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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

#341

Post by aantthony »

quazeekotl wrote: post #335
aantthony wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why has the goalpost moved from an idea dying out, to dying out within one day? And who is "we"? > Most of them _everyone_ knew about for thousands, or even tens of thousands of years That's not true. People didn't know about it. When the sunlight came, people changed their beliefs relatively quickly compared to how long the false beliefs were held. Sometimes within a few years, but generally within a generation.

Do you really think people at large didn't know about hanging, slavery, human sacrifice, and ideas about a flat earth in societies where these ideas were applicable?

I meant they didn't know the truth about them. They obviously knew that slavery was occurring.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#342

Post by AnthonyMouse »

knzhou wrote: post #338
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/07/08/gay-rites-are-civil-ri... First you show the world you exist and convince your friends it's worth trying to change things, then you convince the moderates, then you win the fight, then you wait for your bitter enemies to die because they'll never be convinced but at least their kids are open to new ideas. Pissing off your bitter enemies can be hard to avoid and still get the job…

But this article is making my exact point. By the time gay marriage was actually gaining acceptance, the largest pride parades had become as tame as 4th of July celebrations, with SF pride marching with the police, the mayor, and Google employees. They're completely different from their predecessors, like the Stonewall riots.

Because it's a different stage of the fight. You don't start off having a parade with the mayor in it because the mayor won't give you the time of day until your movement is big enough to be taken seriously, which starts with getting noticed and getting out the base. Being bland and studious doesn't do that.

And the parades are still full of weirdos, but they won, so now it's okay.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#343

Post by koheripbal »

Gatsky wrote: post #99

I don’t understand the free speech arguments here. Youtube is an advertising platform. They can do what they want with their platform. If I own a billboard, and someone wants to advertise their bags for dead kittens, I can say no. There needs to be some sense of proportionality. If the government bashed down Icke’s door and smashed his computer then sure, we should worry about free speech. But getting banned from You…

At some point, organizations get so big and so ubiquitous, that they become quasi-governmental organizations.

Google shares data with intelligence services, they have close contacts in the administration, they are a near-monopoly in multiple areas, they have a tremendous number of government contracts, they spend more on lobbying in DC than any other organization.

If we abdicate our rights to these organizations, the government can simply use them as a mechanism of enforcement that obviates the entire Bill of Rights.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#344

Post by floatingatoll »

giantDinosaur wrote: post #302
floatingatoll wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument is that people’s individual freedom to speak anything should be held in higher regard than the welfare of society, regardless of what harmful outcomes may come from that speech. It’s a core tenet of American racists and fascists (and, I suspect, conspiracy theorists), because otherwise they wouldn’t be able to convert others to their cause without being silenced by their platforms.

You could have applied those arguments to all social progressive movements of the 20th century. Gay rights? Those were considered fundamentally abhorrent perversions, suitable for prison & physical elimination. The 'welfare of society'? We define that as much after the fact as anything else. At one point, that was down to censoring anti-slavery positions. How can you possibly consistently make that determination with…

It’s always possible to make an incorrect decision in service of the greater good, but that’s no excuse to give up concern for the greater good forever.

Your argument also neatly contradicts personal gun ownership: “Someone was shot yesterday by their neighbor during an argument, so we should ban individual possession of weapons since guns have been used to enforce disagreeable opinions on others.”

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#345

Post by zozbot234 »

knzhou wrote: post #338
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/07/08/gay-rites-are-civil-ri... First you show the world you exist and convince your friends it's worth trying to change things, then you convince the moderates, then you win the fight, then you wait for your bitter enemies to die because they'll never be convinced but at least their kids are open to new ideas. Pissing off your bitter enemies can be hard to avoid and still get the job…

But this article is making my exact point. By the time gay marriage was actually gaining acceptance, the largest pride parades had become as tame as 4th of July celebrations, with SF pride marching with the police, the mayor, and Google employees. They're completely different from their predecessors, like the Stonewall riots.

The point stands that even these seemingly "queer", radically expressed ideas clearly became a lot tamer, less insolently-stated and more agreeable over time, despite the lack of anything approaching real censorship. That's precisely what you want if you care about not harming society at large, especially in the longer run.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#346

Post by knzhou »

sjwalter wrote: post #330

Man, this comment thread is really harshing my buzz. So many folks here seem real eager to hype their systems and methods for ensuring all this oh-so easily identifiable misinformation has no route to most, which when implemented would stop this huge threat to our civilization. Typing up their clever ideas, full of good intentions (not being sarcastic, my default presumption is you all mean well), each author implici…

There really is no need for hysteria here. If YouTube began issuing a million times more bans, it might approach the quality of an average newspaper in terms of accuracy. Would we be living in a dystopia at that point? No, we'd be living just like we did in the year 2000, when YouTube wasn't around but newspapers were. Just like a nutjob in 2000, Icke still has print, radio, TV, going outside with a megaphone, and going door to door with pamphlets to promote his message. In fact, he's even luckier, because he still has access to the entire rest of the internet.

