I know some people chafe at the thought of tech companies self-censoring their platforms but they should be allowed to prevent their platform from becoming a place decent people don't want to be. Jones isn't just an opposing viewpoint, he's a hateful lunatic. And no, that's not a slippery slope.
There was a recent interview with Senator Ron Wyden where he lamented that tech companies are unwilling to use their legal freedom to police their platforms:
"""Let’s go all the way back to 1996 and talk about Section 230. I think historians are completely in agreement that this is the law that made the internet what it is today.
We thought it was going to be helpful. We never realized it was going to be the linchpin to generating investment in social media. We envisioned that the law would be both a sword and a shield. A shield so that you could have this opportunity, for particularly small and enterprising operations to secure capital, and then a sword [by allowing them to moderate without facing liability over the practice], which said you’ve got to police your platforms. And what was clear during the 2016 election and the succeeding events surrounding Facebook, is that technology companies used one part of what we envisioned, the shield, but really sat on their hands with respect to the sword, and wouldn’t police their platforms."""
I think that what's happened here is a normalization of deviance. Moderation action that should have been taken a long time ago has now been delayed so long it will be painful. Instead of setting strong expectations about what is and isn't okay up front (like say, Hacker News); these companies have gotten lax and will now pay a hefty price to use the sword.
Section 230 coverage made (and still makes) a ton of sense for passive hosting of content—it really would be unduly burdensome to require neutral hosts or search indexers to review every piece of content.
What wasn't foreseeable 20 years ago is that protection shouldn't really apply to recommended content that the platforms' algorithms push forward onto users, especially in the case of something like YouTube where they auto-play. Those are editorial decisions made in the company's own voice, and you shouldn't be allowed to disclaim all responsibility for what your platform actively recommends.
SESTA and FOSTA punched huge holes in Section 230. Any site that allows user generated content or private messaging now is potentially liable if used for certain types of adult "activity".
CDA 230 doesn't give platforms the right to host content without reviewing or moderating it. That seems to be a very common misperception. Platforms already had that right - that was what was implied by the Cubby and Stratton Oakmont cases [0]. What CDA 230 did was allow platforms to moderate their content without assuming liability for it. If you're saying "there isn't enough moderation, so let's kill CDA 230" in my opinion you've got things completely backwards.
100% agree. It’s not like it’s impossible to enforce social norms on the internet. But you have to bake it into the product from the beginning.
One of the huge fails here is that early Facebook was actually a nice and civil place to be. I’m talking way early, circa 2004-2007, when it was you and your real life friends in college. Compared to the free for all backwater that was MySpace, it felt like a refreshing online community where people acted decently because everything was tied to your real identity. There were no followers or any of the gamified attention seeking nonsense that FB eventually turned into. That was a big part of why it blew up. Because it really felt like an amazing product and community.
You could say that Facebook got lax about moderation, but I think it’s worse than that. As far as I can tell some time around 2008 onward the management made a calculated decision to prioritize growth above everything else. You can see the fruits of this philosophy in the infamous “Boz” memo from earlier this year. But it started years ago, and you better believe this attitude came straight from the top ie Zuck. It’s part of what made the company so ridiculously successful. But now facebook will finally pay the price.
It’s a shame because I think they could still have taken over the world and managed to enforce positive social norms. Focusing on moderation and community quality would definitely have slowed down growth, but after 2008 there wasn’t really any chance for a competing social network. Trust me, I worked at Bebo (#3 social network at the time) before it was acquired by AOL and we already knew before the acquisition that we were getting steamrolled by FB along with all of our competitors.
All that to say, Facebook’s competitive advantage meant that it could have afforded to take its time and continue focusing on quality over growth. But company management got greedy and stopped caring about anything other than DAUs.
It’s easy to say in hindsight of course, it’s hard to make these kinds of product decisions when you’re crushing it as hard as Facebook was. And then it IPOs and all the early people are worth 10s of millions in their twenties, which can kind of mess with your head and make you think that you’re basically omnipotent. And for many years it looked like they were.
