Facebook Follows YouTube's Lead, Blocks Alex Jones' Pages
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tod evans
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Chilling precedent? InfoWars block exposes Big Tech as no friend of free speech
https://www.rt.com/usa/435271-alex-jones-inforwars-censorship/
The US Constitution explicitly forbids government censorship. So the Silicon Valley big tech companies named themselves the gatekeepers of goodthink, de-platforming anyone who runs afoul of their arbitrary ‘community standards.’
Alex Jones, the host of InfoWars, has often been derided by establishment media as a conspiracy theorist. Yet on Monday, Apple, Spotify, YouTube and Facebook proved right the motto of his show – “There’s a war on for your mind!” – by blocking or deleting InfoWars accounts from their platforms, saying he allegedly engaged in “hate speech” and violated their “community standards.”
Simply put, these corporations appointed themselves arbiters of acceptable political thought, and censored Jones for failing to comply with arbitrary political standards set in Silicon Valley boardrooms, not at the ballot box.
The First Amendment to the US Constitution says that Congress shall make no law “abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” There is no “hate speech” exemption, either. In fact, hate speech is not even a legal category in the US. However, a chorus of voices all too glad Jones was purged immediately chimed up to argue that Apple, Alphabet, Facebook and Spotify are private companies and this does not apply to them.
There is a wrinkle in that argument, though: civil rights outfits such as the ACLU have argued that social media amount to a “designated public forum” in cases where government officials tried to avail themselves of blocking, muting and other functions put forth by Big Tech as a way to police “toxicity” on their platforms.
“When the government designates social media a public forum, the First Amendment prohibits it from limiting the discourse based on viewpoint,” the ACLU said in a brief submitted last year in a case before the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Virginia. “When a government actor bans critics from speaking in a forum, it silences and chills dissent, warps the public conversation, and skews public perception,” the ACLU brief went on.
In a separate but obviously related case, a federal judge used the “designated public forum” definition to demand that President Donald Trump allow access to his personal Twitter account – not the official [MENTION=17488]potu[/MENTION]S one – to critics, because he is a public official.
Yet if social media platforms are “designated public forum” that government is not allowed to exclude people from on First Amendment grounds, how is it OK for corporations that operate these platforms to do so? Or is chilling dissent, warping conversation and skewing perception only bad when a government actor does it, thereby creating a legal system in which the what is irrelevant, and only thing that matters is who/whom?
There is something deeply cynical about people who until yesterday denounced discrimination and evil corporatism – and will do so again tomorrow – suddenly defending private property and freedom to discriminate against political viewpoints. That’s because this isn’t about principles, but about power.
Liberals were once all for free speech, starting a movement by that name at Berkeley in the 1960s. Now that the media and academia overwhelmingly march in lockstep with the Democratic Party, however, they’re all about “no-platforming” opposing views and calling them “hate speech,” all in an effort to limit the range of permissible thought and expression in America.
This has manifested in many forms, from literal riots in Berkeley to “shadowbanning” of several Republican lawmakers on Twitter. That platform, which has so far refrained from banning InfoWars, didn’t hesitate to block conservative African-American activist Candace Owens after she pointedly echoed the hateful tweets of a liberal journalist hired by the New York Times. Needless to say, the same people up in arms about Alex Jones argued that Sarah Jeong’s tweets were fine, because one “cannot be racist against white people.”
This ideological conflict in American society actually goes back for years, maybe even decades. However, the victory of Trump over Hillary Clinton in the 2016 US presidential election, even though most of the media and all of the Silicon valley were #WithHer, flushed it out in the open. Democrats quickly latched onto a claim of “Russian meddling,” intended to delegitimize Trump’s presidency but also, as it turns out, create an excuse for corporate censorship.
Consider the November 1, 2017 hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee, where lawyers for Google, Facebook and Twitter were subjected to a barrage of demands to regulate their platforms against “Russians” – or else.
“You have to be the ones to do something about it, or we will,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-California). She also pressed for removal of RT from YouTube, only to have a Google representative say that despite looking very hard, the company hasn’t found any policy violations that would justify such a move.
