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This is the problem I had with all the content removal around Covid. It never ends with that one topic we may not be unhappy to see removed. From another comme

by w14 1y ago

This is the problem I had with all the content removal around Covid. It never ends with that one topic we may not be unhappy to see removed. From another comment: "Looks like some L-whateverthefuck just got the task to go through YT's backlog and cut down on the mention/promotion of alternative video platforms/self-hosted video serving software." This is exactly what YT did with Covid related content. Here in the UK, Ofcom held their second day-long livestreamed seminar on their implementation of the Online Safety Act on Wednesday this week. This time it was about keeping children "safe", including with "effective age assurance". Ofcom refused to give any specific guidance on how platforms should implement the regime they want to see. They said this is on the basis that if they give specific advice, it may restrict their ability to take enforcement action later. So it's up to the platforms to interpret the extremely complex and vaguely defined requirements and impose a regime which Ofcom will find acceptable. It was clear from the Q&A that some pretty big platforms are really struggling with it. The inevitable outcome is that platforms will err on the side of caution, bearing in mind the potential penalties. Many will say, this is good, children should be protected. The second part of that is true. But the way this is being done won't protect children in my opinion. It will result in many more topic areas falling below the censorship threshold.

anonymousiam 1y ago
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- mattmanser 1y ago
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- Lio 1y ago
  Don’t be silly. The UK may not be perfect but no one’s going to complain if you compare the Prime Minister or the King to a cartoon bear. Or you talk openly about a government fuck up. Or about one part of the country maybe deciding to become independent. You just can’t shout fire in a crowded cinema and you can’t say “let’s all meet at the local hotel at 3.30 and burn the immigrants to death” during a riot. I’m ok with that.
  - cookiemonsieur 1y ago
    > The UK may not be perfect but no one’s going to complain if you compare the Prime Minister or the King to a cartoon bear. But if you compare Zionism to another eerily similar 20th century europe ism, a lot of people will, indeed, complain.
    - atemerev 1y ago
      Zionism is the notion that the state of Israel has the right to exist. Opposing Zionism is the call to destruction of the entire nation-state, and, therefore, a call to genocide. (Opposing the actions of said state is, of course, a natural right and can be freely expressed by anyone).
      - deleted 1y ago
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      - ben_w 1y ago
        Unfortunately for that meaning of the word — and a few million people stuck in the middle — two completely different groups of racists are both simultaneously coopting it to stir up hatred for their enemies, who are the other group. > (Opposing the actions of said state is, of course, a natural right and can be freely expressed by anyone) Unfortunately, the "soldier mindset" (as opposed to scout mindset) is dominant in this case, and I fear suggesting why would be rejected because of that very mindset. So no, the freedom is not there in practice. "You're with us or against us" kind of thing, but only with the most expansive definition of what counts.
        atemerev 1y ago
        Well, the soldier mindset and "us vs them" mindset is deadly, and the history is littered with mountains of corpses of people who subscribed to this world view, as well as millions of their innocent collateral victims. Hate is deadly and useless. Israel is a nation that is tightly bound and has the right to exist, as there are millions of people who consider themselves Israeli. Palestine is a nation and has the right to exist, as there are millions of people who consider themselves Palestinians. Zionism is the affirmation of the Israelis to be a nation proper. Palestinian identity is the affirmation of Palestinians to be the nation proper. Both things are OK, even if I will be promptly hated by both groups, I won't give the words meaning beyond what was originally given to them.
- ajuc 1y ago
  And still it's the "free-speech" USA that deports students for protesting against Israel war in Gaza and not UK. There's the wording of the law, and then there's the practice of the government. Most communist regimes in Eastern Europe had pretty nice constitutions. It's just that everybody knew it doesn't matter what the constitution says - you complain = you're off to the national variety of a KGB prison. When your government ignores courts and laws and just deport people as it sees fit for their protesting or their tatoos - you do not have free speech. No matter what your laws say. BTW - USA arguably didn't have free speech for majority of its existence. If you were a slave you certainly didn't.
  - achooie 1y ago
    lol free speech is for citizens
    - Defletter 1y ago
      How can someone be so confident but also so wrong? --- EDIT: Let's remind ourselves of where FEDERAL freedom of speech comes from. Firstly, of course, is the First Amendment: > Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. You may notice that it doesn't say "free speech is for citizens", but rather that there is a negative-right against Congress from legislating to restrict speech. But what about the President, or the judiciary, or the States? Well, Gitlow v. New York established the following: > Assumed, for the purposes of the case, that freedom of speech and of the press are among the personal rights and liberties protected by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment from impairment by the States. - https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/268/652/ https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/268/652/ Judges need to get better at this: it NEVER is just for that case. And so the case set a precedent that the 14th Amendment's due process clause contains within itself a more powerful version of the First Amendment. Now let's remind ourselves of what the due process clause says (with the equal protect clause for good measure): > nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. Now, to quote the notorious RBG: > Nor shall any State deprive any person, not any citizen. And the choice [in] the word 'person' was quite deliberate. And similarly, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. So, the United States constitution surely recognises the fundamental human rights of all persons. - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYR414Q8v6A&t=3925s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYR414Q8v6A&t=3925s - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYR414Q8v6A&t=3712s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYR414Q8v6A&t=3712s (timestamp for the question she's responding to) Now, reasonable people can disagree on whether the due process clause should be so expansive, indeed I find the US's tendency to amend the Constitution via Supreme Court precedent to be deeply troubling, but even under a textualist reading of the First Amendment, the idea that Freedom of Speech in America is limited to citizens is deeply, deeply ignorant.
- touristtam 1y ago
  > has continuously curbed free speech over the past few decades mmm do you have example at hand or you are just repeating this in the hope that other with voice the same opinion? The UK has a freedom of expression law: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/42/schedule/1/part/I/chapter/9 https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/42/schedule/1/part... 1. Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. This Article shall not prevent States from requiring the licensing of broadcasting, television or cinema enterprises. 2. The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.
  - throwawaythekey 1y ago
    Isn't it obvious that (2) in practice entirely negates (1)? In Australia we recently had a proposed law to prohibit information that "potentially undermines faith in the banking sector" regardless of truthfulness.