I’m glad to see the backlash finally hitting where it counts. It’s not that I want Facebook to fail - I drank the koolaid hard early on and genuinely loved the product. Also turned down a PM offer from them in 2007, but that’s another story. But I’m really sad to see what could have been a world changing product for good turn into an absolute cesspool of manipulation, misinformation and narcissism. I view the current backlash as a forest fire, clearing away all the crud that’s been piling up over the years in order to make space for a new vision of online community at scale. If Facebook needs to burn to the ground in order to create that future, so be it. More constructive would be a complete management overhaul where Zuck and co would be replaced by leadership who genuinely cares about the wellbeing of the community. That is unlikely to happen until the stock craters enough that investors will finally revolt and demand change. My prediction is that it will get way, way worse for Facebook and its shareholders before it gets better.
they should be neutral. I find it funny how people go up in arms about net neutrality but do a 180 about the information platform providers in the level above ISPs.
I think roads, electricity, and water should be a public utility, but I don't think someone should be able to walk into a Starbucks and scream hateful nonsense.
Here's the difference: Alex Jones can go create his own video site easily, but he can't create his own worldwide ISP.
People have to take action and opt in to watching something on YouTube. They have a choice. If people don't want to hear someone they never have to.
Youtube doesn't provide the means for publishers to interrupt what you are currently watching (well there's ads but that's a bit different as ads have increase scrutiny).
That's slippery slope. They are not censoring based on bias. They are censoring propaganda, disinformation, hate speech and incitement to violence. They've set a very low bar for acceptable content. No reasonable person will miss Alex Jones. If they ever get too heavy-handed you can vote with your feet.
> Or do many of these companies have commitees that guides such decisions?
Whatever the case this doesn't make it any better. I imagine Johannes Gutenberg pondering whether to publish the whole bible or censor the parts he didnt like. Whether he decided on his own , or in a party of 5, it's equally evil.
I dunno. I am not a fan of conspiracy theorists who continuously spread information known to be false; however, the reason posted is problematic: “we want everyone using facebook to feel safe”. Sorry, but feeling safe is very contextual, imprecise and can change from setting to setting. Insofar as “glorifying violence”. Let’s see how they come down on censoring holywood blockbuster movies. Let’s see how sincere they are about that.
Do you need a precise definition to know that a lunatic who incites harassment and death threats toward shooting victims is on the wrong side of the line?
I do think they need to be more precise. And they need to address both sides, both extreme right and extreme left conspiracists who incite violence. But the current language is very vague and only emboldens people seeking censorship and coddling.
I think they should come up with a precise definition, but that’s hard and I see no reason to wait for that when presented with someone who obviously crosses the line.
This feels like yet another instance of programmers applying a programming mindset to human problems. When presented with an instance of a problem, we want to solve the general case. That’s fine for code but often falls flat for people. If somebody is doing something terribly wrong, it’s ok to look at the individual case while you figure out how to handle it in general.
> And they need to address both sides, both extreme right and extreme left conspiracists who incite violence.
Who says they don't? Every time a right wing nut gets chopped you need an equivalent pound of flesh from the left? This just seems like whataboutism to me.
>But the current language is very vague and only emboldens people seeking censorship and coddling.
People always seek whatever they want, it doesn't mean they will get it. Sort of like how you're seeking absolute fairness in equality in corporate censorship. Good luck...
Its not whataboutism. If police in some latam country mostly gets its “mordidas” from foreign tourists, and complaining it mostly happens to tourists is not whataboutism toward the locals.
Well there's no way they can word this sort of action that appeases everyone. Yeah, the way stated in your post does sound pretty lame and overly PC.
> Let’s see how they come down on censoring holywood blockbuster movies.
I'm not sure what you're getting at, seems apples and oranges to me. I think in this case safe means, "we're not going to tolerate bigoted assholes anymore". Not try and adhere to everyone's possible definition of safe.
The blockbuster reference is about glorifying violence. I mean, if we belive movie portrayal on film has an effect on real life (you know, ‘40s movies show aggressive machismo, etc., to we need more equal representation) then we agree that Holywood promotes violence.
