YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke • Hacker News Board

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#451

Post by nyanpasu64 » Mon, May 04, 2020, 4:25 AM UTC

chrononaut wrote: post #446

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…

> Hacker News Guidelines > What to Submit > Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic. > In Comments > Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion…

From my perspective, Hacker News is a website built for the tech community. However I don't view Youtube as a community, but as a platform for individuals to publish videos, broadcast, and sometimes form sub-communities. It's possible that some people who don't login and hang around on the homepage of algorithmically selected videos treat Youtube as a publisher for curating.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#452

Post by ekianjo » Mon, May 04, 2020, 4:25 AM UTC

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…

> COVID-19 has added the additional element of this new concept of "disinformation". The argument is seductively simple: "being exposed to this information could lead you to engage in patterns of behavior that harm society. Therefore we can conceptualize this speech as being an indirect form of violence/negligence and therefore we have a moral obligation to remove such content".

Which is actually extremely funny, since Youtube directly links to all WHO content as it were the Word of God, and WHO just a month and a half ago was crying on all rooftops that masks were useless and should not be used before completely reversing their stance. So by their own standards WHO is propagating disinformation/negligence and harming society as well.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#453

Post by identity0 » Mon, May 04, 2020, 4:25 AM UTC

chrononaut wrote: post #446

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…

> Hacker News Guidelines > What to Submit > Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic. > In Comments > Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion…

It’s an issue that’s difficult to distill in a way that could work as a law or as a winning argument against snarky commenters playing Devil’s Advocate. In theory the line between rules and censorship is vague and grey, but in practice it’s pretty easy to tell what is rule enforcement and what is political censorship. I guess a good place to start would be examining the rules of a website and determining if the takedowns follow the rules and the rules are not overly broad.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#454

Post by rojoca » Mon, May 04, 2020, 4:27 AM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #434

rojoca wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

> booting people off platforms is a "bad idea" which you wish to "suppress". Not censoring an idea and arguing that an idea should not be implemented are not equivalent. > booting people off platforms shines a light on their "bad ideas" If this is true, i.e. reporting of the censorship increases the visibility of the bad idea, then it completely destroys the pro-censorship argument that it reduces the visibility of b…

> Not censoring an idea and arguing that an idea should not be implemented are not equivalent.

I'm not sure this is correct, but I'm willing to be convinced if you can expand a little more. I guess I see it as censoring the act of censoring.

> If this is true, i.e. reporting of the censorship increases the visibility of the bad idea, then it completely destroys the pro-censorship argument that it reduces the visibility of bad ideas. It would also immediately cease to be true if censorship ever became uncontroversial, in which case you couldn't claim that it's giving the allegedly bad idea a chance at a fair debate.

In this case, it is true. But youtube censorship is not equivalent to societal censorship, it just signals that youtube does not endorse Icke's ideas and does not wish to publish them, but people can still evaluate them somewhere else.

> Is somebody suggesting that YouTube should be prohibited from creating and distributing their own videos?

No, the suggestion is they should not be allowed to write their own terms and enforce them.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#455

Post by clarkmoody » Mon, May 04, 2020, 4:30 AM UTC

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 very nature of scientific inquiry is to question conventional wisdom. Often those new ideas are heretical.

That is not to say that all ideas are valid forms of scientific inquiry. But suppressing all but the "blessed" opinions of the WHO goes against the scientific process.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#456

Post by ThrowawayR2 » Mon, May 04, 2020, 4:30 AM UTC

fzeroracer wrote: post #234

colejohnson66 wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a majority of the population was using HN, then we’d be getting closer to an apples to apples comparison. The crux of the issue includes Google’s reach.

Does it matter if the majority is using it or not? The same concept of freedom of speech should matter. And HN is one of the largest tech forums on the internet; making it effectively the 'Youtube' of tech forums. So given HN's expansive reach, why do you think it deserves to be excluded from the concept of being a provider? Why shouldn't it be forced to house all content?

HN has negligible reach compared to Youtube, Facebook, or Google.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#457

Post by jlawson » Mon, May 04, 2020, 4:31 AM UTC

chrononaut wrote: post #446

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…

> Hacker News Guidelines > What to Submit > Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic. > In Comments > Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion…

YouTube isn't a 'community' any more than the roads we all travel on. There is no viable alternative to YouTube/Google. There is no way to escape its influence. And being banned from it can ruin you (depending on how your life/work is structured).

HN is totally different because of the completely different scale and the existence of viable alternatives.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#458

Post by fantyoon » Mon, May 04, 2020, 4:32 AM UTC

quietbritishjim wrote: post #439

mrfusion wrote: post #223

Just some food for thought. If youtube was around in the past and doing this stuff they could have deleted videos in support of the following: (these all started as fringe beliefs(1)) Interracial marriage Gay marriage Smoking causes lung cancer (1) interesting topical read and it has sources for these at the end https://waitbutwhy.com/2019/09/american-brain.html

Those are ideological beliefs. Yes, at one time they were very widely and strongly held. But they were never remotely comparible to spreading factually incorrect information about something biological. A simple demonstration to this: even the reverse of these (e.g. "I believe gay marriage is morally wrong") can't reasonably be argued against with "that is factually incorrect". It's fair to believe that private compan…

> But they were never remotely comparible to spreading factually incorrect information about something biological.

> Smoking causes lung cancer

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#459

Post by unishark » Mon, May 04, 2020, 4:33 AM UTC

ggreer wrote: post #420

dvt wrote: post #36

Earlier 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. 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 s…

I think it's funny how people will downvote arguments favoring free speech. At least they're being consistent.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#460

Post by PureParadigm » Mon, May 04, 2020, 4:35 AM UTC

chrononaut wrote: post #446

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…

> Hacker News Guidelines > What to Submit > Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic. > In Comments > Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion…

Yes, as the parent mentions, YouTube can do the same kind of content curation from a legal point of view. The question is whether YouTube is a platform where we should advocate for less censorship/more freedom. I think that since YouTube is a general platform and that no serious alternatives exist, we should advocate for less censorship.

YouTube is different from Hacker News because YouTube is more of a general platform (not focused on a particular topic). In contrast with Hacker News, less censorship on YouTube would not significantly degrade the experience. You can still go subscribe to the channels you like and be completely unaware of the content you don't want to see. On Hacker News, the whole point is that it is focused on particular subjects (I suppose it would be analogous to a curated list of YouTube channels), and its rules keep it that way.

Another factor to consider is what alternatives exist. As far as I know, YouTube is the only serious option at the moment for general video content. YouTube content includes news and politics, and many people use it as their primary source of information. No matter what your politics are, they will likely differ from Google's in some way, and if YouTube begins to aggressively censor opinions they disagree with, you'll find yourself without a platform since no serious alternatives exist.