[cowholio4]

Not only were they completely wrong with their numbers, they even were wrong in their assessment of Fauci. They said they “are actually seeing the patients, Dr Fauci hasn’t seen a patient in 20 years.”

In 2015, Dr Fauci personally helped take care of an Ebola patient when most of the world was terrified of Ebola.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/03/why-nihs-anthony-fau...

[blisterpeanuts]

Suppose you're right. Does it justify censorship? Fauci can defend himself, and the docs are welcome to express their opinions. What gives Google/YouTube the justification to silence them?

[Barrin92]

>What gives Google/YouTube the justification to silence them?

The fact that it is their platform.

>Fauci can defend himself,

Fauci is a 79 year old man busy working 20 hours a day trying to stop more people from dying, he doesn't have the time to debunk garbage on the internet.

Youtube is completely within their rights to remove dangerous disinformation from their platform and I hope they take an agressive stance going forward.

[thdrdt]

I know it's their platform so they can do what they want.

But why not show a warning like "the following content has false and dangerous information"?

Now it is gone so it can't be discussed.

And I also think you take away responsibility of the viewers if they don't need to be critical about any information.

[loceng]

"And I also think you take away responsibility of the viewers if they don't need to be critical about any information."

This is exactly the problem currently though - the general population doesn't have either the time or critical thinking developed to understand this.

Daniel Schmachtenberger on Eric Weinstein's The Portal episode #27 said: “... and the most awesome thing of the current system [of suppressing unruly people] we don’t even have to deal with protestors with tear gas or bean bags or whatever mostly, because mostly addiction, and student debt, and information overwhelm and those things deal with the people adequately so they don’t actually understand enough or care enough or have the capacity to organize very meaningly."

Eric replied: “We just legalize weed and make porn free and everyone’s de-motivated.."

- timestamped link to talk https://youtu.be/_b4qKv1Ctv8?t=3780 - but I'd highly recommend watching the whole interview.

The goal has to be getting the population healthy enough to be responsible and reasonable, rational enough, otherwise these hierarchal systems lead by people are guiding this like parents raise children until people are mature enough; the extreme of this would be CCP controlling China's population.

[skuthus]

I think if you disagree with what they have done, you should express that fully and also stop using the platform in favor of others who share your views.

[thdrdt]

Well I was just pointing out there are other options besides removing content.

[gccxsse]

>dangerous disinformation

What does this even mean?? Have we forgotten the importance of free speech?

[loceng]

Do you believe that the system of censorship by the CCP for China's population is worse than what YouTube did, and do you understand that the two doctors weren't detained by authorities and that they could find a host to post the video on again that isn't YouTube - and so how are they being prevented from speaking?

Distribution is very different than freedom of speech, and distribution of their video is allowed on the internet - however the internet is a platform to allow decentralized moderation, so then platforms on top of the internet can moderate depending on what they believe is [hopefully] best for society - and based on that people, viewers, will decide what platforms they will trust or watch content from and give their attention and support/money to - whether through shallow manipulative ads or payment.

[slenk]

Free Speech allows you to say whatever you want, not guarantee you no repercussions.

Besides, private businesses don't need to allow free speech...

[chaostheory]

It's called private property. YouTube can do what it wants on its private platform. It's not a monopoly. There are other video platforms.

[vanniv]

That's why putting everyone under house arrest is so effective.

The left owns the online media, and they ban all non-left thought.

Meanwhile, if you try to speak in person, the cops come and beat you up.

[chaostheory]

We have a free market. Anyone can build a video platform. PayPal existed before Stripe.

[kostko]

Same goes for news you see over TV, it does not have to be true. Its their platform. How can you make an informed decision is all you’re being told is manufactured truth?

[chaostheory]

You read and watch the media that gives you the data you need. Ignore the others once you can verify the information. Wash, rinse and repeat. It’s supposed to be a free market. There’s no guarantee that government mandates will make the data any better

[jonny_eh]

> What does this even mean??

Misinformation that can lead people to doing dangerous things.

[djsumdog]

There was a time when saying black people where just as intelligent as white people was considered misinformation and a dangerous way to think.

There was a time when many leaders considered homosexuality dangerous and magazines promoting homosexuality was misinformation.

It's easy to say something is misinformation now, but the standard of truth does not come now, it comes 20 years from now when history judges this moment.

[washadjeffmad]

You've failed to justify your equivalence. How many neo-Nazis, homophobes, self-styled "truthers", and xenophobic racists came to their conclusions naturally, without any external guidance or rhetoric?

