
YouTube has deleted the account of David Icke - 99chrisbard
https://www.newsweek.com/david-icke-man-behind-coronavirus-5g-conspiracy-has-youtube-channel-shuttered-sharing-1501641
======
ryankemper
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), but that's different from saying
that we as a society should _want_ our private platforms to engage in such
censorship and suppression.

Booting people off of platforms merely reinforces their pre-existing beliefs,
and further radicalizes them.

COVID-19 has added the additional element of this new concept of
"disinformation". The argument is seductively simple: "being exposed to this
information could lead you to engage in patterns of behavior that harm
society. Therefore we can conceptualize this speech as being an indirect form
of violence/negligence and therefore we have a moral obligation to remove such
content".

Many may disagree, but I think we need to throw out this concept of
"disinformation" entirely. I don't believe in fighting "bad ideas" by
suppressing them, I believe in shining a light on them. Let the truth fight
for itself. (And of course now comes the classic counter-argument: that the
evils of disinformation possess a virality that makes them spread far more
easily than the truth, being that truth is nuanced and difficult to acquire
whereas bad information is seductively simple. I won't address that argument
here but personally I think it's a very dangerous way of thinking)

~~~
stevebmark
> I believe in shining a light on them

I hear this a lot. Light is the best disinfectant. 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. However, I have repeatedly seen the
opposite: Sharing bad ideas increases their audience, increases ignorance,
hate, fear, and human suffering. You're looking at an article describing this
phenomena right now.

More importantly, I've also seen the opposite: Private platforms actively
suppressing people trying to harm humanity _does_ work. Deplatforming these
people and, importantly, showing social pressure that these are bad ideas and
shouldn't even be entertained as valid debate, has shown to work repeatedly.
In fact, social pressure is one of the most effective tools against hate and
ignorance like this.

I don't think you're basing your "shine the light" argument in evidence, which
I suspect is ironic because I suspect you believe you're objective and use
evidence to judge things.

~~~
aantthony
> 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](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fact-checking#Effects)

And there are countless ideas that have died out when more people learn. It's
easy to forget about them, precisely because they do die off. A few big ones
that were held by the majority but died out:

\- flat earth (before Galileo)

\- pro-slavery views

\- human sacrifice

\- caning children

\- hanging

\- smoking is good for you

\- communism

\- laws against gay marriage

> In fact, social pressure is one of the most effective tools against hate and
> ignorance like this

It can be used to enforce hate and ignorance as well. It's naive to think that
the way _you_ propose enforcing it would be different to all other times in
history when it was used.

~~~
quazeekotl
Most of those ideas didn't die out because one day people found out about
them, and then we put an end to them.

Most of them _everyone_ knew about for thousands, or even tens of thousands of
years, why didn't this "sunlight" disinfect them?

~~~
zozbot234
Because "sunlight" includes the norms of a free _and_ intellectually-open
society, which didn't develop until well after those thousands of years.
Censorship itself is not even that bad _merely_ due to how it might deal with
the YouTube fruitcake du jour; it's _really_ , _really_ bad because it's
openly destructive of these hard-gained shared norms, in so many ways.

~~~
quazeekotl
Maybe, but the argument is that mere public existence of an idea effectively
promotes correct ideas and demotes incorrect ideas.

That is absolutely not in evidence.

~~~
WalterBright
Sure it is. All kinds of ideas died when information became readily available,
even when the authorities tried to suppress them.

For example, the idea of a nobility class.

~~~
james-mcelwain
Past results do not guarantee future performance.

~~~
tomhoward
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.

~~~
james-mcelwain
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.

~~~
tomhoward
All the events you list happened in the wake of the enlightenment, the period
when ideas challenging the validity of the dominance of the monarchies, nobles
and the church were disseminated and popularised in large part due to the
invention of the printing press - i.e., an instrument of free speech.

~~~
james-mcelwain
This either trivially true, in the sense that the Western canon builds on
itself, or patently absurd, in the sense that you attempt to frame the 1918
revolution as being a mere effect of the invention of the printing press 500
years earlier. Neither strikes me as being particularly rigorous
historiography.

~~~
tomhoward
> _particularly rigorous historiography_

It was one-line discussion-board summation of what is widely accepted by
historians (as you said, "trivially true"), but if you'd like to share an
explanation of how the spread of ideas leading to the revolutions of Europe
could have happened without an innovation that had the same effect as the
printing press did, I'd be intrigued to to read it.

> _patently absurd_

So far, three of your replies in this thread alone have contained the word
"absurd".

They probably all break the HN guidelines ("Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have
curious conversation", and "Please respond to the strongest plausible
interpretation of what someone says").

But more importantly, you're too busy sneering at other people's comments to
make any positive assertion of your own.

So what is it you actually want to persuade us of, about the appropriate
levels of constraints on speech in the modern world?

~~~
james-mcelwain
> If you'd like to share an explanation of how the spread of ideas leading to
> the revolutions of Europe could have happened without an innovation that had
> the same effect as the printing press ded, I'd be genuinely intrigued to to
> read it.

History is more complicated than a single invention! It's needlessly
reductive.

I could also say: "how could have the revolutions of Europe happened without
mercantile capitalism challenging the economic structures of feudalism?" But
that's just imposing a post-hoc narrative on history that happens to fit my
existing views.

> So what is it you actually want to persuade us of, about the appropriate
> levels of constraints on speech in the modern world.

My sole reason for participating in this thread is to firmly reject idealism
and the teleological view of history. Ideas aren't magic. Technology isn't
either.

(P.S. it's kind of hilarious that you're invoking HN rules regarding my speech
in the same breath as you are defending the merits of free speech.)

~~~
tomhoward
> _History is more complicated than a single invention_

Yes, of course, I never claimed otherwise. But some concepts are more
fundamental and influential than others, and the flow of information is more
fundamental and influential than most.

> _My sole reason for participating in this thread is to firmly reject
> idealism and the teleological view of history. Ideas aren 't magic.
> Technology isn't either._

If that's all you're trying to say, then, OK, thanks for pointing that out.

> _it 's kind of hilarious that you're invoking HN rules regarding my speech
> in the same breath as you are defending the merits of free speech_

Fine, have your free point :)

But dismissing everyone else's comments as "absurd", "preposterous",
"hilarious" etc whilst not making any effort to construct a solid assertion
about the main topic is just a waste of everyone's time.

------
imgabe
I'm not going to shed a tear for David Icke, but this quote is very
concerning:

> YouTube has clear policies prohibiting any content that disputes the
> existence and transmission of Covid-19 _as described by the WHO [World
> Health Organization] and the NHS [the U.K 's healthcare system]_ [emphasis
> added]

The WHO at least has been flat out wrong several times during this pandemic,
such as telling people not to wear masks. Anointing one agency as the sole
source of truth and censoring anything that contradicts it is not going to
lead to a good outcome. People need to be able to question authorities.

~~~
knzhou
Do you have a standard in mind that's better than the WHO? Would you prefer
content prohibited on the basis of whether it sounds right or wrong to a
random Google employee?

