Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

newsweek.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

441–450 of 923 posts

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#441

Post by dgellow »

p1necone wrote: post #412

The entire text of the first amendment, seeing as it seems like a lot of people like to reference it without actually knowing (or pretending not to know) what it says: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a r…

Isn’t David Ivke from the UK? How is a part of the US constitution relevant here?

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#442

Post by colordrops »

p1necone wrote: post #409
colordrops wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know that HN is an international community but it's based in the US and most users are Americans. In the US, you need strong evidence of negative repercussions to restrict speech, and even then it's extremely difficult, due to the 1st amendment being one of the most important laws of the land. It's not the other way around - evidence is not needed to show that allowing speech is helpful.

That's not what the first amendment says. The first amending only stops the government from enacting laws that limit speech. Private companies and individuals are free to limit speech however they like on their own platforms and environments (within the bounds of the law of course). The first amendment is like 50 words long, you should read it.

No need for snark. Of course I've read the first amendment. I'm speaking of speech in general. This post is about censorship by private entities, but there is current of thought in this thread that speech should be restricted in general.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#443

Post by giantDinosaur »

floatingatoll wrote: post #344
giantDinosaur wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could have applied those arguments to all social progressive movements of the 20th century. Gay rights? Those were considered fundamentally abhorrent perversions, suitable for prison & physical elimination. The 'welfare of society'? We define that as much after the fact as anything else. At one point, that was down to censoring anti-slavery positions. How can you possibly consistently make that determination with…

It’s always possible to make an incorrect decision in service of the greater good, but that’s no excuse to give up concern for the greater good forever. Your argument also neatly contradicts personal gun ownership: “Someone was shot yesterday by their neighbor during an argument, so we should ban individual possession of weapons since guns have been used to enforce disagreeable opinions on others.”

The 'greater good' doesn't exist outside of what we say. If we're forbidden from expressing our views on what it should actually be, if you can't find others who express the same views, how is that not equally serving whoever is in power and simply disagrees with what you think is right? The 'greater good' seems far better served by designing platforms to encourage healthy debate rather than playing whack-a-mole with whatever the issue du jour happens to be. For the same reasons we tend to not ban political parties, and hopefully recognise that it's better simply to design superior systems - e.g. not using first past the post or having an independent electoral commission. Censoring to act in the 'greater good' is foolish hubris that can only end badly for those it purports to help the most. And, crucially, when it does start to harm you, how will you speak out about it?

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#444

Post by aantthony »

lonelappde wrote: post #416
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) Not only is what you meant to write (geocentricity) not actually in support of your thesis, showing your poor historical knowledge, what you actually wrote is Not Even Wrong -- it's a classic shibboleth for showing people you have no idea what you are talking about and should be ignored.

Both flat earth and geocentricity were ideas that died out, but yes, geocentricity.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#445

Post by james-mcelwain »

tomhoward wrote: post #436
james-mcelwain wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Past results do not guarantee future performance.

This is a pretty low effort comment, but more importantly is conceding the several upthread assertions that freedom of speech has historically been effective at correcting bad ideas. If your claim is that we shouldn't expect this to continue in the future, that's a whole new claim that you need to support.

I mean, a teleological view of history and ethics is just so absurd that it disturbs me that professed "rational" scientifically minded people believe it. There's no basis for believing just because things "tend" to get better that is in itself a causative argument about some intrinsic nature of humanity.

I mean, even the example used ("the noble class") is preposterous on face because:

1. The Russian Revolution? Germany 1849? Even the American Revolution? None of these are about ideas, or "shining the light on ignorance" -- they're about putting the nobility up against the wall. If there's some kind of teleology at play here, it's not that we thought about it in the marketplace of ideas long enough and decided to do away with the concept.

2. Nobility still exists! At best, this just means we live in a secular society, where we no longer believe the Word of God justifies massive inequality.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#446

Post by chrononaut »

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 and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email us and we'll look at the data.

These guidelines seem like a private corporation censoring content. Are platform guidelines like these also an example of censorship?