    - ajuc 1y ago
      It's very hard to find a law without exceptions. It's forbidden to kill people. But if you are defending yourself it's not. And if you're a soldier you are indeed required to kill. It's forbidden to break other people's property - but if you're trying to save somebody's life you can break a window to get to them. It's illegal to capture and keep people imprisoned. But state can put you in prison no problem. Etc. Freedom of speech was never intended to be the only fundamental rule of the society. It's one of many. Being fundamentalist about it is harmful. In particular what is harmful is abusing it to circumvent other, reasonable rules. In USA the reason oligarchs can pay politicians for their campaigns is because it's classified as "free speech". This is corruption on the highest level of the state legalized with idiotic excuse. It's illegal in most democracies, and for a good reason. Another example is spreading hate campaigns against minorities. We know what happens if you allow this to go on. We've seen 1930s. We have laws against it - but only for traditional media. Internet is a way to circumvent these rules and good practices. Just like radio was a way for to-be-totalitarian-rulers to circumvent the establishment in 20s and 30s.
- ben_w 1y ago
  The UK has problems, but it's not what you'd guess from its own media (left or right, both just have different errors), and everyone else's media is likely even more wrong. When the Sex Pistols got "God Save The Queen" to number 2 in the charts (despite being widely refused broadcast or sale), the listings just left the number 2 slot blank that week. The band was arrested after performing the song on a boat on the Thames. Decades later, an MP suggested playing the "God Save The Queen" (also the name of the national anthem) every night on the BBC, patriotically, in the aftermath of the Brexit vote. Newsnight* agreed and trolled everyone by playing the Sex Pistols' instead of the anthem. * "the BBC's news and current affairs programme, providing in-depth investigation and analysis of the stories behind the day's headlines" to quote Wikipedia
- Latty 1y ago
  It's always funny seeing Americans who have clearly got their news about the UK from questionable sources telling us how actually we live in a dystopian open-air prison. In the US, you have people being literally grabbed off the street and sent to foreign prisons because of their speech with no due process, but the UK is the one close to a loss of freedom of speech because checks notes you can be convicted in a court of law for actively calling for people to burn down hotels full of immigrants during riots. This isn't new, of course, I remember some time back I was being told how white people couldn't go into Leicester... while I, a white man, attended University in Leicester. The UK definitely has issues, even ones related to expression, but generally it's a very free place that does pretty well with respect to it. The US is in a much more dangerous place for freedom of expression right now.
  - decremental 1y ago
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  - didntcheck 1y ago
    I also live in the UK, and I in fact care about both of these. "Things are worse in America" is a tired and harmful cliché frequently used to deflect valid complaints about affairs here. Is the Trump administration really the low bar we're happy with? And I'm afraid we're long past the point of dismissing police and state overreach into freedom of expression as an "American/right-wing myth". The Julian Foulkes case [1] is just one recent example - and no, the fact that they apologised in this one case, featuring an important person, that received substantial media attention, is not enough to reassure me that it was an error [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0j718we6njo https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0j718we6njo
    - Latty 1y ago
      I explicitly said that the UK wasn't free of issues: my pointing out the US was worse wasn't defending our own, simply making the point that some Americans tend to massively exaggerate the UK's issues while pretending the US doesn't have any. Average people from the UK are going to assume that any pushback on speech controls is nutters if the message comes with absurd exaggerations and outright lies. There are legitimate cases of overreach from our legal system, but too often the focus is on someone actively calling for violence, and those are not the same.
- aa-jv 1y ago
  Whether you are in the UK or the USA, your freedoms are being degraded even outside the media-consumption sphere. Until GCHQ and NSA are properly reigned in, nobody is getting their human rights back. With the base expectations for the abrogation of human rights being set at global scale by these heinous organizations, which subvert our democracies and corrupt them, there can be no expectation that the broader sphere of local human rights will ever recover from the damage caused. We cannot fight for a free and open society, when that free and open society is being used to abrogate literally billions of human beings rights outside of our own state borders. The issue will never leave the commons for as long as the military industrial complex is allowed to violate human rights at immensely despicable scales. The protection many claim are being provided, is a fallacy - the net effect of GCHQ/NSA control over our information and communications systems is, a deleterious effect on our ability to protect our rights at an individual level. A government which promotes this abrogation of human rights at massive scale is never going to be brought to heel over those same rights being returned, locally - whether British, American, Canadian, Australian or Kiwi...
KurSix 1y ago
Once you normalize vague enforcement around "problematic" content, the net just keeps widening
- slg 1y ago
  These slippery slope comments always seem a little naive to me because they imply there is some pure way to handle moderation. In practice, you have to be an extremist to think literally no content should be removed from Youtube with the most obvious example of something nearly everyone wants to be removed being CSAM. Maybe you would respond by saying that is illegal and only illegal content should be taken down. According to which laws? Hate speech is illegal some places, should that be removed? What about blasphemy? Maybe you would suggest to closely follow the local law of the user. Does that mean the site needs to allow piracy in places that is legal? And who decides whether the video actually violates the law? Does the content have to stay up until a court makes the final decision? Or what about content that is legal locally, but might be under some restrictions. Should Youtube be obligated to host hardcore porn or gory violence? There needs to be a line somewhere for normal people to actually want to use the site. I'm not going to claim to have the perfect answer on where that line should be, but there is always going to be an ongoing debate on its exact placement.
  - jaapz 1y ago
    > In practice, you have to be an extremist to think literally no content should be removed from Youtube with the most obvious example of something nearly everyone wants to be removed being CSAM. This is not what is being said in the comments you are replying to, you are taking it to the other extreme yourself
    - slg 1y ago
      Yes, I intentionally included an extreme example to highlight my point. However, that was not the only example included. Would you like to respond to my whole comment or just that single cherry-picked sentence?
  - timewizard 1y ago
pinoy420 1y ago
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ajuc 1y ago
