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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

by knzhou 6y ago

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 6y ago
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/photo/1 https://twitter.com/JackKaplanNY/status/1256761546451058689/... 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 6y ago
  > 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 6y ago
    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.

by knzhou 6y ago

sjwalter 6y ago

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/photo/1 https://twitter.com/JackKaplanNY/status/1256761546451058689/... 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 6y ago
> 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 6y ago
  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.