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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://quotei

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/

rajup 6y ago
It's not censorship by any means; YouTube isn't the government. David Icke and his ilk should feel free to take their lunatic fringe theories to the lunatic fringe corners of the Internet like Breitbart etc. They won't be "censored" there.
- brenden2 6y ago
  YouTube is a de facto public utility at this point. IMO if they want it to be a closed ecosystem, they should not allow public access the way they currently do. There's no good alternative to YouTube (yet) but I hope there is some day. Pushing people to the fringes just breeds more hatred, outrage, misinformation, and extremists. Imagine if there was just one phone company and they only let people who they agree with have phones.
  - beart 6y ago
    Terrible analogy. YouTube is not the only video host. Video hosts are not the only way to share or consume content.
  - montroser 6y ago
    Nope, it's not. The whole rest of the Internet is flush with video content -- it's no monopoly like the phone company used to be. YouTube is an offshoot of an ad company. A private, for-profit enterprise that uses video content from its users to sell adverts. Now, if you want to say the Internet is a public utility -- that's getting closer. And if the Internet writ large somehow managed to block certain content, that would be of great concern. That would require government intervention, like you see in China and some other places. But that is not what it's happening here.
  - gamblor956 6y ago
    YouTube is not a de facto public utility. It is not currently used as the primary means of news by any segment of the population, by any government entity anywhere in the world. It is not a means of communication like Zoom or the telephone. It's just videos. Lots and lots of videos. It provides entertainment to billions of people, but that doesn't mean YouTube is a utility. It just means its very popular.
    - cameronbrown 6y ago
      > It is not currently used as the primary means of news by any segment of the population This is wrong. I'm ~19 in the UK. My entire demographic gets their news from either Google, YouTube, Facebook and word-of-mouth, younger people even more so.
      - cambalache 6y ago
        I agree, OP is just out of touch with current realities. Sorry but I will side with the the notion that Youtube IS a public utility. The free market allowed these monsters to grow (Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc) and become extremely powerful. They cannot now to claim "they are just another private company" when people are totally marginalized from public discourse if they dont play along. The other thing is the partenalistic stuff, please remove the content so those brain dead morons(not me) dont get influenced.If the ideas are so wacky, you need more light and debate and shame, not censorship and secretism. Maybe I am one of those brain-dead morons, but for me the standard is very clear, if a video/tweet is illegal, remove it and block the account, otherwise, let it be.
        cameronbrown 6y ago
        Unfortunately this is a very unpopular opinion nowadays.
      - gamblor956 6y ago
        I don't doubt that people that are 19 hear things through the rumor mill. That is how the 5g rumor spread and why the UK has so many destroyed 5g towers right now. But there is a difference between the gossip spread through social networks, and news. Also, to note--Google doesn't generate its own news. It sources it to news organizations...Similarly, YouTube News coverage are just segments of news broadcasts by news organizations...
  - DonHopkins 6y ago
    MTV is a de facto public utility by the same measure, yet they stopped showing music videos decades ago. How DARE they??? That's censorship! I want my MTV, money for nothing, and chicks for free!!!
- wnoise 6y ago
  Wherever did people get the idea that the only form of censorship is governmental?
  - gamblor956 6y ago
    It's quite literally in the definition of censorship, and has been since its origination in Ancient Rome. More importantly, the restriction on censorship has been tied to government action since it was first enshrined in the First Amendment. A private party can choose not to spread the content of a third party. That is not censorship. That is one party choosing not to spend their own resources to further the interests of a different party. If the third party has an issue with that, they can spend their own resources creating their own platform to spread their own ideas.
    - wnoise 6y ago
      Ah, the etymological fallacy. Certainly the office of censor started in ancient Rome. However there have been plenty of other censors throughout history, and many that currently exist. Consider: 1. The Catholic Church's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_Librorum_Prohibitorum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_Librorum_Prohibitorum 2. The https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comics_Code_Authority https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comics_Code_Authority 3. The Hays code: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_Picture_Production_Code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_Picture_Production_Code 4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadcast_Standards_and_Practices https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadcast_Standards_and_Practi... None of them are governmental. All exist to police speech. In general, merely declining to publish something should probably not be called censorship. It is indeed a fine line between maintaining editorial control and suppressing speech. However, when one publishes just about everything, but excepts certain viewpoints with the explicit goal of suppressing them, the term starts to fit a lot better. Is any of this against the First amendment? Of course not. But it's still clearly censorship.
