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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

#421

Post by rojoca »

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…

The following may seem frivolous and/or uncharitable but I think you would find them hard to disagree with:

- booting people off platforms is a "bad idea" which you wish to "suppress".

- booting people off platforms shines a light on their "bad ideas"

I'm sympathetic to the spirit of your comment, but I think Mr Icke has plenty of other ways to publish his ideas, and I don't believe youtube is suppressing them in a way that necessitates suppression of theirs.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#422

Post by thebean11 »

knzhou wrote: post #417
thebean11 wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The audience of the things you've listed has shrunk dramatically, in terms of percentage at the very least. Just look at where ad dollars have been moving for the past 15 years.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#423

Post by aantthony »

Frondo wrote: post #381
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…

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…

Yes that is a good point. The link I gave mentions that study, and says it has failed replication attempts. I think the truth is more nuanced - there are ways it can be more effective and yes sometimes counter-effective. But that doesn't mean we should just give up fact-checking entirely. I think there are several ways we can make corrective fact checking more convincing to people and am working on building a collaborative fact-checker https://verifact.io to try to do that

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#424

Post by tootie »

zalkota wrote: post #178
zalkota wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if the person was in the street? Should they be removed?

Who chooses whether it’s detrimental to other well being? What if that person who chooses is tyrannical like the CEO of Reddit, who suppresses all right wing posts?

Reddit has tons of right wing content. Even TOS violations were permitted on Trump subs for years before being quarantined.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#425

Post by zozbot234 »

vkou wrote: post #398
knzhou wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Galileo didn't deliver spittle-flecked rants either. He carefully gathered evidence and wrote it up, and his ideas gained acceptance by peer review.

Actually, Galileo did largely deliver self-aggrandizing spittle-flecked rants, full of personal attacks against other astronomers, which were complete rubbish. His arguments for why the Earth revolved around the Sun were complete nonsense, and were more theological, than scientific in nature. His contemporaries were not particularly impressed, but he probably wouldn't have been censored, if he also didn't try his dam…

And Isaac Newton did a lot of work in alchemy, occult studies and predictions of the apocalypse founded in the period equivalent to the "Bible code". I don't know why people assume that the foremost scientists in recorded history did not benefit from an overall intellectually-open social climate and worldview. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#426

Post by clouddrover »

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 don't believe in fighting "bad ideas" by suppressing them, I believe in shining a light on them. Let the truth fight for itself.

The truth often doesn't get the chance to fight for itself on platforms like YouTube and Facebook. They are designed to keep showing you more of what they think you want to see because that drives engagement and engagement is what's profitable. You simply won't see opposing views. You go further down the rabbit hole and your existing ideas are reinforced, no matter how faulty they are.

Sometimes the truth doesn't have the resources to fight for itself. For example, this woman has been falsely accused of starting the coronavirus pandemic:

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/27/tech/coronavirus-conspira...

It's a lie concocted by one of her fellow Americans. It's a lie that's now been spread all over the world resulting in death threats to her and her family. She simply doesn't have the resources to stop it. The police haven't helped her. YouTube hasn't helped her. She doesn't have the money to pursue a civil lawsuit. The best she can do is get in the media and hope that somehow helps.

Once a lie is spread far enough it will eventually find someone who believes it and is unstable enough to act on it. We've seen that before as well:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/22/us/pizzagate-attack-sente...

A contest of ideas presupposes a level playing field, a balanced presentation, equal voices, and a basic agreement of the facts. That is, unfortunately, not the practical reality.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#427

Post by knzhou »

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…

> now comes the classic counter-argument: that the evils of disinformation possess a virality that makes them spread far more easily than the truth, being that truth is nuanced and difficult to acquire whereas bad information is seductively simple

This is such a knockdown argument that I can't believe you just refused to address it!

The mirror image of David Icke is the genuine experts that are trying to get good, nuanced information out there, often fresh out of research papers. Most of these people have single digit reach, i.e. so little that they could spend their whole lives getting less reach that Icke gets in 5 minutes.

The asymmetry in potency between good and bad information is far higher today than at any time in the past, and I applaud Youtube for doing a tiny bit to stop the bleeding.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#429

Post by james-mcelwain »

zozbot234 wrote: post #345
knzhou wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> That's precisely what you want if you care about not harming society at large, especially in the longer run.

Please, explain: how do queer ideas harm society, in the longer run?

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#430

Post by lonelappde »

aantthony wrote: post #361
yongjik wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 lite…

Have you not noticed that the most populous country in the world is run by a self-identifying Communist Party?

And the USSR, #4 was Communist until it collapsed economically, not intellectually?

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