That's slippery slope again. You're saying we can't collectively deride Nazism because we're suppressing political speech. We can. Easily. Alex Jones is not a literal Nazi, but he is equivalent. Demonizing groups of people based on absolutely fabricated nonsense. We can safely excise his voice without losing a single reasonable voice.
Alex Jones spreads absolute hateful nonsense with no journalistic value whatsoever. There isn't a clear border between a dissenting opinion and raving lunatic but there is a border and he is very far across it. Take the US criminal standard of evidence: beyond a reasonable doubt. He is a lying lunatic beyond a reasonable doubt.
Still , thats not a valid argument, it's complete red herring ['not a slippery slope' vs 'alex jones is bad' :L unrelated - i kinda lose faith when i see lack of basic logic here]
Not just a hateful lunatic, but one with a violent following. Harassment and death threats are not free speech, and he’s lucky he’s merely getting kicked off some corporate platforms instead of being arrested for his role in these things.
There are a number of legit politicians who have violent followers. Remember James T. Hodgkinson, Bernie Sanders follower, who shot at members of Congress (one of the latest examples, there are many more in history) - of course Sanders is not responsible for the actions of this deranged individual. I've never seen any content by Alex Jones (and I'm not sure I ever will) but from what I heard, while he is a crackpot of the highest degree, he never advocated direct violence. And if this is true (I may be wrong since, as I admit, I have only third and fourth party knowledge of his content, and I am not sure I want to have a dip into that cesspool) then he should be allowed the same as Sanders - not to be held responsible for the actions of even bigger crackpots than he is, if he did not directly promoted them.
Looking through his page on WikiQuote, I see at least a couple direct calls to violence. And that’s just from those few statements the editors deemed worthy.
I don’t understand why you’d write this response without looking into the man first. If you’d rather not examine him, I totally get it, but then maybe don’t defend him?
WikiQuote is a good idea, I didn't think Alex Jones would have a page there but here it is. But the worst I could see is "I will STUMP your head in if you start a fight with me, you thug scum" and "Stop being weak! And when you see a threat coming down on you, deal with it!". As political speech goes, I've heard worse from very mainstream politicians. Which ones do you think are the worst there?
> I don’t understand why you’d write this response without looking into the man first.
I did. I know who Alex Jones is. But of course I didn't read every single one of his rants, I have much better ways to spend my limited time on this Earth, thankyouverymuch. I also think if somebody argues for his exclusion from all major platform, they should already have the examples of the violent calls ready, just saying "yes, he did that, trust us, we wouldn't lie to you would we?" shouldn't be enough.
> but then maybe don’t defend him?
People still can't get an idea that demanding someone to be treated fairly is not the same as liking them or defending them. I mean, we're doing this thing for millenia, the Bible (and I mean the old, Jewish one, not even the newer one) talks about just courts - for criminals, not for good nice people - as one of the basic requirements, and we still don't get it through that being just to someone and defending someone is not the same. How long will it take? Will the collective conscience in year 9000 get it?
"1776 WILL COMMENCE AGAIN IF YOU TRY TO TAKE OUR FIREARMS!"
Note that the second one is directly connected to Sandy Hook, since he tells everyone that it was a hoax done with the purpose of taking people's guns away. He's basically telling people to rise up in armed revolt. He tells his audience that the victims' parents are actually part of a conspiracy to take their guns, tells them that armed revolt is the proper response....
You're not demanding that he be treated fairly. Being treated fairly would mean that if he's advocating violence he should get kicked off these platforms. You're defending him by saying you don't think he does this. That's not being just or fair, that's being counterfactual, and even worse it's coming from a position of deliberate ignorance.
OK you got this one. It's in the middle of the large and mostly incoherent rant, so I missed it, but that's encouragement of violence (even though Jones would probably call it rhetorical figure, but he should have used different rhetoric in this case). For this he does deserve condemnation. Doesn't make him a "threat to our democracy", as one not-very-smart Senator recently proclaimed.
> "1776 WILL COMMENCE AGAIN IF YOU TRY TO TAKE OUR FIREARMS!"
This is not a call to violence - not only nobody is trying to take our firearms, but most gun control proponents specifically and emphatically reject the suggestion that this is their goal. And even if they were lying, it's a predictive, not normative statement, about a very hypothetical situation at that.
