> Some people, after being exposed to misinformation, chose to believe them.

You missed my point :) Humans, being inherently limited, are always at risk of being wrong. Being wrong about things is the default state. I simply don't think that we should strive to expunge all forms of "misinformation". That is to say, of course people believe misinformation.

> Do you have evidence that the truth more often than not win over lies?

Ah, I see my point is easily misinterpreted. I find it very plausible (in fact, I outright believe) that "a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes". Rather, I think the implications of using that fact to justify suppression is inherently dangerous.

Furthermore I think truth, just like the concepts of agency and free will, are useful abstractions for us to operate under. But when examined in their totality, the concepts unravel. Thus I feel that truth is local, not global, and by acting like there is a global form of truth we are only forcing our local-truth onto others in the misguided belief that we can separate truth from our individualized local contexts.

Coming back down to earth for a second, the problem always remains: "who decides what truth is"?

YouTube is perfectly capable of objectively and correctly deciding that David Icke is full of shit.

And the Constitution decides that the truth is that the First Amendment doesn't apply to YouTube. That's an objective truth you seem to be unaware of.

I consider your statement to really be saying the following:

"According to myself, YouTube is perfectly capable of objectively and correctly deciding that David Icke is full of shit."

The idea that in some cases we do not know what is true is valid. The idea that therefore we can never determine what is true and therefore must, in the name of "free speech" support and help anyone say anything is not.

David Icke is not spreading information. He's spreading nonsense about lizard people. That's objectively true.

I personally agree that what David Icke is spreading is a bunch of nonsense. But I'm against suppressing him because otherwise I can't maintain a logically consistent belief system. That is to say, as soon as we can ban the lizard guy, we can also ban a lot more viewpoints that are not quite as controversial / outright crazy but straddle the line.

And just to head this off, the dimension of palatability to advertisers is separate, and if a site chooses to quarantine or whatever, so be it. I'm speaking merely from a framework of, "is this the kind of society we want?", as opposed to, "is it feasible for a profit-seeking corporation to adopt such an open policy"?

But your belief is already logically inconsistent unless you are saying we should allow porn, animal cruelty, or ISIS propaganda on YouTube (the last one is very clearly suppression of a political opinion, and abhorrent one, but nonetheless).

This is the issue, if you are saying YouTube should allow all content then you need to be consistent and allow all content. If not you really just disagree on what content should be censored, but then you can't make this out to be a censorship vs free speech debate, because you agree on censorship, just not on what gets censored.

But his anti-Semitic content did not result in the ban, his mis-information concerning Covid-19 did. YouTube has not taken any measures to implement a policy of banning for anti-Semitic speech.

Not the OP, but I'm against banning the anti-Semite. I'm against banning Mein Kampf. I'm against banning the writings of Marquis de Sade. I'm against banning people who advocate for a "spectrum" of non-binary genders.

An adult should be capable of consuming information from disparate sources, especially distasteful ones, and formulating logical arguments to deconstruct those positions. It takes some practice. That practice can't be done in an information vacuum. If there are deficiencies in the population's ability to perform the above, then we should be rectifying that through education (whereby I mean improving how people go about mentally solving problems), rather that scrubbing the world of "bad" data or opinions.

Entrusting institutions to ban media is essentially saying "These people know what's good for you, better than you do." and I absolutely abhor that sort of arrogant, misplaced, condescension. It often comes from people who are intelligent, but nowhere near as infallible as they think they are.

It’s very easy to maintain a logically consistent belief system that allows for private censorship. It’s called “the person who owns the servers makes the rules”, and if you don’t like then rules then buy your own servers.

While this kind of censorship bothers me, I think it's funny everyone forgets we're hanging out at Google's house. If Google wants someone to leave their house that person has no right to protest.

What should be protested is that there isn't really anywhere else to go -- and the best form of protest is to build it.

That's right, because "Lizard People" are technically "Jews", so he's not actually ranting and raving about fictitious lizards, he's ranting and raving about Jews, so maybe he's not technically objectively full of shit because Jews really exist, huh?

But maybe YouTube's lawyers advised them that the First Amendment doesn't apply to them because they're not Congress, so they booted him for anti-semitism, and inciting terrorism, and being a menace to public health, among other subjective but perfectly legal and valid and morally justifiable reasons.

Just as a statement of legal fact, the First Amendment applies to more entities than Congress.

Just to preempt any question, I’m not saying the First Amendment prevents YouTube from not publishing Icke’s content

Yes?

