Comment by dotnet00
5 months ago
Admittedly, Google was very heavy handed with Covid censorship. Sure, there was a lot of genuine misinformation that maybe deserved it, but they also tended to catch a lot of actual qualified scientists engaging in scientific debate (say, arguing in favor of masks and the transmission through air theory in the early days) or even some discussion that wasn't opposing the official stances.
Somewhat related, it's pretty insane how even to this day YouTubers have to avoid referring to by name a global multi-year situation that everyone who existed at the time went through. It's due to advertisers rather than government pressure, but still, insane.
Yeah at the time I get the impression they were banning dissent, not just egregious or dangerous content (whatever that even means). I though most places came to their senses a long time ago and walked back that heavy handedness, I'm surprised this just happened.
Your point reminded me that around the time when the pandemic first started, I saw a YouTube video on physics titled something like "Corona and Arc Discharge" and it had the contextual note that is sometimes added to videos. I think the official name YouTube gives it is: "topical context in information panel". I thought it was a funny case where the automated system thought this physics video had something to do with COVID.