~~~
imgabe
I would prefer _content_ not to be prohibited at all. Content is not a
problem. Actions are a problem. Watch all the videos you like telling you to
burn down a cell tower. Once you _do_ burn down a cell tower, then you go to
jail. Perhaps we should also then hold the people telling people to burn down
cell towers responsible, criminally and civilly, for the people who listen to
them.

David Icke might not be so cavalier about telling people to burn down cell
towers if he could be sued and/or jailed after people took him up on it.

As a general principle, I think we should focus on _actual_ consequences, not
imagined, potential consequences.

This has the effect of also encouraging useful dissent. If you disagree with
WHO and you turn out to be right, you can be properly credited with it. You
are not automatically punished for the crime of daring to disagree with the
WHO, and we all benefit from having more accurate, useful information.

~~~
ashtonkem
If you’re worried about freedom of speech, then giving more people standing to
sue David Icke for taking his dumb advice would be far more stifling than
allowing YT to ban people. This would basically allow anyone with deep enough
pockets to police speech using the courts.

~~~
zimpenfish
> This would basically allow anyone with deep enough pockets to police speech
> using the courts.

Which, tbf, the US and UK already have to some degree.

~~~
ashtonkem
Which is what I was thinking of.

But there is a big difference between the U.K. and America here; in the U.K.
if you lose a litigation, you have to pay your opponents legal bills. In
America the cases where the loser must pay are very limited with high bars to
clear. This means that it’s absolutely possible to bankrupt someone in America
with frivolous lawsuits, so long as those lawsuits aren’t bad enough to
trigger the limited exceptions.

------
mrfusion
Just some food for thought. If youtube was around in the past and doing this
stuff they could have deleted videos in support of the following: (these all
started as fringe beliefs(1))

Interracial marriage

Gay marriage

Smoking causes lung cancer

(1) interesting topical read and it has sources for these at the end
[https://waitbutwhy.com/2019/09/american-
brain.html](https://waitbutwhy.com/2019/09/american-brain.html)

~~~
quietbritishjim
Those are ideological beliefs. Yes, at one time they were very widely and
strongly held. But they were never remotely comparible to spreading factually
incorrect information about something biological.

A simple demonstration to this: even the reverse of these (e.g. "I believe gay
marriage is morally wrong") can't reasonably be argued against with "that is
factually incorrect".

It's fair to believe that private companies like YouTube shouldn't be
censoring speech like this. But these comparisons are bogus and only weaken
your point.

~~~
hubert1234
you really think that somebody cant come up with strong scientific evidence to
support all of those? cmon, it's a lack of knowledge and imagination on your
part. There are plenty of real scientific arguments against gay marriage or
gay rights at large. You just dont ever hear them because everyone who ever so
much as hints at them gets banned immediately.

~~~
Cthulhu_
You're appealing to authority and you're using weasel words. What are these
arguments? Who made them?

------
JSavageOne
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 until he became convinced.
He also believed in basically every other conspiracy theory (eg. anti-vaxxing)
due to spending a considerable amount of time in this Youtube rabbit-hole.

Perhaps instead of simply blaming and deleting individual accounts, Youtube
should accept responsibility for the dark side of its recommendation
algorithms and stop feeding people the same kind of one-sided content
espousing the same conspiracy theories.

~~~
Andrex
They've already done this, and it's already been effective:
[https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/03/03/905565/youtube-h...](https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/03/03/905565/youtube-
halved-conspiracy-theory-videos-recommends/)

Half is a good starting point, but obviously I think YouTube wants to push
that higher. This article is from two months ago, also.

------
toofy
This really comes down to whether or not all ideas should be _promoted_
equally. Do we think all ideas–even if they are demonstrably untrue-deserve to
be boosted to the same level of provable truths.

Should they all be promoted equally and considered equally and taught equally,
forever? Do we allow demonstrably false claims to remain at the top to be
treated equally, forever? To forever waste time? Every single provable
untruth? Millions of them? Forever?

I personally see no problem with demoting ideas which have been considered
already. I however would have a problem if these peddlers of demonstrably
untrue ideas couldn’t easily go set up their own websites or print on their
own paper.

This is why I’m not running around flapping my arms dancing in a panic circle.
At this point, people can still:

\- _easily_ make their own websites at a cost which is a tiny fraction
compared to history

\- ideas can still printed and pushed the same as they always could through
print

\- people can still stand on a corner and yelp out whatever ideas just as they
always could.

This is really about how much promotion into consideration these ideas deserve
and for how long. How much of our _very_ limited time/energy reserves do every
idea get?

~~~
kyle_martin1
I elect to demote your ideas. How does that feel?

------
christiansakai
I used to naively believe that education and more information will fix a lot
of things in the world. People will want to study and think and they will be
enlightened.

I don't believe that anymore. For one reason, studying is hard, critical
thinking is hard. Even with given free time and privilege (hello UBI?), most
people will not prefer studying or thinking critically. They'd rather parrot
things from the internet and the media around them.

~~~
battery_cowboy
It kinda makes me scared that we'll never figure out how to prevent the most
ignorant of us from destroying us all.

~~~
thinkingemote
If it makes you feel any better and it shouldn't, right now and in the past
many people have figured out how to effectively deal with "the ignorant". It
basically involves death or camps, reeducation, exile, eugenics etc.

The problem is not "idiots", the problem is thinking that other people are the
problem.

~~~
battery_cowboy
True, division is the real enemy of the people and it's hard to remember that
fact everyday with the assault to your senses from the media about how people
are doing bad stuff. Thanks for reminding me.

------
Zenst
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.