We don't exist in a vacuum, and people are socialized into their beliefs. Either these doctors weren't given the faculties to distinguish fact from fiction in their education, they lack the mental and social capacities to protect themselves from falling for twisted logic and half-truths, or they're intentionally manipulating those vulnerable members of society for their own gain.

[philipov]

Because the constitutional amendments only place restrictions on the government, we don't get to have free speech if we rely on private platforms to be the primary means of political expression.

[hkai]

Is this desirable?

[ric2b]

I would say no, which is why net neutrality is important.

[jeegsy]

> Distribution is very different than freedom of speech

Whenever these dabates arise it would save a whole lot of time if participants assume as a given that everyone understands the first amendment as written. IMHO it will be far more useful to discuss the point of having this amendment in the first place. The idea that everytime someone has a remotely controversial idea, they have to setup an internet video company with global reach in order to propagate said idea is ridiculous. Even if you agree that Youtube has the right (which they do) to take down this video, their reasons for doing so should trouble everyone who in some way contributed to their near monopoly of internet video. Also, consider that they didnt even have to provide a reason. They provided one in the belief that the public actually favors censorship!

[krapp]

>The idea that everytime someone has a remotely controversial idea, they have to setup an internet video company with global reach in order to propagate said idea is ridiculous.

This isn't an idea that anyone is actually proposing to you, it's a strawman of your own making. The picture you're trying to paint whereby it's almost impossible for anyone to spread their ideas on the internet without Youtube's consent doesn't remotely correspond to reality. Every website has global reach, and plenty of controversial content has been spread on the internet in text form. You don't need video to propagate controversial ideas, but even then, video distribution existed on the internet before youtube. Filesharing and torrent sites exist, as do other streaming platforms which also have a global reach.

>They provided one in the belief that the public actually favors censorship!

The public does favor censorship. Free speech absolutism, to the degree of allowing even fraudulent and hateful speech to proliferate without check or consequence, is a minority view.

[jeegsy]

I wasn't trying to create a strawman, I only described things the way I did as a shorthand due to my belief that it was obvious to all the outsized role that youtube plays in public discourse. Just as was said on another informative thread I saw recently on HN, your facts (torrents, filesharing, non-neccesity of video etc) are correct but irrelevant.

> Free speech absolutism, to the degree of allowing even fraudulent and hateful speech to proliferate without check or consequence, is a minority view.

I appreciate your illustrating what an actual strawman looks like.

[heddon]

You make the excuse to remove the video with no actual proof that this is dangerous misinformation. In fact, YouTube, and the media are the real danger.The biggest threat to Americans in the history of all.

[aliminator8]

YouTube has the right to censor anything it likes. It's their platform. If you don't like it, don't use YouTube.

[dilap]

Should they have that right though?

YouTube is owned by a Google, a massive, publicly-traded corporation with near-monopoly power.

Are the best interests of society served by allowing it to be governed in an authoritarian, totalitarian fashion, or would it make sense, considering it is one of the most powerful mediums of speech ever created, to let it be governed by rules somewhat approximating the much-lauded, traditional, western liberal values of free speech?

[montroser]

The idea a private company should be forced to use their resources to host content they deem harmful to humanity seems obviously wrong. Of course they should have the right.

YouTube is not a public service.

"Free speech" does not mean you also are entitled to a platform and an audience.

[autoexec]

> "Free speech" does not mean you also are entitled to a platform and an audience.

"Free speech" is a right but also an ideal. When speech is being silenced (de-platformed) or people (the audience) are forbidden from hearing it even when they want to, it violates those principles.

> YouTube is not a public service.

Youtube is a powerful and unique resource without meaningful competition which I think does give them a certain level of responsibility to uphold the ideals of free speech.

Personally, I think that education is always better than suppression. Rather than remove these videos, a better option would simply be to inform users that the video contains false information and where they can find the truth.

[snowwrestler]

> When speech is being silenced (de-platformed)

This is a ludicrous equivalency; by this standard YouTube is also “silencing (deplatforming)” people who don’t have computers because it’s not giving them resources to help them make and post videos.

Deplatforming is not silencing. The default state of an individual in society is no platform. People who want platforms should build them.

> Personally, I think that education is always better than suppression.

You do not need to give people bad information to educate them. You only need to give them good information.

I can teach you that 2+2=4 without spending hours belaboring all the numbers that 2+2 does not equal.

[wvenable]

> "Free speech" is a right but also an ideal.

The problem with the ideal is that most people have it wrong. "Free speech" is not speech without consequences.

