
YouTube Bans Alex Jones, Following Facebook's and Apple's Lead - anigbrowl
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/08/youtube-bans-alex-jones-following-facebook-and-apples-lead/
======
Tomminn
From Wikipedia:

"The InfoWars website receives approximately 10 million monthly visits, making
it more visited than some mainstream news websites such as The Economist and
Newsweek."

This bothers me. Say what you like about his content, but it is not fringe. He
is the preferred "thinker" of a significant fraction of the population. If you
think the solution is to deplatform him, you're thinking about the problem
_wrong_.

He is an opportunity. By becoming a lightening rod and focal point for a large
fraction of a country's misguided thinking, _he has made that misguided
thinking more fragile_. Easier to dislodge. Because now you just need to find
a combination of words that helps his followers see him for what he actually
is.

And if you succeed, everyone who sees will get a lesson in thinking more
clearly. They will be more resilient to a future charlatan.

So if Alex Jones makes your blood boil, then put that emotion to work. Raise
his platform. Discuss him. Debunk his ideas one by one. Use whichever tools
appeal to you. If youtube wants to help, then youtube algorithms should be
tweaked to encourage people to view both sides of the debate.

~~~
jimejim
You have more faith in human rationality than I do at this point. Making his
content harder to get will reduce his legitimacy. Con men and frauds should
not be treated with respect or debated. Also, Jones specifically used his
platform to abuse people, so this is not just about being full of shit all the
time.

~~~
iosDrone
"We only burn the bad books!"

~~~
jimejim
You and others didn't read my last sentence and keep hiding behind childish
free speech absolutism. Jones specifically used his platform to abuse people.
He should have been banned a long time ago. This isn't just about his
conspiracy theories.

------
j-c-hewitt
I think the reason why Alex Jones became popular is because the mainstream
news websites like CNN and even sections of the NYT became more Jones-like in
their reporting. When people are just choosing between different
sensationalist conspiracy theory websites it becomes much more challenging for
ordinary people to pick a quality outlet.

The thing is that most of the web and the printed word is spam that will
actively confuse you the more that you read it. Compare the newspaper to a
cookbook. The cookbook, if it's good, can be tested for effectiveness quite
readily even allowing for variations in things like your ingredients and how
your oven functions as compared to the one in the author's test kitchen.

The news isn't all that different from Maury Pauvitch and it seems to get
worse every year. You would probably at least learn a little about how small
claims court works by watching daytime TV but you learn less than nothing from
having poorly sourced propaganda piped into your brain at 1080p/60fps. People
who watch Maury aren't under the impression that they're being elevated, but
people addicted to the news are suffering from that delusion.

~~~
torpfactory
Oh please. What a load of hogwash. NYT and CNN aren’t perfect but making some
kind of comparison to the rantings of a lunatic like Jones is absurd. Get a
grip.

~~~
_Tev
Well for you it might be clear it is much better than Jones, but from the
distance the "us vs them" narrative and the obsession with whatever is the
latest "scandal" (Clinton's emails, Weinstein, Trump & Russia) makes it seem
like pure tabloid. So you can actually make good argument about NYT being
similar to Jones (better crap is still crap).

~~~
tptacek
It's quite clear if you understand the distinction between journalism and
infotainment. Journalism outlets spend millions of dollars to staff
professional reporters and fact checkers; when they report a story, they've
often got a whole team of trained professionals on multiple locations
collecting details and interviewing primary sources. When the outlet we're
talking about is the NYT or WSJ, those teams are in dozens of countries around
the world operating out of large full-time bureaus.

Infotainment outlets hire a couple dozen people to make shit up and put it on
a web page and a Youtube video.

