The problem with your argument is that you assume that legitimate voices won't be coöpted by people pushing some agenda that is not supported by any data; i.e. you assume that the people on the other side of the "public debate" are operating in good faith. There is no debate when one side is not seriously & honestly looking at the data.
It's good to debate science and to question whether vaccines are safe and effective. The problem is that if someone with any credentials asks these questions in public, a firestorm of antivaxxers will immediately create thousands of posts claiming "doctor questions the safety of the vaccines." Most people who read those posts won't take the time to understand the nuance -- their takeaway will be "this confirms my belief that the vaccine was rushed/etc."
That's not to say that these debates shouldn't happen -- they absolutely should, but not on YouTube or social media where nuance is easily lost. During a global pandemic the consequence of airing objections in public on social media can mean that thousands of people might not get vaccinated because of bad or malicious actors. That leads to real deaths.
By censoring the debate on youtube, you're basically confirming to the wacko conspiracy theorists that there is in fact a conspiracy. The damage to civil society is far greater than a little misinformation.
The solution to bad speech is more speech. Speaking of nuance easily lost, an algorithm is not going to be able to figure out the nuance required to censor rationally. Honestly, I don't think most humans are capable of it. Best to err on the side of letting information spread.
"By censoring the debate on youtube, you're basically confirming to the wacko conspiracy theorists that there is in fact a conspiracy."
This is an excellent point. My view has been these are wackos but you can't silence wackos without giving someone in authority the discretion to decide who to label a wacko. But as you point out, having the discretion to decide someone is a wacko and has ideas too dangerous to be heard, at a large organized scale, actually is a conspiracy.
Agree, I saw multiple times that someone who actually discussing topic from their area from expertise, who tried to remove some hyperbole media added. For example he was saying that lockdowns (like an actual lockdowns) only made sense initially when there was a possibility to contain it.
The anti-vaxxers cut it out of context and spreaded it on FB and sounded like someone with credentials was basically saying that all precautions were not needed and this was all fake pandemic (this was a year ago, BTW before we had vaccines).
Written by a Google employee. This totalitarian thinking is a perfect example why the US is declining so rapidly into a poorer oligarchy. He (Xir?) is convinced that vaccines are necessary for COVID, and that plebes that use his product are too stupid for "nuance". Thus it should be banned speech. Thinking about it, there were discussions even in Nazi Germany or in the Soviet Russia: except that plebes went jail for them. They were the privilege of the very top: like Hitler discussing with Goebbels or Brezhnev with Kosygin. Or Pichai with Wojcicy in his oligarchical case.
It's good to debate science and to question whether vaccines are safe and effective. The problem is that if someone with any credentials asks these questions in public, a firestorm of antivaxxers will immediately create thousands of posts claiming "doctor questions the safety of the vaccines." Most people who read those posts won't take the time to understand the nuance -- their takeaway will be "this confirms my belief that the vaccine was rushed/etc."
That's not to say that these debates shouldn't happen -- they absolutely should, but not on YouTube or social media where nuance is easily lost. During a global pandemic the consequence of airing objections in public on social media can mean that thousands of people might not get vaccinated because of bad or malicious actors. That leads to real deaths.