“I’m not really satisfied with that,” said Feinstein.
Now, imagine how much more chilling this would be if Feinstein represented the ruling party, rather than the opposition. It isn’t that far-fetched: during the 2016 election, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg told Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta she “badly” wanted Clinton to win, while Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google’s parent company Alphabet, actually spent election night at Clinton HQ with a “staff” badge. More recently, this April actually, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey called a “great read” the article describing how Democrats should fight and win the “civil war” currently being waged in the US.
This isn’t about how much one likes or dislikes Alex Jones or InfoWars. This is about corporations deciding for you what you should be allowed to hear, read, say or think – and the people normally criticizing such behavior cheering it on, because it suits their political agenda.
As Jones’s colleague Paul Joseph Watson put it, “The great censorship purge has truly begun.”
Ask not for whom the censorship bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
Nebojsa Malic for RT
https://www.rt.com/usa/435271-alex-jones-inforwars-censorship/
The US Constitution explicitly forbids government censorship. So the Silicon Valley big tech companies named themselves the gatekeepers of goodthink, de-platforming anyone who runs afoul of their arbitrary ‘community standards.’
Alex Jones, the host of InfoWars, has often been derided by establishment media as a conspiracy theorist. Yet on Monday, Apple, Spotify, YouTube and Facebook proved right the motto of his show – “There’s a war on for your mind!” – by blocking or deleting InfoWars accounts from their platforms, saying he allegedly engaged in “hate speech” and violated their “community standards.”
Simply put, these corporations appointed themselves arbiters of acceptable political thought, and censored Jones for failing to comply with arbitrary political standards set in Silicon Valley boardrooms, not at the ballot box.
The First Amendment to the US Constitution says that Congress shall make no law “abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” There is no “hate speech” exemption, either. In fact, hate speech is not even a legal category in the US. However, a chorus of voices all too glad Jones was purged immediately chimed up to argue that Apple, Alphabet, Facebook and Spotify are private companies and this does not apply to them.
There is a wrinkle in that argument, though: civil rights outfits such as the ACLU have argued that social media amount to a “designated public forum” in cases where government officials tried to avail themselves of blocking, muting and other functions put forth by Big Tech as a way to police “toxicity” on their platforms.
“When the government designates social media a public forum, the First Amendment prohibits it from limiting the discourse based on viewpoint,” the ACLU said in a brief submitted last year in a case before the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Virginia. “When a government actor bans critics from speaking in a forum, it silences and chills dissent, warps the public conversation, and skews public perception,” the ACLU brief went on.
In a separate but obviously related case, a federal judge used the “designated public forum” definition to demand that President Donald Trump allow access to his personal Twitter account – not the official [MENTION=17488]potu[/MENTION]S one – to critics, because he is a public official.
Yet if social media platforms are “designated public forum” that government is not allowed to exclude people from on First Amendment grounds, how is it OK for corporations that operate these platforms to do so? Or is chilling dissent, warping conversation and skewing perception only bad when a government actor does it, thereby creating a legal system in which the what is irrelevant, and only thing that matters is who/whom?
There is something deeply cynical about people who until yesterday denounced discrimination and evil corporatism – and will do so again tomorrow – suddenly defending private property and freedom to discriminate against political viewpoints. That’s because this isn’t about principles, but about power.
Liberals were once all for free speech, starting a movement by that name at Berkeley in the 1960s. Now that the media and academia overwhelmingly march in lockstep with the Democratic Party, however, they’re all about “no-platforming” opposing views and calling them “hate speech,” all in an effort to limit the range of permissible thought and expression in America.
This has manifested in many forms, from literal riots in Berkeley to “shadowbanning” of several Republican lawmakers on Twitter. That platform, which has so far refrained from banning InfoWars, didn’t hesitate to block conservative African-American activist Candace Owens after she pointedly echoed the hateful tweets of a liberal journalist hired by the New York Times. Needless to say, the same people up in arms about Alex Jones argued that Sarah Jeong’s tweets were fine, because one “cannot be racist against white people.”