~~~
stolen_biscuit
Actually it's been pretty conclusively shown that removing extremist content
from mainstream channels pretty much prevents the ideas from propagating in
the mainstream. If the cockroaches want to crawl under the fridge there's not
much you can do to stop them but you can stop them from breeding on the table.

~~~
dvt
> Actually it's been pretty conclusively shown that removing extremist content
> from mainstream channels pretty much prevents the ideas from propagating in
> the mainstream.

Actually, no it hasn't. And for anyone that holds such a viewpoint, I'd
strongly suggest reading J. S. Mill's classic, _On Liberty_ [1] -- a
foundational document of Western political thought.

[1]
[https://www.gutenberg.org/files/34901/34901-h/34901-h.htm](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/34901/34901-h/34901-h.htm)

~~~
DonHopkins
What's wrong with YouTube and Facebook exercising a bit of "benevolent
despotism"?

~~~
ryankemper
The classic problem - who decides what behavior is benevolent?

"$INSERT_POSITIVE_ADJECTIVE despotism" is still despotism.

So it comes down to each person's belief set - do they believe that despotism
is unfortunate when misapplied but is a force for good in the right hands? Or
do they instead believe that all forms of control inevitably will get seized
by corrupt forces? Or more radically, that the entire concept of control is
inherently contradictory when seen in the broader context of us having brains
with limited computational power, limited knowledge, forever bounded by time
in a locally deterministic universe, and thus any attempt to seize control
just furthers the propagation of ignorance that the "benevolent despotists"
are ironically trying to eradicate?

The answer is left as an exercise to the reader.

------
Gatsky
I don’t understand the free speech arguments here. Youtube is an advertising
platform. They can do what they want with their platform. If I own a
billboard, and someone wants to advertise their bags for dead kittens, I can
say no.

There needs to be some sense of proportionality. If the government bashed down
Icke’s door and smashed his computer then sure, we should worry about free
speech. But getting banned from Youtube?

~~~
floatingatoll
The argument is that people’s individual freedom to speak anything should be
held in higher regard than the welfare of society, regardless of what harmful
outcomes may come from that speech.

It’s a core tenet of American racists and fascists (and, I suspect, conspiracy
theorists), because otherwise they wouldn’t be able to convert others to their
cause without being silenced by their platforms.

~~~
giantDinosaur
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 without censoring, at various points,
everything good we've worked for? If you're pro abortion, are you 'converting
to the cause' of nihilistic extremism, or are you making reasonable arguments?
Who determines that, government censors? Private corporations with effective
monopolies on communication channels? That only sounds good if they're run by
the people you agree with. They will not always be run by people you agree
with.

~~~
floatingatoll
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.”

~~~
legolas2412
Not the poster, but you can see why gun violence is different. Free speech is
different from material harm to others.

Also, you can keep pursuing greater good by education and protection of human
rights. No need to sacrifice free speech.

~~~
floatingatoll
> _Free speech is different from material harm to others._

This is not a universally agreed-upon belief, and is specifically a belief I
disagree with.

Free speech is just as sharp a blade as any other weapon. We seem to think
that weapons can be carried safely because human beings will use good
judgement about when to use them. I hold the same belief about speech: it is
dangerous when wielded incorrectly, and societies are uniquely vulnerable to
it above all other weapons. It's no more appropriate to me to allow wholly
unrestricted use of speech than it is to allow wholly unrestricted use of
weapons.

Most arguments for 'free speech' try to _avoid_ the ethical debate about where
the line between 'freedom to say anything' and 'harm to the greater good' is.
I consider that line the most critical debate of all. Arguing that speech must
never be restricted is just as extremist a view as arguing that speech must
always be restricted. I much prefer the position "speech generally doesn't
need to be restricted, but I'll make an exception in cases of significant
risk/harm to societies".

------
Traster
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 sites that exist at scale: There's
Youtube, there's Facebook, and then Twitter.

If we had 15 social media platforms, it really wouldn't be much of a problem
for them to make decisions about who they wanted on their platform - whether
that be through Terms of Service or crappy DMCA implementations. And that's
not even taking into consideration the fact that they're all run by the same
handful of people who bump into each other at the local Whole Foods.

The problem isn't censorship, it's the fact that we've got Standard Oil and no
one sees it as a problem.

~~~
krapp
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.

------
ordinarydev
If spreading misinformation is a valid means to shut down a channel then why
do channels like Spirit Science remain? They got about 900k subs and spend the
whole time spouting the most insane claims you could possibly think of with
absolutely no evidence to back it up and yet they continue to remain.

~~~
untog
At a guess: the level of danger the misinformation poses to the public would
be a deciding factor.

------
p1necone
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 redress of grievances."

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

------
t0ughcritic
Been saying this a long time. The top tech companies aka FANGs are too big and
just booting people off regardless of if they agree with msg is is not right.
This was happening with apps before, now videos and WhatsApp msg throttling.
Soon it will be email filtering and then we can say we officially have the
great freedom firewall of America. Any means of discovery and communication
digitally is now strictly controlled under the guise of fake news. Content was
already being ghosted or shadow banned and now it is simply booted. No one
should attempt to build any company unless they are heavily funded on these
platforms. Add trailers, preview content on them and if possible self host.

------
ryankrage77
I see a lot of comments suggesting YouTube is a large & monopolistic enough
platform that they have to be held to a different standard than a private
company, more like a public utility.

YouTube is a private company, and they're hosting exabytes of video content
for free. You don't need to pay (with money) to upload terabytes of video and
have it streamed to millions of people. Just 20 years ago that would have been
unimaginable. Even today I think it's taken for granted a little too much.

If YouTube did what we want, I reckon they'd be out of business pretty fast as
they get overrun with the kind of content they currently don't allow.

------
colinplamondon
Especially right now, communication is moving more and more online. Online
communication is increasingly mediated by corporations.

If our speech is mediated by corporations, and those corporations tell us what
we can and cannot say, what good is freedom of speech?

Companies like YouTube take advantage of their economies of scale to offer
video services for free. To be able to do that, they had to dump services at a
loss for years funded by venture capital.

How can you build a meaningful paid platform, while a VC-backed company spends
tens of millions on R&D at a loss?

The argument thus far is that this is in the consumer's interest - free
services at a high quality. That dumping being good for the consumer is
contingent on the business being able to monetize with advertising.

If YouTube couldn't make money with ads, they'd have to charge for their
services - opening them up to competition. VC backed businesses offering
consumer products for free is most certainly dumping. So far, that dumping has
been to consumer's benefit. YouTube's behavior is reversing that benefit.

There's also a lot of other options they could go with, all of which would be
far less un-American.

1) A Reddit-like quarantine system, and eat the cost of hosting (like Reddit
does)

2) Require Ickes to pay for his own hosting on YouTube, at YouTube's favorable
pricing and peering contracts.

3) Enable a separate ad ecosystem for quarantined content.

------
Mikhail_Edoshin
There seems to be quite a few YouTube videos of charging phones in microwaves.
Are these videos being removed from YouTube too? And I've heard stories that
some people indeed believed that and broke their phones. Can YouTube be held
responsible for damages?

------
busymom0
“As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both
instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged.
And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air
– however slight – lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.”

\- Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas

------
anctualprzn
While I generally agree that censorship is not ideal, I think one big issue
here is that YouTube is already in the business of influencing what is watched
on their platform. Popular content is recommended more. In effect, content
becomes click bait that's meant to invoke emotions. I think some blame can be
put on YouTube for driving people to listen to fanatics, so this seems like an
effort to right that wrong.

