Right. In general contradiction arises when we try to prevent people from doing stupid things. It becomes very difficult to maintain a logically consistent view on what's okay to censor and what's not.

Most of us agree anti-vaxxers are ill-informed and that adopting their beliefs causes people to engage in patterns of behavior (avoiding vaccines) that are not in what we think is their best interest.

What about other beliefs? If someone posts a video saying that they don't think seatbelts are effective in preventing injuries during car crashes, should they be suppressed?

What about someone who claims that vaping is safe and popularizes the practice? Do we ban that?

It's easy to pick a few almost-universally hated groups and rally against them: racists, anti-vaxxers, flat earthers. Few things are that cut-and-dry. And watching the widespread rise of "benevolent censorship" wrt COVID-19 has really shown me how far we can take the idea of "protect people from information that could harm them".

For example, I recently submitted a highly controversial 7500+ word blog post that advocated for ending lockdown in the US. I got some matters of scientific fact wrong (and have since addressed or am currently working on addressing those), i.e. things like accounting for the phenomenom of "overshoot". Some sections probably did not give a perfectly fair view of "each side" and could be/were criticized as being cherry-picked. And I think I got a lot of things very right. I've now had 9 people e-mail me in the last 24 hours saying that they tried to share my post on Facebook/Messenger and that the entire domain is now blocked for violating the community guidelines. Is that something worth banning? It advocates for a position that could easily be argued will lead to death, and therefore reading it could kill people. So it's a very easy argument to make, if you take the position that we should suppress "harmful" information.

As I said at the start of this thread, I basically reject the entire concept of "disinformation" for that reason; it inevitably gets used to suppress even the most good-faith and well-researched (or in my case, somewhat-well-researched :P) arguments. Therefore I think the entire concept is inherently dangerous to a free society.

Okay, that's enough rambling for one night. I'll let everyone else duke it out :)

Furthermore, there is zero guarantee that the censors won't eventually develop a taste for antivaxxing themselves, and now any information about potential benefits of vaccines is actively suppressed.

There indeed were a few dangerous vaccines, about three generations ago. That's exactly why we have the elaborate clinical trial system today: they stop potentially unsafe vaccines all the time. A large fraction of the COVID vaccines might go this way. Nobody is against banning unsafe vaccines, but some are for banning people from spreading baseless, conspiratorial anti-vax bullshit.

Exactly. But who are we trusting to tell the difference between bullshit and not? Would you trust youtube employees with that?

No, which is exactly why I'm happy they defer to the WHO. I don't trust the WHO unconditionally either, but I trust it much much more than David Icke.

But will youtube defer to the right group on every issue? Is there always a right group?

This issue will pass but now they have a precedent.

There have been issues more recently with vaccine safety. Or at least, there were enough lawsuits to start frightening off vaccine manufacturers. Since 1986, however, they've been insulated from lawsuits under federal law:[0]

> The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, ..., as amended, created the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP), a no-fault alternative to the traditional tort system. It provides compensation to people found to be injured by certain vaccines. Even in cases in which such a finding is not made, petitioners may receive compensation through a settlement.

> The VICP was established after lawsuits against vaccine manufacturers and healthcare providers threatened to cause vaccine shortages and reduce vaccination rates. The Program began accepting petitions (also called claims) in 1988.

The current anti-vaccination movement began largely over concern that thiomersal preservative in many childhood vaccines was causing autism. Although multiple epidemiological studies indicated that there was no appreciable risk, "the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) asked vaccine makers to remove thiomersal from vaccines as quickly as possible as a precautionary measure", and it was ~gone by 2001.[1]

0) https://www.hrsa.gov/vaccine-compensation/about/index.html

1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiomersal_and_vaccines

A business decision to avoid risk of costly litigation is not at all the same as actual harm. If you have any information on actual harm, please share it. Otherwise, please leave your FUD at the door.

So you don't believe that people ought to have the right to sue when injured?

Also, calling stuff "FUD" is a classic strategy to escape responsibility. For example, the tobacco industry claimed that lung cancer risk was FUD for decades. Other examples include groundwater pollution, asbestos, and lead paint.

Not to mention human overpopulation. Which is arguably the root cause of the COVID-19 pandemic. Along with HIV and Ebola, and likely more to come. And of course global climate change, which may well kick serious ass in coming decades.

