YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke

My wife and I watched his 3 hour interview last night after hearing about these bans and discussed this a fair bit.

For those that didn't watch, he categorically denies the existence of Covid-19, calls the entire thing a hoax and said that Gates is a psychopath who wants to vaccinate the entire world with nanobots that will eventually enslave us. 5G doesn't cause Covid-19, because it doesn't exist, but 5g can activate the nanobots and at 60ghz can cause respiratory problems similar to what we're seeing. This is orchestrated by a shadowy group called The Cult. We should rise up against our governments and the 'technocrats' of silicon valley (the 1%) to solve this.

It may sound ridiculous, but he mixes in enough truth (often in the form of things you will have seen on the Internet) and cleverly spun arguments to make the 'lies' believable. He does this over a long enough time period (yesterday 3 hours, but his talks are often far longer), that you come away believing what he's said, that's he incredibly clever, and that he's fighting for the "real man on the street" against the 1% and a government that's done nothing for you. Social media has been very dangerous in this respect.

A few days ago I saw someone on twitter saying that rather than deplatform, Icke should just be beaten in debate. The problem is you can't beat Icke in debate without making his followers dig in further. Like any conspiracist, the retort is "that's what they'd want you to say". It's similar to arguing with someone about the existence of God. You can't prove there is no God, I continue to believe and tell you he exists.

My wife just thinks it's all ridiculous. I think with the vaccinations, it's dangerous. But then I have kids now, both are vaccinated. The concept of censoring people scares me, but the idea of throwing away a hundred years of science and medicine because people are worried about being being controlled by Gates's nanobots scares me even more.

Censorship can kill people. Look at China's initial reaction to COVID19, to name a timely example. Admittedly, YouTube doesn't censor to the extent that China does, but whenever you have censorship you open the possibility of censoring life-saving speech, which may be controversial at the time.

Yes, if taken blindly without critical thinking, online misinformation has the potential to do harm and even lead to deaths, as you mention. For freedom of speech to work best, you need an educated and thoughtful population. If you think people are sheep and believe everything they read online, then certainly at first pass it sounds like censoring what they see is the right move. But this relies on a critical implicit assumption: that you (or the censor you defer to) know better and are never wrong. Have you ever changed your opinion? Perhaps you from five years ago would censor something important you would say today. There is no flawless human being in the world that can be trusted with this power.

Okay then, how about we just censor the obviously bad stuff, like Nazis or the 5G conspiracy theories? As other commenters have suggested, censorship will just feed into their narrative, further radicalize, and drive them underground. Instead, for things that are indeed so obviously wrong, simply explain why. Counter their flawed ideas with your correct ideas. If they're so obviously wrong and you're so obviously right, this should be trivial. Reasonable people will see that you're right, and those that don't would be radicalized anyway.

> It strikes me as odd that more people seem to want YouTube to permit far-right propaganda on their platform, than want YouTube to permit 'adult content', which just about no-one advocates.

Personally I would have no problem with adult content on YouTube as long as it's labelled as such. And it's not just "far-right propaganda" that falls under free speech, but also "far-left propaganda" and anything in between. True free speech would not discriminate.

> 'Disagree with' is trivialising the problem. This stuff is serious.

Censorship is also serious, and has serious consequences. It is important to think carefully about the consequences of censorship.

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.