The debate shouldn't be "to remove or not". The debate should be "who should decide what to remove". We've had media laws for decades. Internet is underregulated to a crazy degree, so the people who make the decisions are unaccountable and even unknowable. It would be much saner if the people deciding this were judges and elected officials. The way we allow a few oligarchs to decide what information 99% of the world consume for hours every day, and just let them do whatever they want, and don't even tax them in practice - it's just absurd. Free speech is for people not for corporations. And it's certainly not for corporations to enforce. People defending hacker ethos and free internet pretend internet is still like in 90s. If you do have your own self-hosted blog - sure - be a free hacker. But if you have million customers - you're not a free-spirited hacker. You're a media mogul abusing unregulated loophole. States should act accordingly.
Timshel 1y ago
I think your position is quite simplistic and completely ignore all the issues around YT pushing all kind of scam/misinformation which has tremendous impact (EX: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10226045/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10226045/ or https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jan/12/youtube-is-major-conduit-of-fake-news-factcheckers-say https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jan/12/youtube-i...) Could try to separate the pure hosting part of YT from the recommendation but since the home page heavily mix recommendations and the subscription page see almost no usage (Technology connection mention 4% traffic), I'm not sure if it makes sense to still consider YT as simple hosting. And last point I'll make, I believe the fact that their moderation is such a crap shot job is mainly a reflection that it's not a priority.
Lutger 1y ago
I don't see how one necessarily leads to the other. There's obviously already filtering going on in youtube, even before covid, on illegal content and also on legal content that is against the policy (adult content for example). How is Covid desinfo during the pandemic suddenly a slippery slope for anti-competitive measures, while all the other moderation measures aren't? Whats so special about anti covid desinfo rules? I think we really need a better argument than 'making any rule leads to making bad rules, so we better have no rules'.
- aleph_minus_one 1y ago
  > Whats so special about anti covid desinfo rules? - The magnitude of content involved. - The fact that there exists a significant part of the society which is vocal about not endorsing these particular deletions. - The fact that many people became aware of the moderation ("censorship") that YouTube does and its power. - The fact that these COVID information videos (despite being perhaps wrong) formed important patterns of opinions, i.e. some opinions considered "extremist" or "wrong" were suppressed.
  - shakna 1y ago
    We also suppress videos on the correct manufacturing process for plastic explosives. Not because doing it safely is a bad idea, but because proliferating bomb making materials is. Covid disinformation got people killed. It will continue to get people killed, especially with a proponent of it leading the US health service. Things likely to lead to death, are likely things you do not want on your platform.
    - p1dda 1y ago
      [flagged]
    - aleph_minus_one 1y ago
      > Covid disinformation got people killed. If they trust bad medical advice on YouTube and die, it's their problem.
ulrikrasmussen 1y ago
> Many will say, this is good, children should be protected. The second part of that is true. But the way this is being done won't protect children in my opinion. It will result in many more topic areas falling below the censorship threshold. For example, YouTube currently has quite a lot of really good videos on harm reduction for drug users (and probably also a bunch that are not very good and/or directly misleading). I would expect all of such videos to be removed if such a child protection law was passed, because any neutral discussion of drug use apart from total condemnation is typically perceived as encouragement. That would deprive people of informative content which could otherwise have saved their lives.
- actionfromafar 1y ago
  All these concerns are muddled by thinking about Youtube as the example, since it is such a blind meta machine optimising for ad revenue, it’s already actively pushing all kinds of harmful content.
- andrepd 1y ago
  Big tech censorship disgusts me. Everything is completely backwards from what it should be, and the sheer scale of those platforms (bigger than many countries by population or money) prevents individual people and even governments from exercising meaningful democratic oversight. So these platforms congregate hundreds of millions of people and whatever their CEOs and/or douche tech bros in SV decide is what becomes law. Another example: videos about the holocaust or WWII atrocities. Every one of them demonetised and hidden from recommendations because it touches a horrifying topic. Harms the children? On the contrary, nothing more important in an age of global fascism waves than a lesson in how it went last time. Meanwhile the whole platform is a cesspool of addictive brainrot, gambling ads, turbo-consumerist toy unboxing videos, etc. Things that are actually truly harmful to kids. These are not restricted, these are promoted! War is peace etc etc. Good is evil and evil is great. Everything is backwards. I hate this so much.
  - ndriscoll 1y ago
    The thing to understand is your last paragraph: everything big ads does is unsurprisingly focused toward making people into worse versions of themselves. You wouldn't let kids go to a casino or porn site for educational material. Don't let them use youtube either. It could be that someone happened to post educational videos to the porn site. If so you'd might as well download them while you have the chance, but don't mistake their existence for some indication that that's what the site is for. They're still less than 0.1% of the videos, and you'd need to specifically search for them or be linked to them to find them. Assume you'll need to look elsewhere for educational material. e.g. there are 10s of thousands of results for videos for "Holocaust" on worldcat.
rollcat 1y ago
"Think of the children" is the primary justification for so many abusive laws and efforts. The public is buying into it, despite the simplest solution being: parents should pay more attention to how they're raising their kids. "We don't have the time". True. We've improved the efficiency of an average worker by orders of magnitude each $TIME_PERIOD for about two centuries; yet the length of a mean working day has long remained the same. "You dirty communist". Sure, go suffer. This system is abusive. We continue to agree to the status quo, because we're constantly being manipulated over the much less important things, like religion, the gays, or the immigrants. You can't get spiteful over the ruling class if you can be kept happy through being spiteful to your neighbor.
b800h 1y ago
What confuses me is how TV App providers are going to make this work. How is the interface going to work to allow me to use YouTube on the TV whilst checking my age, and ensuring that it's me using the TV each time it's turned on? And how is a TV different to a computer? It's completely impractical.
bugtodiffer 1y ago
UK's predator network was also built to protect kids but in the end is only used for copyright infringement
KaiserPro 1y ago
These are two different, but slightly related topics, which are being conflated with a third. Google is not censoring based on moral grounds here. Its purely financial. If they are caught hosting "how to circumvent DRM", then a number of licensing agreements they have with major IP owners that allows them to profit off music, video and other IP disappears. Most of the take down stuff is either keyword search or automatic based on who is reporting. The Online safety act is utterly flawed, to the point that even ofcom really don't know how to implement it. They are reliant on consultants from delloite or whatever, who also have no fucking clue. The guidelines are designed for large players who have a good few million in the bank, because in all reality thats how ofcom are going to take to court. There are a number of thing the act asks to happen, most of them are common sense, but require named people to implement (ie moderate, provide a way to report posts, allow transparent arbitration, etc, etc) along with defined policies. In the same way that charities are allowed to have a "reasonable" GDPR policy, it seems fair that smaller site should also have that. but this would go down badly with the noise makers. As for age protection, they also really don't know how to do it practically. This means that instead of providing a private (as in curtains no peaking) age assurance API, they are relying on websites to buy in a commercial service, which will be full of telemetry for advertising snooping. Then there is moral/editorial censorship, which is what you go to a media platform for. Like it or not, you choose a platform because the stuff you see is what you expect to see there, even if you don't like it. Youtube is totally optimising for views, even if it means longterm decline. (same with facebook, instgram and tiktok)