I'm not a fan of popularity-driven recommendations unless they're from a
community like HN that has a high-bar for useful content.

------
intended
Inevitably on a moderation question on HN People will argue for “truth” to
fight with misinformation.

Please know that this stopped working the moment we went past the artisanal
era of content moderation - which was before the Cable news cycle effect. At
the scale we operate at now, not moderating content guarantees that malformed
information Packets that take advantage of neural and social weaknesses will
proliferate over “truth”.

------
jasonlingx
Interesting. Private companies have now become the moral arbitrators and
censors of the global social media platforms they control vs in China where
the government takes on this role. Wonder which is more dystopian.

------
patti3000
Rebel Wisdom has done some great reporting on this:

David Icke & London Real, an Investigation
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDM1wTGOjOw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDM1wTGOjOw)

Why was David Icke been banned from YouTube?
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omiD6WkTKak](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omiD6WkTKak)

------
chantelles
Icke's Conspiracy theories are displacement of class discontent 2005: The
Reptoid Hypothesis. In this context, Google has just silenced a form of
dissent or at least evidence of dissent building.
[https://www.jstor.org/stable/20718709?seq=1](https://www.jstor.org/stable/20718709?seq=1)

------
pnako
YouTube is trying very hard to become the new MTV.

------
rurban
What he says reminds me a lot on religious teachings. They are still allowed
to spread their bullshit. Esp. it reminds me on Scientology. Which is allowed
in many countries to teach the very same bullshit.

Censorship is violating fundamental rights. Somebody should fight them,
Facebook, Google, Twitter, in court, but nobody will for these nutcases.

------
runawaybottle
If Youtube really believes this is the right course of action, why doesn’t
it’s sister company Google remove those items from search as well? If this is
really a principled action, then let’s see some follow through.

They’d never do that because that is the very definition of internet
censorship as we know it today.

That’s how close Youtube is with this dangerous game.

~~~
Talanes
You see no difference in their role as a content-host and a content-
aggregator?

~~~
runawaybottle
Why would a content aggregator allow disinformation on their site during a
global pandemic?

And now we enter the semantics game.

------
gerland
The reason why we cannot get the right balance between freedom of speech and
the right to silence the "abusers" is that by trying to do that we are
uncovering an inconvenient truth.

It would not be a problem to let the conspiracy theory people or ultra-left,
ultra-right people speak freely if an average person would have healthy
mechanism to counter the disinformation. Unfortunately those mechanisms were
dismantled by the classical media in an conscious effort in the last 7+
decades.

Face it - the average person is taught how he should think not by the
educational system, but by the media. Our current predicament is only due to
information centers hoarding power that they should never get. Not saying that
the educational system is great, I think it's even worse to some degree, but
we have given up the control for convenience.

Instead of creating a basis from science, we created a system in which the
buzzwords spat out from "journalists" mouths are underlying the whole social
discourse.

We cannot get the balance in the "new media" right, because now everybody is
granted the power that no one should have in the first place. We are trying to
optimize the wrong parameters.

------
brenden2
IMO censorship is wrong. To quote someone smarter than me:

> I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to
> say it.

[https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/06/01/defend-
say/](https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/06/01/defend-say/)

~~~
luckydata
that person didn't realize the damage propaganda could do with modern tools.
Unfortunate reality is our cognitive biases can be exploited, and complete
freedom of speech is not in the best interest of the majority of humanity.

This is a "loophole" that is exploited over and over again by climate change
denialists, cigarette companies, nazis...

~~~
brenden2
Yeah, and just imagine what politicians could get away with if they had laws
that allowed them to prevent people from speaking their mind.

~~~
luckydata
This absolutism is unnecessary. Plenty of modern democratic countries have
limits on acceptable speech (France, Sweden to give you a couple examples) and
they are not less democratic than the US (I would argue they are more).

Limiting speech within agreed boundaries is not problematic as long as it's a
decision taken with a good criteria and with a good goal in mind. It's no
different than any other decision we make on how we setup society.

~~~
brenden2
What is or isn't acceptable at the time is largely a matter of fashion and
opinions. As an example, have a look at the ALA's compiled list of banned
books (some of which are banned for ridiculous reasons):
[http://www.ala.org/advocacy/sites/ala.org.advocacy/files/con...](http://www.ala.org/advocacy/sites/ala.org.advocacy/files/content/FieldReport_Download%20%282%29.pdf)

------
kalium-xyz
I predict a near future update from David on how the Lizard people plotted
against our enlightenment once again by blocking him from us. Fear not, he has
found new ways to make us aware of the consciousness field, saturn, and 5G its
emotion affecting effects.

------
mrfusion
This is a good read that made me think twice about what youtube is doing.

[https://waitbutwhy.com/2019/09/american-
brain.html](https://waitbutwhy.com/2019/09/american-brain.html)

------
pcurve
While channels with extreme stance that have public health repercussion are
easy enough for them to shut down, I worry more about amateur channels with
conspiracy-oriented bating materials that polarize people to either extreme.

------
NiceWayToDoIT
Although I welcome deletion of David Icke account, I am afraid that now he
will play on a card of suppression, scoring even more points for his
conspiracy theories, fueling even more flame of fear and hatred.

------
throwaway05041
Throwaway. I worked at an event David did many years ago. I used to be a big
fan.

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.

~~~
leonvv
The root of the problem seems to be the inability of people to correctly judge
the likeliness of David's arguments to be true. This is not a problem that
we're going to solve by banning David's content.

~~~
krapp
>This is not a problem that we're going to solve by banning David's content.

Ok. How are we going to solve it by guaranteeing that his content proliferates
as widely as possible, or even as some have suggested, by having governments
force platforms to host it against their will, in the name of absolute free
speech?

The principle that we can debate the merit of ideas only so long as we never
prevent any idea from spreading only renders debate meaningless. It's implied
in the concept of a marketplace of ideas that some ideas will have value over
others. And so it seems implicit to the concept of free speech that one should
have the freedom to accept or reject an idea, or try to disabuse someone of an
idea you deem fallacious.

~~~
leonvv
> his content proliferates

This is the root of the problem. The fact that his content is on YouTube does
not imply that it will proliferate.

> How are we going to solve it

Critical thinking skills are apparently undervalued. This is a problem that is
hopefully solvable by education and public debate. Even if not, the situation
in which a small part of the population believes in David's ideas seems
preferable to me than one in which a small group of (non democratically
chosen) people decide what is acceptable content and what is not.

> It's implied in the concept of a marketplace of ideas that some ideas will
> have value over others.

I agree, but different people will have different definitions of value.

> And so it seems implicit to the concept of free speech that one should have
> the freedom to accept or reject an idea, or try to disabuse someone of an
> idea you deem fallacious.

I agree, but censoring someone goes much farther than to disabuse. Too far, in
my opinion.

