Originally published at: YouTube announced it will remove all anti-vaccine content, kicked off Joseph Mercola and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. | Boing Boing
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Glad to hear that they’ll be taking off some of the more batshit crazy stuff about microchips, etc, but it’s going to be very tricky for them to manage some of the more nuanced takes using algorithms, and even a human-review process will be hard if those humans aren’t experts.
For example, ZDoggMD, a pretty well respected (and pro vaccine) doctor with a popular YouTube channel, recently got a video removed from Snapchat as “misinformation” because he expressed his opinion that there was not yet enough data available to show that it’s appropriate for the general population to start receiving boosters at this time. A couple days after that the CDC advisory committee came to the exact same conclusion.
If they’re overly aggressive with the video takedowns, removing legitimate discussion of safety data about myocarditis, etc, this could backfire. I hope they get it right.
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“Now that the house has burned to the ground, we’ve decided to take the VERY BRAVE step of hiding all of the lighters. You’re welcome!”
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A year late and many dollars long for YouTube and the other platforms. Allowing charismatic woo peddlers to sell their dangerous nonsense in the name of freeze peach translated to big bucks.
Also, RFK Jr. has done a truly impressive job of leveraging his father’s name to destroy the large amount of goodwill associated with it.
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Congratulations YouTube! You are now somewhat better than Facebook.
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Mercola is branching out…
He has a Twitter banner telling people that he is going to delete all his digital content in 48 hours unless they subscribe. The end is nigh!
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But where will people do their research now?
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Too little too late. This is shutting the barn door after all the horses already ran out and are breaking down your fences.
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I’ll take a few people who are operating in good faith having their videos pulled if it gets the conspiracy theorists from stopping their damage to the world. You can always go back and reinstate something, but given the very real damage this is doing to the world, something needs to be done here.
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Way late, but still good.
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If people are no longer able to have good faith, nuanced discussions of evidence in a public forum then I believe it will turn off some otherwise reasonable people and empower conspiracy theorists more than it hurts them.
Much of what’s on YouTube is clearly not in good faith or is so far out there that it needs to get pulled. But let’s say, for example, that early on in the pandemic when Fauci and others were advising against the general public wearing masks, a health researcher on YouTube wanted to make public her legitimate research showing that masks can be helpful. I think that nuanced, good-faith claims do need to be discussed openly for the scientific process to work.
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Sure, but as I said, such discussions can be reinstated. But of course that depends on the good faith of the social media companies… who have not been operaating in good faith with regards to free speech issues… That’s the real root of the problem, in fact. That the social media companies regularly give the right wing a pass on these issues with regards to free speech (including conspiracy theorists) and will shut down even the mildest leftist criticism.
But still, right now, I’d rather something get taken down and put back up later, given that nearly 700,000 have died of this fucking thing, thanks in part to weaponized misinformation. YMMV. But I’m sick of this tiny minority holding the life and death of too many of us in their hands.
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I seem to recall that Mercola made the same threat some months ago.
(the scheme is he posts stuff, 48 hours later, he deletes it, the cycle repeats, and the end result is a constant churn of “new” misinformation and possibly new ads for unproven woo)
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They can be disgruntled frenemies together.
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Don’t tempt them to lower the bar!
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