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Youtube Medicine

YouTube Will Remove Videos With Misinformation About Any Vaccine 549

YouTube will begin removing content questioning any approved medical vaccine, not just those for Covid-19, a departure from the video site's historically hands-off approach. From a report: The division of Alphabet's Google announced Wednesday that it will extend its policy against misinformation to cover all vaccines that health authorities consider effective. The ban will include any media that claims vaccines are dangerous or lead to chronic health outcomes such as autism, said Matt Halprin, YouTube's vice president for trust and safety. A year ago, YouTube banned certain videos critical of Covid-19 vaccines. The company said it has since pulled more than 130,000 videos for violating that rule. But many videos got around the rule by making dubious claims about vaccines without mentioning Covid-19. YouTube determined its policy was too limited. "We can imagine viewers then potentially extrapolating to Covid-19," Halprin said in an interview. "We wanted to make sure that we're covering the whole gamut."
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YouTube Will Remove Videos With Misinformation About Any Vaccine

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  • Disinformation has become a public nuisance. It's killing people.

    People who seek to gain by misleading others are doing something very similar to shouting fire in a crowded theatre. It's a deliberately destructive act.

    • Disinformation has become a public nuisance.
      It's killing people.

      TFA is about misinformation not disinformation.

    • by Brain-Fu ( 1274756 ) on Wednesday September 29, 2021 @11:38AM (#61844575) Homepage Journal

      Misinformation is harmful. Censorship is harmful. Both are harmful. No matter who wins, we lose.

      The operators of YouTube have just pronounced themselves the proper authority on truth. Why would we trust THEM? They are humans too, full of biases and corruption, and stupidity, just like the people spreading the misinformation.

      The disease is bad and the cure is even worse.

      • Oh man, I honestly didn't even realize the dual-meaning of my closing statement "The disease is bad and the cure is even worse." In that case "the disease" was supposed to be "misinformation." Not COVID-19. Now I sound like one of the spreaders of misinformation because of my distaste for censorship.

        I'm really feeling like there isn't a way to win.

        • Oh man, I honestly didn't even realize the dual-meaning of my closing statement "The disease is bad and the cure is even worse." In that case "the disease" was supposed to be "misinformation." Not COVID-19. Now I sound like one of the spreaders of misinformation because of my distaste for censorship.

          I'm really feeling like there isn't a way to win.

          The only winning move is not to play.

      • by JackieBrown ( 987087 ) on Wednesday September 29, 2021 @12:01PM (#61844723)

        Honestly, the best way to make a conspiracy ring true to is to forbid any reference to said conspiracy.

        How do you trust the "science" behind covid when doctors or scientist that are critical get pulled from visibility? When you are only allowed to hear about how good something is, how do you trust that it is actually good?

    • by RobinH ( 124750 )

      I agree it's a nuisance, and I agree that it's dangerous, but it's also dangerous to see censorship by big nebulous organizations that control so much of the communication bandwidth. It's actually pretty easy to imagine a vaccine that does end up having some problems in the future, and you've just made it impossible to post a video to YouTube about it. Don't you think the pharmaceutical company will be happy that they can now get YouTube's help in covering it up? "That vaccine is approved! You can't say

    • by argStyopa ( 232550 ) on Wednesday September 29, 2021 @01:36PM (#61845219) Journal

      Why would I guess that you would be insisting (pre Trump, that is) that we not believe what evil corporations tell us is "the truth".

      My, how times have changed, as long as they genuflect toward your particular banners, eh? Now they're the good guys and we have people on slashdot (!) INSISTING angrily that 'freedom of speech' only narrowly applies to government and corporations can muzzle whomever they have the ability to.

      You know, for the public good.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 29, 2021 @10:44AM (#61844267)

    Remember all the various things we called "misinformation" over the past couple years which turned out to be true?

    Imagine what they might block in pursuit of "The Truth" which will actually be true.

    • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

      by mspohr ( 589790 )

      Ah yes, good that we now know that smoking is good for you; bacon is good for you; climate change doesn't exist and even if it exists it will make life better for everyone; and the Earth is flat.

    • Remember all the various things we called "misinformation" over the past couple years which turned out to be true?

      Could you be specific? I only know of one lie (of tens of thousands) that happened to collide with a possible truth.

      Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

  • ...after 3 years (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gurps_npc ( 621217 ) on Wednesday September 29, 2021 @10:54AM (#61844327) Homepage

    It's not just about removal, it's about timely removal.

    They need to remove these as fast as they remove copyright claims.