> He's basically telling people to rise up in armed revolt.
If "they" try to "take our firearms", which nobody is doing. On the contrary, Supreme Court repeatedly recognized firearms ownership as a personal right (even though some locations have trouble recognizing it). Saying "if you do this policy, people will revolt" is a common rhetorical figure, which is very far from direct encouragement of violence.
> He tells his audience that the victims' parents are actually part of a conspiracy to take their guns,
This is despicable and loathsome. But not a call to violence.
> tells them that armed revolt is the proper response....
If his conspiracy proves true and people actually come to take his guns - which of course it won't and they won't (unless he commits a felony, which is different business).
> You're not demanding that he be treated fairly.
Yes I do. I am kind of an expert on what I am demanding, you can believe me at least on that.
> Being treated fairly would mean that if he's advocating violence he should get kicked off these platforms.
So far we've seen he advocated violence once, and even that in kinda rhetorical (though no doubt very objectionable) fashion, along the lines of "punch the Nazi" that we've heard so much recently, or one press member expressing a desire to "wring the neck" of one press secretary for not giving responses to this press member's liking. I've seen the same and way worse literally on every platform that banned Jones, with no consequence to speak of, certainly not total ban (maybe sometimes short suspension). This is certainly what should be condemned, but way below total ban. So I continue to think he was not treated fairly.
I leave you with this quote from Noam Chomsky:
If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.
You can’t say that his call to arms when they take our guns doesn’t count because nobody is taking our guns. Neither he nor his audience are constrained by the facts. He’s telling them that there is a large, active conspiracy to take their guns. They believe him. In that context, saying to be violent if they take their guns is a call to violence.
I don’t see how your quote applies. Inciting violence is not typically considered protected speech, and even if it is, getting kicked off of YouTube is not a restriction on one’s freedom of expression.
> You can’t say that his call to arms when they take our guns doesn’t count because nobody is taking our guns.
I didn't say it doesn't count. I said it is not a call to violence.
> there is a large, active conspiracy to take their guns. They believe him.
They may be believing him there's a conspiracy (though with people jumping around calling for repeal of Second Amendment I'd say the conspiratorial part of it is rather weak) but they can't believe somebody has already came to take their guns. For a simple reason that nobody did, they'd notice something like that. And, I don't think there was a single instance of violence caused by the fact that somebody listened to Alex Jones and thought somebody came to take their gun and reacted violently. Either Alex Jones is very bad at his job (which is not hard to believe - but then why ban him?) or maybe whoever listens to him does not interpret his message in this way?
> In that context, saying to be violent if they take their guns is a call to violence.
No, it is not. For example, I would consider if US (or any other) government starts rounding up Jews and putting them into concentration camps, violence to resist such governmental action is justified (and, I think, morally necessary, if there's no other way to stop it). This is not "calling to violence" in any sense that relates to current discussion - because nobody is actually rounded up and put into concentration camps. Confusing two situations - discussion of something that might happen (and what we want and hope to prevent much earlier than there would be even close to the theoretical situation) and what would be proper action in that theoretical case of an unacceptable infringement of the rights, and call to violence right here, right now, in our current situation (which we consider acceptable enough that our society condemns calls to violence) - is completely erroneous.
> Inciting violence is not typically considered protected speech, and even if it is, getting kicked off of YouTube is not a restriction on one’s freedom of expression.
Simultaneously kicking him from all major platforms is clearly designed to limit his freedom of expression and suppress his message (as much as non-governmental bodies can). You can argue that it is a good thing, but if you argue this is not the goal you are either very naive or willfully ignorant. And one count of rhetorical "incitement" we've seen so far can not be a reason for such action. People routinely say same and worse things online and do not get banned from everything (some even get hired to work in major newspapers).
It is clear that Jones was banned not because of one or two occasional (and very rare if in all his very prolific expression so far we've found one or maybe, maybe two such instances) references to violence. But because of his despicable character and his despicable message. It is clear that a lot of people consider silencing him be a good thing, a desirable thing to happen.
