It is kind of scary how someone can be "blackballed" from the internet.
All of your social media accounts get deleted so you move to your own website. Until the hosting company decides they don't want to do business with you so you start hosting it yourself. Until the domain registrar you used decides they don't like you so now you have to give people an IP address to reach your site. Until your ISP terminates your contract because they don't like people hosting websites on their network.
So many services controlled by private companies that can choose to not do business with someone.
Not being American, and living somewhere where freedom of speech is not guaranteed, I don’t understand the problem.
Surely freedom of speech is different to freedom from consequence.
If I want I can legally (in the US) go about spreading hateful lies, but I better be prepared for the consequences of my actions. I can say what I want, but it doesn’t mean what I say is acceptable or that others have to like it.
If platform owners decide they don’t want me using their systems to promote my particular brand of racist demagoguery, well, fair enough.
There must be some sort of social responsibility. The Internet gives anyone with a bit of determination the reach and influence previously only available to large organisations, but with great power etc...
Yes it’s legal to say anything, but surely for those who do say things, especially to a large (and largely uncritical) audience there is an obligation to do so responsibly. By poisoning our shared information well with their vicious lies, Mr Jones and his ilk are being highly irresponsible and should be held to account.
> If platform owners decide they don’t want me using their systems to promote my particular brand of racist demagoguery, well, fair enough.
Would you like this thesis as much as it was framed in the other direction? Assume that all platform owners are just fine with that 'particular brand of racist demagoguery' but really can not stand the utterings of the last Nobel peace prize winner (just to give an example) and decide to kick him to the curb. Would that be 'fair enough' or would it cause an outcry? Other than a shift in political bias there is no difference so it should be the former but I expect it to cause the latter.
Those platform owners would come with the same ratification: 'There must be some sort of social responsibility. The Internet gives anyone with a bit of determination the reach and influence previously only available to large organisations'.
When the four largest protests in US history can happen over the course of 24 months without most of the general public even knowing, then it's time to seriously start reconsidering whether the right to freedom of speech is effective under its current legal interpretation.
I am not sure why you think the general public doesn't know about these protests. They had popular acclaim on news channels while they were happening.
Sure, perhaps people have forgotten about a particular march especially if they do not consider it relevant to their lives, or a wider movement but at the time people heard about what was going on.
We have already supposed that all hosting providers have terminated you, and all DNS providers have terminated you, why shouldn't all ISPs terminate you?
Or, those with the time, money, and know-how can do these things today, so that others that they are sympathetic to will have more options available to them when they are shut off tomorrow.
And the result is Gab. A site full of people who were banned from Twitter. About half of the "popular" tab is ranting about how the Holocaust never happened, diversity is a weakness, and (((they're))) going to kill all the white people soon. The other half is about how awful Twitter is to ban people. The now-defunct Talk.Tor, and 4chan's /pol/, are the same way.
Most of the users that Twitter and Facebook deletes are actually people (or spambots, but even Gab blocks those) who ought to be deleted, so any service that's primarily filled with expats from them gets filled with slightly-oblique calls to violence and general quackery.
So when a poor user who isn't a skinhead gets banned because someone who happens to have the admin bit has a personal beef with them, they're supposed to switch to Gab? That's not an okay alternative.
I'd offer Mastodon as a healthier example of somewhere Twitter/Facebook refugees can turn. I'm sure there are some federated instances that harbor the type of toxic behavior you describe, but on a well-moderated instance, they'll get depeered pretty quickly. And there are lots of instances to choose from, so a bad admin just means you need to find a new instance -- you're not cut off from the entire platform.
That's true, but it's a different thing. Blocking a site on ISP level prevents users from viewing the site as opposed to blocking creators from presenting the site. It's a subtle but important difference.
Also, according to Wikipedia over a few days the site had its domain registration revoked by several providers, its Youtube channel, Discord, and Twitter accounts were banned, its links were censored on Facebook, and it was DDOSed by Anonymous.[1] If you look at the Wikipedia link it's actually nuts how much effort was put into silencing the site.
Yes, I'm aware of their various attempts, but their poor choice of companies (mainly from the west) makes me think they either didn't know about about shadier hosting options, or they wanted to keep up the victimization narrative. Why didn't they go for a .su or .ru subdomain and a russian hosting company? I'm sure putin would welcome them with open arms.
