Bad. Stipulating that you're correct in your assessment:
* the opportunity to drive trucks through and over the holes in the reasoning and teach people something through a "Stuff David Icke Says" parody channel is snuffed.
* Icke gets to assume a martyr pose.
* YouTube looks a trifle authoritarian.
The truth doesn't have to resort to heavy-handedness to prevail. Newton's Third Law applies (in a social way) in these forcing situations.
It has worked well in every fascist/despotic state that has implemented it.
Free speech, even outright lies, racism, etc. must necessarily exist in the public forum if a society is to remain free.
For now, the silencing is "friendly" in that it only destroys livelihoods. If we allow it to become a norm then how long will it take a populous - now so used to being silenced - to agree to let the government silence the "other"?
Once there is a "party" line, as in China, only suffering follows.
“Contrary to what most people think, Weimar Germany did have hate-speech laws, and they were applied quite frequently. The assertion that Nazi propaganda played a significant role in mobilising anti-Jewish sentiment is, of course, irrefutable. But to claim that the Holocaust could have been prevented if only anti-Semitic speech and Nazi propaganda had been banned has little basis in reality. Leading Nazis such as Joseph Goebbels, Theodor Fritsch and Julius Streicher were all prosecuted for anti-Semitic speech.
“Pre-Hitler Germany had laws very much like the anti-hate laws of today, and they were enforced with some vigour.” [1]
"In the decade from 1923 to 1933, the Nazi propaganda magazine Der Stürmer — of which Streicher was the executive publisher — was confiscated or had its editors taken to court no fewer than 36 times. The more charges Streicher faced, the more the admiration of his supporters grew. In fact, the courts became an important platform for Streicher’s campaign against the Jews." [2]
It really doesn't though. I run a pretty big social platform based on 'free speech', every time a site like Youtube or Facebook goes on a purge like this our membership increases and we make bank.
> the opportunity to drive trucks through and over the holes in the reasoning and teach people something through a "Stuff David Icke Says" parody channel is snuffed.
I wish reasoning worked. I know people who follow nut jobs like Icke, are anti-vaxxer, think COVID is 'just a cold', etc... and no amount of reasoning or data will change their minds.
* the opportunity to drive trucks through and over the holes in the reasoning and teach people something through a "Stuff David Icke Says" parody channel is snuffed.
* Icke gets to assume a martyr pose.
* YouTube looks a trifle authoritarian.
The truth doesn't have to resort to heavy-handedness to prevail. Newton's Third Law applies (in a social way) in these forcing situations.