~~~
krapp
>The fact that his content is on YouTube does not imply that it will
proliferate.

That's not what I meant. In a world run under free speech maximalist
principles, one in which society is only allowed to debate and criticize ideas
like David Icke's, but no platform is allowed to choose not to host them
(because that choice amounts to censorship,) those ideas would proliferate
because _mere criticism and debate_ are not sufficient to prevent their
spread.

If it were, there would be no anti-vaxxers or flat earthers, or people who buy
into most conspiracy theories, because those people are aware of the arguments
to the contrary of their point of view, and they choose to dismiss those
arguments. They don't respond to criticism with sober introspection and logic,
they respond with ridicule and sometimes violence.

>Even if not, the situation in which a small part of the population believes
in David's ideas seems preferable to me than one in which a small group of
(non democratically chosen) people decide what is acceptable content and what
is not.

Except Youtube isn't deciding what is acceptable for society, they are
deciding what is acceptable for themselves. David Icke's delusional followers
are free to continue to be deluded, but he is no longer allowed to host
content on their platform.

>I agree, but censoring someone goes much farther than to disabuse. Too far,
in my opinion.

I disagree that David Icke's been censored. He doesn't have a right to a
Youtube account, any more than he has the right to break into my house and
start ranting about lizard men. Youtube isn't public property just because
it's on the internet.

The problem is that it's impossible for the marketplace of ideas to reject
anything without it being interpreted as censorship. That's a slippery slope
no one wants to recognize.

------
imode
I see a lot of people not wanting to offer alternative solutions to the
treatment of this particular individual's content: if you're not in favor of
removal, then what? This content can't be allowed to stand as-is.

I'm sure you'd complain about any measure other than leaving this individual
alone. If so, you deserve to be angry, because you're part of the overall
problem.

Edit: To remind all of you, downvotes should be reserved for things that are
strictly disruptive or not contributing to discussion. Unless we're free to
disregard the rules, now.

~~~
at_a_remove
Don't consider the downvotes as not contributing to the discussion, think of
them as ... deplatforming your idea. It cannot be allowed to stand as-is,
after all.

~~~
imode
It's nice that you can't contribute in a meaningful way to the discussion.
Means I'm right.

------
baybal2
I find this a little bit strange when they allow outright scam pseudoscience
ads.

I think, I counted at least 4 "magic cure" ads on youtube today.

------
cgiles
The question I am not seeing addressed in the many, many comments below is:
_why_ is there such a large pool of people willing to believe, and act on,
ideas like "5G causes COVID-19 symptoms", "vaccines are harmful", anything by
Alex Jones, etc?

It is because people are afraid, and because there is a breakdown of trust in
Authorities and Experts to tell the truth and keep people safe. Governments
and intelligence agencies lied about Iraq and beyond. Large corporations were
the only ones saved in 2008. There is a reproducibility crisis in science,
which it pays lip service, and lip service only, to solving. Newspapers have
become partisan, ad-driven shills. Corporations buy politicians, and together
they invent truths as needed to further the bottom line.

This is the context in which people are increasingly skeptical of Authorities.
"5G causes coronavirus", I think, like flat-earth belief, is less an actual
belief a person could actually have, than an almost symbolic statement of
distrust in Experts. The specific belief is completely unfounded, but the
feeling behind it is not.

In this context, I fail to see how corporate censorship could possibly be the
answer. At the very best, it is a band-aid. The necessary solution is for our
institutions to regain their credibility. The first in many steps will be for
them to show some humility and acknowledge that they have failed us badly.
Until that credibility is re-established, they need to use a softer touch,
rather than doubling down on the obviously false idea that their words are the
Infallible Truth.

------
scythe
An amusing casualty. Newsweek states:

>David Icke, Man Behind Coronavirus 5G Conspiracy

Can this be true? Does David Icke have a following that isn't just laughing
along with it? I remember his reptilian shapeshifter theory being a running
joke from back when I was in high school in 2005!

Surely, _someone else_ must have started the whole 5G conspiracy theory,
right? Icke just latched on to it?

~~~
mrkeen
> Does David Icke have a following that isn't just laughing along with it?

I thought the same thing about flat earth a while ago.

~~~
p1necone
I like flat earth because it's relatively harmless, while also being wacky as
all hell. Of course it attracts a bunch of people who are into other, actually
harmful conspiracy theories too.

I miss when it was all flat earth and aliens and bigfoot, rather than white
supremacy and denying the validity of a global pandemic that's actually
killing people.

------
friendlybus
The case for a free and open web is terminal. Assange, christchurch, numerous
political commentators. Liberty is deflating into traditional culture and we
are all being pinned down into our most basic identities for the sake of the
coming command economy in the 2040s. Sic transit gloria mundi.

------
dwardu
It all started with Alex Jones, and everyone cheered...

YouTube is a private company, and yes it can choose who it wants on its
platform.

On the other hand of the argument. When do we determine that a company's
platform has become so big, that it is a public space and it should just
"maintain" the platform and make it as inclusive as possible? For example, we
had Alexandra Ocasio Cortez blocking people on twitter, and it is a private
platform that a public figure is using, however it was deemed illegal, I'm not
sure if it is the same thing that happened with Trump and a few others.

I'm not an US citizen, and I don't live in there, however it's so important to
see people's views, no matter how stupid or ridiculous it can be. I want to be
able to make up my own mind, some views may be terrible and we should be able
to hear them. Be curious in pursuing these things.

David Icke, from the little I know is crazy, and says some ridiculous things,
but he should have be allowed to voice them.

~~~
DanBC
> and make it as inclusive as possible?

This argument would be stronger if it mentioned all the people chased off
these platforms by the virulent toxic supporters of Icke and Jones.

~~~
dwardu
Irrespective of if they are right or wrong, and if others think it's stupid.
Everyone is free has the right to speak their mind, and they must also
understand that they must be accountable for what they say.

People who want to cancel others because they have a dissenting thought they
want to say are ultimately terrible human beings.

------
mdszy
Free speech does not mean that anyone is required to host your content.

------
polytronic
I completely align with this:

"When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its
subjects, This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden
to know, the end result is tyranny and oppression no matter how holy the
motives."

Robert A. Heinlein

------
techntoke
How can they remove David Icke before George Webb and Jason Goodman?

------
qiaoliang89
It is like fun control isn't it? You can own firearms for self defence. But if
you murder someone else cause other negative consequences, you need to take
responsibility. Free! = irresponsible.