verisimi 1y ago
> children should be protected. I get how this sounds unambiguously good - but I hate this excuse. As I see it, if you don't allow kids some danger (unmonitored play, freedom of movement) you end up with adults that are completely unable to assess dangers correctly and want themselves (and everyone else) to be nannied by the government/legislation/etc. There really are dangers out there, and it is not a bad thing to engage with them to be able to build independence, rather than trying to edit the world to conform to a (mistaken, protected) idea of reality.
btbuildem 1y ago
> all the content removal around Covid What are you referring to?
- _heimdall 1y ago
  During the pandemic there was a lot of content taken down if it in any way went against the mainstream narrative of the virus or the vaccines. You couldn't discuss concerns or risks of the vaccine, or discuss any alternative therapeutics or treatments. I want to say you also couldn't discuss the lab leak hypothesis for a while, but I can't remember a specific example for sure so maybe I'm misremembering that one.
  - rat87 1y ago
    Good. We should be praising Google for that decision. That made many bad ones but that seems obviously good and saved a number of lives
    - _heimdall 1y ago
      > obviously good and saved a number of lives You would really have to show your work on that claim. "Good" is a judgement call, it may be obviously good to one and obviously bad to another. Claiming that a number of lives were saved by aggressive YouTube censorship of specific content is also quite a claim. What is the number, and how can you show a direct link between censorship and any one life saved?
      - const_cast 1y ago
        It's really quite simple, and we don't even require proof, just logic. It's plainly true that less masking, less isolation, and less vaccination leads to increased risk of death or injury to Covid. Therefore, having more content promoting those things must lead to increased risk of death or injury to Covid. We really don't need to over-intellectualize these things. Saying things that are just not true, which increases someone's risk, results in lives lost. It would be the same as if I made a PSA telling people to not wear a seatbelt. Or to not wear sunscreen. But if I did that, there would be zero dispute, no? So I think we all understand the concept.
hshdhdhj4444 1y ago
Yeah because if it wasn’t for COVID YouTube, Facebook, et al would never have removed any content on their platform, unlike what they had been doing all this while… There are so many issues with this. Being able to pick what content they host is fundamental to freedom of speech for private entities. The real problem is twofold. 1. A few platforms hold monopoly positions. Who else can compete with Youtubr? And the reason isn’t necessarily because YouTube has a particularly better UI that keeps viewers and content creators on it. The reason YT has all the content creators is because it leverages Google’s ad monopoly and is able to help creators make money. A decently functioning anti-trust system would have split google ads from the rest of the company by now. 2. The devastation of the promise of the open internet. VCs have spent hundreds of billions of dollars to ensure we remain in walled gardens. Open source, self hosted, software on the other hand, where the benefits are shared and not concentrated in individual hands which can then spend billions to ensure that concentration, has suffered. We need govt funding for open source and self hosted alternatives that are easy and safe for people to setup. Combine the two and instead of YT getting to choose what videos are seen and not seen on the internet, major and small content creators would self host and be the decision makers, and still make similar amounts of money because they could plugin the openly available Google Adsense (kind of like how you can on blogs…).
- ClumsyPilot 1y ago
  > Being able to pick what content they host is fundamental to freedom of speech for private entities Interesting position - when somebody posts illegal content on YouTube, they are not liable, it’s not their speech. But when I want to post something they don’t like, suddenly it’s their freedom of speech to remove it. A lot of breakdown in society lately is clearly coming from the fact that some people/companies have it both ways when it suits them.
  - akimbostrawman 1y ago
    The solution would be to revoke section 203 from any platform which acts as a digital public square if they do moderation beyond removing illegal content. Ofc they would try there best to be excluded to have there cake and eat it too.
arp242 1y ago
You already need to remove content if you don't want to be overrun with endless gore and porn videos and that type of thing.
redm 1y ago
In my experience with OFCOM, Child Safety is just the gateway to a vague list bullet points including “terrorism” and “hateful” content (vaguely defined); what could go wrong??
smeeger 1y ago
saaaave the children!!!1
camgunz 1y ago
If you replace "Covid" with "child porn" or "animal cruelty" or "anti-semitism" you'll see how bad this argument is.
- thrawa8387336 1y ago
  Those 3 are not even comparable to each other...
  - camgunz 1y ago
    Oh you don't think a plague that killed over 7 million people rates w/ animal cruelty?
    - mardifoufs 1y ago
      You sound like the people who argue for disallowing any communist speech or ideology from being discussed because "communism killed 100 million people" or something. Like yes covid killed millions. What's your point exactly? Do you have any proof that YouTube taking down videos that didn't agree with how the situation was handled actually saved lives? Or is your argument just that if anyone disagreed (even for stupid reasons) publicly with covid policies, they are somehow causing people to die? Again, do you have any actual proof?
      - camgunz 1y ago
        I'm gonna skip way to the end of this: * masking saved lives * vaccines saved lives * kids could spread COVID-19 * even young, otherwise totally healthy people died from COVID-19 We knew all these things basically immediately, but because of intense brainrot tons of misinformation spread on the internet. YouTube pulling down videos about COVID-19 misinformation saved lives. The end.
        mardifoufs 1y ago
        So, no actual proof? And actually no, at least where I live, for the first two weeks masks were strongly discouraged and were said to be useless by our local government (Quebec). That was for the first 2 weeks of the pandemic, which were the most important in terms of spread. Even hospital staff were told to not wear them. I'm glad YouTube didn't ban anyone who didn't agree with our local government's opinion on masks then. Also, that's funny since again, here in Quebec and in most of the world kids were back to school by autumn 2020. Yet it took more than a year after that for children in the US to go back to school. I guess American experts just knew more than everyone else. It's as if things aren't as cut and dry as you make them out to be.
like_any_other 1y ago
> Ofcom refused to give any specific guidance But, short of such an obvious breach, the rules regarding what can and can't be said, broadcast, forwarded, analysed are thought to be kept deliberately vague. In this way, everyone is on their toes and the authorities can shut down what they like at any time without having to give a reason. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-41523073 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-41523073

