Let me put it this way. If you're not just pointing to the mask example as a tentative, academic exercise, and sincerely believe that they constitute some non-trivial percentage of videos that will really get taken down, you should come out and say so. And if you don't want to commit to that, I have a hard time understanding what, other than frivolous internet contrarianism, motivates you to emphasize those examples.
>do you really think that a discussion about edge cases is so unnecessary?
Yes.
If this were the case, they could simply announce that their policy is to ban videos that blame coronavirus on 5G.
In practice, they will probably be banning a lot more videos than simply ones which blame coronavirus on 5G.
There's nothing in any of my comments that suggests the policy would only address the specific case of 5g.
>The 99.99999% case scenario concerns videos that are saying '5g caused coronavirus', and meanwhile you're trying to tie up everybodies attention with special cases that don't represent the majority of cases. People get disoriented with special cases and trick questions.
Why not actually defend your arguments and attack mine instead of circling about the issue with "this actual real life example is a what if hypothetical" and hastily drawn up dichotomies?
(Particularly this hammering that these are contrived examples is bordering on the ridiculous: we know this is true!)
You've lost your benefit of the doubt with this comment.
I'm just going to note you agree that these examples are contrived yet nevertheless want to debate them, apparently to performatively exhibit your appreciation for the values open-mindedness and free speech.
That's a not a constructive use of anybody's time. It's a frivolous distraction. Youtube is doing what they can to save lives by stopping misinformation in the face of a global pandemic. If you're more interested in turning this into a navel gazing exercise, I'd say you're suffering from a serious lack of perspective.
I'm shocked that anyone would believe that this is an honest framing of YouTube's motivation.
How about political pressure?
Your argument seems to rely on the fact that we know the WHOs recommendation on masks is wrong.
Exactly. There's absolutely no reason to trust Google about anything. This is a totally CYA move. That is, Google's only concern is avoiding controversy, whether it's about copyrights and trademarks, non-mainstream politics, non-traditional medicine, or whatever.
Even so, it's their platform, and they have the right to do whatever they like with it. I avoid it, and I recommend that others avoid it, but we're all free to choose.
Let me however disagree strongly with your claims that this concerns 99.99999% of cases, and that the other commenter was talking about "what ifs" and "hypotheticals". That last claim seems to me to just be untrue: we know in fact that local laws, for example several american states, contradict WHO. Their point is valid. This could be a problem.
Now you have done well to state your belief of proportion clearly: only 1 in a million of the cases that will be removed should not have been removed, the rest are indisputably worth of banning.
I think you now need to go a step further: Why do you think that all but one out of a million cases will be justified? And do you really think that a discussion about edge cases is so unnecessary? Given YouTube's history with copyright trigger happiness, I wouldn't be so sure of these proportions, myself.
And I think that it is actually very healthy that the introduction of (increased) censoring should go hand in hand with public scrutiny and discussion, in fact I'd be very worried if we'd all just accept all of it uncritically.
Your point is, in general, well taken. I think you're right to point out commentators can blow fringe issues out of proportions. I am however unconvinced in this particular case.