On Friday I shared a significant video by a pair of doctors who presented facts based on the last few months of historical data. Based on what they've observed, the doctors drew conclusions at odds with the prevailing views and held a media event to make known their findings.
By Tuesday, a few days later, after more than 5 million people had watched it (including Elon Musk, who tweeted about it), the video was removed by YouTube as inappropriate. Why? "For violating YouTube's terms of service." (i.e: Community Standards.)
When ABC of Bakersfield, California contacted YouTube for further illumination on this action, a company spokesperson for the social media giant "issued a statement saying the video was pulled because the content contradicted the guidance of the local health authority."
Was it because the doctors pointed out that there has never once been a pandemic in human history in which the response has been to quarantine the healthy instead of the sick?
“We quickly remove flagged content that violate our Community Guidelines, including content that explicitly disputes the efficacy of local healthy (sic) authority recommended guidance on social distancing that may lead others to act against that guidance," said the statement. "However, content that provides sufficient educational, documentary, scientific or artistic (EDSA) context is allowed -- for example, news coverage of this interview with additional context. From the very beginning of the pandemic, we’ve had clear policies against COVID-19 misinformation (emphasis mine) and are committed to continue providing timely and helpful information at this critical time.”
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Does it make sense for YouTube to exercise censorship so as to prevent any alternative viewpoint on a significant issue that impacts all of us? I do concede that they have a right to maintain standards. On the other hand, how do we learn what is true and what is not if we're not even permitted to hear something contrary to a government sanctioned point of view? (And in this case, they stated it was a local health policy, which seems to stretch credulity.) How can the court of public opinion draw accurate conclusions on important matters if they are not permitted to hear more than one side of an issue?
Abraham Lincoln went out of his way to hear all sides on important issues and maintained a cabinet comprised of contrary views for the express purpose of listening as they each argued their positions.
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Here's the beginning of that ABC News story.BAKERSFIELD, Calif. — YouTube issued a statement Tuesday regarding the removal of a video press briefing with Accelerated Urgent Care doctors Dan Erickson and Artin Massihi. The video was the first of two videos playing the entire briefing from a press conference last week. Reports of the video being taken down suggest YouTube pulled it for violating community guidelines.
23ABC received an email from YouTube on April 27 giving the station notification the video had been taken down, citing YouTube’s “community guidelines.” 23ABC has appealed the ruling through YouTube.
23ABC News also reached out to YouTube regarding the notification and a company spokesperson issued a statement saying the video was pulled because the content contradicted the guidance of the local health authority.
YOU CAN READ THE REST OF THE STORY HERE:
https://www.turnto23.com/news/coronavirus/video-interview-with-dr-dan-erickson-and-dr-artin-massihi-taken-down-from-youtube
AND WATCH THE ORIGINAL CENSORED VIDEO HERE:
https://www.turnto23.com/news/coronavirus/accelerated-urgent-care-doctors-recommend-lifting-shelter-in-place-order
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When I wrote my original blog post, my working title was, The Most Important BIog Post of My Life. While posting I changed it to the softer, less hysterical-sounding Important Information Related to COVID-19 -- April 24.
ADDENDUM: Here is a blog post that presents an opposing point of view regarding the statements made by Dr. Erickson, claiming it to be shoddy statistics and false claims.
For what it's worth, it's sometimes useful to be aware of the psychology concept of "confirmation bias." We're all, to some extent, stained by pre-existing presuppositions. Our inability to observe things through a totally objective lens ought to keep us humble. All too often we don't know what we don't know.
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1 comment:
The big Youtube purge that first demonetized, then shadow-banned, and then outright deleted I don't know how many Youtube videos and entire channels took place 2 years ago.
There was considerable msm-type "earnest debate" over the deletion of the Alex Jones Channel (which probably didn't lose one iota of its viewership, because his followers just watched it directly via Jones' own channel).
But some of the subjects that were deleted almost to oblivion and whose deletion has NOT been loudly and "earnestly" debated on msm are deeply researched "conspiracy theories" regarding:
(1) the 2-3-time-a-week "mass shootings" that suddenly began to be plastered all over the "News" after the 2012 Smith Mundt Modernization Act of 2012 (https://www.congress.gov/bill/112th-congress/house-bill/5736/text), which Act for the first time legalized propaganda being targeted at the American audience (rather than only at foreign audiences, as before),
(2) which country was actually behind and is obviously the only country to have profited from 9/11,
(3) who besides "commies" and "rogue CIA" and "right-wing nazis" actually had the most and clearest incentive to get rid of JFK and RFK and keep the truth covered up,
(4) injuries and deaths allegedly caused by vaccines, especially when the "conspiracy theories" are backed by parental and medical testimony of the injuries or decline having begun on the very same day that the vaccinations took place,
(5) "hate speech" that insufficiently hates upon the anti-Bolshevik German NSDAP of the 1930's and early 1940's, and that points out extensive "revisionist" research into the official history of the internment camps of that era,
and now,
(5) questioning of or disagreement with the WHO / mainstream media / official accounts of the COVID-19 super-dangerous killer virus and the necessity for a world-wide lockdown, stay-at-home and social distancing orders, and mandatory universal vaccinations to "keep people safe".
A lot of the "conspiracy" videos have moved to alternative platforms such as Bitchute, D-live, and 153news dot net. (The latter platform had its server brazenly stolen off a rack of servers about a month ago, but has managed to get back "on the air" with financial support from viewers.)
A large number of people never get beyond the msm and Wikipedia, then of those who do, a very large percent never go beyond Youtube and cursory Google searches before they start to quake in fear and shame of being branded "conspiracy theorists".
But the truth does not fear open debate. The only thing that fears open debate is the lie, and the only thing that protects the lie is censorship to stifle the truth that would expose it.
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