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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

#891

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OK, so I admit that Icke's thing about 5G and COVID-19 is batshit insane. I truly can't imagine how someone could argue that in good faith. He must be trolling, doing it for the lulz. But still, that's arguably distinguishable from creating a panic by shouting "fire" in a crowded theater that's undoubtedly not burning. In that crowded theater, it's the stampede that gets people killed in the moment. I do see the anal…

Icke is one of, if not the, originator of the theories of shapeshifting reptilians controlling society. His own descriptions of himself coincide strongly with paranoid schizophrenia.

Huh. That's pretty wild.[0]

> A poll of Americans in 2013 by Public Policy Polling indicated that 4% of registered voters (±2.8%) believed in David Icke's ideas.

But at least some of them were joking, right?

0) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reptilian_conspiracy_theory

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#893

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> not removing ANY speech. That causes genocides to happen though -- are you okay with that or did you not know

No, people with guns and uniforms cause genocide. People with pens and typewriters have never harmed a hair on anyone's head. To disagree is to argue that human beings are nothing but programmable devices. If that's your position, fine, but we'll have to disagree.

Goebbels might want to have a word.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#894
post #742

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It depends on how much control they have. You'll find no pro-free-market content on Kwangmyong.

You'll instead find the artisanal hand-crafted propaganda, and you won't find constructive criticism. Usually you'll find massive tomes of apologetics full of self-pity and victimization, and of course absolute hope that Dear Leader will still solve this even if the world is against him. Is there some kind of "list of prohibited books" in NK (like the Index Librorum Prohibitorum in the 16th century)? I guess not, bec…

> I guess not, because anything that's not allowed is by default prohibited?

Yes, at least for online content. As far as I understand it, a researcher who wants access to some out-of-country material has to manually submit a request. The censors then download the article or page, go through it, and pass it on if it's found acceptable. In addition, no single computer has access both to the global internet and to the intranet.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#895
post #850

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The fact that you need to explain that sort of demonstrates that it isn't relevant to the use of the argument. Good arguments can come from poor sources. Most people agree that shouting fire in a crowded theatre is the sort of speech which should be restricted, wherever the argument came from.

> Good arguments can come from poor sources. All the more reason to not silence cranks and conspiracy theorists. From John Stuart Mill's On Liberty : > But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of th…

"the dictum that truth always triumphs over persecution, is one of those pleasant falsehoods which men repeat after one another till they pass into commonplaces, but which all experience refutes. History teems with instances of truth put down by persecution. If not suppressed forever, it may be thrown back for centuries."

– John Stuart Mill, On Liberty https://www.utilitarianism.com/ol/two.html

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#896

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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…

How many racists would you guess are in the USA? I ask because it seems like you're using a very binary definition of the word.

> How many racists would you guess are in the USA?

Obviously that depends on how you define "racist". If you define it as "votes for an explicit racist from a racist party espousing distinctly racist policies", about 62M.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#897
post #874

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> (professor Didier Raoult) has been mostly right about the whole thing Can you cite some sources? Everything I've seen about him has pointed out how bad his study was, how he has a track record of just plain making stuff up, etc. Here's a good example (with extra links) that pretty much demolishes his claims: https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/03/29/mo...

The main source would be the website of his own research center https://www.mediterranee-infection.com/en/ (but it's mostly the content in French that's interesting) He had a lengthy interview on French media last week. As far as I'm concerned he got pretty much every part of that epidemic right from the beginning and the facts are now vindicating him. But that's not really the point anyway. My point is: he went agai…

> So who is to judge whether or not he should be allowed to spread his ideas?

People who don't think you should make up stuff in medical studies? Which he has a documented history of doing.

Or people who don't think a half-arsed study of questionable value should be held up as a breakthrough against COVID-19 when it demonstrably is not?

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#899

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Who decides what content gets censored?

My comment was on the topic of YouTube's content policies.

And you're content with YT effectively having the ability to choose the way "public" discourse is censored?

Media outlets have immense political power because of this ability to keep the demos out of the loop of what can and can't be censored. Politicians have leverage with the media outlets, but The People do not.

I'm not particularly content with that.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#900

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I would absolutely agree that those who are harmed need adequate remedies under the law. I also know that vaccines provide an immense public benefit. If the specifics of the tort system were causing companies to exit the vaccine business (and they were) , that's certainly something the government ought to step in to fix. However, that doesn't mean there were "issues with safety" as you claim. The implications in your…

If you read the background for that law, you'll find that people were in fact being injured by vaccines. And some still are. Just as virtually all medicines injure some people. Because there's great variability in responses. The law didn't get enacted just to prevent lawsuits, but also to compensate those who were injured. > The implications in your comment are actively harmful to the public health. That way lies tot…

Yes, vaccines have side effects, just as any other medication or treatment does. Nobody has claimed otherwise.

The reason your comment is harmful is because you make implications that have no basis in evidence, but which serve to advance dubious claims accepted by a small but growing and very vocal group of antivaxxers that have had a clear negative impact on our society.

If you have some new evidence or analysis to add, please add it. If all you have is fear, uncertainty, and doubt, please don't throw gasoline on this fire.

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