Nobody here thinks that speech should be criminalized but that doesn't mean you have the right to be heard. If nobody wants to associate with you because of your speech, that's their right. You are not entitled to a soapbox.

[AbrahamParangi]

It's not clear that services should be both protected from liability as common carriers and permitted the power of the censor.

Should phone companies decide who gets to make phone calls? Should they cut you off if you say things that are unpopular?

[chipotle_coyote]

"But what YouTube is doing would clearly be bad if it was done by a totally different actor in a totally different context" simply doesn't work as a defense here. Yes, it would be bad if the phone company got to decide who made phone calls, but let's pick something closer to the actual context here: "Should comedy clubs get to decide who gets to perform on their stage? Should they stop booking you if you say things that are unpopular?"

Telecommunications companies in the past have been treated as "public functions," legally speaking, because they were explicitly designated so by the state and given limited regional monopolies. The limits on liability afforded to YouTube and similar services do not magically transform them to state actors; they remain private corporations with their own First Amendment rights not to publish and host what they choose not to. This principle has been tested repeatedly in many cases.

[freepor]

Should a Catholic hospital be required to treat a gay man if they deem homosexuality harmful to humanity?

[bzb3]

Bake that cake.

[balls187]

> Should they have that right though?

Yes.

Free speech does not grant the right for anyone to say whatever they want. The US Surpreme court has, as a matter of case law, ruled in specific areas to restrict free speech.

These two doctors, under the pretense of medical expertise, provided false information, and used Youtube to do it.

Google being a large massive publicly traded entity does not have any bearing as to it's responsibility to guard against violations on it's platform.

[lucio]

Free speech DOES grant the right for anyone express opinions without interference from the government. SCOTUS limitations for freedom of speech are very narrow, and being wrong or against the mainstream opinion is not one of them.

[dependenttypes]

> SCOTUS limitations for freedom of speech are very narrow

Are they though? I can think of all kinds of limitations of the freedom of speech in both the US and in Europe. Copyright, gag orders, company and military secrets, illegal numbers, etc.

[skuthus]

>without interference from the government.

Exactly. Youtube isn't the government.

[balls187]

> and being wrong or against the mainstream opinion is not one of them.

False statement of Fact is absolutely an Exception to Free Speech.

[Gibbon1]

The way I think of it is. Say my company makes high voltage transformers. And I get wind that one customer is using them to manufacture interrogation devices. I sure as shit can tell them to take their business elsewhere.

[Dylan16807]

But if you're selling electricity you generally don't get to refuse service to anyone.

[JackFr]

> These two doctors, under the pretense of medical expertise, provided false information, and used Youtube to do it.

Not according to the article. The local TV station interviewed them and the local TV station put the video on YouTube.

Presumably as they are licensed to practice medicine in the State of California they do have some expertise greater than those of us without MDs so it's hardly 'pretense'. Is wearing scrubs on camera a ridiculous rhetorical device? Yes. Were these guys wrong on some facts? Absolutely. Were they wrong on policy recommendations? Much, much harder to say.

What's astonishing though is the ease with which people seem to be willing to turn over their civil liberties and place themselves under house arrest.

We have to sit through three years of the echo chamber telling us Donald Trump is a fascist, and then finally when our freedom to assemble is literally stripped from us by the police power of the state, people are complaining that he's not fascist enough. Geez.

[balls187]

> Not according to the article. The local TV station interviewed them and the local TV station put the video on YouTube.

As noted in another comment, the article does not touch on the veracity of the claims of these two doctors.

"In a rare statement late today, the American College of Emergency Physicians and the American Academy of Emergency Medicine declared they “emphatically condemn the recent opinions released by Dr. Daniel Erickson and Dr. Artin Messihi. These reckless and untested musings do not speak for medical societies and are inconsistent with current science and epidemiology regarding COVID-19. As owners of local urgent care clinics, it appears these two individuals are releasing biased, non-peer reviewed data to advance their personal financial interests without regard for the public’s health.”"

Source: https://www.dailynews.com/2020/04/28/california-doctors-with...

> We have to sit through three years of the echo chamber telling us Donald Trump is a fascist, and then finally when our freedom to assemble is literally stripped from us by the police power of the state, people are complaining that he's not fascist enough. Geez.

You're making a false analogy; US Government in times of emergency has used it's authority to curtail civil liberties; I'm sure you are well aware of the gist of the War Times Power Act. And perhaps most famously (and more controversialy) when Habeas Corpus was suspended.

