Unpopular opinion: I don’t like this. Would much prefer that ideas compete. Id sort of give Amazon a pass since, unlike twitter, Reddit, Facebook & YouTube, it doesn’t make many promises regarding the free exchange of ideas. But still.
To me, this action says "We have chosen not to publish material, that is based on indisputably false premises, that may harm viewers and the public at large."
Agreed, there is just too much junk out there. There should be some sort of editorial control especially when it is a paid service.
I personally expect Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime Video to provide some sort of filtering. YouTube, on other hand, I don't expect any editorial control there and also for same reasons, I will never let my kid to access it alone.
They need not decide the premise is false; they can rely on scientific consensus. It's not a perfect heuristic but it's the most useful one we have. If they're transparent about the sources they use and they're impartial and consistent in their application (read: no videos given special treatment), they're not arbitrating. They're (actively) reporting.
It sure is! Tell you what, I'm all on board for a massive awareness campaign by Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Netflix on the dangers of sugar intake as well.
While I believe anti vaxxers are wrong, there are very few things in the medical field that are "indesputible".
Plus, this isn't just a black and white issue. What if a specific vaccine is released some day that turns out to be harmful? Harmful drugs frequently make it passed FDA approval only to be recalled later.
If one of them happens to be a specific vaccine, are we going to be censoring any and all media that tries to sound the alarm?
I think your opinion is basically the standard one: censorship is generally bad, marketplace of ideas, etc.
I don't have a take on this particular issue. But I think censorship is generally very dangerous, and I also think the Mill-style marketplace of ideas is a bad analogy bordering on the nonsensical the more I think about it.
Humans generally synchronize their ideas with each other and generally put minimal effort into validating their ideas because the synchronization process works enough as a heuristic.
The obvious attack then is to blast out intentionally harmful material in order to do things like cause disease outbreaks.
Our position can't just be that were defenseless against this kind of attack because censorship is more evil than disease outbreaks. There must be some nuance that so far nobody has articulated sufficiently well.
And none of this really even matters because Amazon is a private platform where I can almost never find the thing I want to watch. The amount of things not on Prime Video is so vast that it's hard to get up in arms about them removing something that has no obvious value other than to cause harm.
The "marketplace" analogy is comically flawed. The actual marketplace works only when it's tightly regulated, from anti-trust to consumer protection to standards and on. When disputes arise, the totality of civil law and the court system serves to adjudicate them. Institutions such as Bloomberg are basically deputised to be trustworthy intermediaries collecting and verifying market data.
I don't really care for the "fake news" label since it's so politically charged. But I would say a thing is a "fake fact" - a falsehood, to speak plainly - if it asserts a claim about the world which has no support from the scientific community (or worse, is actively disputed by the scientific community).
In other words if it's not grounded in empiricism it's a "fake fact."
All the information on vaccines is out there, from trial data to journal articles to wikipedia articles to graphic novels on the history to your doctor being willing and able to explain them.
The existence (and growth) of these "sceptics" is a testament to our inability to live up to your standards of critical thinking. I don't see how more pro-vaccine information could ever move the needle. The dynamics are rather asymmetric.
And the "all the information/everyone decides for themselves" strategy is fundamentally impossible, anyway: if you "trust no one", your only chance to verify the benefits of vaccines is to redo the studies yourself. That's impossible, obviously.
So one way or another, we need to delegate some editorial control to institutions/people that we can trust to take on part of the burdens of verifying information.
"Trust" does not imply blind allegiance here: these institutions have track records that you can spot-check. There will always be competition between them. And they tend to follow long-term incentives to keep your trust instead whatever short-term benefit could be derived from lying to you.
This isn't some obscure idea. It's so fundamental to the functioning of our society people don't even notice how they constantly rely on trust. Do you ever board a plane? You're trusting some FAA employees, and that they work within a legal structure that makes it unappealing for them to let a drunk pilot bribe them. Do you trust your spouse more than some random stranger not to steal from you? That's because you have known them for a decade, and (again) because they have far more to lose than to gain.
