Why should anyone care about these platforms' engagement metrics? What about these platforms necessitates their survival?
The assumption that Youtube is an unalloyed good for the world is a very controversial one.
The problem starts when you have a Yale educated doctor telling publicly that eggs (or butter, or fat) are unhealthy and then you have Harvard educated doctor who tells you the opposite.
Same with wearing masks. We heard from the official sources (WHO, governments) that wearing mask by healthy people does not help, while 3 months later we hear the opposite and then again we hear they don't help.
Censorship on YT will not solve the problem that people stopped believing in science and that happened because many scientists were working hard to lose public trust.
This is an actual thing that we can see happen in real time. It very, very obviously causes damage - and claiming it’s just “some random youtubers” is a deliberate attempt to misrepresent that.
If you disagree that this approach is wise, or effective, or morally correct, thats a totally fine argument to make. You don’t need to also lie about the impact in order to make it.
It isn't obvious to me. Where has this caused concrete damage?
A lot of countries used to have censors around a few decades ago. Usually they regulated radio, TV broadcast, and cinema, and the popularity of such government regulation were at times pretty high, especially among parents and conservatives. In my nation it stopped dangerous information that taught children to kill other children, and also information that could harm national interests.
They were however removed on the principles of free speech concepts (not the US constitution specific version). It also happened that the amount of children that killed other children did not actually rise, so there were clearly a lack of any scientific method to determining how dangerous a piece of information really was.
> everyone talks about how misinformation is rampant on these platforms
There is no tangible evidence for that, supporters of this strategy believe in conspiracies themselves. Same strategy as with Nazis on the net: ignore them.
That really works and it already has for years before everyone became panicked.
If these platforms don't do anything then everyone talks about how misinformation is rampant on these platforms, how dangerous it is and that nothings being done about it. If they do, then everyone's worried about censorship or blamed to be politically motivated.
There could be simple legislation that defines what is and what isn't to be censored, then these platforms can adhere to that and check a compliance box and leave it at that.
Perhaps a better response would be, what do you think these platforms should do, really? Maybe we can crowdsource a good idea. And, while at it, also think how to thread the needle of keeping these platforms as less scammy etc. as possible, so that the people won't stop using the platforms.