That said, I think it's our responsibility (duty) as citizens to continually challenge attacks on the 1st Amendment, and other curtails of constitutional protected freedoms, but it's also on us to hold accountable those who seek to use the rights granted by the Bill of Rights in ways that harm the public.

It is my pov that the opinions, presented as medical facts by these two doctors, were harmful to the public, and should be censored.

[asdff]

Of course they should. Youtube isn't bound by any law to be the standard video hosting site. They are simply the most popular over the past 10 years. Zero government mandate or anything. They can remove all hosted content tomorrow if they'd like, entirely up to them. If you don't like it, feel free to build your own platform. That's the beauty of disseminated knowledge of computer science and the internet, after all.

[dependenttypes]

> If you don't like it

... feel free to discuss about it on hacker news.

Regardless, would you say the same if someone was banned from a super market over being gay?

[asdff]

No, because there are laws against discriminating protected classes (although sexuality is not quite a protected class per se and laws can vary between states). There are no laws against discriminating bigoted content or propaganda, these aren't protected classes.

[skuthus]

According to the current interpretation of the Civil Rights Act, you would not be able to prevent them from shopping

[snowwrestler]

Traditional western liberal values of free speech permit and require private citizens to make decisions about which points of view they will support and which they will not support. Which is what YouTube just did.

There is not a “everyone likes your software platform so you’re not allowed to have an opinion” exception to the traditional western liberal values of free speech.

[dependenttypes]

I do not think that stopping me from viewing what they said is an opinion.

[shkkmo]

> the much-lauded, traditional, western liberal values of free speech?

Such as stopping people from saying bad words on radio/tv or stopping women from even accidentally showing a specific small part of their chest? We have a long history of direct censorship by liberal western governments for far worse reasons than saving lives.

I don't see all these "free speech" advocates stepping up to stop the ongoing suppression of comparatively harmless expression like showing the female nipple. Yet, somehow the suppression of this actively harmful content is the rallying cry that pulls in so much attention.

I am a free speech advocate, and I don't personally support the removal of this video, as I think the aims would be better served by alternate means, such as placing a strong disclaimer of inaccuracy alongside links to accurate rebuttals. However, I don't see how you stop Google from removing whatever content they want without creating laws that curtail other important aspects of free speech (e.g. creating a regulatory body that decides which groups do and do not have the right to control the content they publish).

[stOneskull]

I hope they do that with videos by cnn, fox, and the world health organisation too. This video by the doctors could be a refutation to certain pieces by others, even.

[dependenttypes]

Just like a bakery has the right to refuse service to whoever they feel like, it is their shop after all, right?

Anyway, they may be able to legally do what they want but this is not a free "get out of jail" card against any criticism.

[GuiA]

I look forward to a world where platforms are less afraid to kick off the voices they don’t like. The world would be better with 50 YouTubes rather than just one.

[RonanTheGrey]

If there were 50 YouTubes, that would be amazing. I wouldn't care ONE BIT if someone got kicked off RandomTube. It'd be hard to argue that their voice was being silenced.

The 2nd player to YouTube, however, is a very distant second. YouTube has the power to decide if billions see a message. That's.... a power most governments would salivate to have.

Personally I feel like the perspective that "they're privately owned so they can do what they want" while technically true, intentionally and dishonestly misses the point.

[crazy1van]

> It's their platform

But the real question is at what level of censorship to the cease to be a platform and become a publisher?

[camccar]

Bitchute is getting really nice and they don't censor stuff like this. I personally recommend it.

[dredmorbius]

There are arguments that don't involve "private property, absolute authority" which permit both some censorship (in the public interest), and some guarantees of access most especially to under-served, unprivileged, and minority viewpoints (also in the public interest).

That argument is public interest.

[zouhair]

> Does it justify censorship?

Yes, they are wrong and they will cause deaths if they are allowed to peddle more unsubstantiated bullshit. This is not a philosophical debate, people are literally dying.

[stOneskull]

Yet what they call 'authoritative news sources' like nbc, cnn, fox, etc are the biggest peddlers of bs of all, and they get front page all across the platform.

[mindslight]

Specifically with this subject we had a solid month of all of those "sources" denying there was a problem that might require individual action, even going so far as to refute common sense best practices like wearing face masks. Their only source of credibility is not breaking rank.

[fwn]

> This is not a philosophical debate, people are literally dying.

That's a bit like "let's not think about what we're doing, people are literally dying".

The gravity of the situation only increases the need for evaluation of our behavior as a society.