I mean, if you made a documentary about it being physically impossible to incinerate 6M humans in the span of time the nazi's had to do it in the ovens that they had to do it in, you'd get banned from Amazon before you could so much as publish your video.
But you believing such a fringe nazi conspiracy theory couldn't kill me or my neighbour. My children wouldn't be at a real risk of dying from spending time with your kids, even if you indoctrinated them in your beliefs.
Some ideas are too dangerous to even get the chance to compete, especially in a country like USA with an education system so broken that 40% of its people believe that Psychic mediums can actually talk to the dead.
Holocaust denial isn't victimless. In fact, I would argue it's far more dangerous than these vaccine hoaxes.
"It happened, and therefore it can happen again" is the motto here. It is the singularity of barbarism that has defined politics in Europe and the US ever since; the crown witness against militarism, nationalism, and populism.
I never mentioned holocaust denial... but let's go with that. So long as it never happens again, it's victimless. And because it's not going to happen again (nobody of consequence in any position of authority over govt, the media, or academia is a holocaust denier). Antisemitism certainly has victims, but in any case that's not the same thing as holocaust denialism.
> In fact, I would argue it's far more dangerous than these vaccine hoaxes.
Are you unaware that children have been dying of measles in ever greater numbers in the developed world due to the anti-vaccine movement? You certainly must be because some hypothetical danger that might occur in the future can't compare to children dying today.
Does the implementation of the "counter" matter to you? Do you think giant corporations should be the gatekeeper on what information/ideas/speech is permitted and what is not?
But is it an authoritarian solution? Does that terminology make sense outside of the sociopolitical context of government action? I feel it really diminishes the meaning of the word, "authoritarian" when you throw it around to describe the rights reserved by a non-government entity to police its own platform.
A private company has a platform, and they can choose what content to allow on the platform. If you don't like it then enjoy your content elsewhere.
If anything, it sounds like a bit of a made up problem to declare Amazon (or another similarly sized tech company) is being authoritarian by removing anti-vaccination videos. I mean come on, we have a rich history of authoritarian governments murdering people for vocal dissent. I get that you disagree with private censorship, but let's have some perspective now...
It's bigger than "just one company". You say it's the company's free choice but that is not true. There is a large amount of pressure on companies to conform. It's a part of a broader movement to shut down dissent wherever it exists.
This movement is successfully censoring billions of people. The gloves are softer than before but the scale is larger and this is a huge threat.
there's always been bad information but it was previously hard to disseminate NEW bad information quickly. It was incredibly expensive, slow and there were watchers, gatekeepers ... various religious authorities, newspaper editors etc. now the russian election manipulation cyber warfare division or your local anti-vax grifter can anonymously target a limitless number of impressionable rubes with the click of a mouse. often for free if the content's viral. thanks social media!
Today in 1985 Amazon pulls all videos discussing links between H.pylori and ulcers from its Prime platform. Many HN users laud the decision to remove the content that a "scientific consensus" of the medical community have "proven false".
'This is not about competing markets of ideas', the HN users are saying, "these are real doctors -- real scientists -- saying that the 'facts' in these videos cannot possibly be true. Therefore these are 'false facts' and should be removed."
There are some that would say that a government should not be able to force you to inject things into your own or your children's bodies. They would call that tyranny.
Much of the pro-choice argument regarding abortion is based on the idea that you own your own body.
My kids get vaccinated, but I sympathize with the anti-vaxxers arguments regarding governmental force.
The same argument could be said that kids born to unwilling mothers leads to social and moral decay. If you are pro abortion/ pro choice you must be pro choice for anti vaxx.
No it can't because there is no direct, empirical relationship between children born in neglectful or under-resourced households and medical illness in other children. You can mount an abstract argument that there are secondary or tertiary effects that increase e.g. crime, violence or what have you. But that kind of relationship is not nearly as tight nor as evident as the reduction in herd immunity effected by fewer children receiving vaccinations.
I don't disagree. I personally think it's irresponsible not to vaccinate your kids. I also support schools and such requiring vaccinations for attendance (although that gets murky when the government runs the school).