by w14 1y ago

anonymousiam 1y ago

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mattmanser 1y ago
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Lio 1y ago
Don’t be silly. The UK may not be perfect but no one’s going to complain if you compare the Prime Minister or the King to a cartoon bear. Or you talk openly about a government fuck up. Or about one part of the country maybe deciding to become independent. You just can’t shout fire in a crowded cinema and you can’t say “let’s all meet at the local hotel at 3.30 and burn the immigrants to death” during a riot. I’m ok with that.
- cookiemonsieur 1y ago
  > The UK may not be perfect but no one’s going to complain if you compare the Prime Minister or the King to a cartoon bear. But if you compare Zionism to another eerily similar 20th century europe ism, a lot of people will, indeed, complain.
  - atemerev 1y ago
    Zionism is the notion that the state of Israel has the right to exist. Opposing Zionism is the call to destruction of the entire nation-state, and, therefore, a call to genocide. (Opposing the actions of said state is, of course, a natural right and can be freely expressed by anyone).
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - ben_w 1y ago
      Unfortunately for that meaning of the word — and a few million people stuck in the middle — two completely different groups of racists are both simultaneously coopting it to stir up hatred for their enemies, who are the other group. > (Opposing the actions of said state is, of course, a natural right and can be freely expressed by anyone) Unfortunately, the "soldier mindset" (as opposed to scout mindset) is dominant in this case, and I fear suggesting why would be rejected because of that very mindset. So no, the freedom is not there in practice. "You're with us or against us" kind of thing, but only with the most expansive definition of what counts.
      - atemerev 1y ago
        Well, the soldier mindset and "us vs them" mindset is deadly, and the history is littered with mountains of corpses of people who subscribed to this world view, as well as millions of their innocent collateral victims. Hate is deadly and useless. Israel is a nation that is tightly bound and has the right to exist, as there are millions of people who consider themselves Israeli. Palestine is a nation and has the right to exist, as there are millions of people who consider themselves Palestinians. Zionism is the affirmation of the Israelis to be a nation proper. Palestinian identity is the affirmation of Palestinians to be the nation proper. Both things are OK, even if I will be promptly hated by both groups, I won't give the words meaning beyond what was originally given to them.
ajuc 1y ago
And still it's the "free-speech" USA that deports students for protesting against Israel war in Gaza and not UK. There's the wording of the law, and then there's the practice of the government. Most communist regimes in Eastern Europe had pretty nice constitutions. It's just that everybody knew it doesn't matter what the constitution says - you complain = you're off to the national variety of a KGB prison. When your government ignores courts and laws and just deport people as it sees fit for their protesting or their tatoos - you do not have free speech. No matter what your laws say. BTW - USA arguably didn't have free speech for majority of its existence. If you were a slave you certainly didn't.
- achooie 1y ago
  lol free speech is for citizens
  - Defletter 1y ago
    How can someone be so confident but also so wrong? --- EDIT: Let's remind ourselves of where FEDERAL freedom of speech comes from. Firstly, of course, is the First Amendment: > Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. You may notice that it doesn't say "free speech is for citizens", but rather that there is a negative-right against Congress from legislating to restrict speech. But what about the President, or the judiciary, or the States? Well, Gitlow v. New York established the following: > Assumed, for the purposes of the case, that freedom of speech and of the press are among the personal rights and liberties protected by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment from impairment by the States. - https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/268/652/ https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/268/652/ Judges need to get better at this: it NEVER is just for that case. And so the case set a precedent that the 14th Amendment's due process clause contains within itself a more powerful version of the First Amendment. Now let's remind ourselves of what the due process clause says (with the equal protect clause for good measure): > nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. Now, to quote the notorious RBG: > Nor shall any State deprive any person, not any citizen. And the choice [in] the word 'person' was quite deliberate. And similarly, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. So, the United States constitution surely recognises the fundamental human rights of all persons. - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYR414Q8v6A&t=3925s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYR414Q8v6A&t=3925s - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYR414Q8v6A&t=3712s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYR414Q8v6A&t=3712s (timestamp for the question she's responding to) Now, reasonable people can disagree on whether the due process clause should be so expansive, indeed I find the US's tendency to amend the Constitution via Supreme Court precedent to be deeply troubling, but even under a textualist reading of the First Amendment, the idea that Freedom of Speech in America is limited to citizens is deeply, deeply ignorant.
touristtam 1y ago
> has continuously curbed free speech over the past few decades mmm do you have example at hand or you are just repeating this in the hope that other with voice the same opinion? The UK has a freedom of expression law: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/42/schedule/1/part/I/chapter/9 https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/42/schedule/1/part... 1. Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. This Article shall not prevent States from requiring the licensing of broadcasting, television or cinema enterprises. 2. The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.
- throwawaythekey 1y ago
  Isn't it obvious that (2) in practice entirely negates (1)? In Australia we recently had a proposed law to prohibit information that "potentially undermines faith in the banking sector" regardless of truthfulness.
  - ajuc 1y ago
    It's very hard to find a law without exceptions. It's forbidden to kill people. But if you are defending yourself it's not. And if you're a soldier you are indeed required to kill. It's forbidden to break other people's property - but if you're trying to save somebody's life you can break a window to get to them. It's illegal to capture and keep people imprisoned. But state can put you in prison no problem. Etc. Freedom of speech was never intended to be the only fundamental rule of the society. It's one of many. Being fundamentalist about it is harmful. In particular what is harmful is abusing it to circumvent other, reasonable rules. In USA the reason oligarchs can pay politicians for their campaigns is because it's classified as "free speech". This is corruption on the highest level of the state legalized with idiotic excuse. It's illegal in most democracies, and for a good reason. Another example is spreading hate campaigns against minorities. We know what happens if you allow this to go on. We've seen 1930s. We have laws against it - but only for traditional media. Internet is a way to circumvent these rules and good practices. Just like radio was a way for to-be-totalitarian-rulers to circumvent the establishment in 20s and 30s.
ben_w 1y ago
The UK has problems, but it's not what you'd guess from its own media (left or right, both just have different errors), and everyone else's media is likely even more wrong. When the Sex Pistols got "God Save The Queen" to number 2 in the charts (despite being widely refused broadcast or sale), the listings just left the number 2 slot blank that week. The band was arrested after performing the song on a boat on the Thames. Decades later, an MP suggested playing the "God Save The Queen" (also the name of the national anthem) every night on the BBC, patriotically, in the aftermath of the Brexit vote. Newsnight* agreed and trolled everyone by playing the Sex Pistols' instead of the anthem. * "the BBC's news and current affairs programme, providing in-depth investigation and analysis of the stories behind the day's headlines" to quote Wikipedia
Latty 1y ago
It's always funny seeing Americans who have clearly got their news about the UK from questionable sources telling us how actually we live in a dystopian open-air prison. In the US, you have people being literally grabbed off the street and sent to foreign prisons because of their speech with no due process, but the UK is the one close to a loss of freedom of speech because checks notes you can be convicted in a court of law for actively calling for people to burn down hotels full of immigrants during riots. This isn't new, of course, I remember some time back I was being told how white people couldn't go into Leicester... while I, a white man, attended University in Leicester. The UK definitely has issues, even ones related to expression, but generally it's a very free place that does pretty well with respect to it. The US is in a much more dangerous place for freedom of expression right now.
- decremental 1y ago
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- didntcheck 1y ago
  I also live in the UK, and I in fact care about both of these. "Things are worse in America" is a tired and harmful cliché frequently used to deflect valid complaints about affairs here. Is the Trump administration really the low bar we're happy with? And I'm afraid we're long past the point of dismissing police and state overreach into freedom of expression as an "American/right-wing myth". The Julian Foulkes case [1] is just one recent example - and no, the fact that they apologised in this one case, featuring an important person, that received substantial media attention, is not enough to reassure me that it was an error [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0j718we6njo https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0j718we6njo
  - Latty 1y ago
    I explicitly said that the UK wasn't free of issues: my pointing out the US was worse wasn't defending our own, simply making the point that some Americans tend to massively exaggerate the UK's issues while pretending the US doesn't have any. Average people from the UK are going to assume that any pushback on speech controls is nutters if the message comes with absurd exaggerations and outright lies. There are legitimate cases of overreach from our legal system, but too often the focus is on someone actively calling for violence, and those are not the same.
aa-jv 1y ago
Whether you are in the UK or the USA, your freedoms are being degraded even outside the media-consumption sphere. Until GCHQ and NSA are properly reigned in, nobody is getting their human rights back. With the base expectations for the abrogation of human rights being set at global scale by these heinous organizations, which subvert our democracies and corrupt them, there can be no expectation that the broader sphere of local human rights will ever recover from the damage caused. We cannot fight for a free and open society, when that free and open society is being used to abrogate literally billions of human beings rights outside of our own state borders. The issue will never leave the commons for as long as the military industrial complex is allowed to violate human rights at immensely despicable scales. The protection many claim are being provided, is a fallacy - the net effect of GCHQ/NSA control over our information and communications systems is, a deleterious effect on our ability to protect our rights at an individual level. A government which promotes this abrogation of human rights at massive scale is never going to be brought to heel over those same rights being returned, locally - whether British, American, Canadian, Australian or Kiwi...