Societies have used shunning as a way to regulate themselves for thousands of years. There's no reason why we can't do the same thing on the Internet.
The only problem is that the power to shun is being concentrated into too few hands. A group that blames the Jews for literally everything[1] should be shunned, but it shouldn't just be up to one guy to decide that.
The Daily Stormer deserves everything they got. The fact that they've bounced from provider to provider means that the free market is operating correctly; they're being shunned. But as CDN's buy each other out, that gets to be less of a solution.
Nobody is arguing that they do. The question is whether CEOs can decide what their own companies host. Since being a Nazi is not a legally protected category they’re free to not help Nazis.
Again, this is not a hard problem once you shake the poor framing you’re stuck in. It’s not a question of legality because this isn’t the government preventing them from speaking and it doesn’t involve a legally protected class. It’s also not a question of some CEO preventing someone else from speaking. The only thing going on is a CEO saying they won’t help promote that speech, which is a basic right.
Of course it is a question of legality. It is a question of whether a CEO -- who has no democratic legitimacy -- should be allowed to decide what can be (in a manner that other people will actually read) published. And as I said, that their censorship is not perfect does not make a difference.
> and it doesn’t involve a legally protected class.
All your saying is that the CEOs' censorship is legal because it's legal.
Again, no CEO is preventing people from publishing things. You can setup your own server and publish anything you want unless it’s in a few illegal categories. Your position seems to be that your desire not to pay for hosting confers some sort of right to compel other people to pay for it but that’s simply not true.
"Nazi" is closely associated to the Holocaust, but you don't have to have killed someone to be a Nazi.
From Wikipedia:
Nazism is a form of fascism and showed that ideology's disdain for liberal democracy and the parliamentary system, but also incorporated fervent antisemitism, scientific racism, and eugenics into its creed.
From that definition, Daily Stormer certainly was home to Nazi's, perhaps more appropriately "Neo-Nazi"
When you say it’s ok to censor something because it is [hateful | racist | sexist | obscene | dangerous], then you’re opening a pretty bad door. You’ve declared it ok to censor—now we’re just arguing over the list of adjectives worthy of censorship. It doesn’t take much to add things like “embarrassing to politicians,” “profit-destroying,” or “against popular opinion” to that list. Who knows, you may hold what you think are benign beliefs and opinions today that someone deems censorable tomorrow and there will be nothing you can do about it. No internet for you, round-earther!
> So many services controlled by private companies that can choose to not do business with someone.
That discrimination is not based on intrinsic qualities, though. You can't discriminate on skin color, sexual orientation, etc. because society-at-large has decided those are qualities that you're born with.
But it's perfectly within everyone's right to discriminate against assholes, if that's what they judge you to be.
You can try to change their minds, but there is no right or law that forces them to listen.
Furthermore, a person can't change their genetics. But they can change their attitude, personality, etc. so those are not intrinsic qualities.
> You can't discriminate on skin color, sexual orientation, etc. because society-at-large has decided those are qualities that you're born with.
No, you can't because society has decided you can't. Being something you are born with may or may not be part of the reason some in society support that designation, but its mostly beside the point. Religious or politocal affiliation is not widely viewed an immutable condition of birth and one is protected in the US and the other in at least some US jurisdictions.
Sure, I'm not saying these private companies should be forced to do business with someone like Alex Jones. But maybe some of these services shouldn't just be controlled by private companies. I'm kind of surprised that a government owned domain registrar doesn't exist, for example. If I want to register a domain name I have to go through a private company who can choose not to serve me as long as it isn't because I'm a member of a protected class.
There are plenty government owned registrars. Heck the gTLD .gov is pretty much a goverment entity. They even have policy regarding FOIA requests: https://home.dotgov.gov/foia/ which is they are exempt. However, good luck getting .gov domain. It probably is not happening unless your an actual government entity.
In many western countries you're also not allowed to discriminate against pregnant women, or because of religion, both of which are under an individual's control (except if rape).
Because those are decisions we've collectively decided we should support people's right to make. There's not much support for the right to decide to be an asshole.
but there is - that's what the right to free speech is. As the old saying goes, popular speech doesn't need to be protected. Being "an asshole" is not an objective measure, so you need to draw a line in the sand between legal and illegal speech. Free speech is the line that says "you can say anything" except for a few specific cases that are liable to put people in direct fear for their lives/wellbeing.
