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

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#661

Post by samiru » Mon, May 04, 2020, 8:10 AM UTC

zimpenfish wrote: post #502

koheripbal wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, the issue is the abuse of power. Google is very nearly a quasi-government organization. They have endless government contracts, they spend more on DC lobbying than anyone else, and they actively share data with US intelligence agencies. At some point, the laws that protect us from government, must also apply to these massive quasi-government monopolies - or they quickly become worthless.

I would venture that the government should be protecting its people from misinformation like Icke's (after all, they enforce things like "truth in advertising", "medicines must state side effects", etc.) and not leaving it up to YouTube.

The problem is, the "protection" and "regulation" quickly become tools to eliminate your political enemies. In some ways this is already happening in the western world.

We are becoming what we used to oppose against to.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#662

Post by cycomanic » Mon, May 04, 2020, 8:12 AM UTC

BurningCycles wrote: post #548

Frondo wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, so far I haven't seen anyone on here take the strong free speech absolutist position -- that nothing should be censored ever, including calls to violence. I've seen several comments that basically say "don't censor in general, but do remove calls to violence," so that seems like it's not a controversial opinion at least in this discussion. Why are calls to violence bad, but spreading misinformation about a pandem…

>Why are calls to violence bad, but spreading misinformation about a pandemic How do you know what is 'misinformation' ? WHO claimed that face masks were worthless, now you are forced to wear them in lots of places. WHO also claimed that there was no human to human transmission of COVID-19, etc. The powers that be will not stop spreading misinformation when it suits them, they just want no one to be able to question…

And the powers that be want to call for violence (and often do) so why do you want to restrict everyone else from doing it?

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#663

Post by mschuster91 » Mon, May 04, 2020, 8:12 AM UTC

PureParadigm wrote: post #460

chrononaut wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 platf…

> As far as I know, YouTube is the only serious option at the moment for general video content.

Are they? There's Vimeo, Facebook, Pornhub's SFW option, Twitter can host short videos, there's a metric shitload of porn hosts, and if you're in for premium service every major CDN offers video hosting/distribution.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#664

Post by triyambakam » Mon, May 04, 2020, 8:14 AM UTC

knzhou wrote: post #437

pnako wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 heal…

Nobody is talking about banning people like Didier Raoult. If you can't tell the difference between a professor and a guy who gives spittle-flecked rants about the lizard people, this discussion will not be productive. For example, we all know he did a terrible job with the hydroxychloroquine study, but of course he retains his position.

You've really missed the point

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#665

Post by joshuamorton » Mon, May 04, 2020, 8:14 AM UTC

Erlich_Bachman wrote: post #613

joshuamorton wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, because the argument that "institutions are not perfect" is a strawman that distracts from the actual question which is "is anything David Icke says anything remotely approaching the truth?" and the answer is undeniably no. Arguing about a slippery slope that the institutions might not be perfect either doesn't matter. Icke isn't trying to be correct. He's either literally mentally unwell (I've read that he has s…

> distracts from the actual question which is "is anything David Icke says anything remotely approaching the truth?" That's not the actual question we are discussing here. Whether he is correct or not does not change any premises of this post or discussion. We are discussing censorship and deplatforming.

Not at all. The parent that I originally responded to stated

> We have a myriad of evidence that societies that suppress the truth for "the public good" [end badly]

To believe that that statement is relevant you must believe that "covid-19 is caused by 5G towers" is, or could be, the truth. Otherwise you have to defend the much stranger position, that societies which knowingly suppress information that everyone knows is false don't end well, which is silly, I know of no society that has ended badly due to its attempts to suppress things that everyone agreed were false. (and by this I mean factually false, not ethical concerns etc.)

If you don't believe that, then you agree that by suppressing Icke, we aren't suppressing the truth, so there is no danger. If you do believe that, you are misinformed, and it's a good thing we're keeping disinformation away from you.

Now, you might argue that I've constructed a catch-22, and you'd be correct if I thought that this was a generally applicable solution, but I don't. While not every piece of information is obviously untrue, some are. "Covid-19 is caused by 5g towers" is one such piece of information. It is also, apparently, dangerous when people believe it.

There's lots of other opinions that I find distasteful or whatnot that I don't believe should be deplatformed because they are clearly false, that is reserved for things which are clearly false.

There's no issue of censorship here, because on the off chance that Icke is right (which again there isn't), he could do a study and submit a paper to the relevant academic circles, and resolve the issue. In other words, society again, isn't suppressing truth, they're suppressing cranks. Which is reasonable. Cranks are bad and distract us from getting actual work done. Most of the time we can just ignore them, but every once in a while a crank gets ahold of an idea that is both wrong and, when believed by a small but fervent group, can be dangerous to everyone. In those cases, keeping the idea from catching on further is good.

Again this applies only to things that are provable in nature, not things of the form "we should overthrow the bourgeoisie".

