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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

#351

Post by yongjik »

aantthony wrote: post #313
stevebmark wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I believe in shining a light on them I hear this a lot. Light is the best disinfectant. What evidence do you have for this? I've never seen a bad or immoral or harmful idea die out when more people learn about it and scrutinize it. However, I have repeatedly seen the opposite: Sharing bad ideas increases their audience, increases ignorance, hate, fear, and human suffering. You're looking at an article describing th…

> What evidence do you have for this? I've never seen a bad or immoral or harmful idea die out when more people learn about it and scrutinize it. There is a significant amount of evidence for it. For example, one could measure the effects of showing people fact-checks, and it has been demonstrated that it does indeed work: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fact-checking#Effects And there are countless ideas that have die…

> flat earth (before Galileo)

That people thought the Earth was flat before Galileo is a meme. Even Ancient Greeks knew it was round.

> pro-slavery views

In 1776, America is born with its Freedom(TM). In 1829, Mexico abolishes slavery. In 1835, Texas revolts, resulting in Republic of Texas (1836), which then merges with the US (1846), which triggers the Mexican-American War (1846-1848), which leads to, among other things, recognition that Texas is a part of a slave-holding nation. Slavery won't be abolished until the Civil War (1861-1865).

In the end, slavery wasn't abolished by debates: it was abolished by literally sending troops to shoot slave owners.

> communism

Karl Marx wrote Das Kapital in London while writing articles for New-York Daily Tribune. Whatever its merits are, his ideas were widely known throughout Europe, and still accepted widely enough to turn Russia into Soviet Union.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#352

Post by aantthony »

quazeekotl wrote: post #328
zozbot234 wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because "sunlight" includes the norms of a free and intellectually-open society, which didn't develop until well after those thousands of years. Censorship itself is not even that bad merely due to how it might deal with the YouTube fruitcake du jour; it's really , really bad because it's openly destructive of these hard-gained shared norms, in so many ways.

Maybe, but the argument is that mere public existence of an idea effectively promotes correct ideas and demotes incorrect ideas. That is absolutely not in evidence.

My comment wasn't about whether people knew these practices were occurring. People knew they were occurring.

The mere public existence of an idea (like in some dusty old book that nobody reads) is not sufficient to change majority option, no.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#353

Post by p1necone »

mrkeen wrote: post #175
scythe wrote: post #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?

> Does David Icke have a following that isn't just laughing along with it? I thought the same thing about flat earth a while ago.

I like flat earth because it's relatively harmless, while also being wacky as all hell. Of course it attracts a bunch of people who are into other, actually harmful conspiracy theories too.

I miss when it was all flat earth and aliens and bigfoot, rather than white supremacy and denying the validity of a global pandemic that's actually killing people.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#354

Post by knzhou »

koheripbal wrote: post #340
knzhou wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a "marketplace of ideas", in practice it's a used car dealership. Just about anybody with the slightest bit of cleverness and free time can convince any trusting person of anything whatsoever, no matter how horrible, given enough exposure.

So the alternative is to create "oracles of truth" that cannot be questioned? That's just the opposite idiotic extreme.

Who said that? The range of bullshit information you can find at a moment's whim remains extremely high, in fact higher than it ever has been in history.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#355

Post by dempseye »

imgabe wrote: post #276
throwaway2048 wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But under your logic, Hitler was not the problem, and should have been free to say whatever he liked, correct?

People are responsible for their own actions. "Hitler told me to" or "David Icke told me to" do not excuse anything someone does. I believe we established particularly after WWII that "I was just following orders" is not a valid defense to committing atrocities. You might also want to remember that one of the first things Hitler did after getting power was to outlaw any opposition parties and violently break up meeti…

We also established the principle of command responsibility.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#356

Post by Zenst »

lovehashbrowns wrote: post #303
Zenst wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>ugh there are literally people who think the Earth is flat. There are literally people who think the Earth is flat! True, should they ban that as well? Though they havn't been going around flattening mountains or any other harm, so there is that. Not all those who believe conspiracy stuff, act upon it. Some will, those are more the ones who will engage in lesser, more niche platforms in which such content will run,…

When flat Earthers start protesting quarantines during a pandemic, try to intimidate elected officials with guns, try to destroy 5g towers, and threaten employees of a private company, yeah we can talk about taking them off youtube. I don't understand how you think these channels aren't echo chambers already. They are... Them being on youtube doesn't change that. It only allows them to easily reach millions of people…

Sure it allows millions, but how many will take it seriously and how many will be sat on the fence about it. By removing them from youtube you put those sat on the fence down a path of thinking, ok what are they hiding here. You also push those who believe it anyhow away from any exposure of debate towards niche area's, area's in which those sat on the fence may visit and without balanced debate, get drawn into things even deeper.

Maybe the right action for this, maybe not. Hard to really measure it beyond cell tower death rates and I'm fairly sure we have past the peak upon that surge.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#357

Post by knzhou »

aantthony wrote: post #341
quazeekotl wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So you're arguing that once the public knows the truth... then the public will know the truth? Does sound like a rather weak claim, doesn't it?

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#358

Post by imgabe »

quazeekotl wrote: post #337
imgabe wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is giving a speech a crime? Which speeches are crimes? Who is going to determine that? You? More importantly, who would you like to put in charge of determining whether your speech is a crime? Contrary to what is expressed above, Hitler did much more than give speeches. He also gave orders which is a different thing entirely. Saying "Gee I wish so-and-so were dead" is not a crime in any reasonable democracy. Telling…

So you would be perfectly fine with Hitler at least being elected then, and anyone who tried to stop him would be a bad person?

Supporting the right of people to participate in free and fair elections does not imply that you agree with the outcome of every election. Can you understand that?

The question is where the responsibility lies. Hitler did not elect himself. The responsibility for electing Hitler lies with...the people who voted for Hitler. Where else would you put it?

As to whether someone who "tries to stop him" is a bad person, that depends on what you mean by tries to stop him. One of the benefits of not censoring dissent is that we can hear many different points of view, and hopefully choose better ones. So, of course there is no problem with trying to stop anyone by making a better argument and doing a better job of rallying people to your cause.

If you mean, "Do I think it's OK to murder political candidates as long as I'm sufficiently convinced they'll be evil", no I don't. Keep in mind that there are people who feel about Obama or FDR the way you feel about Hitler and reconsider whether you want to condone murdering anyone you disagree with.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#359

Post by rasengan »

imgabe wrote: post #164

I'm not going to shed a tear for David Icke, but this quote is very concerning: > YouTube has clear policies prohibiting any content that disputes the existence and transmission of Covid-19 as described by the WHO [World Health Organization] and the NHS [the U.K's healthcare system] [emphasis added] The WHO at least has been flat out wrong several times during this pandemic, such as telling people not to wear masks.…

They are doing this with the intention to stop you and all of us from questioning authorities.

The internet has proven to be way too powerful.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#360

Post by BurningFrog »

stevebmark wrote: post #171
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…

> I believe in shining a light on them I hear this a lot. Light is the best disinfectant. What evidence do you have for this? I've never seen a bad or immoral or harmful idea die out when more people learn about it and scrutinize it. However, I have repeatedly seen the opposite: Sharing bad ideas increases their audience, increases ignorance, hate, fear, and human suffering. You're looking at an article describing th…

> * I've never seen a bad or immoral or harmful idea die out when more people learn about it and scrutinize it.*

If this was true, all bad or immoral or harmful ideas from all of human history should currently be vigorously alive.

That is obviously not the case.

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