[rojoca]

The following may seem frivolous and/or uncharitable but I think you would find them hard to disagree with:

- booting people off platforms is a "bad idea" which you wish to "suppress".

- booting people off platforms shines a light on their "bad ideas"

I'm sympathetic to the spirit of your comment, but I think Mr Icke has plenty of other ways to publish his ideas, and I don't believe youtube is suppressing them in a way that necessitates suppression of theirs.

[AnthonyMouse]

> booting people off platforms is a "bad idea" which you wish to "suppress".

Not censoring an idea and arguing that an idea should not be implemented are not equivalent.

> booting people off platforms shines a light on their "bad ideas"

If this is true, i.e. reporting of the censorship increases the visibility of the bad idea, then it completely destroys the pro-censorship argument that it reduces the visibility of bad ideas. It would also immediately cease to be true if censorship ever became uncontroversial, in which case you couldn't claim that it's giving the allegedly bad idea a chance at a fair debate.

> I'm sympathetic to the spirit of your comment, but I think Mr Icke has plenty of other ways to publish his ideas, and I don't believe youtube is suppressing them in a way that necessitates suppression of theirs.

Is somebody suggesting that YouTube should be prohibited from creating and distributing their own videos?

[rojoca]

> Not censoring an idea and arguing that an idea should not be implemented are not equivalent.

I'm not sure this is correct, but I'm willing to be convinced if you can expand a little more. I guess I see it as censoring the act of censoring.

> If this is true, i.e. reporting of the censorship increases the visibility of the bad idea, then it completely destroys the pro-censorship argument that it reduces the visibility of bad ideas. It would also immediately cease to be true if censorship ever became uncontroversial, in which case you couldn't claim that it's giving the allegedly bad idea a chance at a fair debate.

In this case, it is true. But youtube censorship is not equivalent to societal censorship, it just signals that youtube does not endorse Icke's ideas and does not wish to publish them, but people can still evaluate them somewhere else.

> Is somebody suggesting that YouTube should be prohibited from creating and distributing their own videos?

No, the suggestion is they should not be allowed to write their own terms and enforce them.

[AnthonyMouse]

> I'm not sure this is correct, but I'm willing to be convinced if you can expand a little more. I guess I see it as censoring the act of censoring.

Censorship applies to information. Restricting information can't be justified because it's by definition impossible for the public to evaluate whether what's being censored is appropriate when it gets taken down and they can't see it. "Censoring the act of censoring" doesn't have any such problem -- if YouTube was prohibited from censoring videos, they can do it even when everybody has full knowledge that they're operating under that constraint.

They could even run a banner at the top of videos they don't like that says "YouTube things this is wrong" and link to their own video explaining how, and that wouldn't be censorship. But you don't need to take down somebody else's videos to do that. It's in fact better if you don't, because then more of the people who come to see the video you think is wrong will see the message explaining why you think it's wrong, instead of going somewhere else where there is only the alleged misinformation.

> But youtube censorship is not equivalent to societal censorship, it just signals that youtube does not endorse Icke's ideas and does not wish to publish them, but people can still evaluate them somewhere else.

That would be fine so long as the somewhere else is equally prominent, but YouTube is too big for there to be any such place. If you're a monopoly/oligopoly then you ought to be a common carrier. If they really wanted out of that they could always break themselves up.

> No, the suggestion is they should not be allowed to write their own terms and enforce them.

Enforcing terms as a monopoly is effectively legislating, so they should follow the same rules as the government.