So yes, the central point is that nothing Icke says is anything remotely approaching the truth. In other words, libeling a concept should be reasonable to deplatform, since libeling an individual certainly is.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#666

Post by jshevek » Mon, May 04, 2020, 8:15 AM UTC

jfnixon wrote: post #640

jshevek wrote: post #624

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Science and technology is advanced by a tiny community of humans, relative to the species as a whole. I don't think it works as evidence for "more often", rather it is evidence for the amazing results that can come when the truth wins even within a small group.

The question was not "do you have evidence the truth wins more often than lies for the species as a whole"; there was no specific context implied as I read it. So, do you have evidence lies win more often than the truth for the species as a whole?

>> Do you have evidence that the truth more often than not win over lies?

>The existence of technology as well as science.

Simply put, the second statement is not evidence to satisfy the request in the first statement.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#667

Post by PureParadigm » Mon, May 04, 2020, 8:15 AM UTC

KozmoNau7 wrote: post #623

PureParadigm wrote: post #573

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's incredibly unlikely you'll agree with the powers that be on every issue, so you'll find yourself deplatformed, and unable to speak out against injustice. As you mentioned, you feel that the powers that be are suppressing certain ideas. If you want censorship, guess who will be in charge of deciding what to censor. Sure, astroturfing and other misinformation campaigns can happen if speech is truly free, but the a…

"The alternative is far worse", with us currently being in a state of world politics where whoever shouts the loudest on social media gets to set the agenda. Freedom of speech is a fundamental human right. No ifs or buts about that. In the same breath, it is very important to realize that your freedom of speech does not absolve you from responsibility for what you say. It does not obligate others to facilitate your s…

I agree with what you say here. Freedom of speech does not obligate YouTube to give anyone a platform, as they are a private entity. It does not obligate anyone to listen to you. What the top level comment is saying though, is that just because there is no legal requirement, doesn't mean we can't "ask nicely" or otherwise strive towards the idea that the predominant video platform refrain from censorship.

There is no legal obligation for YouTube to listen to us, but there is no reason we can't ask for less censorship. If they say no, then they are well within their rights, but we don't have to be happy about it either. Just because we can't legally force change doesn't mean we must abandon the cause. The most optimistic scenario would be if public sentiment changes enough such that YouTube feels they are being seen as unfair and it is damaging to their reputation/bottom line, perhaps we may see a change in their censorship policies. This is an ideal to strive for, and uses social/economic pressure as opposed to legal pressure. It is like your obligation to be a helpful neighbor or to be a caring friend. It's not by force of law, but people are expected to do it because it's "the right thing to do." In the same way, when you're the predominant video platform on the internet, the right thing to do is not to censor opinions you disagree with.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#668

Post by DougBTX » Mon, May 04, 2020, 8:16 AM UTC

boudin wrote: post #654

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…

In theory I agree, but freedom speech should come with responsibilty of speech, especially when you have a broad audience. When you built an audience that you make believe "science is bollocks" and spread that 5g is responsible for the spread of COVID-19, how do you prevent the potential death and destruction it's gonna result in? I agree that just shutting down a youtube account is not the best approach, but in this…

Even constitution-level free speech shouldn't be thought of as blanket freedom to lie, but exactly where the line lies is still under debate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_statements_of_fact

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#669

Post by triyambakam » Mon, May 04, 2020, 8:16 AM UTC

zimpenfish wrote: post #622

triyambakam wrote: post #617

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've certainly repeated this same comment a number of times, maybe it helps you feel like you believe it more. The WHO tweeted about a study with a preliminary conclusion that there is no human to human transmission. Whatever other statements that the WHO made, you seem to be denying that by tweeting this they did not by default endorse the results. They added no other context - they shouldn't tweet something they…

> there is no human to human transmission "Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus" There is a world of difference between "no human to human transmission" as you claim they said and "no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission" as they actually said. https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152

I fail to see this world of difference. Can you explain?

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#670

Post by wnoise » Mon, May 04, 2020, 8:16 AM UTC

knzhou wrote: post #279

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've never seen a bad or immoral or harmful idea die out when more people learn about it and scrutinize it. Leaded gasoline, phlogiston, cold fusion, phrenology, scientific racism, basically the entire history of the progress of science. But let's also not forget that you're asking for a list of discredited ideas, so you wouldn't have heard of them, by definition, if things are working as they should, because they'…

> Leaded gasoline, phlogiston, cold fusion, phrenology, scientific racism, basically the entire history of the progress of science. The progress of science wasn't driven by nutjobs delivering spittle-flecked rants on Youtube. Almost all of it was driven by careful peer review of ideas -- which is the exact opposite of unrestricted speech.

Peer review being so widespread and regarded as necessary is remarkably recent, and it's not at all clear that it's necessary or terribly effective for science.

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/information-culture/the... has some indications that peer reviewers generally don't do a great job.