      - gamblor956 6y ago
        If you want to get technical about it, the Catholic Church was deeply embedded in most European governments when the Index Librorum Prohibitorum was issued, and was the official state religion for multiple kingdoms. The Hays Code was issued by the MPAA as a voluntary set of guidelines governing the then vertically-integrated studios and theaters. Importantly, they were not prohibitions on movie content. Many film productions did not adhere to the Hays Code and many independent theaters similarly ignored it. Indeed, the body established to enforce the code did not even how the power to order studious to cut material... The only instance of the Hays Code having an impact on films was during the short Breen era, which lasted only 6 years, and this only affected films shown in vertically-integrated theaters owned by the studios. Independent theaters continued to ignore the Hays Code, as they always did. And the Broadcast Standards was a decency code intended to mollify advertisers, i.e., other private parties, who generally did not want to be associated with certain types of content. As with the Hays Code, it was a series of guidelines, not a prohibition, and late-night shows generally flaunted the Broadcast Standards with impunity. In other words, not censorship... Just private acts of self-interest to protect their market position.
bobthepanda 6y ago
Freedom of speech is quite different from freedom of the press. You can say what you want, but I don't have to print what you say if I own a newspaper. That being said, if Youtube and such are now going to start curating content (by pushing "recommended" content and by removing content), we may need to revisit those particular platforms' classification under Section 230 of the DCMA.
montroser 6y ago
Well, they still have the right to say it. Does not mean they have the right to a media platform. I doubt Voltaire or whoever smarter than you said that meant to imply that their intellectual adversary had any /right/ to be published.
matwood 6y ago
I agree, but at what point does speech cross the threshold of harmful? If I post a video with fake research and claim drinking Clorox cures cancer, should that be allowed to stay up? What we are talking about in this particular case is not a battle of ideas or opinions, but complete fabrications. I don't know what the answer is, but I do know people who believe some of this crap and will not listen to reason. At least for them, it would have been better if they never heard this stuff.
cortesoft 6y ago
If you hold this absolutest view of free speech, does that mean you don't believe that fraud should be a crime? I am allowed to just blatantly lie about anything under the cover of free speech, right? What about libel or slander? Can I say that brenden2 is a murderer, and make a website with photoshopped pictures of you killing people? Free speech has limits, and telling blatant lies meant to mislead people is one of those limits. Telling people to drink bleach to cure COVID-19 is not protected under free speech.
- nightcracker 6y ago
  If you follow your line of thought then David Icke should be prosecuted. And then YouTube is still wrong here, acting as a judge, jury and executioner vigilante.
  - DonHopkins 6y ago
    No, they just decided, as a commercial entity not under the jurisdiction of the First Amendment, to stop cutting him checks. Get a grip, they're not executing him.
    - legolas2412 6y ago
      He's not commenting on that. He's commenting to the guy who suggests that "drinking bleach cures covid" should not be covered under free speech.
- cameronbrown 6y ago
  Uhhh... fraud has legal definition, as does libel - these are _civil_ issues not _criminal_. That being said, the right to actually say the words is still protected and nobody is allowed to take that right away.
  - throwaway2048 6y ago
    Fraud is absolutely a criminal issue.
chasing 6y ago
Good thing this isn’t censorship. It’s a non-governmental media company curating and policing the content it chooses to host and promote.
- colejohnson66 6y ago
  Where do people get this idea that it’s only censorship if the government does it? Regardless of your view on this, it’s censorship. Period.
  - mda 6y ago
    And they can censor whatever they like, why not?
  - chasing 6y ago
    Media companies should be required to host and promote anyone’s content no matter what? If I send a video to you should you be required to host it on your website?
    - colejohnson66 6y ago
      That’s not even remotely close to what I said. All I said was it is censorship to remove something after it was posted.
nightcracker 6y ago
And to add another, “When you tear out a man's tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you're only telling the world that you fear what he might say.” I don't know who David Icke was or what he was saying (according to comments here he's a 5G conspiracy theorist), but deplatforming him won't have the intended effect.
- DonHopkins 6y ago
  It sure worked well with Milo.
- mda 6y ago
  Oh I think it will have the intended effect. A lot of people lose interest if lies or propaganda aren't repeated constantly. It is human nature.
luckydata 6y ago
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 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    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 6y ago
      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/content/FieldReport_Download%20%282%29.pdf http://www.ala.org/advocacy/sites/ala.org.advocacy/files/con...
- VWWHFSfQ 6y ago
  > complete freedom of speech is not in the best interest of the majority of humanity isn't this one if the founding principles of chinas brutal totalitarian dictatorship
  - 6y ago

rajup 6y ago

It's not censorship by any means; YouTube isn't the government. David Icke and his ilk should feel free to take their lunatic fringe theories to the lunatic fringe corners of the Internet like Breitbart etc. They won't be "censored" there.