KurSix 1y ago

Once you normalize vague enforcement around "problematic" content, the net just keeps widening

slg 1y ago
These slippery slope comments always seem a little naive to me because they imply there is some pure way to handle moderation. In practice, you have to be an extremist to think literally no content should be removed from Youtube with the most obvious example of something nearly everyone wants to be removed being CSAM. Maybe you would respond by saying that is illegal and only illegal content should be taken down. According to which laws? Hate speech is illegal some places, should that be removed? What about blasphemy? Maybe you would suggest to closely follow the local law of the user. Does that mean the site needs to allow piracy in places that is legal? And who decides whether the video actually violates the law? Does the content have to stay up until a court makes the final decision? Or what about content that is legal locally, but might be under some restrictions. Should Youtube be obligated to host hardcore porn or gory violence? There needs to be a line somewhere for normal people to actually want to use the site. I'm not going to claim to have the perfect answer on where that line should be, but there is always going to be an ongoing debate on its exact placement.
- jaapz 1y ago
  > In practice, you have to be an extremist to think literally no content should be removed from Youtube with the most obvious example of something nearly everyone wants to be removed being CSAM. This is not what is being said in the comments you are replying to, you are taking it to the other extreme yourself
  - slg 1y ago
    Yes, I intentionally included an extreme example to highlight my point. However, that was not the only example included. Would you like to respond to my whole comment or just that single cherry-picked sentence?
- timewizard 1y ago

pinoy420 1y ago

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ajuc 1y ago

The debate shouldn't be "to remove or not". The debate should be "who should decide what to remove". We've had media laws for decades. Internet is underregulated to a crazy degree, so the people who make the decisions are unaccountable and even unknowable. It would be much saner if the people deciding this were judges and elected officials. The way we allow a few oligarchs to decide what information 99% of the world consume for hours every day, and just let them do whatever they want, and don't even tax them in practice - it's just absurd. Free speech is for people not for corporations. And it's certainly not for corporations to enforce. People defending hacker ethos and free internet pretend internet is still like in 90s. If you do have your own self-hosted blog - sure - be a free hacker. But if you have million customers - you're not a free-spirited hacker. You're a media mogul abusing unregulated loophole. States should act accordingly.

