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/...

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.