YouTube creators kicked off the platform for “repeated violations of COVID-19 and elections integrity policies” will have an opportunity to “rejoin” in line with revised policies that allow “a wider range of content” on those subjects, its parent Alphabet told the House Judiciary Committee Tuesday. Issued in response to committee subpoenas in February 2023 and […]
I don’t know that I believe in that sort of paternalistic attitude what I do know is that Google et al have no business dictating what is or isn’t misinformation. It’s a double edged blade.
Breathing bleach, very bright light in veins, horse worm paste to fight covid.
Oh fuck right off.
This isn’t a grey area “Oh Mike’s car sounds louder so it’s faster” information. There are objectively factual truths at play and these flat earth worm paste eating fuckwits want to play Don’t Look Up in real life.
It’s not about the factuality of the information though, it’s about the subjectivity of the label. Harmful, hateful, etc are not objective measurable labels and so they can be used to shut down any sort of speech. The paternalistic position that we need to protect people from falsehoods or harmful ideas is frankly condescending. Like I said elsewhere if I cannot believe that people are capable of separating truth from fact, then I must also believe that they are fundamentally incapable of making decisions and therefore I need to take away any ability for them to make any kind of significant decision. I will not follow this line of thought in my life or politics, because then who gets to decide who is capable of making decisions? The experts in their ivory towers? The only experts with apodictic knowledge are physicists and mathematicians, everyone else operates on degrees of certainty, they can be wrong. And furthermore who decides who are the experts? This is a return to aristocracy or monarchy, but instead of divine authority it is credentialist.
If we want to stop people from believing stupid shit the solution is not to attempt to bubble wrap their world as it were, but rather to give them the tools to discern good information from bad information.