Sometimes reality gets tabloidy. Sometimes editors make decisions that
optimize engagement and viewership over clarity. CNN and Fox both run pundit
shows along with hard news and blur the lines by hosting their hard-news pro's
on the pundit shows. But no matter what happens to make CNN seem like
infotainment, it simply isn't, because the process that generates it is
journalism.

~~~
ffgdgggg
Editorial staffs have been decimated for decades.

There is far less fact checking than before, far fewer corespondents and
almost all military reporting is through access-journalism: “our give us
pretty footage, we’ll write nice things”

At which point I prefer Jones: so trashy that I know it’s BS

------
tchaffee
In other discussions about this action, I've seen lots of confusion about what
the 1st Amendment guarantees. Too many people think it guarantees an outcome:
that the government must protect your right to free speech and make sure you
have a platform for free speech. When in fact it's almost the opposite: it
prevents the government from interfering with free speech, specifically
Congress can not pass any laws that interfere with free speech. Keeping in
mind that free speech includes the right to not say things you disagree with.

I'd be curious if any legal experts know of other laws that might apply in
this case.

~~~
slededit
The first amendment represents an ideal. An ideal the country is walking back
from as it discovers a large faction does not share the same morals. The
decision to silence instead of engage will lead to disintegration of the
country if its not dealt with.

~~~
gamblor956
First Amendment is about government action, not self-motivated
private/corporation action.

Facebook, Spotify, and Apple realized that continuing to allow Alex Jones to
remain on their platforms would result in substantial harm to the commercial
viability of their platforms, as a result of boycotts, lawsuits, etc. by the
99% of people that Alex Jones spends his life spewing lies about.

It was an easy financial decision. Hell, they could have faced absolutely
massive shareholder lawsuits if they hadn't kicked him off their platforms.

~~~
slededit
The only rational solution is to make political affiliation a protected class.
It is the only way to ensure democracy in this age of corporations which exert
national control over what we see and hear. Radio waves had FCC protection, no
such system exists for the internet which is rapidly replacing these systems.

If in the days of the first amendment paper producers conspired en mass to
censor we would have seen it dealt with then. Alas its a modern problem which
is ours to solve.

~~~
gamblor956
In the days of the First Amendment...newspapers did actively censor their
opposition. Hell, the First Congress, most of whom participated in the
drafting of the Bill of Rights and its ratification by the States, passed the
Sedition Act, clamping down on free speech in a way not seen since outside of
WWII.

As for making political affiliation a protected class...that wouldn't shield
Jones. He's being kicked off for slander, lies, and acts of incitement, not
his claim to be a conservative.

~~~
slededit
I speak of paper mills not newspapers. This is analogue to DNS providers and
other internet infrastructure providers participating in censorship. It would
be a clear breach of first amendment rights to force someone with editorial
control to print something.

~~~
tchaffee
Horrible analogy. YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter are nothing like DNS and
other internet infrastructure, nor are they like paper mills.

Alex Jones runs a website using DNS and internet infrastructure and gets 10
million monthly visitors. Where's the censorship?

------
mehblahwhatevs
I don't necessarily like this action.

People are quick to point out that FB and Youtube are private entities and
such but the reality is that they've become so ubiquitous in our lives that if
they start censorship based on the company's preferred politics, beliefs, etc.
than it will have an effect on all of us.

Can mobile apps (like WhatsApp) inspect messages and decide to boot users if
they're saying things that aren't in line with the company's positions?

Can ISPs do that too?

~~~
jlarocco
Same here. I don't agree with anything he says, but banning him from these
platforms sets a bad precedent. The way to fight ignorance is with education.

If anything, this will enforce their persecution complex. Now Alex Jones will
say, "See? Big media doesn't want you to know the things I'm telling you." And
he'll be right.

~~~
dragontamer
> The way to fight ignorance is with education.

And ignorance fights back with education. Removing Thomas Jefferson from
textbooks for example. Or replacing evolution with creationism / intelligent
design theory.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/13/education/13texas.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/13/education/13texas.html)

People rewrite education to suit their political slants. You ain't gonna win
in education until you win at politics.

~~~
dmix
> You ain't gonna win in education until you win at politics.

Unless politics doesn't control education... which is a direction we're
fortunately slowly moving towards.

