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YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

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Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#81

Post by not2b »

all2 wrote: post #64
luckydata wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deplatforming works, that's proven. The truth is more fragile than you think.

It has worked well in every fascist/despotic state that has implemented it. Free speech, even outright lies, racism, etc. must necessarily exist in the public forum if a society is to remain free. For now, the silencing is "friendly" in that it only destroys livelihoods. If we allow it to become a norm then how long will it take a populous - now so used to being silenced - to agree to let the government silence the "…

The Weimar Republic was a free society. How'd that work out? It was destroyed by outright lies, racism, etc.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#82

Post by kiba »

ryankemper wrote: post #46

I very strongly feel that we should be very careful to avoid adopting a legalistic attitude towards freedom of speech. That is, I am opposed to the argument that private corporations are not bound by the first amendment, and therefore it's okay for them to suppress content. I agree that they're not bound by the first amendment (I don't claim to understand the nuances of the "platform" laws so I won't address that), b…

COVID-19 has added the additional element of this new concept of "disinformation". The argument is seductively simple: "being exposed to this information could lead you to engage in patterns of behavior that harm society. Therefore we can conceptualize this speech as being an indirect form of violence/negligence and therefore we have a moral obligation to remove such content".

Some people, after being exposed to misinformation, chose to believe them.

I don't believe in fighting "bad ideas" by suppressing them, I believe in shining a light on them. Let the truth fight for itself. (And of course now comes the classic counter-argument: that the evils of disinformation possess a virality that makes them spread far more easily than the truth, being that truth is nuanced and difficult to acquire whereas bad information is seductively simple. I won't address that argument here but personally I think it's a very dangerous way of thinking)

Do you have evidence that the truth more often than not win over lies?

It is possible that platforms, being designed the way they are to maximize corporations' interest naturally lead to unintended consequences.

There are billion of youtube video, nobody will be able to watch them all. So the youtube algorithm can recommend videos that are necessarily harmful based on what the person watched before.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#83

Post by cortesoft »

brenden2 wrote: post #11

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/

If you hold this absolutest view of free speech, does that mean you don't believe that fraud should be a crime? I am allowed to just blatantly lie about anything under the cover of free speech, right?

What about libel or slander? Can I say that brenden2 is a murderer, and make a website with photoshopped pictures of you killing people?

Free speech has limits, and telling blatant lies meant to mislead people is one of those limits. Telling people to drink bleach to cure COVID-19 is not protected under free speech.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#84

Post by mythrwy »

ryankemper wrote: post #46

I very strongly feel that we should be very careful to avoid adopting a legalistic attitude towards freedom of speech. That is, I am opposed to the argument that private corporations are not bound by the first amendment, and therefore it's okay for them to suppress content. I agree that they're not bound by the first amendment (I don't claim to understand the nuances of the "platform" laws so I won't address that), b…

When the platform receives 85% (or whatever the percent is) of all video sharing internet traffic "we are a private organization!" shouldn't really apply.

Become a semi-monopoly of public discourse and obey the rule of free speech!

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#85

Post by beart »

brenden2 wrote: post #52
rajup wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

YouTube is a de facto public utility at this point. IMO if they want it to be a closed ecosystem, they should not allow public access the way they currently do. There's no good alternative to YouTube (yet) but I hope there is some day. Pushing people to the fringes just breeds more hatred, outrage, misinformation, and extremists. Imagine if there was just one phone company and they only let people who they agree with…

Terrible analogy. YouTube is not the only video host. Video hosts are not the only way to share or consume content.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#87

Post by chasing »

Zenst wrote: 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.

> This will just shift this extremist content to other unregulated and unmonitored platforms...

Good. YouTube doesn’t need to be promoting every flavor of garbage known to man. That’s why the rest of the internet exists.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#88

Post by ryankemper »

DonHopkins wrote: post #65
dvt wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.…

What's wrong with YouTube and Facebook exercising a bit of "benevolent despotism"?

The classic problem - who decides what behavior is benevolent?

"$INSERT_POSITIVE_ADJECTIVE despotism" is still despotism.

So it comes down to each person's belief set - do they believe that despotism is unfortunate when misapplied but is a force for good in the right hands? Or do they instead believe that all forms of control inevitably will get seized by corrupt forces? Or more radically, that the entire concept of control is inherently contradictory when seen in the broader context of us having brains with limited computational power, limited knowledge, forever bounded by time in a locally deterministic universe, and thus any attempt to seize control just furthers the propagation of ignorance that the "benevolent despotists" are ironically trying to eradicate?

The answer is left as an exercise to the reader.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#90

Post by kspacewalk2 »

stolen_biscuit wrote: post #27
Zenst wrote: 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.

This comment would feel so natural to a Putinist apparatchik.
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