> Its the problem of those they affect. "Infectious" is not self-contained to a singular individual.

The stats I've seen suggest the vast majority of people have caught COVID between 2019 and now and pretty much all the preventative measures that worked reliably were things that either individuals could do themselves or that required targeting travellers specifically.

It isn't obvious that people trusting YouTube about COVID affects any third party. Who and how are they affecting?

Even if we assume that's true (everything I've seen says it isn't), then a sole individual always affects others. Humans do not exist as lone monks in the hills, generally speaking. When they are ill, it affects their workplaces, it affects their families, it affects their friends. When they die, it's worse - it affects all of those, but also has tail effects on the health industry.

Nothing you do, ever, is in isolation. So nothing you do, ever, will not affect someone else. Pretending that everyone is a sole unit, to excuse behaviour, has never made sense.

I mean, ok. Everything is connected to everything else, true enough. That seems a bit vague. Do you have a specific example to illustrate what you are talking about? Because the 'disinformation' that I saw being banned was typically people with PhDs in vaguely related fields talking about scientific papers. Disagreeing with them seems like a fair play, deplatforming them seems actually damaging. If I can't listen to people with PhDs to learn about academic papers because everything is interconnected then something has gone rather off the rails.

The disinformation I saw turned into accidental deaths. By attempting to treate the virus with alcohol, horse tranquilisers, and more. And those deaths are verified.

People weren't listening to PhDs getting banned. They were listening to influencers get banned.

So are you talking about your neighbours and relatives here? Like someone next door tried feeding someone else alcohol when their spouse got COVID? What actually happened?

> People weren't listening to PhDs getting banned. They were listening to influencers get banned.

I'm a people, you know.

People died. [0] I'm not talking anecdotes, because that's pointless when discussing why a company acts.

[0] https://www.ajtmh.org/view/journals/tpmd/103/4/article-p1621...

> YouTube allowing bad medical advice will hurt YouTube.

YouTube censoring videos people want to see will also hurt YouTube.

I don't think that is so certain - or a viable alternative would be competing with them.

Evidently not very much.

> YouTube allowing medical advice not endorsed by pharma-infiltrated FDA will hurt YouTube.

Fixed that for you

This doesn't really hold up to scrutiny. Big Pharma would benefit from everyone taking ivermectin to cure their covid, yet content about that was removed. Google is bigger than the entire Pharma industry, and only a couple Pharma companies had covid vaccines.

There's also a ton of general anti-pharma content on YouTube that they'd get taken down, demonetized, etc if they had any power over YouTube.

> Big Pharma would benefit from everyone taking ivermectin

I don't follow. Why would Big pharma benefit from everyone taking ivermectin since its off patent and ultra cheap?