Trying to figure out how a cake baker with 1 store front is NOT allowed to discriminate, but multi billion dollar multinational companies are allowed to... ?
It was not ruled either way - instead 'the Court held that penalizing the baker for this refusal to violate his religious convictions violated the principle that the government "cannot act in a manner that passes judgment upon or presupposes the illegitimacy of religious beliefs and practices." The Court emphasized the fact that the State of Colorado had permitted three other bakers to refuse to provide cakes that expressed sentiments opposed to same-sex marriage, condemning this disparity in treatment as demonstrating hostility to religious views.' [0]
> Trying to figure out how a cake baker with 1 store front is NOT allowed to discriminate, but multi billion dollar multinational companies are allowed to... ?
In the US legal context, what determines the permissibility of discrimination is the grounds on which one discriminates.[1]
Problem: social networks are increasingly building themselves around "journalistic" or "media" companies. These companies can lean on their political alignment to vindicate themselves when things go sour with the network. Easy to turn this into a campaign against "mainstream" media AKA whoever isn't getting banned.
Solution: No idea, but it's interesting to see this play out around media orgs instead of like, actual users who might have an opinion. Alex Jones is a strong face for InfoWars, but the whole thing is a media company.
There seems to be a tremendous opportunity brewing for censorship-free service providers. If the Terms of Service were such that they only prevented illegal activity, spam, and other automated abuse being conducted on their platform, and left content alone, is there a way to make that feasible?
If there was a moment to create an alternative that specifically "left content alone" to FB and Youtube, it'd be now. I wish I had the resources/time to do that, but I don't. I hope somebody finds the time, though.
You're essentially describing where we started out. We know what happens without rules, online and off. There's a reason we converge towards having standards of behavior above basic legality.
We have to stop conflating the importance to speak without threat of imprisonment with a right to publish anything anywhere.
I'd argue that there is no significant difference in the way that totalitarian governments silence democracy activists, Muslims or just random people protesting against government actions, and the actions of Facebook, Apple, Google and Spotify.
Yes Alex Jones is horrible. Problem is, if crazy people don't have freedom of speech, you don't have it either.
It's pretty clear that they are. And so it is arguable that the First Amendment should apply.
However, it's also arguable that the men who wrote the Bill of Rights had not even a shred of a clue about the power of social media on the Internet. News spread slowly then, and there was time for considered debate.
I mean, they were concerned about restraining democratic will to protect against populist extremism. For example, US senators were initially elected by state legislatures. And the Electoral College wasn't just an accounting system.
But damn, I don't have an answer. One could argue that Alex Jones is basically yelling "fire", and so has no expectation of free speech. But what about the antiwar.com people? What's so horrible about advocating the rights of Palestinians, or opposing sanctions against Iran?
> One could argue that Alex Jones is basically yelling "fire", and so has no expectation of free speech.
Of all the things you could argue, I think this is explicitly not one of them. All the crazy and ridiculous things Alex says are in no way comporable to a direct call to violence or endangering Public safety with knowingly false statements.
In other words, Facebook is silencing free speech in a way that is definitely not covered if they must comply with the bill of rights.
OK, hypothetically, if he were part of a Russian operation to destabilize the United States, would the US government be justified in prosecuting him? I mean, consider Mariia Butina , who "face[s] charges related to interference in the presidential election."[0]
> OK, hypothetically, if he were part of a Russian operation to destabilize the United States, would the US government be justified in prosecuting him?
Sedition is a different charge than censored speech.
> I meant "fire" in a political sense.
When you are talking about free speech, there is no other sense other than the literal in-a-movie-theater sense.
Yes. The term that is popular in Europe is “Quangos” or “quasi-autonomous non-governmental organization”. Quangos doesn’t technically apply here, but I think it’s a good frame of mind / reference to use.
The fact that government power, has in the West, declined extensively since the 1970’s, means the power went elsewhere. The corporate / finance sector, with rock bottom interest rates provided from capital across the globe have received most of it.
Of course this did all provide some benefits via the many innovations we’ve seen. But there are also many, probably more, downsides that we are seeing now.
