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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

#751

Post by krapp »

Traster wrote: post #746

To be honest there's a lot of talk about freedom of speech here, and the dynamic of freedom of speech vs private corporations right to determine what they allow on their site. Personally I think that this issue is not actually as important as people think, and this problem is just one of several that emerges from a different problem. Our real problem is a lack of competition. There are a tiny number of social media s…

Googling "social media sites" gives me far more than 15 alternatives to Youtube, Facebook and Twitter. You're like people arguing that Youtube has a monopoly because no "serious" competition exists, only the weasel-words you're using are "at scale" to pretend the entire rest of the social media ecosystem doesn't exist.

Wasn't it a meme not long ago that young people didn't even use Facebook anymore, that it was turning into the "old people's social network?" How does that happen if Facebook is Standard Oil and no competition is possible? I guess all of those other sites and apps simply aren't operating "at scale?"

The discussion of whether and how social media affects political and cultural discourse, and especially how the gamification and incentives of social media do, is worth having. But the tendency of arguments to depend on slippery slope fallacies which assume the entire web beyond three or four popular sites simply doesn't exist or doesn't matter is incorrect.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#752

Post by Kiro »

jfoster wrote: post #547
knzhou wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 2. There is no evidence of human-to-human transmission. This is one of those completely false things that people only believe is true by repetition. Go back and actually read the full set of WHO statements in mid-January. They have a bunch of statements saying that nations should get prepared, one saying that specific studies haven’t yet found hard evidence for person-to-person transmission (because at that point m…

> Here you need to remember that the W stands for "World". So they give dubious advice to the entire world since the good advice doesn't perfectly fit the world in entirety? There are many better options: don't give advice, explain two sets of advice, ask for advice from governments to be followed, make the advice generic enough that it still applies to the world. An example of advice that might apply anywhere in the…

Just because countries have mandated a mask requirement doesn't mean there is a scientific consensus yet. You all talk like this it's a fact that masks for the broad public will actually help. In my country the general advice is the opposite. We simply don't know so I'm not surprised that WHO hasn't taken a firm stance yet.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#753

Post by jstanley »

streb-lo wrote: post #499
rowanG077 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree. For the simple fact that no human or organisation can be trusted with the power to silence anyone or any group. I Think this should apply to functional social monopolys as well. YouTube/facebook/instagram etc shouldn't be allowed to remove content they deem untrue.

HN has a monopoly on discussion between people with (slightly) above-average critical thinking skills. Should we ban their moderation as well? 15 years ago the idea of an internet video monopoly didn't even exist and if it did no one would have cared. What you are suggesting is impossible to enforce or even reason about.

If HN moderators started censoring posts because they disagreed with them, or thought the ideas were "too dangerous" (rather than just because they were spam) then yeah people would start complaining about it.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#754

Post by Kiro »

langitbiru wrote: post #475
knzhou wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 2. There is no evidence of human-to-human transmission. This is one of those completely false things that people only believe is true by repetition. Go back and actually read the full set of WHO statements in mid-January. They have a bunch of statements saying that nations should get prepared, one saying that specific studies haven’t yet found hard evidence for person-to-person transmission (because at that point m…

"they said that healt workers need them more" -> WHO could say that normal people should use cloth masks (not surgical/N95 masks). Problem solved. I still think WHO made a blunder in their recommendation about mask usage.

Why would they say that when there is no scientific consensus yet?

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#755

Post by jashmatthews »

italicbold wrote: post #730
zimpenfish wrote: post #719

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Well thats my point, they werent forced underground. My mistake, I misfollowed your logic. > it was not socially acceptable to have a reasonable conversation around them without being labeled racist Well, that's because Trump is an outspoken racist, the GOP is also pretty racist (but better at keeping it quiet), and Brexit was largely predicated on racism.

Do you really believe there are 15,188,406 racists in the UK and 62,984,828 racists in the USA? If you truly believe that then I feel sorry for you, because you live in a really sad world. Is that really the experience you have living in or visiting these countries or travelling around them, that 1 in 2 people you meet are racist? I think its a bit lazy and easy to substitue fringe views from within these two camps a…

Sadly, this is quite evidence backed. Somewhere around 1/3rd of the UK population have racist attitudes based on multiple surveys across multiple decades. In the 60s and 70s there was close to 75% support for ending immigration into the UK for non-whites.

So yes, it's absolutely believable to have 15M racist wankers in the UK.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#756

Post by fragmede »

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…

We tried shining light on bad ideas. It didn't work. All the light the world could muster was being shined onto the lack of a link between vaccines and autism, yet there was a measles is having a resurgence.

Suppression doesn't really sit well with me either, but "disinformation" is nothing new. There are plenty of ideas that are similar to David Icke's nonsense and most of them predate 2020. Things like "the moon landing was faked", "the Earth is flat", and "the government is controlling us through chemtrails". The difference is, someone else believing the Earth is flat doesn't affect me the same way a measles outbreak does.

This isn't a conversation to have in the abstract. The idea that David Icke is spreading is that the COVID-19 pandemic is linked to 5g cellphone service. 5g being deployed in Wuhan is somehow evidence of the link between the two.

What light can you shine on that idea, to get people to stop shooting telecommunications workers and burning cellphone towers down?

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#757

Post by cycomanic »

TheUndead96 wrote: post #489
joshuamorton wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying that the truth is "Covid-19 is caused by 5-g towers"?

This is the exact type of escalation that is not helpful. This caricatures the argument that institutions are not perfect. In the beginning, the WHO said the virus could not be spread between people. And YouTube & friends are actively censoring to imperfect sources (since all sources are ultimately imperfect).

But this is the exact example of misinformation spreading easily. I assume you a a reasonable, rational and well informed individual like most on HN, but you still believe this bit of misinformation. The WHO never said that the virus could not spread from human to human, they said "there is no evidence for human to human spreading". That nuance makes a big difference in meaning, the absence of evidence for something is not evidence for the absence of something. But this nuance was lost in all of the misinformation spreading.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#758

Post by whywhywhywhy »

JSavageOne wrote: post #482

I have no familiarity with David Icke, but I wonder how much of his "popularity" was fueled by the Youtube algorithm recommending his gullible viewers more and more of the same kind of conspiracy content. I remember speaking to a Flat-Earther once (yes, they actually exist), and it seemed he basically became a flat-earther because he watched one flat-earth video and Youtube kept recommending him more similar content…

He was prolific in the conspiracy space and famous in the UK long before YouTube even existed. He doesn't need YouTube to get his opinions out there.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#759

Post by whywhywhywhy »

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…

Just because they know not to say it anymore doesn't mean they stop thinking it.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#760

Post by TheAdamAndChe »

Zenst wrote: post #202
harimau777 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose it would depend on what you mean by equivalent. It seems plausible that they stem from the same or similar social, psychological, and/or moral defects.

Most stems from ignorance. Of which education and constructive debate style education are the best solutions and what you have left, that is the pure hate that need more than blocking in society.

Funny, it was actually education that removed my racist tendencies yet made me look down on those who are fat. One is genetic and unavoidable, the other is 100% the result of choices made by the individual.

Fat shaming is also normal in many Asian countries where they have some of the lowest obesity rates and the longest lifespans in the world.

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