Finally, a few quacks are getting banned by YouTube.
YouTube is taking down several video channels associated with high-profile anti-vaccine activists including Joseph Mercola and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who experts say are partially responsible for helping seed the skepticism that’s contributed to slowing vaccination rates across the country.
As part of a new set of policies aimed at cutting down on anti-vaccine content on the Google-owned site, YouTube will ban any videos that claim that commonly used vaccines approved by health authorities are ineffective or dangerous. The company previously blocked videos that made those claims about coronavirus vaccines, but not ones for other vaccines like those for measles or chickenpox.
That’s nice. But Mercola, for instance, has been grifting for over a decade, peddling quack nostrums over the internet to the point where he has a net worth of over $100 million. Mercola still has a Facebook page featuring a prominent ad for his latest book, which claims you can prevent and cure COVID-19 with vitamin supplements. He sells little bottles of water with labels that claim they are homeopathic medicines. And now, belatedly, YouTube does the obvious?
I am tapping the tips of my little fingers together in the tiniest clap I can do.
Good ,I think only footage of cats should be allowed on youtube .
The fact that we allow this to occur is an indictment of our entire economic and political system.
Incidentally, several months after this policy was announced, Finnish media noticed that YouTube had “accidentally” neglected to moderate Finnish language content according to the new policy. I very much got the impression that the company had been originally dragged (kicking and screaming, as usual) into adopting this policy due to heavy criticism in English language media, concerning specifically proliferation of English language anti-vax content. So presumably, YouTube wanted to test how much, if any, bad PR shit they will get (and how fast) for various other language markets for not enacting a policy that was presumably announced in an English language press release to calm the English language market.
I expect Birger to ask you to do your clapping as slow as humanly possible. ((What do you know, I italicized the full stop as well!))
Mercola is still up on Twitter and Facebook. Hopefully they will follow Youtube’s lead like they did when they banned Alex Jones. If they had kicked Mercola off of Facebook a year ago it would have saved many lives.
Add early Devo videos and I’m in.
@7 Tay Zonday needs his own category.
@8 We need heavy metal music videos, too.
Music?
Better: Osmium – The DENSEST Metal On Earth!
René @ 4
Good point!
@7 I need my weekly fix of God Awful Movies ….and Stephen Colbert. He made the Trump years endurable.
I was recently informed by an earnest acquaintance that using a nebuliser to inhale dilute hydrogen peroxide will cure ‘any virus’. I assume he was referring to respiratory illnesses, and honestly it might actually have an effect on infected lungs, but I (layman that I am) suspect it would also damage the lungs themselves.
When I got home I looked for further information on the origins of the idea and guess where I ended up?
Joseph goddamned Mercola.
Of course.. The true irony here is that I know several people whose videos where blocked, on the grounds of “medical misinformation”, but later restored, having posted videos about how the vaccine was safe, effective, and necessary. So, this isn’t just a case of, “About time.”, its a direct reversal of the crap that was already happening.
Ok ,so only cats ,early Devo videos ,and heavy metal allowed on Youtube .
Well, also American kids hurting themselves on skateboards , Russian dash cam footage
will also be allowed .
Plus the opening theme tune to” Chorlton And the Wheelies “.
That’s it .
Skateboards?
If they strive to win the Darwin Award that is their choice, but showing it to the whole world is a bit too much like the British “gutter press”.
Tragedy: I am willing to make an exception to any video showing a cute tiger and her cubs eating a tourist that ignored the warning signs.
@15 It is way more funnier when they are rolling around in agony clutching their family jewels and someone is heard saying .
“Wow dude ,are you ok ?”
Why limit it to Tigers ,people getting out of their cars to photo Buffalos in places like Yellowstone are always good for a laugh .
I didn’t know Mercola and Kennedy were still relevant…