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YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

newsweek.com

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Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#31
An amusing casualty. Newsweek states:

>David Icke, Man Behind Coronavirus 5G Conspiracy

Can this be true? Does David Icke have a following that isn't just laughing along with it? I remember his reptilian shapeshifter theory being a running joke from back when I was in high school in 2005!

Surely, someone else must have started the whole 5G conspiracy theory, right? Icke just latched on to it?

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#32

IMO censorship is wrong. To quote someone smarter than me: > I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/06/01/defend-say/

that person didn't realize the damage propaganda could do with modern tools. Unfortunate reality is our cognitive biases can be exploited, and complete freedom of speech is not in the best interest of the majority of humanity. This is a "loophole" that is exploited over and over again by climate change denialists, cigarette companies, nazis...

Yeah, and just imagine what politicians could get away with if they had laws that allowed them to prevent people from speaking their mind.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#33

IMO censorship is wrong. To quote someone smarter than me: > I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/06/01/defend-say/

that person didn't realize the damage propaganda could do with modern tools. Unfortunate reality is our cognitive biases can be exploited, and complete freedom of speech is not in the best interest of the majority of humanity. This is a "loophole" that is exploited over and over again by climate change denialists, cigarette companies, nazis...

> complete freedom of speech is not in the best interest of the majority of humanity

isn't this one if the founding principles of chinas brutal totalitarian dictatorship

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#34

IMO censorship is wrong. To quote someone smarter than me: > I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/06/01/defend-say/

that person didn't realize the damage propaganda could do with modern tools. Unfortunate reality is our cognitive biases can be exploited, and complete freedom of speech is not in the best interest of the majority of humanity. This is a "loophole" that is exploited over and over again by climate change denialists, cigarette companies, nazis...

> that person didn't realize the damage propaganda could do with modern tools.

No that person did. It's precisely why he was against censorship. Propaganda is rather useless without censorship. It's why china, north korea, nazi germany, etc had censorship.

> This is a "loophole" that is exploited over and over again by climate change denialists, cigarette companies, nazis...

Right. Imagine if cigarette companies and nazis had the power to censor...

Your comment is actually in support of free speech but you are so blinded by agenda that you can't see it.

Nazis supported censorship and used your exact reasoning to censor. Think about it. The chinese government uses your exact reasoning to censor. Think about it.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#35
post #18

Yay another extremist swept under the digital carpet, problem solved - well NO. This will just shift this extremist content to other unregulated and unmonitored platforms that will not engage in debate, but blindly accept such things. After all, if people believe this kinda stuff, cutting of the head won't stop them believing, just shifts the problem out of the public glare, at least on the surface.

Actually it's been pretty conclusively shown that removing extremist content from mainstream channels pretty much prevents the ideas from propagating in the mainstream. If the cockroaches want to crawl under the fridge there's not much you can do to stop them but you can stop them from breeding on the table.

[deleted]

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#36
post #18

Yay another extremist swept under the digital carpet, problem solved - well NO. This will just shift this extremist content to other unregulated and unmonitored platforms that will not engage in debate, but blindly accept such things. After all, if people believe this kinda stuff, cutting of the head won't stop them believing, just shifts the problem out of the public glare, at least on the surface.

Actually it's been pretty conclusively shown that removing extremist content from mainstream channels pretty much prevents the ideas from propagating in the mainstream. If the cockroaches want to crawl under the fridge there's not much you can do to stop them but you can stop them from breeding on the table.

> Actually it's been pretty conclusively shown that removing extremist content from mainstream channels pretty much prevents the ideas from propagating in the mainstream.

Actually, no it hasn't. And for anyone that holds such a viewpoint, I'd strongly suggest reading J. S. Mill's classic, On Liberty[1] -- a foundational document of Western political thought.

[1] https://www.gutenberg.org/files/34901/34901-h/34901-h.htm

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#37

IMO censorship is wrong. To quote someone smarter than me: > I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/06/01/defend-say/

It's not censorship by any means; YouTube isn't the government. David Icke and his ilk should feel free to take their lunatic fringe theories to the lunatic fringe corners of the Internet like Breitbart etc. They won't be "censored" there.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#38
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what happened is the trolls and insane people got all the clicks and it made the public dumber.

Would that have happened if these platforms "organised _the world's_ information, and made it _accessible_ and useful" instead of using engagement driven filter bubbles?

Facebook would be #1 in online advertising and we'd be using Bing on our Windows Phones.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#39
post #18

Yay another extremist swept under the digital carpet, problem solved - well NO. This will just shift this extremist content to other unregulated and unmonitored platforms that will not engage in debate, but blindly accept such things. After all, if people believe this kinda stuff, cutting of the head won't stop them believing, just shifts the problem out of the public glare, at least on the surface.

It's not a binary. The more places extremists can find like-minded people, the more their worldview is normalized and validated. The fewer places, the higher the probability that they realize (or be continuously confronted by) how far out their views are, and the less extremist a position they'll end up taking.

I genuinely don't think universal free speech is the answer, because people aren't confronted with the counterargument until they seek it out. If you could guarantee that argument, it would be much safer. But I don't think it's possible with today's media; people exist in a bubble of both their own choosing and algorithmic choosing, and aren't challenged.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#40
post #9

[flagged]

Whether or not you agree with him is one thing. Youtube, Facebook, and other companies are treading a very thin line around Provider vs Publisher. Sure, most people might think that Icke doesn't make much sense, but how long until something _you_ like is censored off the platform? If you truly do believe in a table for rational discussion all ideas should be considered regardless of how far-out they may seen. By bann…

>[…] a very thin line around Provider vs Publisher.

Nope. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/04/no-section-230-does-no...

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