To the extent that they are strong-armed by governments to carry out government mandates, they are. In some nations, governments may require companies to regulate speech, and in those cases it is hard to argue that these companies are not acting on behalf of the state.
What if power companies "de-platformed" you? After all you use that power to spew hate, so they are morally responsible. And there is no constitutional right to have electrical power.
You can just get yourself a generator, right.
And of course, Apple is under no obligation to sell you a MacBook. After all, being a hateful person is not a protected class.
I think it's about time we build a "bad people" list, which companies can consult before providing service. And if any company doesn't respect it, we can social media mob them into compliance.
The crazy thing about social media mobs is how few people engage in them.
A few hundred or thousand people angrily tweet about something -- who cares, right? Wrong. Cable media cares. They pick up a few of the most inflamitory examples from Twitter (it's easier to find quotes on Twitter than it is to go outside and report) and they present these tweets as if they represent a mainstream movement involving millions.
And these angry (but tiny) mobs are having an enormous impact on private companies and public policy. The tail is wagging the dog.
See this account which is used to organize mobs. The current target is Breitbart, and apparently the campaign is quite successful (they are listing 4000 advertisers which supposedly dropped support):
Wow. That account has over 180,000 unpaid followers.
That's quite literally a small army (for reference, it appears the number of active duty US marines is around 200k).
Without commenting on the causes this (or any other) army of followers believes in, it's staggering to imagine what kind of impact monetary incentives, dispersed, for example, by way of an autonomous smart contract that is funded by anonymous donors via 'x' cryptocurrency that relies on some simple proof of action for payout, could have on the frequency and magnitude of actions such groups carry out.
We really are at the beginning of a new chapter in the history of humanity.
>I think it's about time we build a "bad people" list, which companies can consult before providing service. And if any company doesn't respect it, we can social media mob them into compliance.
Who gets to decide on who goes on that list? This is a very dangerous predicament that could shut out legitimate voices and dissenters. The list itself would likely be against first amendment rights.
It was sarcasm (I think), but it’s what social media has been clamoring for for years. And yes, it’s a terrible idea. It’s only favored by those who want to curtail what people can say.
Let's be real here, there are big differences in what you're saying. The power company, or Apple for that matter can't know what you're using their products for. You could be smearing shit on twitter at work, or on the public wifi. There's no connection there. Whereas twitter, facebook, insta etc. the literal process is you send a message to the platform saying "Put X on you're website on my behalf".
A second big difference is facebook decides to de-platform groups on facebook for what they do on facebook, they aren't banning people on a shared bad people list. That would be a kind of cartel/collusion which breaches other restraints on a company's behaviour.
You are behind the times. Behavior outside Twitch can now lead to an indefinite ban:
> In a blog post on Twitch’s community board, the company said that if a streamer uses other mediums to send targeted harassment or hate toward another streamer, it will consider those actions a violation of Twitch’s policies — even though the activity didn’t happen directly on the platform.
No but there are many many laws restricting their ability to do so as part of regulating their natural monopolies. I'm not sure the network effects of Facebook, Youtube, etc. rise to requiring the same protections vs the monopolies of power companies.
I think that a better comparison to power companies is ISPs. Your ISP is a utility and natural monopoly, much like the power company. They shouldn’t be allowed to boot you for this (nor for alleged infringements by copyright groups but that’s a different matter)
Unless we want to start considering platforms like Facebook public spaces subject to all generalised government regulations for those spaces.
Yeah the comparison between Facebook/Youtube and power companies is painfully broken. If a power company won't sell to me there's no (practical) way to power my own home where Jones can peddle his lunacy all he want on his own site or one of the hundreds of other hosting opportunities. People have to be oh so slightly more active in seeking out his content now.
> I think it's about time we build a "bad people" list, which companies can consult before providing service. And if any company doesn't respect it, we can social media mob them into compliance.
Ooh ooh I love building lists of dissenters! That's like crack and baseball and baseball on crack rolled into one!
Shall we get started? First: anyone that seriously advocates we the people build a list of dissenters among our own citizenry. Second: anyone that wants to gut core provisions of the Bill of Rights and US Constitution.