But using the government to forcibly inject stuff into people's bodies seems wrong.
Why do you keep calling it "stuff?" and why "forcibly inject?"
You say you support vaccination but you can't help but describe it without the necessary context, as if random Feds are strapping babies down against their will and pumping random fluids into them against their will for no particular reason.
You can make your argument and avoid the pointlessly nefarious language.
I see your point regarding the word "stuff." Mostly I phrase it like that because I'm trying to empathize with (and represent) the anti-vaxxer view. They don't view vaccines as medicine, they view it as poison or at least potentially harmful. They are also not often well informed regarding it's contents, so to them it is just "stuff" that someone who they don't trust says is good for them.
"Forcibly inject" tho is metaphorical but accurate. Many of the people here are advocating the mandating of (i.e. forcing) people to vaccinate their kids.
> as if random Feds are strapping babies down against their will and pumping random fluids into them against their will.
That's not completely wrong. The kids in my mother's generation for example were force-vaccinated in school and a lot of them suffered through life-threatening kidney issues caused by said vaccine. This is certainly not the case right now, but I have heard of people advocating for mandatory vaccination in schools.
It happened around 1962-1964. It was a smallpox vaccine. My mother ended up with Nephritis and had to battle it for years while my uncle ended up with his hands and legs being paralyzed and had to get a surgery.
When someone doesn't vaccinate their child and they get the measles, which kills someone else's child, who was too young to be vaccinated, that also seems wrong.
People will spend their entire lives as a potential danger to society. I don't think the measles, for example, will be eliminated.
People are committed by the state (MN at least) for mental health reasons, and in certain cases, forced to take neuroleptic drugs, some of which are injected. Tyranny?
In my opinion, promoting an anti-vaccination stance is akin to shouting fire in a crowded theater, or should be viewed as such. It's a public health risk.
If you were committed by the state for mental health reasons, and in certain cases, forced to take neuroleptic drugs, some of which are injected, would you consider that tyranny? I definitely would ...
But I concede that's a pretty hard problem to deal with. I don't have any answers.
I personally know someone who is wrongfully convicted and serving a prison sentence. Maybe my mind is corrupted by movies but I've seen enough films where people are wrongly committed for political or revenge reasons that I would be hesitant to support that and give them the power to do it.
Wrongful conviction is an unfortunate part of our justice system. In some cases it is rectified, and others it is not.
My point was that people who refuse vaccines and people with mental illness who refuse to comply with treatment potentially both pose a danger to others.
If someone is harmed, whether by preventable disease or violence as a result of another's refusal to accept the recommendations of medical professionals, the party that refused vaccination/treatment causes harm to another without being held liable. Either someone else pays to make the party who suffered whole, or the party who suffered loses.
I feel the state should intervene when people are unable to make the correct decision about medical treatment when there are negative externalities. It's unfair to those who comply.
Vaccinating your child is basic medical care for your child. Your child has a right to life and my child has the right not to get whooping cough and possibly die from it.
If you don't believe in vaccines, don't have kids.
The idea is competing -- it continues to grow and spread despite the (continually growing and already present) threat to public health and as such, is increasingly being considered as dangerous and bad. I simply don't understand why we have to have this exact same conversation every time a private platform makes its own content determinations.
I'm also getting really tired of this "it's just ideas, guys!" as nationalism, flat earthism, anti-vaxx and more dangerous, anti-intellectual bullshit spreads across the country in this YouTube-era. I'm on the phone with my brother and he's telling me about a student teacher telling middle school students the earth is flat. I'm tired of acting like it's fine and this is unconcerning. Maybe the ever-reliable, ever-silent downvoters could express themselves and tell me why I'm wrong to be concerned.
Isn’t there an in-between of doing nothing? Asking Amazon to publish an opinion is a pretty big ask. At least deleting the item doesn’t necessarily imply a position.
Irrespective of whether or not anti-vaccine should be suppressed, Amazon wouldn't delete a video they agreed with and thought was helpful to their brand. Eliminating undesirable media absolutely implies an opinion. The closest analogy I can think of is, if I burnt a book from my personal library, what would you infer about my opinion of its contents?
