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YouTube Is Removing Some Nootropics Channels (vice.com)
According to Wikipedia, nootropics are drugs, supplements, and other substances that improve cognitive function, particularly executive functions, memory, creativity, or motivation, in healthy individuals. Many of them are not regulated by the Food and Drug Administration, and some have reported addiction and harm, as well as uncomfortable side effects. These concerns may be behind YouTube's recent decision to delete at least three nootropics channels over the past three days. Motherboard reports: The nootropics YouTubers don't know why YouTube penalized them. YouTube's community guidelines prohibit harmful or dangerous content, including "hard drug use," which seems like the most likely reason. [Ryan Michael Ballow, a YouTuber whose channel "Cortex Labs Nootropics" was deleted] believes it's either "pharmaceutical industry influence" or some other elements within YouTube's leadership decided to target nootropics specifically. "It's all extremely fishy, and demonstrates a continued censorship trend with YouTube," he said in an email. [Jonathan Roseland, another YouTube that recently had their channel "Limitless Mindset" deleted] guessed his channel got flagged because he made videos about kratom, an opioid-like substance that has been linked to deaths and is coming under increased government regulation. Other kratom videos have apparently been removed. But Ballow said he's never posted a video about kratom, and a search for "kratom" on YouTube pulls up countless results, including reviews. Similarly, searching for nootropics, magnesium, aniracetam, oxiracetam, and Modafinil showed no shortage of videos, including reviews.
It's hard to know why the channels were removed since YouTube declined to clarify specifics with the creators and did not respond to a request for comment. YouTube allows creators to appeal enforcement decisions, but Ballow's appeal was rejected. The rejection notice did not clearly state which guidelines were violated, but it pointed to another potential violation. YouTube "included a paragraph that states that if the sole purpose of your YouTube videos is to drive people off of the platform, said videos break the rules," Ballow said. He interpreted this to mean the fact that his videos directed viewers to other websites to buy products.
It's hard to know why the channels were removed since YouTube declined to clarify specifics with the creators and did not respond to a request for comment. YouTube allows creators to appeal enforcement decisions, but Ballow's appeal was rejected. The rejection notice did not clearly state which guidelines were violated, but it pointed to another potential violation. YouTube "included a paragraph that states that if the sole purpose of your YouTube videos is to drive people off of the platform, said videos break the rules," Ballow said. He interpreted this to mean the fact that his videos directed viewers to other websites to buy products.
YouTube removes videos without an explanation aside from an implied "because fuck you, that's why". News at 11.
YouTube rejects the appeal for reason given above. News is still at 11.
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
This is why ad-supported media can never address the harms caused by the pharmaceutical industry and the very powerful pharmaceutical lobby in the US. All those advertising dollars influence the stories covered, the news promoted, and the videos allowed to be distributed on platforms.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
It can decide who it wants on its platform.
They don't owe you anything.
Maybe because YouTube has too much power, and not enough competition?
They were giving out medical advice without a license?
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Just buy a domain (which I presume most of these people already have) and publish the videos there.
Those who are interested in that topic will certainly find them. Monetarization will be more difficult, but I'm sure the channels were made solely in the interest of science anyway. So nothing changed.
Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
The owners think of them as private spaces, but sell them to the public as public spaces. At some point they become de-facto monopolies or oligopolies (which see), and we end up having to create trust-busters, just like after the previous great depression.
davecb@spamcop.net
There's tremendous liability here. Telling people to try drug X without a medical license and the drug not coming through a properly regulated distribution channel likely leads viewers to buy it on the internet. No telling whether the drug contains what it says, perhaps just enough fentanyl to kill a rhinoceros. The danger is more in how the viewer might obtain the drug rather than the danger of the drug or advice itself. At least that's my take.
He who forgets will be destined to remember. - EV
The use of nootropics by engineering types reminds me very much of the use of "supplements" by body builders. There actually are things that work -- in fact there's a remarkable amount of overlap in the things mental and physical jocks need to do to maximize performance. Get plenty of high quality sleep. Good diet. Daily exercise. Caffeine. In fact if you include coffee and tea, the use of nootropics is nearly universal among desk workers.
The marketing of nootropic products to mental jocks looking for an edge is remarkably similar to the snake oil marketing aimed at athletes. Take a substance where an (typically very minor) effect has been seen in a couple of studies and conflate evidence with proof. Now if you think about what the brain is, the idea that there is a single non-food molecule that will make it work better is pretty-far fetched. What exactly is this magical formula supposed to be doing in the brain? And by "exact", I mean which specific brain structures are being changed and how? The answer is, usually, nobody knows, but they have some promising studies, or sometimes just a single promising study.
Here's the thing about complex systems like the brain, or the troposphere for that matter: they are rich sources of contradictory evidence and statistical outliers. A single study or even a handful of studies is evidence, but it's not proof.
Now for bodybuilding there are two, or maybe three supplements that are safe and have evidence for useful effect, but I'd argue that there are unlikely to be any true nootropic compounds. That include caffeine. People use caffeine to offset the effects of inadequate sleep and meals heavy on refined carbohydrates that trigger insulin brain fogs. They also use caffeine to interfere with a natural brain function that promotes our survival: boredom. Boredom evolved so you don't waste too much time on things that aren't going to get you fed or laid in the near future -- a category of tasks that includes most desk work. So in a way, caffeine is actually an anti-nootropic.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
There's tremendous liability here. Telling people to try drug X without a medical license [...]
This is argument by misdirection.
1) Google should bear no liability for what it's users say, and
2) Google should not be making legal decisions.
Once you go down the path of "it's the carriers' responsibility", it's really very easy to suppress all kinds of speech. Make one flashy arrest very public, and watch how the "chilling effect" causes all the carriers to clamp down on everything even remotely related, out of fear.
It's very, *very* clear that the current situation is untenable and unfair to the population.
The situation is now so bad that there is a grassroots movement calling for the breakup of the big players (google, facebook, twitter, and so on) on monopoly/antitrust grounds.
Google could be smart, recognize the growing trend, and go back to a "public commons" mode before that happens.
Or, they could continue to try to adjust public thought, try to "bring home" the election for their preferred candidates, and then get chopped up like so much cordwood.
(OTOH, that would probably be good for the users. Google has turned decidedly evil over the past few years, and "not being evil" is a competitive advantage that the smaller pieces could use to compete against each other.)
More than likely we need to move over to a torrent style video system and nas boxes with quick erase functions in case of raids. We will undoubtedly be labeled terrorists for wanting to watch non approved content.
I'm still waiting for the next gen torrents with anonymous cloud storage and with soloman tech and xor pieces such there is no content unless you have all the pieces. And pieces are shared among torrents of different content. It's all split across opaque cloud storage. (Imagine you xor a video of barney the dinosaur with a video on hacking an xbox.) In exchange for you donating storage and bandwidth you get to upvote content.
Oh noo! Boohooo!! Youtube is becoming more like NBC and HBO, who also didn't give me an automatic yes to my "let me be the executive producer of a new tv show" idea that I pitched them.
Here, I found a magic brain pill video that youtube hasn't "censored" yet. So don't worry, nootropics is still cool on youtube.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
The difference between medicine and alternative medicine, is that medicine actually works.
Just sayin'