------
bdcravens
Before today, I could care less about Jones's views. Naturally, with the news
of these bans, I visited his site. Looks like all the articles about the ban
have the most comments. Presumably these aren't just the usual site visitors.

And of course right now he's atop today's Google searches:

[https://trends.google.com/trends/trendingsearches/daily?geo=...](https://trends.google.com/trends/trendingsearches/daily?geo=US)

------
americangreen
Congrats, you just made Alex Jones cool and officially counter culture cool.

This will not end the way silicon valley thinks.

------
digital_trench
Prediction: Jones will be back on all these platforms before 2019.

~~~
pavlov
Why?

~~~
e40
Now that he knows where the line is, he'll step back behind it. The pressure
from the many fans of his will pressure the companies to put him back on,
because he promised to be _good_.

Just a guess.

~~~
gamblor956
I would predict he'll be back for a different reason.

He'll simply create new accounts, and on this new account he'll toe right up
to the line without going over it (until 2019).

The pressure from his many fans will have no effect, because they're not a
market that any company wants to be associated with.

------
mesozoic
Interesting if anyone could pursue a lawsuit over this stuff Jones could. Will
be interesting to see how far that goes in the court system.

------
cartercole
free speech is dead

~~~
nwsm
"free speech entitles you to saying what you want, not to a microphone"

~~~
cartercole
free speech is for the government not a private organization

------
skepticmoron
Right thing to do. Let’s learn from the mistake bill nye made by debating that
idiot who built the ship in the Midwest.

------
trukterious
_> Conspiracy theorist and online troll Alex Jones

>The decision comes hours after Apple and Facebook made similar moves_

So I guess Mr Jones will have to report on this particular conspiracy
elsewhere. I for one would like to hear it...

~~~
pithic
Sophisticated people understand that there are no actual conspiracies, only
baseless conspiracy theories.

~~~
trukterious
Conspiracy theories are usually bad explanations and leave unexplained stuff
like how new conspirators are recruited without exposing the conspiracy. Yet a
small fraction of conspiracy theories _are_ true, e.g. Guy Fawkes. A more
sophisticated treatment acknowledges this and understands that these are
frequently labelled 'conspiracy theories' in attempts to discredit them.

------
api
I have mixed feelings about this. I fear it will actually make Jones' brand of
demagoguery and crackpot theories more appealing and sexy. The best thing to
do might be to let far-right conspiracy theory propaganda die in the
mainstream, since the mainstream is where things go to die.

~~~
nasredin
Pardon me, if I misunderstood you.

Jones is already mainstream. He is not going to get smaller if you give him
bigger platforms.

Unrelated question.

Can somebody explain to me, how he went from "9/11 was inside job, police are
jackbooted thugs, anti Bush, anti Obama" to being pro police, pro government?

I want to understand the logic behind this.

~~~
sergiotapia
How indeed? Best not talk about it here on hackernews though, it's wrongthink
and will get you banned.

Remember there's no conspiracy to control the narrative. It's totally a
coincidence that Alex Jones got banned from Youtube, itunes, and Facebook
simultaneously.

~~~
dang
I'm surprised that such an established HN user as you would say something that
absurd about HN moderation.

~~~
sergiotapia
I've been here long enough right? I've seen it happen, my share of [dead]
comments.

~~~
dang
Maybe so, but "wrongthink"? That's not even close to accurate.

------
pcunite
The default SafeSearch filter for Google is turned _OFF_. That tells you all
you need to know about their morals.

~~~
beart
Sorry, what does that tell me about their morals?

------
danso
As others I've seen on Twitter have pointed out, the "Infowars Official" app
and Infowars Magazine creator page is still available on the App Store:

[https://itunes.apple.com/us/developer/infowars-
magazine/id69...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/developer/infowars-
magazine/id697158581)

I don't peruse the Podcast listings, or news about podcasts that much. Is
Apple generally not as stringent about policing Podcasts as it is for iOS
Apps?