I mean, Icke is the most clear-cut of examples. Otherwise you end up backing into "nobody is ever qualified to determine the truth of any statement objectively and correctly". Nihilist anti-positivism.

The thing about the coronavirus is that wrong decisions, both by public health and private individuals, produce real body counts. And quite alarmingly high body counts in those countries which have embraced disinformation.

(Before someone starts in on it, the Iraq war was also a body count produced by the embracing of disinformation)

As with all such matters, its about the slippery slope, and setting precedents. The belief is, we can have our cake and eat it too. e.g. we will allow free speech, except for the egregious cases like X, Y, Z. The problem of course is, who defines egregious, and can it be objectively defined?

Can you expand what you mean by "truth is local"?

I'm asking, because I see it as the complete opposite. The rules of physics apply all over the world and outside of the planet. Yes, some patterns of reality are only found in a specific place on this planet (cultural values, for example), but things like whether COVID-19 is caused by 5G does not.

Do you have evidence that censorship wins over lies? Considering that one of the most fundamental and important US laws is freedom of speech, it behooves you to prove that censorship works, not that free speech works.

If anything, history shows that eventually, censorship will only allow the lies of those in power.

History also shows that eventually those regimes fall too.

The question should be which set of policies maximizes the power of the informed general citizens relative the incumbents and the irrationals (or very-very boundedly rationals).

The fact that the first amendment exists is strong evidence that censorship works. If it didn’t work, why is it so important to prevent the government from censoring people? After all, censorship is futile right?

The question is who censorship "works" for. In most cases it works for despotic dictatorships.

They too switched to misinformation, direct control of media, supression of independent media, etc.

This kind of transparent content removal is not what dictatorships do.

It depends on how much control they have. You'll find no pro-free-market content on Kwangmyong.

You'll instead find the artisanal hand-crafted propaganda, and you won't find constructive criticism. Usually you'll find massive tomes of apologetics full of self-pity and victimization, and of course absolute hope that Dear Leader will still solve this even if the world is against him.

Is there some kind of "list of prohibited books" in NK (like the Index Librorum Prohibitorum in the 16th century)? I guess not, because anything that's not allowed is by default prohibited?

> I guess not, because anything that's not allowed is by default prohibited?

Yes, at least for online content. As far as I understand it, a researcher who wants access to some out-of-country material has to manually submit a request. The censors then download the article or page, go through it, and pass it on if it's found acceptable. In addition, no single computer has access both to the global internet and to the intranet.

I meant physical books, or whatever. I mean is there some contrived reasoning on why those books are too dangerous, or otherwise prohibited? (Like it was with the Papal Index.)

> Do you have evidence that the truth more often than not win over lies?

It doesn't. That's precisely why Icke's ban is necessary: he was incredibly popular.

"Do you have evidence that the truth more often than not win over lies?"

The existence of technology as well as science.

Science and technology is advanced by a tiny community of humans, relative to the species as a whole. I don't think it works as evidence for "more often", rather it is evidence for the amazing results that can come when the truth wins even within a small group.

The question was not "do you have evidence the truth wins more often than lies for the species as a whole"; there was no specific context implied as I read it. So, do you have evidence lies win more often than the truth for the species as a whole?

>> Do you have evidence that the truth more often than not win over lies?

>The existence of technology as well as science.

Simply put, the second statement is not evidence to satisfy the request in the first statement.

"Do you have evidence that the truth more often than not win over lies?"

We have a myriad of evidence that societies that suppress the truth for "the public good" don't go in a desirable direction or end well.

That isn’t an answer to the question the OP posed, though. And it’s an important question.

This is the exact type of escalation that is not helpful. This caricatures the argument that institutions are not perfect. In the beginning, the WHO said the virus could not be spread between people. And YouTube & friends are actively censoring to imperfect sources (since all sources are ultimately imperfect).

No, because the argument that "institutions are not perfect" is a strawman that distracts from the actual question which is "is anything David Icke says anything remotely approaching the truth?" and the answer is undeniably no. Arguing about a slippery slope that the institutions might not be perfect either doesn't matter. Icke isn't trying to be correct. He's either literally mentally unwell (I've read that he has schizophrenia) or he's intentionally being provocative, or both. This isn't even a case of YT removing someone who is acting in good faith.

I've said it elsewhere and I'll repeat it here: the idea that institutions can be mistaken does not mean that we should remove things that are just clearly completely and totally false (and damaging). It's the difference between the idea that a large portion (say, 10-20%) of the population is infected with covid with no symptoms, which is also almost certainly wrong, but there's at least some level of evidence for. Almost all of that evidence is flawed, but like, you can cite real academic papers from people. And the idea that 5g causes covid, which doesn't even make enough sense to create a well founded argument to the contrary. It relies on the audience not understanding what a virus is (or wanting to suspend disbelief).

