Submitted 1 year ago by L4s@lemmy.world [bot] to technology@lemmy.world
https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/15/23832603/youtube-cancer-treatment-misinformation-policy-medical
YouTube starts mass takedowns of videos promoting ‘harmful or ineffective’ cancer cures | The platform will also take action against videos that discourage people from seeking professional medical …::YouTube will remove content about harmful or ineffective cancer treatments or which “discourages viewers from seeking professional medical treatment.”
that probably means that advertisers started to have issue with that, and it didn’t bother them for well over decade
This is the best summary I could come up with:
YouTube hopes that this policy framework will be flexible enough to cover a broad range of medical topics, while finding a balance between minimizing harm and allowing debate.
In its blog post, YouTube says it would take action both against treatments that are actively harmful, as well as those that are unproven and are being suggested in place of established alternatives.
YouTube’s updated policies come a little over three years after it banded together with some of the world’s biggest tech platforms to make a shared commitment to fight covid-19 misinformation.
While the major tech platforms stood united in early 2020, their exact approaches to covid-19 misinformation have differed since that initial announcement.
Most notably, Twitter stopped enforcing its covid-19 misinformation policy in late 2022 following its acquisition by Elon Musk.
Meta has also softened its moderation approach recently, rolling back its covid-19 misinformation rules in countries (like the US) where the disease is no longer considered a national emergency.
I’m a bot and I’m open source!
YouTube hopes that this policy framework will be flexible enough to cover a broad range of medical topics, while finding a balance between minimizing harm and allowing debate.
there’s nothing to debate
Who determines what is ineffective or harmful?
I mean chemo isn’t puppies and rainbows.
I mean chemo is effective. It fucks you up. But it’s okay good at “curing” cancer.
Well colour me shocked. That YT would do the bidding of big pharma… Never.
You’re right, we should let these scammers prey on vulnerable people when they’re at their most hopeless. They don’t deserve their money! They won’t have any use for it!
Fallacy much?
The fact that there’s debate about the efficancy of certain medicine doesn’t change the fact that we atleast have a relatively good idea about what doesn’t work. People like Steve Jobs would probably have a thing or two to say about that aswell.
“Big pharma” has better things to do than produce purposely harmful medicine. Fortunately, poisoning your customers is a big danger to profitability. If at all, a “traditional medicine” approach that was not a scam would be immediately adopted, marketed and commodified by the pharma industry, not suppressed and fought.
“Big pharma” companies do have a potential interest in covering up the harms of medicines in their patent rosters. If it doesn’t straight up kill their customers, it’s less money they have to spend on R&D for less harmful treatments.
Not to imply random snake oil assholes selling ivermectin etc. don’t have similar, worse interests. But no one in the space whatsoever is just immune from standing to gain from doing something bad without serious oversight from all angles.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemisinin
there are probably more, starting with aspirin (salicin), modern opioids (opium) and modern anticholinergics (atropine). there’s also plenty of stuff in traditional medicine that maybe does nothing beneficial or even kinda works but it’s way too toxic for modern regulatory agencies, like all heavy metals and aconitine
Reva@startrek.website 1 year ago
On the one hand, good on them for removing conspiracy theories and harmful fake medical information. This is an important step to preventing this kind of abuse and grifting.
On the other hand, “discouragement of professional treatment” is pretty vague. In a world where there are such massive issues within psychiatry especially, with forced clinic stays, abusive “therapies” like conversion therapy, irresponsibly administered medication and plenty of bigotry within the medical community when it comes to hot issues like intersex people, trans people, narcissism or schizophrenia, discouraging some people from going to that is an important part of disability and mental health activism.
I hope this will not be used in that way.