------
rukittenme
I, for one, welcome corporate censorship of the public discourse. Because if
there's anyone I can trust its my local, multi-national brand. I love you
brand!

~~~
rukittenme
Also, spare me the asinine "you're free to speak on public property"
responses. Public discourse has de-facto moved into private custody. There is
no "escaping it".

------
tibbydudeza
Come on really ???.

He is a paranoid delusional who once claimed to be Jesus and believe that
Lizard people are real ... he needs medical help.

No freedom of speech issue here.

------
zaro
The thought police strikes again.

------
busymom0
Don't agree with much with Icke but we are on the wrong path.

------
IIAOPSW
I'm going to paste here something I wrote a while ago. This is an
technological thought experiment and an allegory for fake news and modern
propaganda. I use a technological hypothetical to remove the question of if
people have any agency in falling for it and the question of if it is
necessary to put up with fake news as a form of free speech. With those two
questions settled in the premise, we can think clearly about the core issue of
the threat of effective propaganda to democracy.

Suppose neuroscientists and neural network researchers found an adversarial
image which worked on humans. Not all humans, but at least 15% of them. The
technology is developed such that by including a specially crafted banner ad
image next to an article you could put an arbitrary thought in the persons
mind. This opens up a very serious hack in a democracy. The technology is hard
to build, but a nation state actor like China or Russia could easily replicate
the technology themselves and use these banner ad images to sway elections.
Like a psychological atom bomb, it is just a matter of time before every major
player has it. 15% of the population is larger than the margin on nearly every
election ever. A democracy which wants to survive only has two choices:

1\. Criminalize the adversarial images and censor them from the web. Congrats.
You are now in an arms race with one side making better adversarial image
detectors and the other making better hidden adversarial images. In the mean
time you've built an insanely good machine learning based censorship apparatus
which sits on top of all internet traffic. Eventually the technology gets to a
point where the cognitive basilisk isn't obvious to the unaffected and people
are worried that some images are being censored for their substance. The
adversaries intentionally hide the patches in posts / ads about wedge issues
like guns or abortion so that taking it down looks like political censorship.
While everyone agrees censoring the thought breaking images is necessary,
people are rightfully scared about this apparatus being abused.

Maybe the cognitive basilisks are de facto censored in the sense of being de-
platformed by the media (both traditional and social variants). Maybe they are
state-capitalism censored in the sense of de-platforming under threat of
regulation if they aren't. Maybe we go full China with it and have a top level
federal internet censor. The only real difference between these mechanisms is
the technical issue of legality. For our purposes the implementation does not
matter.

2\. Don't let people in the 15% vote. People are again rightfully scared that
it could easily expand beyond 15%. A very small, very educated, very detached
from the average class of people (neuroscientists) is now trusted to decide
who gets to vote. All of the 15% (and quite a few in the 85%) are suspicious
of them abusing this power to forward their personal political preferences.
Disenfranchising people based on inherited neurological traits is extremely
contentious. The question of if it is the right thing to do becomes the
defining social issue of a generation.

A political fissure opens up. Some people prefer option 1 because they don't
consider the adversarial patches to be "speech" and thus don't think there's a
free speech risk in censoring them. Some people prefer option 2 because they
don't think it is possible to win the arms race in the first case and so long
as we don't let the disenfranchisement expand beyond 15% the sin is
forgivable. At the very least they think option 2 is a less slippery slope
than option 1. Some people like option 1 and 2 at the same time because just
do whatever it takes to fix the problem as fast as possible. The people in the
15% think the cognitive basilisks are just a made up conspiracy by the elites.
Of course they think this because the cognitive basilisks told them so.

Then comes the disingenuous part of the fissure. Some people like option 2 but
their unstated reason is because they looked at how the 15% currently votes
and they think disenfranchisement will finally lead to their political party
winning. Some people secretly want to keep the exploit in place because their
political party happened to benefit from interference in the last election.
They don't actually have a solution but instead constantly remind you how
risky and undemocratic the two options are and insist we do neither. None of
the disingenuous advocates are ever moved by any arguments because their
purported beliefs were always just a fig leaf over their unstated wants.

The debate over how to deal with this technology takes on an impassioned,
repugnant, culture-war tone that we have all grown to recognize by now. What
happens next I don't know.

What I am proposing is that if cognitive basilisk's exist then there is a
contradiction of wants within Democracy. You must pick at most 2:

-Everyone gets to vote. -Nothing is ever censored. -The internet has no borders.

The only remaining question is do fake news and AstroTurfing bots count as
cognitive basilisks?

------
sjwalter
Man, this comment thread is really harshing my buzz.

So many folks here seem real eager to hype their systems and methods for
ensuring all this oh-so easily identifiable misinformation has no route to
most, which when implemented would stop this huge threat to our civilization.
Typing up their clever ideas, full of good intentions (not being sarcastic, my
default presumption is you all mean well), each author implicitly assumes
their superiority over the masses who are so easily duped into believing awful
and dangerous mistruths based on a few headlines boosted on Twitter. The
mindset, stripped of all the complications and rhetoric and real positive
intent, boils down to this: "These poor fools are completely lost, already in
a world of hurt, and their naivety threatens all we hold dear, and so we must
protect them from themselves."

Already in this thread, all the usual quibbles & arguments for & against this
particular form of censorship are being studiously re-litigated. I feel
strongly enough to write internet comments about very few issues and my
feelings in favour of free speech fundamentalism are making it difficult to
stay out of the fray. But I will restrain myself--not because it's a bad thing
to do, but just because the ROI on everyone's time is so low, considering the
tiny likelihood that all these words spilled out here will change even one
mind.

Instead, I will ask a question that thus far has not been raised, and that I
think is fundamental to this issue:

Q: What problems are we trying to solve here?

It seems that somewhere in the recent past (if I had to ballpark it, I'd say
this all began to rise sometime around 8 Nov 2016) basically everyone in
society came to the agreement that misinformation is running rampant, so
rampant it may be the #2 item trafficked on the web, King Porn secure in his
crown. Not only do we all seem to agree that misinformation is everywhere, but
we all seem to also agree that this misinformation's impact is a massive
threat to our society--the camel's legs are shaking under the strain, and
Zuck's machine just keeps throwing straw.

This seems quite bizarre to me. Can someone here who's proposed one of these
Democracy Protection Apparatuses tell me what it is y'all're trying to fix?

Make no mistake--I am quite aware that basically every public communications
channel, not just the web but every channel, is under pressure from a constant
flood of messaging aimed at literally changing minds, changing what and how we
all think about this concern or that. I am quite well apprised of how the
anti-vaxxers spread their wild, unbelievable propaganda, leveraging facebook
moms' groups and instagram knitting forums to spread their evil & subversive
messages. I know all about how the wily Ruskies have become the world's
greatest social media influencers imaginable, who can take a shoestring budget
that couldn't cover a major campaign's one day hotel spend and swing the most
important election on earth.

Of course, as with the printing press and radio and television and fax
machines and even pagers, I completely believe, based on solid evidence, that
power factions attempt to leverage all broadly-adopted comms channels to their
own selfish ends. I'm not denying that.

But can anyone here clearly identify what problem is right now such a huge
concern that we should cheer on a corporation--one that wields power over our
lives like no other ever has--as it unilaterally decides what we can and
cannot here?

I mean, Susan's big reason here has been laid out explicitly: The 'rony
pandemic is of such great concern that our ears should be blocked off from any
sound that doesn't emanate from Official Authority, in this case, the WHO, an
organization which five months ago nobody cared about at all and now everyone
knows is about as credible as The National Enquirer (todo: insert BatBoy
joke).

I mean, to me it is clearly obvious that accepting censorship is a huge risk.
I'm not crazy, I don't think there should be literally zero restriction on
free speech. The world would be a mess of scams were fraud permissible, for
instance. But the risks censorship brings are huge and asymmetric--only us
little people suffer when the surveillance and enforcement mechanisms
censorship requires are abused. The wealthy and connected will always have
more access to information than we do. When the abuse happens, it will always
be to their benefit, because they either are the censors themselves or they
control the censors. As we stand to lose the most when censorship is abused,
we should have an extremely high bar for any justification for it. (Just think
about that phrase, "dangerous information," for a second--we're not talking
nuclear launch codes, we're talking questioning public policy, this is what
Susan thinks is dangerous. Clearly she thinks very little of us.)

Censorship is power. Actually, censorship is the root of the power hierarchy.
It's the most important tool in the shed, as a tractor is to a farmer so is
censorship to Team Elite.

They want to control our minds. And many people in here are cheering them on.