Timshel 1y ago

I think your position is quite simplistic and completely ignore all the issues around YT pushing all kind of scam/misinformation which has tremendous impact (EX: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10226045/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10226045/ or https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jan/12/youtube-is-major-conduit-of-fake-news-factcheckers-say https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jan/12/youtube-i...) Could try to separate the pure hosting part of YT from the recommendation but since the home page heavily mix recommendations and the subscription page see almost no usage (Technology connection mention 4% traffic), I'm not sure if it makes sense to still consider YT as simple hosting. And last point I'll make, I believe the fact that their moderation is such a crap shot job is mainly a reflection that it's not a priority.

Lutger 1y ago

I don't see how one necessarily leads to the other. There's obviously already filtering going on in youtube, even before covid, on illegal content and also on legal content that is against the policy (adult content for example). How is Covid desinfo during the pandemic suddenly a slippery slope for anti-competitive measures, while all the other moderation measures aren't? Whats so special about anti covid desinfo rules? I think we really need a better argument than 'making any rule leads to making bad rules, so we better have no rules'.

aleph_minus_one 1y ago
> Whats so special about anti covid desinfo rules? - The magnitude of content involved. - The fact that there exists a significant part of the society which is vocal about not endorsing these particular deletions. - The fact that many people became aware of the moderation ("censorship") that YouTube does and its power. - The fact that these COVID information videos (despite being perhaps wrong) formed important patterns of opinions, i.e. some opinions considered "extremist" or "wrong" were suppressed.
- shakna 1y ago
  We also suppress videos on the correct manufacturing process for plastic explosives. Not because doing it safely is a bad idea, but because proliferating bomb making materials is. Covid disinformation got people killed. It will continue to get people killed, especially with a proponent of it leading the US health service. Things likely to lead to death, are likely things you do not want on your platform.
  - p1dda 1y ago
    [flagged]
  - aleph_minus_one 1y ago
    > Covid disinformation got people killed. If they trust bad medical advice on YouTube and die, it's their problem.

ulrikrasmussen 1y ago

> Many will say, this is good, children should be protected. The second part of that is true. But the way this is being done won't protect children in my opinion. It will result in many more topic areas falling below the censorship threshold. For example, YouTube currently has quite a lot of really good videos on harm reduction for drug users (and probably also a bunch that are not very good and/or directly misleading). I would expect all of such videos to be removed if such a child protection law was passed, because any neutral discussion of drug use apart from total condemnation is typically perceived as encouragement. That would deprive people of informative content which could otherwise have saved their lives.

actionfromafar 1y ago
All these concerns are muddled by thinking about Youtube as the example, since it is such a blind meta machine optimising for ad revenue, it’s already actively pushing all kinds of harmful content.
andrepd 1y ago
Big tech censorship disgusts me. Everything is completely backwards from what it should be, and the sheer scale of those platforms (bigger than many countries by population or money) prevents individual people and even governments from exercising meaningful democratic oversight. So these platforms congregate hundreds of millions of people and whatever their CEOs and/or douche tech bros in SV decide is what becomes law. Another example: videos about the holocaust or WWII atrocities. Every one of them demonetised and hidden from recommendations because it touches a horrifying topic. Harms the children? On the contrary, nothing more important in an age of global fascism waves than a lesson in how it went last time. Meanwhile the whole platform is a cesspool of addictive brainrot, gambling ads, turbo-consumerist toy unboxing videos, etc. Things that are actually truly harmful to kids. These are not restricted, these are promoted! War is peace etc etc. Good is evil and evil is great. Everything is backwards. I hate this so much.
- ndriscoll 1y ago
  The thing to understand is your last paragraph: everything big ads does is unsurprisingly focused toward making people into worse versions of themselves. You wouldn't let kids go to a casino or porn site for educational material. Don't let them use youtube either. It could be that someone happened to post educational videos to the porn site. If so you'd might as well download them while you have the chance, but don't mistake their existence for some indication that that's what the site is for. They're still less than 0.1% of the videos, and you'd need to specifically search for them or be linked to them to find them. Assume you'll need to look elsewhere for educational material. e.g. there are 10s of thousands of results for videos for "Holocaust" on worldcat.

rollcat 1y ago

"Think of the children" is the primary justification for so many abusive laws and efforts. The public is buying into it, despite the simplest solution being: parents should pay more attention to how they're raising their kids. "We don't have the time". True. We've improved the efficiency of an average worker by orders of magnitude each $TIME_PERIOD for about two centuries; yet the length of a mean working day has long remained the same. "You dirty communist". Sure, go suffer. This system is abusive. We continue to agree to the status quo, because we're constantly being manipulated over the much less important things, like religion, the gays, or the immigrants. You can't get spiteful over the ruling class if you can be kept happy through being spiteful to your neighbor.

b800h 1y ago

What confuses me is how TV App providers are going to make this work. How is the interface going to work to allow me to use YouTube on the TV whilst checking my age, and ensuring that it's me using the TV each time it's turned on? And how is a TV different to a computer? It's completely impractical.

bugtodiffer 1y ago

UK's predator network was also built to protect kids but in the end is only used for copyright infringement

KaiserPro 1y ago

These are two different, but slightly related topics, which are being conflated with a third. Google is not censoring based on moral grounds here. Its purely financial. If they are caught hosting "how to circumvent DRM", then a number of licensing agreements they have with major IP owners that allows them to profit off music, video and other IP disappears. Most of the take down stuff is either keyword search or automatic based on who is reporting. The Online safety act is utterly flawed, to the point that even ofcom really don't know how to implement it. They are reliant on consultants from delloite or whatever, who also have no fucking clue. The guidelines are designed for large players who have a good few million in the bank, because in all reality thats how ofcom are going to take to court. There are a number of thing the act asks to happen, most of them are common sense, but require named people to implement (ie moderate, provide a way to report posts, allow transparent arbitration, etc, etc) along with defined policies. In the same way that charities are allowed to have a "reasonable" GDPR policy, it seems fair that smaller site should also have that. but this would go down badly with the noise makers. As for age protection, they also really don't know how to do it practically. This means that instead of providing a private (as in curtains no peaking) age assurance API, they are relying on websites to buy in a commercial service, which will be full of telemetry for advertising snooping. Then there is moral/editorial censorship, which is what you go to a media platform for. Like it or not, you choose a platform because the stuff you see is what you expect to see there, even if you don't like it. Youtube is totally optimising for views, even if it means longterm decline. (same with facebook, instgram and tiktok)

verisimi 1y ago

> children should be protected. I get how this sounds unambiguously good - but I hate this excuse. As I see it, if you don't allow kids some danger (unmonitored play, freedom of movement) you end up with adults that are completely unable to assess dangers correctly and want themselves (and everyone else) to be nannied by the government/legislation/etc. There really are dangers out there, and it is not a bad thing to engage with them to be able to build independence, rather than trying to edit the world to conform to a (mistaken, protected) idea of reality.

btbuildem 1y ago

> all the content removal around Covid What are you referring to?

