Ask HN: Should Alex Jones or James Gunn be suppressed, free speech? - gamechangr
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jstewartmobile
Private censorship by semi-monopolies is a sticky situation. Even so, it's
better than the way things were.

Pre-internet, it was network television, local newspaper, or bust. Those
platforms make facebook and youtube look like free speech fantasy-lands.

As for the actual question, at least Alex Jones still has his own website...
until cloudflare decides to block him. That's what really sucks about the
whole thing; since we refuse to police the internet with civil law, we have
unelected and unaccountable private entities policing it instead. With a judge
and a jury, the wheels may have turned slowly, but at least there was a chance
to put the case forward. Now all of the rights are firmly on the side of the
service provider, and all the rest of us can do is squeal loudly enough to
where--hopefully--one of the wizards behind the algorithm is forced to take
action.

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mhkool
The platforms decide and the question is if that is good. If the platforms
have a monopoly, and silence parties at will, it is bad for democracy.

I like to see a new law that regulates platforms with major influence. I have
seen that Youtube took away the channel of Mika Adams, aka the Health Ranger,
taken down. Youtube not responding to any attempt of conversation. Youtube
putting the channel 3 weeks later back but with 50% of the followers
"removed". We can only guess what Youtube was thinking but there should be a
law against abusing the platform rules to ban somebody, even if that person
did not break any platform rule. Removing a channel from Youtube has such a
deep impact that one must be able, within reason, to be able to resolve
issues. I am not a big fan of Alex Jones and think that most of the times he
talks BS and some of the times he is probably right. I see no good reason to
ban him.

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greenyoda
> _" I like to see a new law that regulates platforms with major influence."_

Giving the government the power to regulate speech on privately owned media is
very dangerous, and is precisely what the First Amendment's guarantees of
freedom of speech and freedom of the press were designed to prevent.

If the government can regulate who YouTube or Facebook or Twitter must allow
to post on their sites, what's to stop them from telling the New York Times
what they have to print on their front page? (The Times also fits your
description of a platform with major influence. Should they be required to
publish an article that I wrote? Or that the President wrote?)

I'm much more scared of the government exercising control over speech than
corporations, since the government has much more power (they can put people in
prison, etc.).

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gamechangr
Does it worry anyone that more and more people are okay with having an
institution suppress an opposing view?

Governments wanting to suppress opposing views is normal. Citizens asking for
others to be silenced is now becoming the new norm.

Who gets to decide?

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thaumasiotes
Citizens asking for others to be silenced certainly isn't new. The demand for
blasphemy laws is generally bottom-up, not top-down. (Though there is a top-
down equivalent, sedition or lèse-majesté laws.)

