Beware of YouTube content moderation. Is it censorship?
YouTube is the most utilized video platform in the world. Many of my patients ask “Doctor, why don’t we hear about vaccine side effects?” People feel blindsided when they develop myocarditis, stroke, blood clots, or other common vaccine side effects but can find no information on them with standard Google searches landing on YouTube.
Ng and colleagues performed a rigorous analysis of YouTube COVID-19 vaccine content and found that the platform is having effective content moderation. This means when you do a search, they are wiping vaccine safety information off the forum as “anti-vaccine” and replacing it with either irrelevant health information or pro-vaccine content.
Non-governmental censorship is now common on social media platforms. This is accomplished with severe threats from the federal government, without regard for the user experience.
The authors declare this a “success” of content moderation. Others would say this is censorship of valuable health information replaced with propaganda promoting novel, experimental unsafe, ineffective, genetic vaccines. What YouTube is doing is very scary, the authors self-expressed virtuosity is even more alarming.
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