YouTube is trying very hard to become the new MTV.
YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke
411–420 of 923 posts
Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke
#412The entire text of the first amendment, seeing as it seems like a lot of people like to reference it without actually knowing (or pretending not to know) what it says:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke
#413Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.”
Not the poster, but you can see why gun violence is different. Free speech is different from material harm to others.
Also, you can keep pursuing greater good by education and protection of human rights. No need to sacrifice free speech.
Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke
#414Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just be aware that it's a double edged sword. Mass acceptance of censorship makes it easy to stifle societal progress by designating ideas which you disagree with as extremist content. We are lucky that the people currently at the helm of tech industry happen to hold mostly liberal views that we broadly agree with. If that was not the case, the same argument could have been used by them to suppress many left-wing/pro…
If you prove that views are damaging, you are not entitled to protections in any shape or form.
I mean, there is so much wrong with this statement, and not like thorny philosophical problems to be teased apart with careful interrogation, but just basic definitional problems as well as issues that would make its implementation impossible that are so obvious a kid repeating the fourth grade could spot them toot suite.
Historic hypothetical: Do you think Nancy Reagan could have convinced damn near every conceivable jury in the country in that rap music and the views therein caused damage? What does that do your little draft constitutional amendment there?
I think it would not bebhard to find your view damaging, I'm fact your expression of that view gas already caused specific damage to me because you made me sad for you. As well, such pro-censorship expressions threaten the very core of America The Idea, which idea brings a great many positive things and clarity to the world, the loss of which would be obviously damaging to millions.
How would your subversive and damaging views survive in the dystopia you seek?
Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke
#415Earlier quoted context omitted.
Totally disagree. Sure the degree of one-to-many communication has greatly increased, but it's been mostly concentrated within the top platforms. Losing access to those would be severely limiting. And no, an email blast isn't a proper alternative to Facebook, any ideas kicked off of major platforms would be at a severe disadvantage.
I feel like we're going in circles here. Even if every single site and app coordinated to kick off David Icke, he would end up, at worst, as silenced as the average American in the year 2000. It just doesn't seem all that bad to me.
No, that's simply not true. The forums of pubic discourse from before do not exist anymore, the collective's attention has moved. If you lose the megaplatforms, you are much worse off than someone in 2000.
Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke
#416Earlier 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)
Not only is what you meant to write (geocentricity) not actually in support of your thesis, showing your poor historical knowledge, what you actually wrote is Not Even Wrong -- it's a classic shibboleth for showing people you have no idea what you are talking about and should be ignored.
Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke
#417Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel like we're going in circles here. Even if every single site and app coordinated to kick off David Icke, he would end up, at worst, as silenced as the average American in the year 2000. It just doesn't seem all that bad to me.
No, that's simply not true. The forums of pubic discourse from before do not exist anymore , the collective's attention has moved . If you lose the megaplatforms, you are much worse off than someone in 2000.
What forums are you talking about? Radio, mail, TV, and newspapers still have audiences of hundreds of millions. Internet forums are in decline, but those have always had completely negligible public reach (as in, down by more than 2 orders of magnitude) compared to the others.
Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke
#418I'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?
Right now in France one doctor (professor Didier Raoult) has been mostly right about the whole thing (in my view), and he became popular thanks to YouTube.
Yet his views are in radical opposition to both the French government and the WHO. Should his videos be removed? He's one of the most published expert on infectious diseases, so who in YouTube has authority to decide that he is more wrong than the minister of health, who is mostly a politician?
Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke
#419Earlier quoted context omitted.
I disagree. I think you have to accept the consequences of destructive behavior. If someone was talking like this at my office, I'd expect them to be fired. Same as if they were outwardly racist or sexist. It's detrimental to other people's well-being.
What if the person was in the street? Should they be removed?
No. Not unless it's outwardly threatening.
Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke
#420Earlier 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. 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.
> 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.…
As I write my reply, this comment is currently grayed-out from downvotes. I find this absurd. Anyone who has read Mill knows Mill was a utilitarian. He didn't support freedom of speech for dogmatic reasons but for practical ones. Mill didn't really care about the rights of the speaker to speak or write. He cared about the right of others to hear and read. From chapter 2 of On Liberty[1]:
> But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.
Mill's point is this: Every time you silence someone, you are preventing others from hearing what that person has to say. Maybe those people want to listen so they can entertain an idea and become convinced. Maybe they want to listen so they can better understand and refute the speaker. Maybe they just find the rantings of a crazy person amusing. Whatever their reasons, the "cure" of censorship is worse than the "disease" caused by letting people communicate. (Note that this formulation also makes it easy to distinguish speech from "speech" such as air horns designed to disrupt a speaker from spreading their ideas to those who want to listen.)
Moreover, censorship requires designating a censor. Is there any person or group who you would grant the power of deciding what you're allowed to read or hear? I certainly can't think of one. I'm an adult and I can decide for myself what is acceptable for me to consume, thank you very much.
Of course YouTube is not a government and they shouldn't be forced to host things that they don't want to host, but following the free speech norm is almost certainly more beneficial to society. Every once in a while, one of those crazy ideas that must be censored— one of those ideas turns out to be true. Just like slavery and the subjugation of women in the past, there are moral errors we are committing that future societies will condemn us for. Censorship prevents those ideas from coming to light sooner and impedes moral progress.
Warning messages before viewing something? Sure. Add links to rebuttals? Fine. Demonetize? OK. But deletion? I'd prefer you didn't.