This ideological conflict in American society actually goes back for years, maybe even decades. However, the victory of Trump over Hillary Clinton in the 2016 US presidential election, even though most of the media and all of the Silicon valley were #WithHer, flushed it out in the open. Democrats quickly latched onto a claim of “Russian meddling,” intended to delegitimize Trump’s presidency but also, as it turns out, create an excuse for corporate censorship.
Consider the November 1, 2017 hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee, where lawyers for Google, Facebook and Twitter were subjected to a barrage of demands to regulate their platforms against “Russians” – or else.
“You have to be the ones to do something about it, or we will,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-California). She also pressed for removal of RT from YouTube, only to have a Google representative say that despite looking very hard, the company hasn’t found any policy violations that would justify such a move.
“I’m not really satisfied with that,” said Feinstein.
Now, imagine how much more chilling this would be if Feinstein represented the ruling party, rather than the opposition. It isn’t that far-fetched: during the 2016 election, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg told Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta she “badly” wanted Clinton to win, while Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google’s parent company Alphabet, actually spent election night at Clinton HQ with a “staff” badge. More recently, this April actually, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey called a “great read” the article describing how Democrats should fight and win the “civil war” currently being waged in the US.
This isn’t about how much one likes or dislikes Alex Jones or InfoWars. This is about corporations deciding for you what you should be allowed to hear, read, say or think – and the people normally criticizing such behavior cheering it on, because it suits their political agenda.
As Jones’s colleague Paul Joseph Watson put it, “The great censorship purge has truly begun.”
Ask not for whom the censorship bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
Nebojsa Malic for RT
goldenequity
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Chris Murphy@ChrisMurphyCT · 10 h
Infowars is the tip of a giant iceberg of hate and lies that uses sites like Facebook and YouTube to tear our nation apart.
These companies must do more than take down one website. The survival of our democracy depends on it.
https://twitter.com/ChrisMurphyCT/status/1026580187784404994
https://twitter.com/DailySabah/status/1026547204331323393
Last edited:
juleswin
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Madison320
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Private companies can exclude whoever they want. The problem in this case is that the US government pressured those private companies into excluded Infowars. That's a violation of the 1st.
juleswin
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This is the sort of posts that give me violent thoughts. You have no proof that any govt agencies pressure any social media company to ban Infowars. You have Trump in govt who is by far running the most friendly infowar govt in the history of histories. So if you want to make a claim as insane as this, you better come with evidence. This pressure was not strong enough to can Alex Jones during the Obama, Bush or Clinton years but u want use to believe that this pressure reached a tipping point with Trump? not buying it.
I would have banned him a long time ago and I wouldn't need govt pressure to act. If I would have banned him then you better believe twitter, youtube and apple can come up with the same decision without govt pressure
timosman
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Madison320
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I thought the same thing until I saw this video. At about the 30 second mark Congressman Raskin asks a Facebook representative "Why is Infowars still on your site?". And he wasn't the only one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2vVc4abqKI
juleswin
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They just pressured each other?
I see what u say but I don't see why the social media would want to pressure govt to ban him. If anything, they would prefer to hide any govt involvement in the ban. People would start crying free speech if such info was to be released.
Either way, I hope this ban would be a win if only it keep Dr. Ron Paul away from that disinfo agent's show. #winning
Anti Federalist
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Madison320
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Only certain groups.
Madison320
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Did you read my post? I showed you the proof that congress was in fact pressuring govt agencies. I don't want you to get any violent thoughts.
juleswin
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I read your post and I did not see any pressure exerted on those social media platforms to ban infowars. One solitary congressman just asked why they let em continue to broadcast of facebook. That is it.
I refuse to believe that some no name congressman has more pull than the US president.
dannno
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It's called the "deep state" and Trump is not a member.
AuH20
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He may not be a full fledged member, but he's boxed in by them. He fears them or he would have ended this entire charade with a Presidential Address.
AuH20
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He does have quality products. Some are organic equivalents that you find in Whole Foods. But as soon as they are labeled with the Infowars name, they immediately become fraudulent snake oil. ROFL
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/07/us/politics/alex-jones-infowars-sandy-hook.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/07/us/politics/alex-jones-infowars-sandy-hook.html