That's about it. We don't really need to go any further. So, ready to sign yourself up for that list? I think it is such a fantastic idea that you really can't allow this opportunity to go to waste, and well, you know, you'll go down in history! That's even better than 15 minutes of fame on TV!
I nominate yourself to be the first person on that list and your "hateful" post is my justification.
I know being barred from the networks that most people use will be an inconvenience for you, but it's for the good of society that people like yourself aren't able to easily disseminate these sorts of ideas.
In fact, I know a guy with power and influence that can expedite your blacklisting, so I think I'll mention your name to him.
Please do not resist, comrade. If you behave we may remove you from the list after a suitable number of years.
This is a hyperbolic analogy and not useful. Sale of electricity and of general purpose computers are wildly less direct than providing a purpose-built platform for speech dissemination. Now, I don't think that banishment from those platforms for anything they define as "hate-speech" is guaranteed to be right for all definitions of "right", and it deserves real scrutiny, but your argument doesn't illuminate anything.
It's a common and obvious rhetorical tactic to manufacture an analogy that scales up the points you want to make and/or scales down the points you don't agree with. It's the same spirit as a strawman. I'm genuinely sad to see that called "refreshingly insightful" on HN.
Mm, a fair critique. This is one of the classic arguments where people feel strongly in one direction or another, and it takes very little effort to essentially set up a yay/nay vote.
We can find common ground, but I wish it were possible without restricting what people can say.
I would disagree. I think selling a person a computer/electricity which they use to make a podcast is as "wildly direct" as selling server hosting (social media platform) for the podcast.
But power companies can refuse you service. So what is your point? In the US, it's pretty well established that the corporation has a right of free-speech too, which usually translates into the right to not to business with someone.
That's not entirely true. Power companies in some states can't refuse service, or they have to jump through a bunch of hoops to do so.
I had an ex who would go 6-9 months without paying her utility bill, simply because there was nothing the power company could do about it. She was abusing the system, but the rules are setup that way so that people who really can't afford to pay their bill don't freeze to death in the winter.
Look, power companies can cut power. Sure there are rules, but the point still stands that they can do it. But it's not even relevant because getting your power cut can affect your ability to remain alive.
Not posting on Facebook is not going to kill anyone.
That's a bit of a misconception. In the US, there are plenty of laws that state a company must do business with you in various circumstances. See all the public accommodation laws. Beyond that, actually read the SC ruling on the whole cake thing and see its implications are not quite what the hype said.
It's not even relevant because electricity is not an ISP and an ISP is not a social network, and net neutrality doesn't exist. And power companies can cut your power!
Power companies have specific rules of when they can cut someones power. Many more companies than power (e.g. restaurants, groceries, etc.) have laws that require them to service customers. See all the public accommodation laws.
If Silicon Valley keeps looking like it is coordinating its censorship, then I would expect those laws to be extended to ISPs & social networks.
> Do Facebook and YouTube constitute quasi-governmental actors that should be held to constitutional standards when regulating their vast marketplaces of ideas? Mr Tribe says that under current law, they aren’t.
It seems the point here is to ask if they should be considered as such (potentially via changing the law), not how they are viewed under the current legal framework (where as they said, the answer is no).
That is the root of the issue here.
These TOS are being applied arbitrarily - there needs to be some form of punitive measure for companies that do this.
It's impractical for the same reasons it's impractical to prosecute every crime. This also means it's less than ideal, but with limited resources you apply them to those who are the most egregious.
TOS should be precise and applied uniformly, but that's not what usually happens. Instead, TOS are intentionally vague so they can be applied selectively according to a company's whims, which are often politically motivated.
> He has suggested that America’s government was involved in the Oklahoma City bombing in 1993 and the September 11th terrorist attacks. He says that vaccinating children will give them autism.
There is always a two-way relationship between the regulated and the regulator. Therefore, all regulated companies are, in a sense, merged with government. The greater the regulatory regime, the more deeply society becomes impressed with the features of fascism.
Do the stakeholders of the banking, pharmaceutical, media, and war cartels, forged in government agencies (whose charters they themselves drafted) and nurtured through regulation, hold sway over Alphabet and Facebook? It's a simple enough question to research and answer.
He also was one of few people who was right about the NSA pre-Snowden. People seen to forget this. When I read the Snowen story my first thought was that, unfortunately, more people would take InfoWars seriously. I do not support censorship, though.