After all, nobody is forced to download his stuff from Apple or go to his pages on Facebook. If somebody wanted to just ignore him, it's very easy to do - I did it for decades without even trying a little bit. But people don't want to just not hear him - people want him silenced. And thus my quote is very relevant.
That was almost certainly blocked by an automated policy against gore for posting genocide scenes. These sites have an absolute avalanche of content to police and make mistakes pretty frequently which is why you can appeal and get the block overturned as this one has been. The video is on her FB page right now.
Also, the promotion of a message is as much free speech as the refusal to promote a message. Facebook and other entities granted free speech should be free to not promote certain messages.
The paradox of tolerance is based on equivocation between tolerance of speech and tolerance of action. Like most paradoxes, it disappears once you're precise in your wording.
Jones, whatever you think of him, is not an existential threat to society, and using the "paradox of tolerance" to censor him is intellectual cowardice.
I'm really sick of the so-called paradox of tolerance being used as a justification for arbitrary political censorship.
Good. They should ban more people. They should ban whoever they feel like banning, for whatever reason or give no reason at all. They already ban you instantly if you show a nipple.
We should stop pretending like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter et al. are some kind of public good or utility. They are private message boards. Message boards which already decide what you see by showing you an endless stream of content designed to optimize ad revenue.
You raise a great point. Everybody is freaking out about this censorship, but these platforms have always been censored. Why is censoring sex perfectly reasonable and nobody cares, but censoring a violent nutcase is suddenly a massive free speech issue?
It's because of the violation of expectations. The expectation has been set that these platforms are a 'free-for-all' of sorts. Once you start adding new categories of people to ban, people get antsy and start wondering where it stops and who will be effected. Hence why I say in another comment in this thread that it'll cost these companies to use their moderation powers more fully. When you don't set the right expectations up front, changes in moderation policy get very very ugly.
The whole point of my comment is that these platforms have never had the expectation of being a free for all. Upload a video of a penis and watch how long that lasts. And I don’t think “incites violence against actual people in the real world” is a newly banned category either.
No, I think they do have that expectation. 'Everything but porn' is a pretty widely accepted free for all category on the web. But yes, 'incites violence' is an actively illegal category; I suspect the only reason it's lasted this long is that the moderation muscles have atrophied so hard nobody seemed willing to go first in banning Jones completely.
Everything but porn, classified documents, personal information without the consent of the person, copyrighted works, encouragement of suicide... I could go on.
You can find all of these things on the web, but they are far from widely accepted.
I would challenge that censoring sex is perfectly reasonable and nobody cares. I hear adult models bitching all the time that their content keeps getting taken down even when they try not to violate any TOS. It's really hard for them to promote themselves and make a living -- especially now with SESTA and FOSTA. I can understand filtering and flagging something as NSFW or something like that but to remove it altogether is a bit much for such a public platform. I think Twitter takes a good approach to it. It is flagged so you can avoid it but you can opt in if you want it.
This is just what shows up as the first item from a Google search. Think of it as a teaser. I'm sure there are more comprehensive videos, but it's kind of exhausting to even look through his material since he does this for several hours every day all year round. Alex Jones himself probably produces 100+ hours of audio and video a month of just him ranting. He also has other people now who do the same thing. The amount of content that they actually create is pretty incredible. And when he really steps over the line and directly threatens someone he then removes the video and backtracks. It just happens over and over and over again.
But if you really want to promote free speech on the Internet then you should support Net Neutrality and go a step further and support the re-nationalization of telecom as a public utility so that it gets first amendment protection.
Don't get me wrong: Alex Jones is the snake-oil-selling, kayfabing carnival barker of the internet. My concern is what appears to be a coordinated take-down of his channels on the dominant social media/communications platforms with very few precise details explaining why. My biggest concern is that this crackdown on a crackpot will set off one of his high-functioning, mentally ill fans to pull a Timothy McVeigh type of vigilante response on one of the companies who have canned him in the last 24 hours. Is my concern unwarranted?
EDIT: I presume the down-votes on this comment are because I referred to some of Alex Jones' fans as mentally ill. I don't say this lightly: I know a handful of people who are legitimately mentally ill who think Alex Jones is the lone truth-teller in the media. You should be very scared of what these people might do if they think their hero is being martyred.