To me, these guidelines shape the content and quality of discussions of the community, but also it's one of the reasons why it's a highly effective community. I don't see why YouTube cannot do the same.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#447

Post by colordrops »

fzeroracer wrote: post #225
colordrops wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know that HN is an international community but it's based in the US and most users are Americans. In the US, you need strong evidence of negative repercussions to restrict speech, and even then it's extremely difficult, due to the 1st amendment being one of the most important laws of the land. It's not the other way around - evidence is not needed to show that allowing speech is helpful.

That's just not true though. In the US the rights of property trumps the rights of Freedom of Speech in 99% of cases. If someone puts up a cardboard box on my property and begins a speech, I have the right to kick them off of my property. We have 'Free Speech Zones' which we kick protesters into so that their exertion of their rights doesn't bother other people. We have cases of senators getting people arrested solel…

"one of the most important" != "The most powerful"

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#448

Post by aantthony »

lonelappde wrote: post #430
aantthony wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That people thought the Earth was flat before Galileo is a meme. Even Ancient Greeks knew it was round. Well knowledge wasn't spread as easily, and could be lost. People knew, then they didn't and so on. It doesn't detract from my point that flat earth is an example of an idea that died off when more people learn about it and scrutinize it. > In the end, slavery wasn't abolished by debates: it was abolished by lite…

Have you not noticed that the most populous country in the world is run by a self-identifying Communist Party? And the USSR, #4 was Communist until it collapsed economically , not intellectually?

Communism collapsed intellectually in the West after the economic collapse of the USSR and the relevant death tolls. I know China is communist, but in democratic countries, for the most part, communism is an idea that died off.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#449

Post by AnthonyMouse »

techsupporter wrote: post #120
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…

> I won't address that argument here but personally I think it's a very dangerous way of thinking The problem is you’ve just said you won’t address the primary, most compelling reason to take these actions. Assuming that “sunshine is the best disinfectant” presupposes a lot of things about society that are, in my observation, no longer true. We do not have the time, through our own actions or not, for quiet contempla…

> We do not have the time, through our own actions or not, for quiet contemplation and retrospection into deep topics.

This is a problem, but how does censorship solve it? You would in fact need to solve that problem for all ideas in order to correctly know what to censor, which nobody has time to do, hence the problem.

> We have polarized ourselves into camps of right and wrong.

This is exactly what the censorship makes worse. You say "not here, go somewhere else" to anyone who disagrees and everyone who disagrees is separated, so that each camp has no exposure to the other side's arguments and whoever is wrong will remain so.

> We are exposed to a staggering volume of information that all seems mostly the same with some slight differences but widely varying outcomes.

The world is complicated. Not everybody is going to understand everything. That isn't possible, but it isn't required. What you need are two things.

One is free and open debate, so that the people who choose to allocate their time to a given specific topic enough to come to an accurate conclusion on that topic are free to do so.

And the other is trusted thought leaders who consult a variety of domain experts on a given topic to determine the consensus of the experts and relay it to all of the people who don't have time to look at the specific details on that specific topic. This is what has completely imploded. The news media has lost their credibility by explicitly abandoning even the pretense of impartiality and chasing clickbait nonsense for ratings, so nobody trusts them anymore. As it should be when they're publishing things like that.

But you either do the research yourself (which nobody has time to do for everything) or you trust somebody else to do it for you. So now people need to figure out who they can trust to distill the informed consensus. But you don't do that by censoring the debate, you do it by being so consistently right that people begin to trust you over the lies of the blaring partisans. That doesn't come from force, it comes from hard work, which nobody seems willing to do anymore, which is why everything is messed up.

Re: YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

#450

Post by chrononaut »

koheripbal wrote: post #339
stevebmark wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this is a completely valid question. In this specific case: Do you think it's bad for YouTube to be active in reducing the spread of this information? Because to me it's almost self evident it shouldn't be entertained as a valid idea. I might also ask why you aren't protesting Hacker News having moderators? Content is deleted from this platform all the time.

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.

> At some point, the laws that protect us from government, must also apply to these massive quasi-government monopolies - or they quickly become worthless.

Except that Google cannot arrest you, prosecute you, sentence you to prison or limit any other right you might have. The best that they can do is no longer letting your voice be heard on their service because you have violated one of their _stated_ guidelines. If corporations were doing this in secret, that's a little bit different, but Google is being very forthcoming on the guidelines they are setting.

Post reply on HN