Covid misinformation, along with audio copyright infringement have become the pretenses for censorship. I wish there were a light at the end of this tunnel, but I only seeing things getting worse as these companies become even more powerful. It has gotten out of control.

Sending death threats and yelling fire in a crowded theatre is also censored. It's pretty ridiculous to think that you can simply say anything you want regardless of how much damage it causes, without repercussions.

Covid misinformation currently kills people every day. And I have relatives who are on the clock, waiting if they are going to end up on ICU. Because some scumbags on the internet decided to bank on misinformation and tell them that the covid vaccine is dangerous.

In the US, both (most) death threats and "falsely shouting fire in a crowded theater" (actually protesting US involvement in the first world war; seriously look up the origin of that phrase) are both legal. Death threats have to be specific and timely in order to be illegal, IIRC.

I wasn't making a legal argument. Just pointing out that crying about "censorship" or "freedom of speech" when YouTube doesn't platform misinformation is just as ridiculous as doing it when you get repercussions for yelling fire or making death threats.

> Covid misinformation currently kills people every day.

Part of the "misinformation" is how institutions are hiding the truth... so isn't censorship reinforcing people's distrust, therefore contributing to the deaths?

This isn't hyperbole, every time some censoring like this happens, it gets factored in as proof of many of the plethora of conspiracy theories. Are these big platforms and government really interesting in saving people, or playing politics? Because it's pretty obvious the main problem is lack of trust, and censorship makes that worse.

Refusing to platform covid misinformation isn't hiding the truth. It's just refusing to platform dangerous misinformation.

I meant that becomes the perception of it. Platforms censor misinformation, and then that becomes evidence to those that want to believe in theories of how the truth is censored.

If the ultimate objective is compliance, censorship is at best incompetent and short-sighted.

Sure, anyone can say anything about anything and believe in conspiracies without evidence. Letting misinformation spread further isn't a viable solution to that.

when the meme is as deadly as the virus itself, what exactly do you propose to protect the breakdown of the system.

freedom at all costs is nothing more than a delusional sigularity the devours itself.

Absurd. Public meetings are proceedings of record, even if they are populated by liars or idiots (whether attending as members of the public or as elected officials). People who can't attend have a legitimate interest in knowing who said what, regardless of its truth value.

We've seen this problem again and again: not that tech companies want to censor stuff (they do have a legitimate interest in setting standards for how their platform is used by others) but that they are cheapskates trying to bring in as much money as possible while spending as little on oversight as possible, and for all their smarts their algorithmic solutions often yield bad results because they're based on the asinine assumption that all content and attention is fungible.

> they are cheapskates trying to bring in as much money as possible while spending as little on oversight as possible

They are the cheapskates for offering a free video hosting and serving option? Or the city that does not want to pay to host their videos on their own computing resources where no one else controls it?

You could argue the city is trying to save public money and make public meetings as widely accessible as possible. Youtube knows full well that not all content is interchangeable, they just don't want to spend money on curating it. The hosting service is the nectar so they can spray the visitors with advertising pollen.

I'm scared of the future, but I'm not sure what I can do about it.

Well I am sure.

You can do nothing about it.

The government of St Louis can pay for their own video hosting.

The city of St. Louis seems to prefer to complain about YouTube’s moderation choices (as a private business) than pay for a Vimeo or Wistia subscription and a mailing list provider. There are also government tailored solutions for managing this content.

Disappointingly, it’s hard to know who is arguing in good faith anymore.

Mirror https://archive.is/I72gs