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Comment by DonHopkins | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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."

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

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"?

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.

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.

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?

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