Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

newsweek.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

361–370 of 923 posts

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#361

Post by aantthony »

yongjik wrote: post #351
aantthony wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 th…

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

Well knowledge wasn't spread as easily, and could be lost. People knew, then they didn't and so on. It doesn't detract from my point that flat earth is an example of an idea that died off when more people learn about it and scrutinize it.

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

Abolishment of slavery took many angles since it was a massive change of society. Sure, you can pick one country where it required a war. But that doesn't mean the battle of ideas aspect is any less important. Even to rally troops you need to convince them their ideas are worth fighting for.

> (communism) still accepted widely enough to turn Russia into Soviet Union

Sure, and then we saw the results, and the bad idea died off (mostly)

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#362

Post by ThomPete »

knzhou wrote: post #354
koheripbal wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

so what?

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#363

Post by zozbot234 »

rasengan wrote: post #359
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.

It's a lot simpler than that, really. YouTube is not "the internet", it's just someone else's computer. That someone wants to be regarded by the general public as a trusted source free of "fake news" (whatever those might be) and as a free and open platform for anyone to post to if they want. That's just not going to work, of course. What's really going to happen is anyone's guess.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#364

Post by ars »

afrcnc wrote: post #104
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…

There's no free speech if the guy is lying on purpose on public issues. You're entering propaganda territory.

> There's no free speech if the guy is lying on purpose on public issues.

Yes. There is. If you only have free speech for things other people think are true, that's hardly free speech.

> You're entering propaganda territory.

Absolutely, and yet, free speech means you can do that.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#365

Post by mirimir »

couchand wrote: post #319
mirimir wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There have been issues more recently with vaccine safety. Or at least, there were enough lawsuits to start frightening off vaccine manufacturers. Since 1986, however, they've been insulated from lawsuits under federal law:[0] > The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, ..., as amended, created the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP), a no-fault alternative to the traditional tort system. It p…

A business decision to avoid risk of costly litigation is not at all the same as actual harm. If you have any information on actual harm, please share it. Otherwise, please leave your FUD at the door.

So you don't believe that people ought to have the right to sue when injured?

Also, calling stuff "FUD" is a classic strategy to escape responsibility. For example, the tobacco industry claimed that lung cancer risk was FUD for decades. Other examples include groundwater pollution, asbestos, and lead paint.

Not to mention human overpopulation. Which is arguably the root cause of the COVID-19 pandemic. Along with HIV and Ebola, and likely more to come. And of course global climate change, which may well kick serious ass in coming decades.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#366

Post by koheripbal »

joshuamorton wrote: post #257
longtom wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The WHO seems to have been embarrassingly wrong or overconfident on many accounts: 1. Global air travel does not need to be stopped. 2. There is no evidence of human-to-human transmission. 3. There is still a "window of opportunity". 4. Masks don't work (but health workers need them!). 5. The CFR is like 4%.

> Global air travel does not need to be stopped. This isn't what the WHO said. They said bans on air from specific places (especially those that disrupt supply chains) are bad. This is true. Banning all air travel to/from china would have hurt medical supply chains in the US, with very little benefit. > 2. There is no evidence of human-to-human transmission. When this claim was made (in early january), there was not…

Having watched their briefings each day in Jan and Feb, this is absolutely not what the said. If you're going to misquote them, at least provide sources.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#367

Post by koheripbal »

knzhou wrote: post #179
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.…

Do you have a standard in mind that's better than the WHO? Would you prefer content prohibited on the basis of whether it sounds right or wrong to a random Google employee?

NIH? CDC? Their statements were more accurate.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#368

Post by teddyh »

imgabe wrote: post #317
quazeekotl wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So Hitler was guilty of no crimes then? It would have been a good, or at least morally obligated thing that nobody stopped him, yes?

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…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_no_one_rid_me_of_this_tur...

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#369

Post by bamboozled »

bamboozled wrote: post #118
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.

Yup, this will just reinforce the idea that Mr Icke is "onto something" and that's why he needed to be silenced.

I don't really get the down vote here, if people think trying to silence someone would actually make conspiracy theorists less likely to believe this guy, then I'm kind of shocked?

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#370

Post by unishark »

knzhou wrote: post #350
unishark wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 megaph…

I'm not making a slippery-slope argument or freaking out over anything. Just noting the metric you are using will always prefer a more authoritarian response. I.e., did the policy work to silence every example I can find for any conspiracy theory that might survive to gain attention? Defenders of free speech obviously want us to take the bad with the good.

As for the internet, I think of it as technology that brings advances also brings new problems. Sometimes we just have to accept them.

Not that I'm against YouTube censoring their content as a private company, by the way. Just defending a quote here.

Post reply on HN