> distracts from the actual question which is "is anything David Icke says anything remotely approaching the truth?"

That's not the actual question we are discussing here. Whether he is correct or not does not change any premises of this post or discussion. We are discussing censorship and deplatforming.

Not at all. The parent that I originally responded to stated

> We have a myriad of evidence that societies that suppress the truth for "the public good" [end badly]

To believe that that statement is relevant you must believe that "covid-19 is caused by 5G towers" is, or could be, the truth. Otherwise you have to defend the much stranger position, that societies which knowingly suppress information that everyone knows is false don't end well, which is silly, I know of no society that has ended badly due to its attempts to suppress things that everyone agreed were false. (and by this I mean factually false, not ethical concerns etc.)

If you don't believe that, then you agree that by suppressing Icke, we aren't suppressing the truth, so there is no danger. If you do believe that, you are misinformed, and it's a good thing we're keeping disinformation away from you.

Now, you might argue that I've constructed a catch-22, and you'd be correct if I thought that this was a generally applicable solution, but I don't. While not every piece of information is obviously untrue, some are. "Covid-19 is caused by 5g towers" is one such piece of information. It is also, apparently, dangerous when people believe it.

There's lots of other opinions that I find distasteful or whatnot that I don't believe should be deplatformed because they are clearly false, that is reserved for things which are clearly false.

There's no issue of censorship here, because on the off chance that Icke is right (which again there isn't), he could do a study and submit a paper to the relevant academic circles, and resolve the issue. In other words, society again, isn't suppressing truth, they're suppressing cranks. Which is reasonable. Cranks are bad and distract us from getting actual work done. Most of the time we can just ignore them, but every once in a while a crank gets ahold of an idea that is both wrong and, when believed by a small but fervent group, can be dangerous to everyone. In those cases, keeping the idea from catching on further is good.

Again this applies only to things that are provable in nature, not things of the form "we should overthrow the bourgeoisie".

So yes, the central point is that nothing Icke says is anything remotely approaching the truth. In other words, libeling a concept should be reasonable to deplatform, since libeling an individual certainly is.

Note that WHO never said that, it is correct that they in the middle of January said that the evidence they had at the current time then did not show transfer between people. But they never spoke about it as it was a fact.

But this is the exact example of misinformation spreading easily. I assume you a a reasonable, rational and well informed individual like most on HN, but you still believe this bit of misinformation. The WHO never said that the virus could not spread from human to human, they said "there is no evidence for human to human spreading". That nuance makes a big difference in meaning, the absence of evidence for something is not evidence for the absence of something. But this nuance was lost in all of the misinformation spreading.

That's an example of a very bizarre view that seems to have almost no chance of being right and almost no evidence in its favor. And presumably many truths sounded weirder (less plausible) than that in past societies, and many truths are going to sound weirder than that in future societies.

It's harder to say this because of the implied criticism of the common sense and rationality of people now living (including everyone in this conversation), but perhaps there are many truths that sound weirder than that to us, too.

> Some people, after being exposed to misinformation, chose to believe them.

Some people, after being given the opportunity to gamble, choose to place a bet, even when it has a negative expected value. Should Nevada ban blackjack?

Some people, after being given the opportunity to buy insurance, choose to buy insurance, even when it has a negative expected value. Should we ban insurance? If not, what about credit default swaps?

The reason central planning doesn't work is that everything is much too complicated for a central planner to be able to make good decisions about everything. People who are close to a thing know it better than people who are far away, so the decision is best left to the individual. It's their life, they're the one with the best incentive to get it right.

> Do you have evidence that the truth more often than not win over lies?

Let us take this question to its logical conclusion and apply it to the censors. If the censors can't tell the truth from the lie then they may end up censoring the truth instead -- oops. But how are they any more qualified to decide this than anybody else?

This is doubly true when you're talking about a platform. As if YouTube has "medical expertise" in its bailiwick.

> It is possible that platforms, being designed the way they are to maximize corporations' interest naturally lead to unintended consequences.

That is absolutely possible. But maybe then the answer is to design them differently rather than keeping the bad design while throwing hatchets at random civilians because somebody who themselves has no unique competence thinks they might be wrong about something.

As an example of your point. At some point in the past the censors would have gotten the truth wrong on the cancer/smoking connection. Believe it or not, that began as a fringe belief.