~~~
knzhou
There really is no need for hysteria here. If YouTube began issuing a million
times more bans, it might approach the quality of an average newspaper in
terms of accuracy. Would we be living in a dystopia at that point? No, we'd be
living just like we did in the year 2000, when YouTube wasn't around but
newspapers were. Just like a nutjob in 2000, Icke still has print, radio, TV,
going outside with a megaphone, and going door to door with pamphlets to
promote his message. In fact, he's even luckier, because he still has access
to _the entire rest of the internet_.

But wait, you say: in the year 2000, Icke wouldn't have been able to get a
following of millions on print or radio! They wouldn't have let him on!
Indeed, so what this actually proves is that in 2020, there is _far more_ free
speech than there was in 2000. We are at historically high levels of free
speech. Freaking out over this is like thinking we've gone back to the Bronze
Age every time the stock market goes down 1%.

~~~
sjwalter
I won't quibble the strange comparison between YouTube, whose second-most
content producer is a man dubbed PewDiePie who talks about video games and
anime memes, to news organizations, though it is quite tempting.

This is what I find so strange. Literally zero people on this forum have
indicated they are in sync with this dude's views (I hadn't heard of this guy
until now, I have no idea what he's about), and from what I can tell, the
crowd here, which I'd judge is a cut or two above the average web forum, finds
whatever his views are absurd and his argumentation unconvincing.

And so, since he says things we may all agree are wrong, we think it is the
right move to remove his views from where they can be found? I mean, YT has
created for itself many many mechanisms through which it can shape the
messages emitting from its platform, from the blunt-force banhammer we're all
here yakking about, to much more subtle though nearly as effective, like how
if I watch a video by Bon Appetite, the autoplayed Next Up video is always
another video from Bon Appetite--if I watched for an unbroken day, I'm sure
it'd be 24 straight of test kitchen hijinx.

The internet's promise was the democratization of mass communication. This
entails both sides of the table, producer and consumer. Infinity websites
means that I'm not stuck flipping between only 120 channels if I can't find
something I like, a massive improvement over television's narrow and
excitement-filled band of allowable opinion.

OBVIOUSLY I don't think any crackpot should be somehow guaranteed to have his
views pushed onto millions. But the reason the internet's promise was so great
was that it allowed us the choice--we could, if we'd like, write and publish a
piece detailing the malfeasance of my corrupt municipal government without
ever needing to consider much less engage the editor in chief of the only
local paper, who let's face it, could probably be easily convinced by the rich
local businessdude, given his poverty-level wages.

But this is why I think this is so fundamental an issue, and why I am puzzled
by your response and that of many here. What damage do you really think David
Icke is causing?

So I gather that he's espousing a view that states that quarantines and
lockdowns are terrible and ineffective, and encouraging people to ignore them
and freely associate.

OK. I understand that you believe the expression of that view could lead to
many people deciding to ignore whatever orders or ordinances that have been
imposed upon them.

Here's a picture from Pier49 in NYC today:
[https://twitter.com/JackKaplanNY/status/1256761546451058689/...](https://twitter.com/JackKaplanNY/status/1256761546451058689/photo/1)

If you don't want to click the link, the picture shows an urban park packed
with people, mostly young men, sitting and standing on the grass, wearing
summer clothes, most appear to be in some state of enjoyment--it's definitely
not any kind of overt protest, it's just a bunch of normal people who got out
of their apartments and are hanging out outside as everyone wants to do on
beautiful sunny days.

Do you think all of these people influenced by YT or other social media
content to subversively break the lockdown orders? If it were possible to
prove it, I'd bet a significant chunk of my net worth that social media had
basically nothing to do with the appearance of this crowd. All it took was
some mercury rising and a clear sky.

And so you believe that this Iche guy's messages about coronavirus and
lockdown are so incredibly risky to broadcast on any major platform that his
views and any like them should be verboten on major platforms--it seems you
cheer this censorship on, hooray for the good guys, we killed off yet another
misinformation peddler whose subversive views could have killed us all!

...and whose subversive views are by default what literally all the people in
the picture, the thousands of normal people who probably like me never heard
of this Iche guy before, who all it took to convince them to go outside some
light and heat.

Think about that: Yay Google! Continue on your path of determining what
messages are acceptable not just on your platform, but by extension, setting
the position and width of the overton window for maybe a majority of the
population.

If that doesn't seem like some hollow-ass justification for censorship, I
dunno what to say.

~~~
knzhou
> So I gather that he's espousing a view that states that quarantines and
> lockdowns are terrible and ineffective, and encouraging people to ignore
> them and freely associate.

> I understand that you believe the expression of that view could lead to many
> people deciding to ignore whatever orders or ordinances that have been
> imposed upon them.

That is not at all a representative summary of his views, or mine. I see
hundreds of people arguing against lockdowns every day, on sites all across
the internet, and it's just fine, and nobody is being censored for it. It's so
mainstream that even the NYT is publishing opinion pieces about it, e.g. when
comparing with Sweden's response.