>My concern is what appears to be a coordinated take-down of his channels on the dominant social media/communications platforms with very few precise details explaining why.
Alex Jones could easily show the emails from these companies where he was warned multiple times.
>My biggest concern is that this crackdown on a crackpot will set off one of his high-functioning, mentally ill fans to pull a Timothy McVeigh type of vigilante response on one of the companies who have canned him in the last 24 hours. Is my concern unwarranted?
It's not unwarranted. But nor should our society walk on eggshells for fear of upsetting these people. It would give a lot of power to a very extreme minority... and probably not a minority that can be expected to be responsible with any power...
Do the TOS that Jones violated have definitions of "hate speech"?
Since there is no legal definition in the US, it would seem necessary for each TOS to create its own. If they have, I'd be curious to know how much they overlap, and how specific/vague they are.
EDIT: why the downvotes? I am honestly asking a question about how specific and consistent the definitions are. I didn't realize I would be punished for doing so.
YouTube: promotes violence against or incites hatred against protected groups
Apple: content including hate themes
Facebook: violent speech, dehumanizing speech, statements of inferiority, or calls for exclusion/segregation of people of protected classes
So it seems like YouTube's definition is the narrowest. Facebook's definition is much broader because it includes "statements of inferiority", and Apple's definition is vague.
Doesn't matter. They can ban him for any reason they want. Hate speech is whatever a mod determines it is. I could say "People with usernames that start with a 'g' are the worst," and if a mod decides that's hate speech then boom—banned.
Unchecked corporate power to control public discourse was considered bad not long ago, wasn't it?
Maybe I'm still stuck at the anti net neutrality mindset we had a while ago and can't flip fast enough to now suddenly trust ISPs and platform providers to regulate my news diet.
Because Facebook is not public discourse. Facebook is a private message board.
The radio show isn't banned. They can host it on their on platform with their own money. It's simply no longer being promoted and paid for by a private website.
Alex Jones has his own website. He can go to the FCC and get a broadcast license and play by the same rules as everyone else and broadcast his show on terrestrial radio if he wishes.
His speech isn't being stifled. No one is telling him he's not allowed to say it, and his listeners are free to continue to listen to his drivel.
Back in the day, we had the "fairness doctrine". If media gave an interview to a Democrat, say, they also had to give an approximately equivalent interview to a Republican. (Approximately equivalent in terms of length, not necessarily in terms of content.)
But they didn't have to give one to a member of the Communist Party, or to a National Socialist, or to a member of the KKK. It was major players only. They didn't have to give equal treatment to the fringe, of any flavor.
Many western countries have always known that and incorporated that knowledge into their legal systems[1].
America is pretty alone in the lunacy that is the First Amendment.
The worst part is when Americans claim that without all the extreme extent of the First Amendment there cannot be Free Speech.
Many free western countries would disagree. Most of them are quite a bit higher in the Press Freedom Index (with press freedom as one part of free speech) than America.
[1] the foremost idea other legal systems could borrow from the German constitution is that of "practical concordance", where no basic right is paramount to the others, but the legal system recognizes that there is a natural tension between all those basic rights and the goal should be to interpret them in such a way that a "global maximum" is reached. So no "free speech above all", but let's see where we can keep most of what free speech could maximally mean and still keep most of all the other basic rights.
The Press Freedom Index's assessment cannot be taken seriously because it lists UK in the same tier as the US. I'm a citizen of neither so I don't have a horse in this race.
The former regularly engages in thought policing the social networks with real prison sentences handed out to such "heinous" criminals like Tommy Robinson.
Which is odd, because it's been long ingrained in the law. There are definite limits to speech. Additionally, InfoWars was admitted by Alex Jones to be fictional stories not news, so there isn't exactly a grave danger in banning it specifically.
As someone who believes in using a network of non-correlated news and information sources (much like a smart investment portfolio uses non-correlated investments to maximize risk/reward-based returns) to give me an well-rounded view on daily news events, I think that censorship like this should be examined very closely.