Public discourse isn't an optional nice-to-have in times in which everything is fine, it's one of the cornerstones of democratic societies.

[zouhair]

No, public discourse in a technical matter is out of the question. Equating the opinion of 2 random doctors to the thousands of epidemiologists worldwide is not helping democracy in any shape or form. It actually destroys it.

We need to stop this insanity. Ignorant people's opinion is not worth the opinion of an expert.

[fwn]

I don't even know what "equating opinions" is supposed to mean in that context? We're talking about removing videos.

It's not about equating anything, but allowing people to express themselves.

> Ignorant people's opinion is not worth the opinion of an expert.

That's a very reasonable opinion to have but it's not what we're talking about.

We're talking about whether we should let Google make the decision on an opinions worth by removing videos.

Real discourse does not come with a bouncer, and even if we would try to dream up one that wouldn't outright delegitimize the discourse it certainly wouldn't be a US American for-profit without recourse or checks and balances.

I think it's popular to argue that it's the free press that serves the role of an evaluating institution. ..but here again: not a singular tech monopoly and not by removing those opinions, which just makes every evaluation questionable by default.

[dependenttypes]

> Yes, they are wrong and they will cause deaths if they are allowed to peddle more unsubstantiated bullshit.

Time to de-platform WHO and Trump then.

[MikeAmelung]

People are literally dying all the time, and still, every single day, twice as many people are born as have died from COVID-19 over its entire course, worldwide.

[r0s]

> Suppose you're right.

Easy to verify, why suppose anything?

> censorship?

On a privately owned site? Try again.

[dependenttypes]

> On a privately owned site?

Yes, censorship is not exclusive to the government.

[skuthus]

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.

It's pretty cut and dry that it's exclusive to government

[dependenttypes]

> 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.

I presume that this is from the US constitution. How does this have anything to do with what I said? I did not mention the US nor its constitution anywhere in my post.

[ric2b]

Do you think censorship is a concept exclusive to the United States?

It's not:

> Censorship can be conducted by governments, private institutions, and other controlling bodies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship

[0xDEEPFAC]

I would like to think about it another way. Suppose you are a "Youtuber" and you have tens of thousands of subs and use it as an income. You agree to their guidelines and they, in turn, become hugely popular due to your content and your fellows. But their guidelines grow more vague and harsh randomly and without warning.

Now, Youtube closes your channel, again, without warning or explanation. You don't have the money for a lawyer to sue and contract laws continue to trend Youtube's favor to control creators - esp. if those that go against political narratives that are officially "untrue." Alphabet Inc censors results for China, you don't think they do it for the US?

Does that sound fair and just? Look at what happened to Alex Jones. Was he a nut - yea, but he was shut down across every platform at once. Which is censorship - good or bad.

There is a media cartel and they have grown to control the internet by waiting for good products and companys to come about and either killing them or corrupting them. Think Snapchat, Vine, Google, Youtube, Reddit, Ring, etc, etc.

[tasuki]

I'm generally sympathetic to the doctors. I'm sure they're trying to do the best they can, going against the mainstream, potentially endangering their careers.

However, "Dr Fauci hasn’t seen a patient in 20 years" is not an opinion - it's factually wrong. When making controversial statements, one should be very careful to avoid erroneous ones alongside.

[hatsunearu]

At what point do you say shit is objectively, legitimately harmful, and has literally negative value to society and humanity? Does this deserve punishment? I'd say yes.

[ric2b]

It does not deserve punishement, it deserves correction. Punishing speech is a dangerous game.

[threatofrain]

> The American Academy of Emergency Medicine (AAEM) and the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) jointly and emphatically condemn the recent opinions released by Dr. Daniel Erickson and Dr. Artin Massihi. These reckless and untested musings do not speak for medical society and are inconsistent with current science and epidemiology regarding COVID-19.

https://www.aaem.org/resources/statements/joint-endorsed/phy...

[mixmastamyk]

They gave published numbers from all over the world, though a bit behind.

Tending a few patients at once in a span of decades? Yes, "technically correct." The comment about Fauci was instigated by the reporters, and is about the least important detail from the video.

Their thesis is that big-dense-city measures aren't necessary in sparse areas. Appears to be the case so far, most of those folks don't even know a single person with it yet. It's why they are receptive to hoax posts unfortunately. It's also why some more rural states and regions are slowly opening.

[teh_infallible]

Maybe they were wrong, and maybe they weren’t. If we can’t see their video, we will never know.

[James_Henry]

You can still see their video. It's on plenty of other sites and there are copies of it on Youtube.