  • by iamnotx0r ( 7683968 ) on Wednesday September 29, 2021 @10:58AM (#61844347)
    When the bullpucky from all this clears in 20 years. I bet no 40 to 60 year old(in 20 years) will admit they were ever on the wrong side.

    Be careful of what you think you agree with. Make sure you are not being propagandized and just one of the lemmings that thinks they know(from perceived free will).

    Almost all censorship, and agreeing with it, is long term terrible for a society.
    • by Powercntrl ( 458442 ) on Wednesday September 29, 2021 @11:39AM (#61844583) Homepage

      You're still free to share whatever bullshit tickles your fancy, you just have to do it on your own dime. As in, how it used to work throughout most of human history since the invention of the written word. It's still free to stand on a street corner and hold up a sign. That costs nothing but your time (and possibly your dignity).

      It's amazing how many people believe they have some sort of God-given right to put their shit on someone else's privately-owned computer(s).

      • This is misleading at best and ignores reality at worst. When you have just about every single major corporation at every step of the chain, from the platform providers to the payment processors to the infrastructure providers to the policy makers, working in tandem to, in their own words, "deplatform" people whose opinions they don't like, it's not a simple matter of paying for your own platform. They literally will not LET you do that. The fact that they are presently using this power for what seems to be
    • <quote>When the bullpucky from all this clears in 20 years. I bet no 40 to 60 year old(in 20 years) will admit they were ever on the wrong side.</quote>

      Nope, because if they follow this approach to it's logical conclusion, between COVID and whatever else happens in the next 20yrs, they'll be mostly dead anyway and thus unable to admit they were wrong.
    • Plenty of other video hosting sites for you to choose from.

  • by mveloso ( 325617 ) on Wednesday September 29, 2021 @11:00AM (#61844359)

    It's incredible that society has progressed so far that people are taking medical advice from random people on a video website that was mainly known for cat videos back in the day.

  • by jm007 ( 746228 ) on Wednesday September 29, 2021 @11:00AM (#61844363)

    gonna have a tough choice, do we want for-profit companies deciding what's right and wrong? do we want gov't deciding? sure, we might cherry pick some times when that appears to be the right choice, but how many times in history can we also point to times when the minority voice turns out to be right?

    there is no 100% solution to many/most complex issues of humanity, only tradeoffs; so to take a big-picture tack, if I have to choose between...

    empowering and depending upon the common person to decide for themselves how to best determine their pursuit of happiness
      -- or --
    empowering 3rd parties -- just as imbued with all the human failings an individual has -- to decide for others .... for me, I put my faith in the individual, not some distant and disinterested 3rd party; is it perfect? no, but that's not a reasonable expectation anyway; I just have faith that in the long run, it's best

    now before some on-the-spectrum pedant starts bashing their keyboard to set me straight, let me be clear that I'm not an anarchist or somebody that thinks gov't has no place anywhere; I know it's not an all-or-nothing proposition, but I do want to make sure we are careful when we move to disempower the individual, which is what happens when anybody or anything makes decisions for them

    from the individual's perspective, gov't is good for only a handful of things; but it seems in the last few generations we've come to think it's the best place solve humanity's problems and the price for that is the disempowerment of the individual... pretty steep price for the capitulation of personal responsibility

    • by ljw1004 ( 764174 )

      from the individual's perspective, gov't is good for only a handful of things; but it seems in the last few generations we've come to think it's the best place solve humanity's problems and the price for that is the disempowerment of the individual... pretty steep price for the capitulation of personal responsibility

      It's true. What has government ever really done for us? All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, public health (i.e. National Health Systems in every developed country other than the US), education, public order, roads (the US interstate system), what has government ever done for us? -- Brought peace (the proportion of people dying violent deaths has been dropping steadily over the past millenia, hand in hand with civic structures).

    • by UnknowingFool ( 672806 ) on Wednesday September 29, 2021 @11:56AM (#61844691)

      gonna have a tough choice, do we want for-profit companies deciding what's right and wrong? do we want gov't deciding? sure, we might cherry pick some times when that appears to be the right choice, but how many times in history can we also point to times when the minority voice turns out to be right?

      No but people forget that YouTube is not a public utility. YouTube is not part of the government. They are part of Google which is a for profit company who gets to decide what people can and cannot do on their platform. That is the nature of capitalism.

    • by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Wednesday September 29, 2021 @12:55PM (#61845027) Journal

      In my opinion medical info is too important to let yahoos lie. If we need to shore up the medical info evaluation procedure, then so be it.

