I want people claiming vitamin C and turmeric will cure COVID-19 to have a voice.
Whether that voice has value is an individual decision you and I get to make, on our own.
What data do you have, that proves diferuloylmethane is ineffective in treating COVID-19?
Are you 100% sure that diferuloylmethane cannot be an ingredient in a battery of medicine to help recover from COVID-19?
This is what I know - SARS-COV2 is novel and not even highly trained, world renowned infectious diseases experts know how it behaves and how to treat it.
Not a central authority that removes that choice from both of us leaving us with no choice.
> I want people claiming vitamin C and turmeric will cure COVID-19 to have a voice.
They're scammers. They're perpetrating a scam. "Giving them a voice" means allowing them to scam others out of money. Why should YouTube be complicit in running a scam?
This seems very simplistic. YouTube is more than a company, it is a community of hundreds of millions of users and thousands of workers. People use YouTube not just for ability to search and share videos, or the recommendation engine, but for the user created content. The owner of the platform is the shareholders, and their designee, the CEO, is ultimately responsible for the decision. I don't think the broader definition of YouTube made this decision.
I think it's wrong to be okay with YouTube suppressing information and misinforming people about global pandemics just because they own the corporation and infrastructure YouTube is built on. YouTube is abusing their monopoly to hurt people.
People don't like government censorship and misinformation not because it's inherently wrong for government to do these things, but because censorship and misinformation create harm. When you consider YouTube's scale and lack of real competitor - it's obvious that their censorship and misinformation is also harmful and therefore problematic. Even if it's legal, it's certainly not moral.
You know its funny how I only see this argument when the service is doing something they agree with. When it's something they don't like there's suddenly outrage.
Remember a few years ago ISPs wanting to remove net neutrality and wanting to potentially charge for access to websites on "their platform"? Suddenly they're big enough to be a "public utility" and "invasion of free speech".
Completely different. ISPs are often a government granted monopoly. You can't just up and start one to compete, so it makes sense that they must be neutral. It's not a free market.
Anyone can start a YouTube clone, and if enough people disagree with YouTube's policies, they'll come use the clone. That's the free market of ideas.
So if they make the wrong decisions and spread misinformation or fail to censor misinformation, can I sue them?
Why do they get the power but none of the responsibility? Is it just because they happen to agree with your worldview? And what if they don't -- what if they start banning videos that suggest Taiwan is a country? Would your opinion change?
> So if they make the wrong decisions and spread misinformation or fail to censor misinformation, can I sue them?
IANAL but unless someone is knowingly spreading false information as true (i.e. fraud), the answer is no. They probably don't even carry the burden of having to reasonably vet information first.
> Why do they get the power but none of the responsibility?
Because it is your privilege to use YouTube, not your right.
Yeah, no... I'm not jumping down that rabbithole of thought-terminating cliches. HN is already replete with countless tiresome retreads of the same slippery slope arguments around freedom of speech, censorship, social media policies, whether truth even exists, Voltaire quotes and Orwell references. Feel free to browse if that's what you're looking for, they all devolve into the same unproductive quagmire.
There's some irony in you refusing to engage with thought terminating cliches when your original post that kicked this sub-thread off was "Yes. But liars, cranks and con artists should be oppressed."
Maybe it is, but almost no one who asks "but who decides x" in these threads is actually interested in debating the matter. They typically already believe no one should be allowed to decide, and they have no intention of actually engaging you in conversation beyond lecturing, berating and snark.
Learning when to step away from such fruitless pseudo-debates before wasting hours on the online equivalent of beating one's head against a brick wall is a valuable survival skill here. Sometimes it's best to simply state your opinion and move on.
> almost no one who asks "but who decides x" in these threads is actually interested in debating the matter. They typically already believe no one should be allowed to decide
I take you up on that offer.
Let us, for a moment, discuss this.
To disconnect us both from the exact matter at hand, because we are likely at this point pretty attached strongly to our biases to it, let us step aside, choose a completely different topic and hypothesize that our debate is on "should the government be allowed to track crimminals moving about in society".
I propose, that yes, murderers should be tracked at all times, as they move about in society, with tracking devices embedded onto their ankles.
You propose, no, no one, including murderers should be tracked at any time.
I then propose that murderers should be given a choice between been tracked, or have their pictures and descriptions published on a public website where anyone interested in staying away from murderers can check in.
I have to be honest, that already seems like exactly the kind of conversation I want to avoid.
The problem here, and it may just be an issue with the internet as a medium, or certain tendencies within technically-minded individuals, seems to be an overriding mistrust of nuance and complexity that leads to polarized, intransigent opinions.
Because really I can see both sides of that argument. On the one hand, society has an obligation to protect itself from bad actors, and part of that necessitates an ability by governments to surveil their citizens to a degree. On the other hand, people have a right to privacy and personal liberty, and governments' power shouldn't be absolute. But no one wants to hear that the only options which balance these concerns are the messy and imperfect ones where we try to do the best we can with imperfect information, and at times conflicting motives and agendas, and laws that require interpretation based on context, rather than being executed like code. The world isn't black and white, it's grey on grey on grey.
I can also see the other side of my own position in this thread - Youtube and other platforms could certainly use their outsized cultural influence and right to moderate content to suppress legitimate information or political activism. I just work from the apparently controversial premise that falsehoods do exist and that it does society no good to allow them to spread, even in the name of "free speech," and disagree with the premise that just because there is no universally acceptable, mathematically provable, perfectly objective answer to "who decides who the liars, cranks and con artists are" which doesn't carry a risk of abuse or hypocrisy, doesn't mean the only acceptable answer is that "liars, cranks and con artists don't exist, and no one gets to decide otherwise."
This is what I know - SARS-COV2 is novel and not even highly trained, world renowned infectious diseases experts know how it behaves and how to treat it.
I don't, for a second, believe Youtube has figured that one out.
Now whether you have decided to reject all competing hypothesis to something you have already decided to be the truth so you can move on with your life and be productive in areas you find valuable - that's your call but if I see you foisting your opinions on what kind of content I get to see, that's you infringing on my freedom and we have a problem.
It's extremely upsetting to see decisions like the parent's.
What's more concerning is the tone is absolute - the intention is "I know exactly what is right and the world shall follow my lead".
That guy Gandhi causing all kinds of trouble! Ban his content!
That guy MLK causing all kinds of trouble! Ban his content!
That guy Edward Jenner with his braindead idea of vaccination proposing we infect ourseves to get better! Ban! Ban! Ban!
History has many examples what that thinking leads to.