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by ergocoder 1621 days ago
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?

3 comments

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

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?

> They might literally have brain problems.

Or they might literally be children.

If children cannot tell the difference in spelling between those two words, then yeah they literally have brain problems.
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.
Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit.

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

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.

Concur. It was a specific criticism of the comment, not a general criticism of HN.
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?
Surely you recognize there is a difference between presenting facts and intentionally misleading your audience.
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.
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.

Who are they intentionally misleading? People who search for “can I drink acid”? I just find it quite ridiculous that something like this needs to be censored.
Hah on the contrary it's exactly the kind of obtuse, pedantic response I would expect on HN.
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.

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.