[Barrin92]

Seems completely understandable that YouTube removed it. For people who didn't watch it, the guy made a prank title "drinking hydroxic acid" (which is water) but I can completely understand why youtube doesn't want anything with "drinking acid" in a video title that even vaguely resembles actual acids.

Plenty of youtube viewers are literal 12 year old children who don't even bother to read the description. "nobody will do anything stupid" doesn't really seem plausible to me when we have adults killing themselves with fish tank cleaner because they confuse it for anti-viral meds

[skim_milk]

YouTube moderation is probably in a tight place financially. IIRC they've never generated a return on investment for Google, so all their revenue is split between paying creators and keeping the lights on. Could they pay thousands of people with bachelor degrees a quality salary to research a couple dozen videos a day for the highest-quality moderation? Sure, but the shareholders and creators on the platform want their share as well, and the viewers already hate the amount of ads on the videos. So we will probably have a skeleton crew of low-pay low-skill workers reviewing thousands of videos a day for moderation for the rest of the foreseeable future without something outside of the company forcing quality moderation otherwise.

[SilasX]

For consistency, then, YouTube should be taking down videos of people doing the Dihydrogen Monoxide experiment/hoax[1]. It's the same idea, framing an anodyne substance as being dangerous.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dihydrogen_monoxide_parody

[cute_boi]

Well youtube has lot of guns games videos, nonsense pranks, knife games in counter strike etc.. Are we going to ban all of those videos?

I don't expect 12 year children to know about acid so it would be surprising if children discovers such video. And parent has to decide which video their children should watch otherwise children can easily go to google.com and do anything.

I really don't think youtube should act like judge in such cases. Outright deleting video in minor thing like this sets very bad precedence.

[Karishma1234fff]

Fair point, but they should apply that standard uniformly. Wasn't the ice bucket challenge dangerous ? And it was literally dangerous.

[spoiler]

There also the problem of fact retention. I really doubt children will remember the name of the substance accurately, and then they suddenly drink hydrochloric acid, which to most people sounds "close enough," and that's just exacerbated in the case of children

[mlazos]

Personally I think a video with drink acid in the title seems a little more dangerous than videos properly named with people pouring ice water on each other, especially for children.

[rasz]

>Personally I think a video with drink acid in the title seems a little more dangerous

like citric acid? you cant cure stupid by censoring thing they dont understand

[ergocoder]

But drinking hydroxic acid is not stupid. I wish people drink more hydroxic acid. Would have been healthier.

So, YouTube now bans a scientifically accurate video?

[Barrin92]

Youtube bans video titles which if misinterpreted might make people do harmful things, like say, confusing hydroxic acid with hydrochloric acid. They're not a scientific journal, they're a video platform serving a general audience.

Please tell me you're just intentionally being obtuse and don't actually struggle with that point because this is a response I expect on reddit and not HN

[ergocoder]

Are you confused by hydroxic acid and hydrochloric acid?

Because I don't. They are obviously different spelling.

If people are confused by these two words, I have bad news for them. They might literally have brain problems.

> They're not a scientific journal, they're a video platform serving a general audience

So what? Are they not allowed to state anything that is scientifically accurate?

What next? We should ban non-scientific channel who says masks help?

> Youtube bans video titles which if misinterpreted might make people do harmful things

Anything that is misinterpreted will lead to harmful things. That's the consequence of misinterpretation.

Hacker News could be misinterpreted as a community of hackers trying to hack into people's computers. Therefore, we should close down the community?

[fknorangesite]

> They might literally have brain problems.

Or they might literally be children.

[ergocoder]

If children cannot tell the difference in spelling between those two words, then yeah they literally have brain problems.

[eatmoarchikin]

Let natural selection do it’s job if they’re that stupid to drink hydrochloric acid or anything else that’s not supposed to be ingested. Seriously, why do we continually have to be responsible for other people’s (referring to people old enough to know better here) stupidity or and/or lack of common sense? It’s too simple NOT to do something because some else did it. Looking at you Tide Pod idiots. Can we please stop coddling the world now.

[bambax]

Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[ratg13]

HN is not turning into reddit, however there are some users that come to this site and treat it similarly.

Sometimes a friendly "that's not the way we do things here" is appropriate for newcomers.

[Kaibeezy]

Concur. It was a specific criticism of the comment, not a general criticism of HN.

[yunohn]

I don’t understand the reasoning behind claiming people are stupid and will mistake hydroxic for hydrochloride and die from drinking it - because of a YouTube video. There’s tons of legal material that teaches you infinitely dangerous things, with no “pranks”, just facts. Should we ban all of them too?

[ratg13]

Surely you recognize there is a difference between presenting facts and intentionally misleading your audience.

[yunohn]

Have you checked out the creators channel? What do you mean “misleading your audience”? It’s quite obvious to me that they are not a scientific awareness channel, and shouldn’t be treated like one.

[ratg13]

I agree with you that they are not a scientific awareness channel, which in my opinion is exactly why this sort of thing should be censored because it is intentionally misleading.

The author has the video re-posted, you can view it yourself.

[fknorangesite]

Hah on the contrary it's exactly the kind of obtuse, pedantic response I would expect on HN.

[vba616]

If it dilutes the electrolytes in your body too much, it can affect brain functioning and even be lethal. You should always check a MSDS for any chemical.

I just went looking for the LD50 and some sources say >90 and others >150 ml/kg, at least in rats. Odd that they don't give an upper bound, but it's probably safe to assume that's within an order of magnitude. For rats.

Antidotes, I assume, include Brawndo.

[snypher]

Please understand that a 'science prank' can be dangerous to someone not educated in that field. In this case the prank is only intended to 'work' on someone who didn't know it was water. So where does that leave the viewer; hopefully they do not take this new knowledge as advice to drink other acids.

[apostacy]

> ...doesn't really seem plausible to me when we have adults killing themselves with fish tank cleaner because they confuse it for anti-viral meds

What actually happened is that a woman murdered her husband with fish tank cleaner, and blamed Trump for it. And the media ran with it because that was a much more sensational story.

https://www.yahoo.com/now/woman-blamed-trump-giving-her-1336...

No, 30 people did not die in one night because Trump told them to drink bleach. Nobody did.

Nor was Kyle Rittenhouse a "mass shooter" that ambushed innocent civil rights demonstrators.

Big tech is wrong all the time.

[King-Aaron]

> Nor was Kyle Rittenhouse a "mass shooter" that ambushed innocent civil rights demonstrators.

He did shoot some people with a high powered rifle in public though, which in most parts of the world is something that you wouldn't get acquitted for.

[patrick451]

It was clearly a case of self defense. What do other parts of the world have to do with it? If those regimes would rather you be dead than defend yourself, they are hardly a paragon liberalism.

[King-Aaron]

Pardon my cynicism, but if he wasn't aggravating people with a rifle at a public protest then perhaps he wouldn't need to "defend himself"

[brailsafe]

Reddit told me I should think he's a mass murderer, so he's actually guilty. Next you'll tell me we shouldn't spread propaganda telling society it's good to identify people primarily by their skin colour! Crazy

\s