Disclaimers don't work. In Soviet Russia, a lot of people believe in strange things like this one https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_(2006_film) Rossiya 1 is one of the primary TV channels with a huge audience. When those people see that someone thinks that vaccination is the main source of childhood disorders, they start using folk remedies. My classmate's child died from this stupid anti-vax propaganda. I can't believe that I'm sitting in the office and writing software for a better understanding source of cancer, reading publications about ML and so on, but my classmates really believe in this bullshit about magic power of vater, vegan food and anti-vax.
Fantastic. I would be thrilled to see other tech companies declare a holy war against this kind of misinformation. In fact, it would make me ecstatic if they started doing the same with other topics that have overwhelming scientific consensus, like climate change.
I frankly don't care if it's censorship. It's a hill I'll happily die on.
Yet, if you argue for the exist of Phlogiston in a physics conference they will politely but firmly show you the door, and make it known that your opinion is wrong and you are not welcome.
Are you implying classical mechanics is comparable to the anti-vaccination movement? Are you aware we've successfully landed people on the Moon using calculations derived by classical mechanics? That example has harmed your argument, not supported it. Just because we have quantum mechanics doesn't mean we can't make true statements about the world using Newtonian mechanics.
As for phlogiston and luminiferous aether - yes, science is not omniscient. But those hypotheses are attributable to insufficiently precise instruments and knowledge.
More importantly, they were positive statements about the world. You're comparing them to the demand for evidence that vaccinations are harmful, to which the best rebuttal is a counter-demand to prove a negative (that they're not harmful).
> Just because we have quantum mechanics doesn't mean we can't make true statements about the world using Newtonian mechanics.
True statements? A scientist would acknowledge them as adequate approximations, not true statements.
And by the way, let's see you build GPS (relativity) or computers (QM by way of semiconductor physics) using Newtonian mechanics.
> More importantly, they were positive statements about the world. You're comparing them to the demand for evidence that vaccinations are harmful, to which the best rebuttal is a counter-demand to prove a negative (that they're not harmful).
That's precisely the point. Science doesn't need self-appointed police squashing silly ideas like anti-vax precisely because science makes "positive statements about the world." Repeatable results speak for themselves.
[EDIT] To clarify further, allowing squashing of ideas because they don't agree with current scientific consensus will just make Planck's lament all the worse. ("A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.")
> What else you got?
After that last line, a slightly lower opinion of your ability to debate in a civil fashion.
Your first sentence nitpicks the word "truth" and ignores the spirit of the point. Your second ignores my point about the validity of Newtonian mechanics and, in the process, detracts from your own point about approximations instead of absolutes. It's also wrong for what it's worth - again, NASA used computers to get us on the Moon. Computers need not be digital.
I don't really care what your opinion is of my ability to debate in a civil fashion. That you are incorrect is not an opportunity for me to persuade you; your arguments are simply a vehicle for convincing the onlookers reading the back-and-forth. And to be blunt, when you're resorting to nitpicking words, ignoring points and comparing Newtonian mechanics to anti-vaccination, I also don't really care about abandoning civility.
And if I'm being honest I do get a certain satisfaction from challenging your examples in such a cavalier fashion, because they're frankly silly and incomparable. Considering the stakes (compromising herd immunity, implicitly defending harmful ignorance) I am all-in on censorship and abandoning decorum.
But you're free not to debate with me if you consider me gauche or impolite, just as Amazon is free to censor all the videos on its own platform.
You responded to the wrong comment of mine, but to answer your question: I did read the insert you posted. That doesn't mean I'm qualified to interpret what it means.
You posted a link with red boxes around things, and I'm inferring I'm supposed to make a new conclusion or challenge my beliefs on the subject. But I don't have sufficient context to follow what you're getting at without you explaining what claim you're making that is supported by the insert.
Have you read the insert? The first highlighted point may seem odd out of context, but the context is right in front of the highlighted section. It's not saying the vaccine is ineffective, it's saying it is for immunisation in people who currently do not have the flu. The lack of studies mentioned is in relation to its effectiveness in people who take the vaccine whilst already being infected with the flu.
