Re:YouTube is banning anti-vaccine activists and blocking al...
by dspillett on Wednesday September 29, 2021 @12:58PM
(#28696475)
> She thinks they’re taking it down because they don’t want people to know the truth.
People already that far down the rabbit hole aren't going to be made more or less hesitant whether YouTube or others leave the content up or take it down because at this point they are already believing things that have been shown to be untrue (or at least highly unlikely to be true).
But taking it down might stop a lot more people being drawn in to the conspiracy theories and becoming that hesitant in the first place and further perpetuating the problem by forwarding on the misinformation.
Taking the information down saves a lot more from the misinformation than it pushes in the other direction. Not that I think we should abandon the latter of course, but they are going to need some other form of intervention anyway, whether this step is taken for the benefit of the others or not. We can't fix all the problems with one action, but needing other actions to help those more deeply entrenched doesn't mean we shouldn't perform this action to help those who are not yet there.
People already that far down the rabbit hole aren't going to be made more or less hesitant whether YouTube or others leave the content up or take it down because at this point they are already believing things that have been shown to be untrue (or at least highly unlikely to be true).
But taking it down might stop a lot more people being drawn in to the conspiracy theories and becoming that hesitant in the first place and further perpetuating the problem by forwarding on the misinformation.
Taking the information down saves a lot more from the misinformation than it pushes in the other direction. Not that I think we should abandon the latter of course, but they are going to need some other form of intervention anyway, whether this step is taken for the benefit of the others or not. We can't fix all the problems with one action, but needing other actions to help those more deeply entrenched doesn't mean we shouldn't perform this action to help those who are not yet there.