brenden2 6y ago
YouTube is a de facto public utility at this point. IMO if they want it to be a closed ecosystem, they should not allow public access the way they currently do. There's no good alternative to YouTube (yet) but I hope there is some day. Pushing people to the fringes just breeds more hatred, outrage, misinformation, and extremists. Imagine if there was just one phone company and they only let people who they agree with have phones.
- beart 6y ago
  Terrible analogy. YouTube is not the only video host. Video hosts are not the only way to share or consume content.
- montroser 6y ago
  Nope, it's not. The whole rest of the Internet is flush with video content -- it's no monopoly like the phone company used to be. YouTube is an offshoot of an ad company. A private, for-profit enterprise that uses video content from its users to sell adverts. Now, if you want to say the Internet is a public utility -- that's getting closer. And if the Internet writ large somehow managed to block certain content, that would be of great concern. That would require government intervention, like you see in China and some other places. But that is not what it's happening here.
- gamblor956 6y ago
  YouTube is not a de facto public utility. It is not currently used as the primary means of news by any segment of the population, by any government entity anywhere in the world. It is not a means of communication like Zoom or the telephone. It's just videos. Lots and lots of videos. It provides entertainment to billions of people, but that doesn't mean YouTube is a utility. It just means its very popular.
  - cameronbrown 6y ago
    > It is not currently used as the primary means of news by any segment of the population This is wrong. I'm ~19 in the UK. My entire demographic gets their news from either Google, YouTube, Facebook and word-of-mouth, younger people even more so.
    - cambalache 6y ago
      I agree, OP is just out of touch with current realities. Sorry but I will side with the the notion that Youtube IS a public utility. The free market allowed these monsters to grow (Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc) and become extremely powerful. They cannot now to claim "they are just another private company" when people are totally marginalized from public discourse if they dont play along. The other thing is the partenalistic stuff, please remove the content so those brain dead morons(not me) dont get influenced.If the ideas are so wacky, you need more light and debate and shame, not censorship and secretism. Maybe I am one of those brain-dead morons, but for me the standard is very clear, if a video/tweet is illegal, remove it and block the account, otherwise, let it be.
      - cameronbrown 6y ago
        Unfortunately this is a very unpopular opinion nowadays.
    - gamblor956 6y ago
      I don't doubt that people that are 19 hear things through the rumor mill. That is how the 5g rumor spread and why the UK has so many destroyed 5g towers right now. But there is a difference between the gossip spread through social networks, and news. Also, to note--Google doesn't generate its own news. It sources it to news organizations...Similarly, YouTube News coverage are just segments of news broadcasts by news organizations...
- DonHopkins 6y ago
  MTV is a de facto public utility by the same measure, yet they stopped showing music videos decades ago. How DARE they??? That's censorship! I want my MTV, money for nothing, and chicks for free!!!
wnoise 6y ago
Wherever did people get the idea that the only form of censorship is governmental?
- gamblor956 6y ago
  It's quite literally in the definition of censorship, and has been since its origination in Ancient Rome. More importantly, the restriction on censorship has been tied to government action since it was first enshrined in the First Amendment. A private party can choose not to spread the content of a third party. That is not censorship. That is one party choosing not to spend their own resources to further the interests of a different party. If the third party has an issue with that, they can spend their own resources creating their own platform to spread their own ideas.
  - wnoise 6y ago
    Ah, the etymological fallacy. Certainly the office of censor started in ancient Rome. However there have been plenty of other censors throughout history, and many that currently exist. Consider: 1. The Catholic Church's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_Librorum_Prohibitorum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_Librorum_Prohibitorum 2. The https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comics_Code_Authority https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comics_Code_Authority 3. The Hays code: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_Picture_Production_Code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_Picture_Production_Code 4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadcast_Standards_and_Practices https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadcast_Standards_and_Practi... None of them are governmental. All exist to police speech. In general, merely declining to publish something should probably not be called censorship. It is indeed a fine line between maintaining editorial control and suppressing speech. However, when one publishes just about everything, but excepts certain viewpoints with the explicit goal of suppressing them, the term starts to fit a lot better. Is any of this against the First amendment? Of course not. But it's still clearly censorship.
    - gamblor956 6y ago
      If you want to get technical about it, the Catholic Church was deeply embedded in most European governments when the Index Librorum Prohibitorum was issued, and was the official state religion for multiple kingdoms. The Hays Code was issued by the MPAA as a voluntary set of guidelines governing the then vertically-integrated studios and theaters. Importantly, they were not prohibitions on movie content. Many film productions did not adhere to the Hays Code and many independent theaters similarly ignored it. Indeed, the body established to enforce the code did not even how the power to order studious to cut material... The only instance of the Hays Code having an impact on films was during the short Breen era, which lasted only 6 years, and this only affected films shown in vertically-integrated theaters owned by the studios. Independent theaters continued to ignore the Hays Code, as they always did. And the Broadcast Standards was a decency code intended to mollify advertisers, i.e., other private parties, who generally did not want to be associated with certain types of content. As with the Hays Code, it was a series of guidelines, not a prohibition, and late-night shows generally flaunted the Broadcast Standards with impunity. In other words, not censorship... Just private acts of self-interest to protect their market position.