Highlighting the lack of proven effectiveness in children is odd too, since the very same insert states it is not for use in under 18s. It makes perfect sense it hasn't been tested on children.
The Mercury part doesn't even say anything negative, simply that it is an ingredient. There are many things that we know are poisonous in some contexts/quantities, whilst being harmless in others.
Im not sure if you're being disengenious on purpose, or if you simply lack the reading comprehension.
Amazon isn't set out to fight and correct anti-vaxxers. (Some people do, and I admire their devotion, but it's not a fight I'd enjoy.) They just want to stem the flow of misinformation.
It's not the job of a fireman to make an arsonist see the error of his ways. We just want to put out the fire.
People not wanting to listen to someone is not censorship. An organization not broadcasting you is not censorship. Even good ideas and real science aren't entitled to be broadcast by every organization in every way possible.
How well has letting people air these ideas worked? Compare the number of Nazis in Germany (and hate crimes committed by same) vs. Lost Causers in the American South and their hate crimes.
It's one thing to hold a belief in a certain threshold for freedom of speech. It's another thing to state without evidence that it has better outcomes.
There's a really nice place you may consider as an option that tightly controls information. No need to worry about encountering bad ideas in the People's Republic of Korea. There's also China. They have a much safer internet there. Not as safe as DPRK's internet, but still pretty good.
And yet Germany is nothing like DPRK or PRC. Maybe there exist freedom of speech thresholds in between the extremes of Somalia (where you are free to shout "fire!" in crowded theaters) and DPRK?
It amazes me how many Americans religiously believe that their thresholds are the only ones that work and that the only other option is some ridiculous extreme. You can see the same religiosity in weapons freedoms. Somalians have more. North Koreans have less. Yet there are many working thresholds in between, most of which empirically perform better than the US's.
Now this is just one vaccine, and its not wise to extrapolate wholesale.
However, this one clearly states: there have been no controlled trials adequately demonstrating a decrease in influenza from using this product.
Note: Its curious I'm being downvoted for actually posted an actual insert, which has real scientific information. You would think all the "science lovers" would applaud that. Ho hum, I guess I should've posted a Merck marketing ad instead.
Well I'm not downvoting you since 1) I can't, you responded to me; and 2) you're not being offtopic. And you're at least defending your position without memeing even if I disagree with it.
That being said, I'm glad you clarified because I figured the implication you were getting at is these are harmful vaccines. Am I correct in saying your grievance is a lack of evidence that they're helpful?
> Am I correct in saying your grievance is a lack of evidence that they're helpful?
Part of the second picture that the user has highlighted basically says that said vaccine contains a mercury derivative and that it has not been tested for "carcinogenic or mutagenic potential, or for impairment of fertility". So I would say that this is also part of his issue.
don't expect them to enjoy facts. They just want their cult to prevail. They'd love to delete your "anti-vaccination" comment. Facts that go against their desires are evil propaganda and should be deleted too.
It's well known that each year's influenza vaccine is produced with imperfect knowledge of what strains may prove most dangerous later on in contagion season, after several months of selection/evolution/travel time.
I wonder if they inadvertently strengthened the conspiracy theory by doing it. Sometimes censorship has that perverse effect. I easily see someone hearing from their "friend" about how Amazon has removed the video because they know it's true, and how it just validates all the bullshit claims presented there.
It's a balance. Banning books has been known to make them more widely consumed, but reading is intrinsically less viral (and more informationally dense, typically) than watching a video.
I think it's easier to attain a critical mass of followers if these kinds of videos go unchallenged.
Amazon is starting to ban some far right books. Sexual Utopia in Power is currently banned(it's on libgen) likely as a compete blacklist on it's publisher. The author had published a book on Kojeve for an academic publisher and the book has received positive feedback from many conservatives who have nothing to do with the far right. I see no reason whatsoever for it to be banned. It may be coming back because it's page is up and not completely deleted like many other books though it's still not up for sale.