I've enjoyed the rants of Alex Jones in the past, just like I've enjoyed Joe Scarborough at MSNBC, Rush Limbaugh, Rachel Maddow, Keith Olbermann, and even Art Bell, so I find this coordinated attack and take down of one of these outlets to be worrisome.
Are we going to accept this current meme that "hate speech" (whatever the hell that is currently defined as) can only come from the Right?
If so, I'll pass on that idea...it's totally political in nature if that's the case and the last thing that I believe is helpful to the world is to have one political viewpoint, Right or Left, to totally run the show.
I think examples of Mr. Jones's banning "hate-speech" should be required if these companies are going to revoke his 1st Amendment protections and censor him, if nothing else then to warn others where the line is to be drawn.
It's not a matter of left or right. If the content is stupid enough moderatos shouldn't hesitate to ban it. It should be completely up to those moderators to determine. The same way it's up to HN mods to determine what posts stay and what posts go. No justification has to be given.
As someone who studied actual political science at university and learned triangulation methods on multiple news sources, and how to unwind bias, Info Wars cannot be unwound. It is 100% bullpucky. It's entertainment. Not a bit of it is news, newsworthy, factual or information. It is functionally junk food that has zero nutritional value.
Your engaging in ad hominem runs counter to "upholding the social norms of free speech and tolerance". Try to avoid insulting someone's honesty and character based on their saying that they enjoy rants by people all over the map (some of which, based on the variety, he must disagree with). I have found that I can enjoy speeches by people I disagree with. While most of Alex Jones' rants are fantastical and accusatory not all of them are. Since you do not know which speeches/rants the OP comment found particularly enjoyable, there is not enough information to make a deductive conclusion.
What's interesting in all this coverage is how the actual content said wasn't so much as alluded to beyond "hate speech". Who was he hating on and how? Can we discuss hate without being hateful?
Not sure if you're serious--he hates on anybody that is considered "liberal" or "left" by his side. Hillary Clinton (especially), George Soros, the "Deep State," bankers, reptilians, "SJW's," Democrats, and so on. It's literal fear mongering.
Which is hilarious considering he was a liberal screaming at the right only a decade ago. Hell he's even in Philip k dicks a scanner darkly screaming liberal values on a street corner.
A decade ago I remember watching EndGame on some prompting of a friend who thought it was great, but who must have fallen asleep while watching it because me recounting some of the sillier bits he thought I was talking nonsense. That was 10 years ago, and it didn't strike me as being particularly liberal in presentation. I wasn't aware of Alex Jones until watching that, but it was pretty clear to me he was a crackpot just stirring people up.
You don't get to put up such a farcical claim without proof. Please prove to me that Alex Jones was liberal for an entire episode any single day this millennium.
Wait, are we speaking of modern liberal/left values or libertarian views? These are not the same, are they? I don't quite understand the evolution of these words but it seems Alex Jones is first and foremost for personal liberty. Note: do not take my understanding of Alex Jones as me backing or supporting him, he's a nutcase.
This answers the "who" part of the question, but not the "how".
Like reasonable, responsible members of any community, what people want to take away from this is "where is the line set" and "where did IW's trajectory take them over the line"? If those questions can't be answered to satisfaction, then this is not custodial, it's political activism coming from the top down i.e. tyranny.
(My personal belief, having looked into a few of IW's productions, is that they are disingenuous provocateurs, and I generally support their sort of product being sidelined from mainstream discourse on the basis that it's an anti-pattern, or a kind of virus that infects and deflects rational discourse.)
My brother is having a fit because he likes listening to Jones for 'conspiracy entertainment'. He's really upset that these companies are 'bullying' Jones.
Since then, more content from the same Pages has been reported to us — upon review, we have taken it down for glorifying violence, which violates our graphic violence policy, and using dehumanizing language to describe people who are transgender, Muslims and immigrants, which violates our hate speech policies.
From the article, InfoWars' editor has already tweeted:
> Spotify has now completely banned Infowars too. Apple, Facebook, Spotify all within 12 hours of each other. This isn't enforcement of [terms of service], it's coordinated big tech censorship. This is real election meddling.