_heimdall 1y ago
During the pandemic there was a lot of content taken down if it in any way went against the mainstream narrative of the virus or the vaccines. You couldn't discuss concerns or risks of the vaccine, or discuss any alternative therapeutics or treatments. I want to say you also couldn't discuss the lab leak hypothesis for a while, but I can't remember a specific example for sure so maybe I'm misremembering that one.
- rat87 1y ago
  Good. We should be praising Google for that decision. That made many bad ones but that seems obviously good and saved a number of lives
  - _heimdall 1y ago
    > obviously good and saved a number of lives You would really have to show your work on that claim. "Good" is a judgement call, it may be obviously good to one and obviously bad to another. Claiming that a number of lives were saved by aggressive YouTube censorship of specific content is also quite a claim. What is the number, and how can you show a direct link between censorship and any one life saved?
    - const_cast 1y ago
      It's really quite simple, and we don't even require proof, just logic. It's plainly true that less masking, less isolation, and less vaccination leads to increased risk of death or injury to Covid. Therefore, having more content promoting those things must lead to increased risk of death or injury to Covid. We really don't need to over-intellectualize these things. Saying things that are just not true, which increases someone's risk, results in lives lost. It would be the same as if I made a PSA telling people to not wear a seatbelt. Or to not wear sunscreen. But if I did that, there would be zero dispute, no? So I think we all understand the concept.

hshdhdhj4444 1y ago

Yeah because if it wasn’t for COVID YouTube, Facebook, et al would never have removed any content on their platform, unlike what they had been doing all this while… There are so many issues with this. Being able to pick what content they host is fundamental to freedom of speech for private entities. The real problem is twofold. 1. A few platforms hold monopoly positions. Who else can compete with Youtubr? And the reason isn’t necessarily because YouTube has a particularly better UI that keeps viewers and content creators on it. The reason YT has all the content creators is because it leverages Google’s ad monopoly and is able to help creators make money. A decently functioning anti-trust system would have split google ads from the rest of the company by now. 2. The devastation of the promise of the open internet. VCs have spent hundreds of billions of dollars to ensure we remain in walled gardens. Open source, self hosted, software on the other hand, where the benefits are shared and not concentrated in individual hands which can then spend billions to ensure that concentration, has suffered. We need govt funding for open source and self hosted alternatives that are easy and safe for people to setup. Combine the two and instead of YT getting to choose what videos are seen and not seen on the internet, major and small content creators would self host and be the decision makers, and still make similar amounts of money because they could plugin the openly available Google Adsense (kind of like how you can on blogs…).

ClumsyPilot 1y ago
> Being able to pick what content they host is fundamental to freedom of speech for private entities Interesting position - when somebody posts illegal content on YouTube, they are not liable, it’s not their speech. But when I want to post something they don’t like, suddenly it’s their freedom of speech to remove it. A lot of breakdown in society lately is clearly coming from the fact that some people/companies have it both ways when it suits them.
- akimbostrawman 1y ago
  The solution would be to revoke section 203 from any platform which acts as a digital public square if they do moderation beyond removing illegal content. Ofc they would try there best to be excluded to have there cake and eat it too.

arp242 1y ago

You already need to remove content if you don't want to be overrun with endless gore and porn videos and that type of thing.

redm 1y ago

In my experience with OFCOM, Child Safety is just the gateway to a vague list bullet points including “terrorism” and “hateful” content (vaguely defined); what could go wrong??

smeeger 1y ago

saaaave the children!!!1

camgunz 1y ago

If you replace "Covid" with "child porn" or "animal cruelty" or "anti-semitism" you'll see how bad this argument is.

thrawa8387336 1y ago
Those 3 are not even comparable to each other...
- camgunz 1y ago
  Oh you don't think a plague that killed over 7 million people rates w/ animal cruelty?
  - mardifoufs 1y ago
    You sound like the people who argue for disallowing any communist speech or ideology from being discussed because "communism killed 100 million people" or something. Like yes covid killed millions. What's your point exactly? Do you have any proof that YouTube taking down videos that didn't agree with how the situation was handled actually saved lives? Or is your argument just that if anyone disagreed (even for stupid reasons) publicly with covid policies, they are somehow causing people to die? Again, do you have any actual proof?
    - camgunz 1y ago
      I'm gonna skip way to the end of this: * masking saved lives * vaccines saved lives * kids could spread COVID-19 * even young, otherwise totally healthy people died from COVID-19 We knew all these things basically immediately, but because of intense brainrot tons of misinformation spread on the internet. YouTube pulling down videos about COVID-19 misinformation saved lives. The end.
      - mardifoufs 1y ago
        So, no actual proof? And actually no, at least where I live, for the first two weeks masks were strongly discouraged and were said to be useless by our local government (Quebec). That was for the first 2 weeks of the pandemic, which were the most important in terms of spread. Even hospital staff were told to not wear them. I'm glad YouTube didn't ban anyone who didn't agree with our local government's opinion on masks then. Also, that's funny since again, here in Quebec and in most of the world kids were back to school by autumn 2020. Yet it took more than a year after that for children in the US to go back to school. I guess American experts just knew more than everyone else. It's as if things aren't as cut and dry as you make them out to be.

like_any_other 1y ago

> Ofcom refused to give any specific guidance But, short of such an obvious breach, the rules regarding what can and can't be said, broadcast, forwarded, analysed are thought to be kept deliberately vague. In this way, everyone is on their toes and the authorities can shut down what they like at any time without having to give a reason. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-41523073 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-41523073