But wait, you say: in the year 2000, Icke wouldn't have been able to get a following of millions on print or radio! They wouldn't have let him on! Indeed, so what this actually proves is that in 2020, there is far more free speech than there was in 2000. We are at historically high levels of free speech. Freaking out over this is like thinking we've gone back to the Bronze Age every time the stock market goes down 1%.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#347

Post by Talanes »

olliej wrote: post #318
Talanes wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the Declaration of Independence explicitly stated the slaves were not people. That is categorically not true. It said some problematic things about Native Americans for sure, but they could never have gotten away with pro-slavery language in the Declaration. It's a propaganda document that had to unite wide swaths of revolutionary ideologies; abolitionists included. I assume that you are actually thinking of the 3/…

The DoI did not release slaves, which is fairly explicit statement that slaves are people. Of course Deciding that slaves were 3/5th of a person, and slavery was legal is an explicit statement the “all men are created equal” was not something believed by the signatories of the DoI. That said the “State power” argument in this case has always been the justification for the treason committed by the confederacy. When fa…

>The DoI did not release slaves, which is fairly explicit statement that slaves are people. Of course Deciding that slaves were 3/5th of a person, and slavery was legal is an explicit statement the “all men are created equal” was not something believed by the signatories of the DoI.

You're treating two different documents that were written 14 years apart by two diffent, though strongly overlapping, groups of people as if they were statements someone made back to back. Did Thomas Jefferson believe the words "All Men" included the slaves he owned when he penned those words? Fuck no! But he still wrote the words in a way that men who did believe that "All Men" meant ALL men could get behind it. Compare this to how he describes the Natives.

"He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions."

By examining the nuance, you can start to see a fuller shape of the society. Slavery was a hot button issue that was left unspoken until the moment it unquestionably has to be addressed. The Native Americans are considered savage and warlike, and that is an uncontroversial view.

I understand the impulse to fight back against whitewashed history, but throwing out all nuance isn't helpful no matter what cause it is in service to.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#348

Post by unishark »

knzhou wrote: post #309
unishark wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's a silly analogy because sunlight won't do squat for many infections. There are clearly better disinfectants out there. But in terms of speech, a better quote is: the best response to bad speech is good speech.

That's an idealistic statement but a false one. Bullshit is much easier to produce than truth, and is inherently much more appealing, because it isn't constrained by having to be true. For example, the "good speech" counterpart of David Icke is a number of real experts who are taking to Twitter and blogs. I've seen a few. They usually have single digit reach. In five minutes, Icke can reach a larger audience than all…

Perhaps you'd prefer a quote like: the best response to bad speech is an authoritarian censor with unlimited powers to silence and imprison people? Because if your only criterion is effectiveness at silencing someone I think that misses the point. Built into the statement is the idea that otherwise the cure (censorship) is worse than the disease.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#349

Post by Barrin92 »

Mirioron wrote: post #107
Barrin92 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Yay another extremist swept under the digital carpet, problem solved - well NO. Well yes, at least partially. Studies of bans on hate communities on reddit have shown effectiveness not only in reducing the total hate, but also, and this is important, changing the behaviour of individual users who were active in the hate communities as they moved towards more moderate, diverse communities. [...] "What they found was…

The studies show that it reduced the amount of overt hate speech on reddit. That's not the same thing as reducing hate speech on reddit nor is it the same thing as reducing hate speech total. The people who left might've ended up creating seeds elsewhere. We don't know that. Furthermore, overt hate speech isn't necessarily the problem for society. It matters more for society what beliefs someone holds than what they…

>Furthermore, overt hate speech isn't necessarily the problem for society. It matters more for society what beliefs someone holds than what they are willing to express

What beliefs people hold in their heads is the result of a multitude of factors and upbringing and it's really beyond our ability and probably not a good idea to think we can somehow turn every racist into a non-racist with sufficient facts and thoughts and prayer or personal coaching.

What we can do is intervene when it comes to racists acting on their racism, be that in the form of public speech acts or even violence, that is to say when they participate in public life, for example on internet platforms.

>The Soviet Union is an example of that - people outwardly expressed agreement with the government, but secretly were against it.

And what happened to the Soviet Union when all those people were able to express their dissent? Nothing good. If you're saying that racists are going to be as empowered by lack of supression as dissidents were in the Soviet Union I'm not sure you're making a great case for ignoring their propaganda.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#350

Post by knzhou »

unishark wrote: post #348
knzhou wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an idealistic statement but a false one. Bullshit is much easier to produce than truth, and is inherently much more appealing, because it isn't constrained by having to be true. For example, the "good speech" counterpart of David Icke is a number of real experts who are taking to Twitter and blogs. I've seen a few. They usually have single digit reach. In five minutes, Icke can reach a larger audience than all…

Perhaps you'd prefer a quote like: the best response to bad speech is an authoritarian censor with unlimited powers to silence and imprison people? Because if your only criterion is effectiveness at silencing someone I think that misses the point. Built into the statement is the idea that otherwise the cure (censorship) is worse than the disease.

This slope isn't nearly as slippery as you're saying. If YouTube began issuing a million times more bans, it might approach the quality of an average newspaper in terms of accuracy. Would we be living in a dystopia at that point? No, we'd be living just like we did in the year 2000, when YouTube wasn't around but newspapers were. Just like a nutjob in 2000, Icke still has print, radio, TV, going outside with a megaphone, and going door to door with pamphlets to promote his message. In fact, he's even luckier, because he still has access to the entire rest of the internet.

Indeed, the fact that we're here discussing Icke's massive popular impact is proof that in 2020, there is far more free speech than there was in 2000, when he was mostly ignored. We are at historically high levels of free speech. Freaking out over this is like thinking we've gone back to the Bronze Age every time the stock market goes down 1%.

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