A lot of channels had to avoid even saying the word Covid. I only saw it return recently to use at the end of last year. There were a variety of channels banned that shouldn't have been such as some talking about Long Covid.
Now you see channels avoiding saying "Gaza" or "genocide". I haven't seen any proof platforms are censoring at least some content related to Israel but I wouldn't be surprised.
> content that falsely alleges that approved vaccines are dangerous and cause chronic health effects
The J & J vaccine was approved at the time, but was later banned for causing chronic health effects.
> claims that vaccines do not reduce transmission or contraction of disease
Isn't that true of the covid vaccines? Originally, the proponents claimed that getting the vaccine would stop you from getting covid entirely, but later on, they changed the goal posts to "it will reduce your symptoms of covid".
That policy catches and bans any scientists studying the negative health effects of vaccines who later turns out to be right.
1) YouTube doesn't know what is true. They will be relying on the sort of people they would ban to work out when the consensus is wrong. If I watched a YouTube video through of someone spreading "vaccine misinformation" there is a pretty good chance that the speakers have relevant PhDs or are from the medical profession - there is no way the YouTube censors are more qualified than that, and the odds are they're just be random unqualified employees already working in the euphemistically named "Trust & Safety" team.
2) All vaccines are dangerous and can cause chronic health effects. That statement isn't controversial, the controversy is entirely over the magnitude. Every time I get a vaccine the standard advice is "you should probably hang around here for 5 minutes, these things are known to be dangerous in rare cases". I think in most countries you're more likely to get polio from a polio vaccine than in the wild. On the one hand, that is a success of the polio vaccine. On the other hand, the vaccine is clearly dangerous and liable to cause chronic health problems.
> This would include content that falsely says that approved vaccines cause ... cancer ...
Cancer is such a catch all that we can pretty much guarantee there will be some evidence that vaccines cause cancer. Everything causes cancer. Drinking tea is known to cause cancer.
3) All policies have costs and benefits. People have to be able to discuss the overall cost-benefit of a policy in YouTube videos even if they get one of the costs or benefits completely wrong.
> This seems like good banning to me. Anti-vaxxer propaganda isn't forbidden thoughts. It's bad science and lies and killing people.
Any subject important enough in any public forum is potentially going to have wrong opinions that are going to cause harm. While some people could be wrong, and could cause harm, the state itself being wrong is far more dangerous, especially with no dissident voices there to correct its course.
Edit: I see you're getting downvoted for simply stating your honest opinion. But as a matter of principle I'm going to upvote you.
According to Google's censorship algorithm, Michael Osterholm's podcast (famous epidemiologist and, at the time, a member of President Biden's own gold-star covid-19 advisory panel).
Most ironic thing I've ever seen. I still recall it perfectly, though it's been four years. Never, ever trust censorship algorithms or the people who control them: they are just dumb parrots that suppress all discussion of an unwanted topic, without thought or reason.
My wake up moment was when they not only took down a Covid debate with a very well qualified virologist, but also removed references to it in the Google search index, not just for the YouTube link.
A lot of channels had to avoid even saying the word Covid. I only saw it return recently to use at the end of last year. There were a variety of channels banned that shouldn't have been such as some talking about Long Covid.
Now you see channels avoiding saying "Gaza" or "genocide". I haven't seen any proof platforms are censoring at least some content related to Israel but I wouldn't be surprised.
Every opinion different from the opinion of "authorities". They documented it here:
https://blog.youtube/news-and-events/managing-harmful-vaccin...
From the two links in the post, Google fleshes it out in great detail, with many examples of forbidden thought.
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> content that falsely alleges that approved vaccines are dangerous and cause chronic health effects
The J & J vaccine was approved at the time, but was later banned for causing chronic health effects.
> claims that vaccines do not reduce transmission or contraction of disease
Isn't that true of the covid vaccines? Originally, the proponents claimed that getting the vaccine would stop you from getting covid entirely, but later on, they changed the goal posts to "it will reduce your symptoms of covid".
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That policy catches and bans any scientists studying the negative health effects of vaccines who later turns out to be right.
1) YouTube doesn't know what is true. They will be relying on the sort of people they would ban to work out when the consensus is wrong. If I watched a YouTube video through of someone spreading "vaccine misinformation" there is a pretty good chance that the speakers have relevant PhDs or are from the medical profession - there is no way the YouTube censors are more qualified than that, and the odds are they're just be random unqualified employees already working in the euphemistically named "Trust & Safety" team.
2) All vaccines are dangerous and can cause chronic health effects. That statement isn't controversial, the controversy is entirely over the magnitude. Every time I get a vaccine the standard advice is "you should probably hang around here for 5 minutes, these things are known to be dangerous in rare cases". I think in most countries you're more likely to get polio from a polio vaccine than in the wild. On the one hand, that is a success of the polio vaccine. On the other hand, the vaccine is clearly dangerous and liable to cause chronic health problems.
> This would include content that falsely says that approved vaccines cause ... cancer ...
Cancer is such a catch all that we can pretty much guarantee there will be some evidence that vaccines cause cancer. Everything causes cancer. Drinking tea is known to cause cancer.
3) All policies have costs and benefits. People have to be able to discuss the overall cost-benefit of a policy in YouTube videos even if they get one of the costs or benefits completely wrong.
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> This seems like good banning to me. Anti-vaxxer propaganda isn't forbidden thoughts. It's bad science and lies and killing people.
Any subject important enough in any public forum is potentially going to have wrong opinions that are going to cause harm. While some people could be wrong, and could cause harm, the state itself being wrong is far more dangerous, especially with no dissident voices there to correct its course.
Edit: I see you're getting downvoted for simply stating your honest opinion. But as a matter of principle I'm going to upvote you.
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Saying lab leak was true
According to Google's censorship algorithm, Michael Osterholm's podcast (famous epidemiologist and, at the time, a member of President Biden's own gold-star covid-19 advisory panel).
https://x.com/cidrap/status/1420482621696618496 ("Our Osterholm Update podcast episode (Jul 22) was removed for “medical misinformation.”" (2021))
Most ironic thing I've ever seen. I still recall it perfectly, though it's been four years. Never, ever trust censorship algorithms or the people who control them: they are just dumb parrots that suppress all discussion of an unwanted topic, without thought or reason.
My wake up moment was when they not only took down a Covid debate with a very well qualified virologist, but also removed references to it in the Google search index, not just for the YouTube link.
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Google went so far as to scan people's private google drives for copies of the documentary 'plandemic' and delete them.
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