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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

#521

Post by throwawaysea »

Why You Should Oppose The Censorship Of David Icke (Hint: It’s Got Nothing To Do With Icke)

https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/why-you-should-oppose-the...

> A truly free being does not need an alliance of plutocrats and government agencies to protect their mind from David Icke. A truly free being does not want an alliance of plutocrats and government agencies to exert any control whatsoever over what ideas they are permitted to share and what thoughts they are permitted to think. A truly free being opposes with all their might any attempt to lock in a paradigm where human communication (and thereby thought) is controlled by vast unaccountable power structures which benefit from the absence of dissent.

> Be a truly free being. Oppose this intrusion into your mental sovereignty.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#522

Post by JSavageOne »

ashtonkem wrote: post #509
JSavageOne wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN is a niche community focused on startups and tech. Youtube is the monopoly on user-uploaded video content and has 2 billion users.

Why should the size of the community matter? Under what rationale are you going to decide that HN can moderate but YT cannot?

Because Youtube presents itself as being agnostic to the content and letting anyone upload anything (excluding porn and dark stuff that any reasonable person would deem inappropriate like ISIS propaganda or child abuse).

If Youtube presented itself as being a video platform for from the getgo, then I wouldn't see a legal problem with moderating videos containing opposing views.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#523

Post by whiddershins »

Barrin92 wrote: post #28
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.

>Yay another extremist swept under the digital carpet, problem solved - well NO. Well yes, at least partially. Studies of bans on hate communities on reddit have shown effectiveness not only in reducing the total hate, but also, and this is important, changing the behaviour of individual users who were active in the hate communities as they moved towards more moderate, diverse communities. [...] "What they found was…

I simply don’t want reddit to social engineer in that manner.

Don’t get me wrong: they can do as they please. I just don’t personally prefer to live in the world where Reddit is deciding what is hate, what is acceptable, etc.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#524

Post by ashtonkem »

JSavageOne wrote: post #522
ashtonkem wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should the size of the community matter? Under what rationale are you going to decide that HN can moderate but YT cannot?

Because Youtube presents itself as being agnostic to the content and letting anyone upload anything (excluding porn and dark stuff that any reasonable person would deem inappropriate like ISIS propaganda or child abuse). If Youtube presented itself as being a video platform for from the getgo, then I wouldn't see a legal problem with moderating videos containing opposing views.

You’re implying that there is a legal difference between being a publisher and a platform, which is not actually a thing under US law.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#525

Post by joshuamorton »

factsaresacred wrote: post #470
joshuamorton wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The idea that bans on travel are 'bad' is nonsense. There's a global ban on civilian travel precisely because it is effective. There's not though. > Sending out a message only to contradict it days later is poor communication and management. I can hear the goalposts scraping by. > very little evidence of widespread benefit from masks use outside of these clinical settings’ The WHO never said this, I'm not sure what…

My mistake, here is what the WHO said: > "If you do not have any respiratory symptoms...you do not need to wear a medical mask" Which is somehow worse.

I've yet to see any actual evidence that wearing a cloth mask while social distancing helps you, as a healthy individual. And I've seen some to the contrary[0].

One of the WHO's main concerns is to prevent shortages and supply chain issues (see their statements about travel and import bans). A run on medical masks is problematic, and the WHO's guidance prevents that.

I'll note that basically no government suggested (or suggests) wearing medical masks[1], unless you are symptomatic, which is in line with the WHO's guidance.

Social distancing is much more important, and while masks may help, especially in areas that are crowded (which you should avoid if possible anyway), they only really help if you are symptomatic, in which case you should absolutely not be outside.

The bay area is fairly unique in requiring mask wearing, and while it's not a major imposition, the utility is probably pretty marginal.

[0]: https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/04/data-do-...

[1]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7118603/

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#526

Post by rlt »

deminature wrote: post #515
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…

Deplatforming has proven highly effective at preventing bad actors from continuing to spread misinformation on Reddit and other social media sites [1]. I support free speech in principle, but internet platforms are such a powerful megaphone for spreading misinformation, the likes of which history has never seen, that platform owners may feel ethically obligated to act against those who would misuse their systems to c…

"Deplatforming" is some pretty great doublespeak for "censoring".

We already have a solution to idiots vandalizing 5G towers: arrest them.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#527

Post by rlt »

ashtonkem wrote: post #520
rlt wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Platforms that are monopolies or close to it are essentially the modern day town square, except instead of police and government enforcing rules, it's tech companies.

The courts have made it quite clear that they’re unwilling to consider companies to be similar to the “town square” unless if they’re doing literally what governments have traditionally done. There is no clear way to argue that YT is doing something that governments traditionally did, so you’re out of luck there. If you believe YT is a monopoly, then it would be far less harmful to everyone if it was just broken up,…

You're commenting about "the courts" in a thread that started with "I very strongly feel that we should be very careful to avoid adopting a legalistic attitude towards freedom of speech."

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#528

Post by aantthony »

zimpenfish wrote: post #494
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) I believe this isn't true - the sphericity of the Earth was widely believed well before Galileo. > - human sacrifice > - laws against gay marriage > - caning children Were these ever views held by the majority? As opposed to, say, a minority of religious zealots in power?

Yep you are right. I should have said geocentricity.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#530

Post by james-mcelwain »

aantthony wrote: post #510
james-mcelwain wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 re…

I also reject platonism. I really don't mean to imply changing these norms was easy, or is only a matter of putting the information out there disregarding material conditions and then just hoping for the best. It seems that having free speech is a necessary, although not sufficient, condition to improve society. It's a principle worth defending.

I think that framing ("necessary but not sufficient") is a much more productive way that I wish free speech advocates would use more.

My opposition to censorship derives from the fact that it tends to require an unjustified hierarchy (i.e. the violence of the state).

However, I have a real problem with imparting some kind of magical quality to ideas. I'm particularly annoyed by the way in which free speech advocates act like social norms are a form of censorship. More specifically, that free speech requires platforming -- i.e., rejecting a freedom of association.

While I do think that the power companies like Google exert of society is well wroth investigating, in general I find that these are much weaker examples of the use of force to censor ideas.

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