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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

#381

Post by Frondo »

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…

Facts don't generally change people's minds.

Google "do facts convince people" and you'll see lots of stuff about this. Here's one, from scientificamerican.com...

> In a series of experiments by Dartmouth College professor Brendan Nyhan and University of Exeter professor Jason Reifler, the researchers identify a related factor they call the backfire effect “in which corrections actually increase misperceptions among the group in question.” Why? “Because it threatens their worldview or self-concept.”

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-to-convince-s...

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#382

Post by knzhou »

thebean11 wrote: post #376
knzhou wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There are huge differences between YouTube (a platform for user-generated content) and a newspaper (a publisher). The latter curates and is legally responsible for anything it publishes, the former isn't. I think YouTube is a lot closer to AT&T than to the New York Times.

Maybe legalistically it is, but my point is that it's like the NYT and radio and print in the sense that these are all routes for one-to-many communication. Restricting one route of one-to-many communication isn't the end of the world. (Meanwhile, AT&T facilitated one-to-one communication. It would indeed be horrifying to censor that -- which is why precisely nobody in this giant comments section is advocating for it, nor is it going to happen.)

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#383

Post by nrr »

ryankemper wrote: post #162
nrr wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, I fear the reality of this situation is a lot less nuanced than you're expressing here. It's more likely that the advertisers who give YouTube a lot of money simply threatened not to advertise on the platform should he continue to have a presence there. In David Icke's case, he directly threatens telecommunications carriers' ability to sell 5G services. That's directly counter to said carriers' marketi…

Couldn't YouTube have adopted Reddit's quarantine concept? (Ignoring for the time-being the inherent tendency of such a concept being used to drive out dissent as happened with Reddit with respect to fringe conservative voices)

If YouTube's advertisers found that kind of thing agreeable, I suppose they could. That said, I'm not sure the incentive exists for them to undertake that kind of work.

The platform existing for everyday people to disseminate their views is secondary to using user-submitted content as a vehicle for advertising revenue. Another way of thinking about it is that the popular content subsidizes the not-so-popular content.

As a corollary: The more popular your content is, the more advertising revenue it needs to bring in. There was even some controversy somewhat recently about this very thing.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#384

Post by james-mcelwain »

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.

I mean, like many things, this just comes down to axioms that ground your meta-ethics. I don't find moral Platonism very convincing.

There's no natural inclination of humans towards justice or injustice, beyond the limits of our own psychology. To me, the idea that there is some internal teleology towards justice is absurd. These are material struggles and material gains that must be defended materially.

We should reject this kind of naive idealism.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#386

Post by james-mcelwain »

WalterBright wrote: post #378
quazeekotl wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure it is. All kinds of ideas died when information became readily available, even when the authorities tried to suppress them. For example, the idea of a nobility class.

Past results do not guarantee future performance.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#387

Post by thebean11 »

knzhou wrote: post #382
thebean11 wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are huge differences between YouTube (a platform for user-generated content) and a newspaper (a publisher). The latter curates and is legally responsible for anything it publishes, the former isn't. I think YouTube is a lot closer to AT&T than to the New York Times.

Maybe legalistically it is, but my point is that it's like the NYT and radio and print in the sense that these are all routes for one-to-many communication. Restricting one route of one-to-many communication isn't the end of the world. (Meanwhile, AT&T facilitated one-to-one communication. It would indeed be horrifying to censor that -- which is why precisely nobody in this giant comments section is advocating for it…

Why is censoring one-to-many communication so much less horrifying? One-to-many communication is integral for any social or political action.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#388

Post by mda »

nightcracker wrote: post #94
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/

And to add another, “When you tear out a man's tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you're only telling the world that you fear what he might say.” I don't know who David Icke was or what he was saying (according to comments here he's a 5G conspiracy theorist), but deplatforming him won't have the intended effect.

Oh I think it will have the intended effect. A lot of people lose interest if lies or propaganda aren't repeated constantly. It is human nature.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#389

Post by legolas2412 »

BubRoss wrote: post #300
legolas2412 wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if you really believe that drinking bleach does cure covid? What if it is cow urine or holy water that you bestow your belief in? Are we going to also ban religion, and the whole mess of lies it brings with it? It is not even a slipper slope at your point, it is a cliff with a waterfall

YouTube isn't the internet

Thats not my point of contention.

I disagree with this "Telling people to drink bleach to cure COVID-19 is not protected under free speech.". It is a separate question whether Youtube's actions are limited by free speech protections. What he said would have all kinds of lies, including religion, not be protected under free speech.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#390

Post by knzhou »

thebean11 wrote: post #387
knzhou wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe legalistically it is, but my point is that it's like the NYT and radio and print in the sense that these are all routes for one-to-many communication. Restricting one route of one-to-many communication isn't the end of the world. (Meanwhile, AT&T facilitated one-to-one communication. It would indeed be horrifying to censor that -- which is why precisely nobody in this giant comments section is advocating for it…

Why is censoring one-to-many communication so much less horrifying? One-to-many communication is integral for any social or political action.

Because, as I said a couple comments ago, the degree of one-to-many communication available to people has been continuously skyrocketing for decades, and currently stands at levels far beyond any seen in history. Even the heaviest possible strawman-censorship one could imagine on Youtube would only erase a small part of this rise. That's because the internet has allowed one-to-many communication to massively scale up, while almost by definition one-to-one communication can't.
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