Free speech does not and has never meant “say whatever you want to anyone without repercussions”. Alex Jones isn’t in jail; that’s about the extent of the privilege his free speech rights afford him, and he still may be succesfully sued.
You're thinking of the first amendment and other legal institutions. Free speech is a much broader concept than this. Ask yourself what a right to bodily autonomy would be if the government only promised that its officers wouldn't bring harm to you, but any private citizen could: it would be anarchy. The reason there is no legal commentary limiting censorship is because it is difficult to discern in the general case when censorship is itself a speech act. This does not limit you or I from making this distinction as private citizens in the particular case, as here.
> Free speech is a much broader concept than this.
Free speech is exactly and specifically the right to control what expression you and your property are deployed to support. Private censorship isn't merely consistent with it, it is the core of it.
Free speech is, in fact, primarily the right to say what you want, not the right to stop others from saying what they want. I admitted that the latter form is sometimes important, but that imparts no requirement on the rest of us to always agree with it.
>you and your property are deployed to support
In particular: "you and your property" is a much more general concept here then it might normally be. If I lend out my printing press to people then I should be able to say what they print with it. If I sell printing presses at a fair market rate, ie I am satisfied with my side of the transaction, then I shouldn't turn around and impose terms on the use of that press. These two things are qualitatively different, even though they both involve limiting the use of printing presses that were at one point mine.
Most of these comments fail to appreciate the highly extreme nature of Alex Jones' rhetoric. Its obscene, flagrant garbage. There are dozens of lines he crossed thousands of times. He isn't banned from speech, but there isn't a place for that kind of conduct on platforms with any kind of standards.
> there isn't a place for that kind of conduct on platforms with any kind of standards.
Flag it as "obscene, flagrant garbage" and hide it. Allow the user to decide. If they want to switch their account to "allow all", that's their choice.
Google does this with search. They can easily do this on YouTube.
The tradition of American law certainly flies a different way than the approach you suggest. I sincerely respect your position, but feel that wisdom and tradition have found value in taking a more nuanced approach.
That’s a list of speech that can be justifiably repressed by the government. It doesn’t apply here. We’re talking about private parties and about speech that doesn’t meet those thresholds, but is nevertheless reprehensible.
was broken by this incident:
"The Pizzagate incident, like Jade Helm before it, illustrates Jones’s ability to influence his followers to take action in the real world, no matter how far-fetched or unrealistic his claims might be. The Pizzagate “story” emerged in the final days of the 2016 presidential campaign, and thanks in part to active promotion by Michael G. Flynn, the son of former National Security Advisor Michael T. Flynn (who also appeared to endorse the story on social media), was still going strong a full month after Election Day, when Edgar Welch appeared at Comet Ping Pong with an assault rifle, ready to “rescue” the children he was convinced were being held in the basement. Welch fired several shots and spent close to an hour inside the restaurant before apparently determining that there were not, in fact, any signs of any criminal activity anywhere in the building. He surrendered to police, and later pleaded guilty to assault and weapons charges. Welch was sentenced in June 2017 to four years in prison."
It is rather audacious to me that you seem to assert that speech in social platforms that are owned and operated in the US with US citizens talking to each other is somehow separate from the rule of law of the US government. The internet was essentially created by the US government. The notion that internet companies somehow supersede individual governments is- dangerous.
The decision of social platforms to enforce their policies in this matter is in part in response to the will of their stakeholders, but also to insulate themselves from anything remotely close to being a party to defamation.
> It doesn’t apply here. <- doesn't hold up for me.
One could argue that ironically, in exercising editorial discretion on content, social platforms demonstrate their ability to censure content, and thus open themselves up to liability for all of the content they chose not to take editorial action against.
If you've gotten this far in this thread, please spend some time with Alex Jones' greatest hits and give me your honest opinion of its merit.
Snarky disclaimer: I give money to the ACLU, I believe in free speech deeply, and though every fiber in my being is opposed to their cause I will fight for the right for Westboro Baptist Church to be able to assemble peacefully in public space. But even Alex Jones' site acknowledges the need for limits: https://www.snopes.com/news/2018/08/07/censorship-platforms-...
