I’m really disappointed with the level of discourse on Alex Jones. It echoes much of what is now widely believed in the UK regarding what is proper and rightful freedom of expression.
Firstly, I would happily acknowledge that the left has a real problem with tolerating views it doesn’t agree with. I am genuinely concerned by the level of faux-rage that is wheeled out at the merest utterance of something that we don’t agree with (though in fairness the Right behave exactly the same although they seem to have won the free-speech narrative space at the moment).
But with Alex Jones it really isn’t a case of censorship. He’s been spouting his nonsense for years without curtail. Even with the Sandy Hook vileness I’m sure he could easily have continued propagating that it was a hoax if only he didn’t incite violence along with it. Now the families are suing Jones and the platforms that host him are running scared.
So for me we don’t really have a free-speech problem. People can and do say whatever they like. The issue is that in a time of social media, what you say is inevitably going to be shouted down and accused of this that or the other. It creates a climate where it feels like free-speech is under attack, when it fact it’s really just a battle of ideologically motivated competing noise. This makes it very hard to say anything. But that difficulty shouldn’t be confused with free speech. We exercise that free speech all the time without consequence.
Agreed. This is a guy saying a school shooting is a false flag attack and is suing families of victims.
A truly odious individual and he has no right to spread that kind of shite on whatever site he wants. He can stick it his blog but anyone else spouting shite on twitter/Facebook/YouTube would be banned.
If the line is set so far that these kinds of things don’t result you getting banned because of freedom of speech, then you might as well be able to say that ISIS is a mossad false flag operation run by the Rothschilds and Barack Obama was grown in a lab in Finland or whatever other bullshit and not have any consequences.
What they fucked up with Alex Jones banning was the seemingly synchronized shutdown across all channels.
He has contradicted the guidelines long before last week and the platforms should have banned him at their own respective moments but every platform banned him within 2 days.
That is weird. And slightly concerning.
Questions need to be asked as to why it was so synchronized?
What stops these platforms to come together tomorrow and hide a certain segment of opinions, like China does.
I haven’t really been following this any more than I follow anything else to do with this asshole but from what I do know he has no real complaint here. No one has any right to be able to post anywhere and some places have now blocked him. He can still say whatever he wants, he just can’t do it in those places.
Yes low hanging fruit that could potentially get the platforms sued. Not for hosting him per se, but for not previously holding him accountable to their own T’s & C’s. His supporters have been abusing parents of a high school massacre - that’s a whole pile of shit these platforms want no part of.
The only way for you to be right and for it to qualify as censorship is if you believe we shouldn’t regulate speech at all? Like we would need to allow ISIS on twitter etc.
Depends on how persistent and full the ban is. If all he has is his website then that will in the long run massively reduce his following, and it will cost him a fortune.
Yep, and I mean silencing Milo seems to have worked.
Look fact is, it’s not censoring him. He still has his blog and website
But twitter, FB etc have terms and conditions as Dr S said. He violated them many times. So he has to face the consequences. He can go to sites that don’t have those with no problem. like I assume is his own site so he has not been censored.
Maybe, but how do you deduce that? He makes his money from product placement on his show, a show that was already in decline from 3 million to 1 million views. He would need to somehow drive traffic to his website with no platform to it. It might spike for a while, while the controversy is live, but once it’s forgotten will people seek him out on his website? Maybe they will, but I doubt it.
Yeah but Jules, whether he makes bank or not, where do you draw the line on censorship? What’ permissible? What’s not? I want to know what position I am debated with.