The irony with your comment is that it's the tobacco industry which started (and is still significantly funding) the whole anti science/evidence campaigns. In fact the whole antivax movement is part of a big FUD campaign. So historically these campaigns have almost always come from a certain direction to discredit established scientific evidence. The current antilockdown campaigns come from the same corner/often the same people so yes people are sceptical about them, I'm sorry that you got banned for your "well reasoned" post.

Maybe the solution is a law that if someone posts/airs clearly wrong facts. Or if someone's theories/facts... Get later disproven they need to post/air a correction at the same time at least as long (maybe better twice as long) and give it as much prominence. Maybe then outlets would be more careful about posting obvious untruths.

Huh. I didn't know that, and I'd appreciate references.

I am aware that the ad agency behind the "tobacco doesn't cause cancer" campaign got into the "lead paint is safe" and other pro-industry campaigns, including the climate change contrarians. And the Tea Party. Funded by folks like the Koch brothers.

> Maybe then outlets would be more careful about posting obvious untruths.

That's a very slippery slope. As I've said before, you may be surprised when you become the pariah.

I would absolutely agree that those who are harmed need adequate remedies under the law. I also know that vaccines provide an immense public benefit. If the specifics of the tort system were causing companies to exit the vaccine business (and they were) , that's certainly something the government ought to step in to fix. However, that doesn't mean there were "issues with safety" as you claim. The implications in your comment are actively harmful to the public health.

If you read the background for that law, you'll find that people were in fact being injured by vaccines. And some still are. Just as virtually all medicines injure some people. Because there's great variability in responses.

The law didn't get enacted just to prevent lawsuits, but also to compensate those who were injured.

> The implications in your comment are actively harmful to the public health.

That way lies totalitarianism.

For example, there's considerable pressure in many countries to outlaw secure end-to-end encryption. To protect against terrorists, child abusers, and other criminals.

So how would we feel if support for secure end-to-end encryption were censored in social media?

Yes, vaccines have side effects, just as any other medication or treatment does. Nobody has claimed otherwise.

The reason your comment is harmful is because you make implications that have no basis in evidence, but which serve to advance dubious claims accepted by a small but growing and very vocal group of antivaxxers that have had a clear negative impact on our society.

If you have some new evidence or analysis to add, please add it. If all you have is fear, uncertainty, and doubt, please don't throw gasoline on this fire.

Well, I think that you're overreacting. Considering risks is important. We've suffered too much from denial. Pollution of groundwater. Fallout from nuclear weapons testing. Toxic chemicals in food packaging. And I could easily come up with another dozen examples.

> The reason your comment is harmful is because you make implications that have no basis in evidence, ...

That's exactly what attorneys for polluters always say. There's this thing called the precautionary principle. So you act when damage is possible, long before there's conclusive evidence.

Edit: If you like, I can probably find defendants' briefs and expert reports from landmark cases, asserting that plaintiffs have provided insufficient evidence of causation to support their claims.

Here's the thing: either you're simply naive to the tactics of anti-vaxxers and unaware that your comments play into their hand, or you're actively advancing their interests.

Yes, it's important to consider the risks of any medical treatment. Your comments make it seem like that hasn't been done, as if doctors and public health officials are just pretending that side effects don't exist. That's simply untrue -- rigorous clinical trials and careful reporting mean that modern vaccines are really quite safe. When you lucidly compare the incidence of side effects against the impact of contracting illnesses that vaccines prevent, there is only one reasonable position to take.

Your initial comments about thiomersal are pure FUD. You acknowledge that there's not real medical concern there, but choose to bring it up anyway? What could your motivation possibly be? If you'd like to discuss it objectively, here's how to do it: Someone with a financial interest who is no longer allowed to practice medicine falsified data in an effort to mislead the public about a supposed danger of a preservative in vaccines. Many people siezed onto that lie, despite the clear evidence that it was flawed, and continue to espouse it, causing lasting damage to society.

> So you act when damage is possible, long before there's conclusive evidence.

The damage that's real here is the damage caused by anti-vaxxers. That's actual damage that's caused harm to real people in the real world. Your comments help advance that agenda, which is why they are harmful.