      A consolation prize is to increase the legal penalties and enforcement on med liars and context manipulators.

      For example, if you present the opinion of an outlier doctor, you have to clearly state it's an outlier opinion.

  • by Murdoch5 ( 1563847 ) on Wednesday September 29, 2021 @11:01AM (#61844375) Homepage
    This is a terrible idea because it's going to let people with a vested interest set the "facts", regardless how true or valid they're.

    I'm NOT an Anti-vaxxer, I fully support getting vaccines, but I also support the open expression of information. Can any health "expert", list every possible side effect of the C Vaccine? I'm sure they can list the "approved" side effects, and they can list the "approved" complications, but what if a new complicate or side effect is discovered they won't accept?

    A good example is a lower abdominal issue I developed 1 week after getting the first shot. It led to 7 ER visits, and a urology visit, but no doctor is will to say "it's related to the C Vaccine", except they can't tell me what caused it, and we've isolated virtually all variables apart from freak occurrence.

    I got my second shot yesterday, so if it comes back (and it never really went away), then we have a correlation, but if Health Canada won't accept it as a complication, will YouTube allow videos about it? If you've never had infected testicles you're lucky, because they don't just hurt at the moment, the fallout can last a year+, which what I'm going through right now. While it's fine to say it's "Not the C Vaccine", you then have to give me some options on what caused it, because if you don't then you're irrationally throwing out possible correlations.

    That's why this is dangerous, it's shutting down the trade of information, in favour of biased groups from accepting that information, based solely on their opinion, regardless if that's medically / scientifically sound.
    • Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)

      by amorsen ( 7485 )

      If you've never had infected testicles you're lucky

      We finally found Nicki Minaj's cousin's friend [gq.com]! Why didn't you come forward sooner?

    • by leonbev ( 111395 )

      Yeah, the problem that I see with this is if someone finds a legitimate problem with a vaccine (like there is a tainted batch out there), how do you report that to the public?

      It seems like all of the social media platforms are likely going to set up AI filters flagging everything about vaccines that isn't coming from the CDC as "fake news", so the warning will likely go unneeded.

  • by burtosis ( 1124179 ) on Wednesday September 29, 2021 @11:28AM (#61844517)
    The answer to who watches the watcher is the public at large, but this breaks down when the population reaches a critical mass of poorly uneducated people who can’t think critically. This is a result of defunding education for over four decades and it’s not going to get better for another 40 even if we suddenly fixed it all today. We have to wait for these people to die off, which is happening a bit faster than average thanks to the inability to tell what’s real and self harm through ignorance.
  • Just a condescending cunt, that thinks it knows better, exactly because it knows so little.
    Exactly like those it tries to stop.
    And ain't that a typical pattern in stupid assholes!

    The only problem here is, who has power over whom.
    Anti-vaxxers would not be a problem if it wouldn't affect anyone else.
    YouTube wouldn't be a problem if it wouldn't affect anyone else.

    Solution:
    1. Spread more self-thinking and problem solving skills to children and promote their curiosity so they grow up as individuals and researche

  • by doom ( 14564 ) <doom@kzsu.stanford.edu> on Wednesday September 29, 2021 @11:37AM (#61844571) Homepage Journal

    It sure would be nice if I could talk about the actual problem here-- see, government doesn't regulate speech because First Ammendment, so instead we pressure Big Tech into doing it for us, and that's legal because Regulation is Bad.

    But if I do try to talk about it, I'm lending support to a bunch of antivaxxer nutjobs (spare me your cherry-picked Studies guys, I'm busy watching unvaccinated people overwhelm hospitals in the red lands).

    The idea that we need robust social institutions with reasonable checks-and-balances built-in and transparent decision making and so on, that's all irrelevant in the modern world, where I'm supposed to just go "Oh good, google did the Right Thing. This time."

  • If I had a dime... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dark.nebulae ( 3950923 ) on Wednesday September 29, 2021 @12:06PM (#61844755)

    If I had a dime for every time a dumbass tried to use VAERS as a data source, I'd be rich.

    VAERS is not a source of data. Anyone can go on there and report anything they want.

    I could go on VAERS and report the vaccine grew back my hair and made my penis 50% larger. It would mean absolutely nothing, VAERS will accept the report and include the information, but that wouldn't make VAERS a source of truth or a source of data on hair restoration or penis enlargment, VAERS is completely unsubstantiated claims.

    Any time you see someone using "data from VAERS", you can automatically discredit them as trying to manufacture evidence to support their own twisted arguments and agendas.

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