I'd guess this will increase his popularity among his followers, just as the NYT recently reported that "Goop's Haters Made Gwyneth Paltrow's company worth $250 million" [1].
The big three tech companies need to be broken up. Too much power in the hands of a few. Don't like what your opponents are saying? Label them "hate speech", close down their networks & move on. You can't be heard if you don't have a voice.
They (the big three) should not be allowed to own our internet interactions anymore than the phone company could listen to and profit from our conversations or regulate what we talk about.
> Don't like what your opponents are saying? Label them "hate speech"
If you think people just simply didn't like what InfoWars would spew, you have another thing coming.
Read up on Pizzagate. Someone went into a pizza parlor with a gun to investigate Alex Jones's claims that Hillary Clinton was running a child sex trafficking ring in the basement. Innocent lives could have been lost for bullshit InfoWars was spouting.
This goes well beyond "I just don't like you." InfoWars is outright dangerous and is poisoning the minds of Americans.
> They (the big three) should not be allowed to own our internet interactions
They don't.
You're still free to use other messaging platforms, or even make your own! The startup costs for creating a web site/app are astronomically low.
That article even says that there was "extensive reporting showing that the Bush administration was making plans for an Iraq invasion before the advent of intelligence used to justify it."
Breaking them up won't solve anything. Youtube and Facebook are huge specifically because of their network effects. In the case of Youtube without something like ActivityPub aggregating all the different video services into one inevitably some other company will gather more users, thus becoming the more profitable platform for creators, thus attracting more creators which will attract more users.
There's also the question of can something like youtube, where there's pretty much no restrictions on who can upload and how much they can upload, be profitable at a smaller scale or without being the subsidiary of a larger corporation with another huge money pipe?
Sounds great. It delegitimizes all 3 of them in the eyes of a lot of people. ( I've only seen occasional clips from his videos, but he seems like your typical half crazed conspiracist, not an ISIS-level propagandist deserving damnatio memoriae)
A typical conspiracy is that aliens are visiting earth and the government has known about this and is engaged in a 5 decade long coverup. And another typical conspiracy is the earth is flat and NASA is in on the coverup so nothing they say or their contractors say can be trusted, nor any of the tens of thousands of aerospace engineers hired by various governments and telecom businesses.
Info Wars is not at all typical. Last week's delusional paranoid conspiracy from Info Wars was that Obama has been banging 10 dudes a day at taxpayer expense. Typical conspiracies for Info Wars and the POTUS, perhaps. But not typical among all conspiracists. These are well beyond fully crazy.
More interesting to me is the number of people who believe this stuff and apologize for it. Fox News has multi-million dollar salaried entertainers who defend Alex Jones.
Not an Infowars fan, but I see "hate speech" being used as a reason to ban alternative views a lot lately. Let's say he was indeed engaging in hate speech (I haven't verified this): hate speech is still speech, no?
Edit: thanks for the downvotes, can we not have a discussion about this? Should we ban hateful books too? I happen to have learned a lot from historically hateful books.
I think the ban is legal, yes, and in this case I also think it's correct. But correct on what terms? I'm not really sure where I draw the line between "hate speech" and not.
No, we don't need any further discussion about hate speech, any more than we need further discussion on whether murder is bad, or torture is acceptable.
We need swift and clear action to remove it from the commons.
It takes time to get on top social network radar, but its impossible to get on three at the same time, without some sort of coordinated effort. In other words - it obvious that getting banned by FB, YT and Apple altogether within 24 hours IS coordinated; the only question: what massages are there networks trying to send ?
PS. I am not fan of Jones show, just like I am not fan of KKK that still existing in USA; but I do remember what Niemöller wrote.
I don't think that quote applies to the people Jones represents. The quote is about quite literally the very same people Jones' supporters are pursuing. "Jews will not replace us" and "Blood and Soil" are literally Nazi slogans.
I don't think Niemöller was worried about the persecution of Nazis...
I’m talking about actions, not beliefs. Believe that Sandy Hook was a hoax all you want, I don’t care. But when you cross the line into harassing and threatening the parents of the victims, it’s no longer a mere political belief.
