, leaving it up, weaken her position? I don’t see a scenario where a decision by Youtube removes her hesitancy, TBH. Knowing some hesitant people, the only thing that changed their minds was their MD.

davesque 5y ago

I feel as though there's actually nothing that would convince people like your wife to get vaccinated. Or at least the ultimate deciding factor cannot be predicted or understood. The problem is that people begin to personally identify with an opinion that they hold. And then they'll find any reason or justification for holding onto it. CDC says get vaccinated? Oh, but they said not to wear masks early on. They can't be trusted. Medical researchers release studies showing vaccine effectiveness? Oh, but look at this random other study that shows otherwise. YouTube decides to moderate vaccine misinformation more strongly? Oh, what are they trying to hide? What are they scared of? You can keep asking questions and doubting as long as you want if you're emotionally attached to an idea. Welcome to the mind of an anti-vaxxer. What this all means is that we shouldn't take into account the effect YouTube's action will have on anti-vaxxers because we'd see the same effect regardless of what we do.

leepowers 5y ago

> She thinks they’re taking it down because they don’t want people to know the truth. 1) If they take false content down that will reinforce her beliefs. 2) If they leave false content up, she will keep consuming it, which will reinforce her beliefs. 3) So - when it comes to changing her mind (and the millions like her), 1 and 2 are a wash. She's adopted an unfalsifiable position. There is no policy Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, et al. can adopt to reason her out of this position. She will have to reason her self out of it at some point. 4) The purpose of taking down false content is not to change her mind, or change the mind of anyone else who has adopted an unfalsifiable position. The purpose is to stop the spread of false and untrue information. If there's 10 million people who have taken the unfalsifiable position the goal is to prevent another 10 million from adopting the same viewpoint. 5) However I can't be sure #4 will actually work. Its very difficult to lockdown information and prevent its spread. 6) And can these platforms moderate edge cases with accuracy? If they bungle the job users will lose trust in them as an information source. But - since these platforms are the main driver of misinformation, then discrediting them as information sources would be a net good. 7) So - no moderation means we continue the status quo of information and vaccine hesitancy. 8) Requiring moderation might combat hesitancy by a) preventing the spread of misinformation and b) discrediting platforms in the eyes of the hesitant or hesitant adjacent. 9) Because these platforms are public and performative they are ill suited for mea culpas. Rarely do people relish engaging with ideas that might prove you wrong, especially in a public setting. The work of helping people reason themselves out of unreason will be done outside these platforms.

fksadfji12 5y ago

The thing that worked where I'm from (Canada) was requiring proof of vaccination to do pretty much anything (eat indoors, play indoor sports, movie theatre, etc). Suddenly, this inconvenience has caused a surge in vaccinations.

stjohnswarts 5y ago

But your wife should realized that if she can have her free speech then so can facebook. She's free to peruse odysee and gittr and get all the antivax stuff she could possibly ever want to see.