bobthepanda 6y ago

Freedom of speech is quite different from freedom of the press. You can say what you want, but I don't have to print what you say if I own a newspaper. That being said, if Youtube and such are now going to start curating content (by pushing "recommended" content and by removing content), we may need to revisit those particular platforms' classification under Section 230 of the DCMA.

montroser 6y ago

Well, they still have the right to say it. Does not mean they have the right to a media platform. I doubt Voltaire or whoever smarter than you said that meant to imply that their intellectual adversary had any /right/ to be published.

matwood 6y ago

I agree, but at what point does speech cross the threshold of harmful? If I post a video with fake research and claim drinking Clorox cures cancer, should that be allowed to stay up? What we are talking about in this particular case is not a battle of ideas or opinions, but complete fabrications. I don't know what the answer is, but I do know people who believe some of this crap and will not listen to reason. At least for them, it would have been better if they never heard this stuff.

cortesoft 6y ago

If you hold this absolutest view of free speech, does that mean you don't believe that fraud should be a crime? I am allowed to just blatantly lie about anything under the cover of free speech, right? What about libel or slander? Can I say that brenden2 is a murderer, and make a website with photoshopped pictures of you killing people? Free speech has limits, and telling blatant lies meant to mislead people is one of those limits. Telling people to drink bleach to cure COVID-19 is not protected under free speech.

nightcracker 6y ago
If you follow your line of thought then David Icke should be prosecuted. And then YouTube is still wrong here, acting as a judge, jury and executioner vigilante.
- DonHopkins 6y ago
  No, they just decided, as a commercial entity not under the jurisdiction of the First Amendment, to stop cutting him checks. Get a grip, they're not executing him.
  - legolas2412 6y ago
    He's not commenting on that. He's commenting to the guy who suggests that "drinking bleach cures covid" should not be covered under free speech.
cameronbrown 6y ago
Uhhh... fraud has legal definition, as does libel - these are _civil_ issues not _criminal_. That being said, the right to actually say the words is still protected and nobody is allowed to take that right away.
- throwaway2048 6y ago
  Fraud is absolutely a criminal issue.

chasing 6y ago

Good thing this isn’t censorship. It’s a non-governmental media company curating and policing the content it chooses to host and promote.

colejohnson66 6y ago
Where do people get this idea that it’s only censorship if the government does it? Regardless of your view on this, it’s censorship. Period.
- mda 6y ago
  And they can censor whatever they like, why not?
- chasing 6y ago
  Media companies should be required to host and promote anyone’s content no matter what? If I send a video to you should you be required to host it on your website?
  - colejohnson66 6y ago
    That’s not even remotely close to what I said. All I said was it is censorship to remove something after it was posted.

nightcracker 6y ago

And to add another, “When you tear out a man's tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you're only telling the world that you fear what he might say.” I don't know who David Icke was or what he was saying (according to comments here he's a 5G conspiracy theorist), but deplatforming him won't have the intended effect.

DonHopkins 6y ago
It sure worked well with Milo.
mda 6y ago
Oh I think it will have the intended effect. A lot of people lose interest if lies or propaganda aren't repeated constantly. It is human nature.

luckydata 6y ago

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 6y ago
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 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    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/content/FieldReport_Download%20%282%29.pdf http://www.ala.org/advocacy/sites/ala.org.advocacy/files/con...
VWWHFSfQ 6y ago
> complete freedom of speech is not in the best interest of the majority of humanity isn't this one if the founding principles of chinas brutal totalitarian dictatorship
- 6y ago