The actual problem with David Icke is that he espouses conspiracy theories, of
the form "the lizard men, Bill Gates, the aliens, and the liberals teamed up
to create 5G to wipe out the human race". Stuff like this leads to serious
consequences, such as the Congressional baseball shooting, the Pizzagate
shooting, the Youtube headquarters shooting, and the armed takeover of the
Michigan statehouse.

~~~
sjwalter
That is a really insane justification. Also strange that what I gather to be a
right-wing internet figure would somehow inspire a shooter to go and try to
kill a bunch of republicans as they perform baseball?

This week there were not just one but an entire carpet bombing mission's worth
of bombshells about the case of general Flynn. Every headline about that guy,
his guilty plea, was a total lie. There was no journalism done during the
entire course of the process, and the FBI from director on down planned his
destruction and did it, knowing full well he was innocent.

This is provable with court documents that are irrefutable.

So we can now throw WaPo and the fancy pulitzer they got for the Flynn fake
news out with Icke right? I mean it seems to meet your standard--huge damage
to a really loyal American and his family, bankrupt, house sold, son and
family threatened to secure the plea the ratfuckers needed.

You'd throw all those people and all the conspiracy nuts like CNN and MSNBC
and Fox News that pushed that dangerous propaganda, right?

Oh, wait, no you're saying those same people, or at least people in that same
group, you want them to do all the censoring.

Oh. Cool.

(Btw, if you think the above bombshells are not true, I can provide you all
the documents, which are easy to validate given they're hosted on various
official DOJ servers, and I'm willing to bet you that Flynn's case is
dismissed.

Team Elite are these kinds of people. They'll tear anyone or thing apart to
fulfill their stupid goals.

Let's cheer them as they mindfuck us into thinking their censorship is a great
idea.

------
Barrin92
he deserved to be kicked off for his virulent antisemitism and Holocaust
denial a long time ago, guess the pandemic conspiracies did him in. Good
riddance.

------
sunseb
I despise David Icke but I think platforms like YouTube or Facebook should
remain neutral. It's not their job to tell us what people should be looking at
or not. Then what? We end up like China where we can only browse government
propaganda?

~~~
ctrl-j
I don't believe slippery slope applies in this situation. For the most part
Youtube has been fairly lenient as to which accounts get heavily moderated
and/or removed. I may revise my opinion if it is ever shown that they become
more aggressively restrictive to what is hosted on their platform - but for
the most part you seem to be given a wide berth to upload what you wish.

The worst I've seen so far is that their video promotion algorithm can be used
to "shadow ban".. but I personally believe they have every right to decide how
their internal advertisements work.

There is also still the free and open internet as a general platform. Torrents
and direct downloads are available as a distribution method if there is truly
no other platform willing to host your media.

~~~
colejohnson66
> For the most part Youtube has been fairly lenient as to which accounts get
> heavily moderated and/or removed.

Ah yes, because people have never had their entire Google account terminated
because they posted one too many emojis in a chat...

[https://9to5google.com/2019/11/09/google-account-bans-
youtub...](https://9to5google.com/2019/11/09/google-account-bans-youtube-
emote-spam-markiplier/)

------
centimeter
I'd previously dismissed him as a quack, but hey, now I'm thinking maybe he's
onto something.

------
pdog
The website that accounts for a huge chunk of global internet traffic
censoring 5G videos feels a little too on the nose to me.

------
endgame
I see no way that this power, first applied to uncontroversially-bad
information, will ever be misused.

What happened to "organise _the world's_ information, and make it _accessible_
and useful"?

~~~
gameswithgo
what happened is the trolls and insane people got all the clicks and it made
the public dumber.

~~~
evv555
Would that have happened if these platforms "organised _the world's_
information, and made it _accessible_ and useful" instead of using engagement
driven filter bubbles?

~~~
kbrwn
Facebook would be #1 in online advertising and we'd be using Bing on our
Windows Phones.

------
danieltillett
Isn’t the real problem that YouTube is basically a utility service, but one
that makes a loss for the parent company.

The discussion we should be making is not if YouTube should censor people, but
if it should be turned into a regulated utility like a phone or electricity
company. Of course if this is decision we make don’t be surprised if Google
shuts down the service.

~~~
Andrex
YouTube contributed 10% to Google's revenue last year ($15 billion.)

[https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/3/21121207/youtube-google-
al...](https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/3/21121207/youtube-google-alphabet-
earnings-revenue-first-time-reveal-q4-2019)

YouTube has been break-even since 2014-2015[1]. The myth that YouTube is still
somehow unprofitable needs to die.

1\. [https://www.wsj.com/articles/viewers-dont-add-up-to-
profit-f...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/viewers-dont-add-up-to-profit-for-
youtube-1424897967)

~~~
danieltillett
Yes YouTube may well be profitable as it is run now, but it may not be
profitable if it was run as a utility.

~~~
Andrex
It shouldn't be run as a utility then. The web is open; another video site can
be established by anyone. YouTube proves the model can be profitable.

I'm not sure I'd treat YouTube's "monopoly" on internet video the same way as
actual utilities have physical monopolies on their industries.

~~~
danieltillett
Internet video appears to be a natural monopoly given no one can even close to
competing against Google.

------
catalogia
David Icke has been a kook for as long as I can remember. People laughed at
him, they didn't fear him. Now he's deplatformed, now he's feared.

Has our society become so fragile that once harmless kooks are now considered
a threat to civil order?

------
charred_toast
@imgabe says it well in this comment section:

> YouTube has clear policies prohibiting any content that disputes the
> existence and transmission of Covid-19 as described by the WHO [World Health
> Organization] and the NHS [the U.K's healthcare system] [emphasis added]

The WHO at least has been flat out wrong several times during this pandemic,
such as telling people not to wear masks. Anointing one agency as the sole
source of truth and censoring anything that contradicts it is not going to
lead to a good outcome. People need to be able to question authorities.

------
throwawaysea
Why You Should Oppose The Censorship Of David Icke (Hint: It’s Got Nothing To
Do With Icke)

[https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/why-you-should-oppose-
the...](https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/why-you-should-oppose-the-
censorship-of-david-icke-hint-its-got-nothing-to-do-with-icke-4cb72d19481c)

> A truly free being does not need an alliance of plutocrats and government
> agencies to protect their mind from David Icke. A truly free being does not
> want an alliance of plutocrats and government agencies to exert any control
> whatsoever over what ideas they are permitted to share and what thoughts
> they are permitted to think. A truly free being opposes with all their might
> any attempt to lock in a paradigm where human communication (and thereby
> thought) is controlled by vast unaccountable power structures which benefit
> from the absence of dissent.

> Be a truly free being. Oppose this intrusion into your mental sovereignty.