With regard to the Pizzagate incident, using the same set of arguments, I can claim that fringe leftist publications resulted in the Congressional baseball shooting where people were actually hurt.
So are you arguing that all those groups he participated in should be banned? That's what it sounds like.
Are you willing to ban Bernie for incitement?
> It is rather audacious to me that you seem to assert that speech in social platforms that are owned and operated in the US with US citizens talking to each other is somehow separate from the rule of law of the US government. The internet was essentially created by the US government. The notion that internet companies somehow supersede individual governments is- dangerous.
It is not the job of private companies to enforce the law. That's the government's job. And there's a reason for that. You do not get to be judge, jury, and executioner because you have some superiority complex.
If the government took action, we can have a substantive discussion over the merits of the case ... but it's irrelevant, because they didn't.
> The decision of social platforms to enforce their policies in this matter is in part in response to the will of their stakeholders, but also to insulate themselves from anything remotely close to being a party to defamation.
It doesn't matter what reason they had for doing it. They may not even have had a reason. It is their right to do it ... but just because you can, doesn't mean you should. That was my point. It's a poor decision.
> If you've gotten this far in this thread, please spend some time with Alex Jones' greatest hits and give me your honest opinion of its merit.
He's the equivalent in the talk show space. It's entertainment.
Do some people take it seriously? I'm sure they do. Some people take the WWE seriously too and think that it's real. So what?
Even if the content has no merit whatsoever, so what? Again, we're not talking about the government censoring him. That's when merit would come into play. It's a private party.
They can absolutely do it. And they shouldn't, because censorship is bad. Really, really bad.
And let's not pretend like their censorship is targeted at only undesirables. Well, I suppose it is, but it depends on who is pointing the finger. These same shitty companies censor perfectly legitimate content in China, because $$$. Not cool.
All these private companies that banned him, they all categorize content. They can easily have a nutjob category and if I want to watch that, it's my business. I don't need the social engineering, thanks.
Also, social engineering usually backfires. I hear Alex Jones has a really popular app and website now due to all the publicity?
The ad economy incentivizes poor quality content, clickbait and more and more extremist and divisive content. This won't stop, it will keep becoming more and more extreme and more and more divisive. You can confirm this on facebook and youtube at any time.
The interim solution is to demonetize any non-original content, political content, news and opinion based content and disable personalized political or social advertising on all platforms.
Because at the moment the large social media companies are profiting from incentivizing extremism and division and are basically poisoning the well.
As a society, we did not have qualms before the internet about publishers declining to amplify the views of people like Alex Jones. Even in the absence of YouTube's support, he arguably has far more of a voice now than he did in the pre-internet days, before he could host his own website. He has that on top of all the traditional means of communication he always had, which includes passing out flyers and yelling in the street.
It is the responsibility of information disseminators to curate their content. Nobody is going to jail over these editorial choices, so the notion that this is a constitutional issue is pure hysteria. YouTube and Facebook are finally stepping up to the responsibility they have long owed us from the beginning.
Arguably the story doesn't change if you look at it that way. No one would fault a newspaper stand for choosing not to carry the Weekly World News, or, say, the newsletter of the KKK.
It's time to improve the law and guarantee the right of all citizens to use monopoly services.
Any large private platform or network should be subject to the First Amendment, because most of them don't operate primarily in a free market. Instead they are monopolies that enjoy network effects and as a consequence are easily strong-armed by governments.
If Facebook's stock keeps declining and it ends up a shadow of its current self then it can be released from this obligation.
How would any of these sites then be moderated?
If removing a comment is now a violation of the first amendment how do you keep sites true to the niche they where founded to serve?
If I run the most popular website for people who like chili do I now have to allow posts related to all types of soups? Can my really popular chili site remove posts about your dog you keep making?
If your chili site reaches the status of de facto town square where most public political discourse occurs, then yes you need to let everyone participate.
Silicon Valley social media companies are effectively public forums on private land.
All of your social media accounts get deleted so you move to your own website. Until the hosting company decides they don't want to do business with you so you start hosting it yourself. Until the domain registrar you used decides they don't like you so now you have to give people an IP address to reach your site. Until your ISP terminates your contract because they don't like people hosting websites on their network.
So many services controlled by private companies that can choose to not do business with someone.