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As Twitter Suspends Alex Jones, Should We Worry About Silicon Valley Regulating Speech?
Apple, Facebook, Spotify, and YouTube's decision to ban right-wing shock jock Alex Jones and his media site, Infowars, from their platforms in early August has reignited a debate about what, if any, obligations these companies have to provide access to ideologically diverse users in the name of free speech. Twitter came under enormous criticism for refusing to go along, but on Tuesday announced that they were suspending Jones's account for one week due to violations of its rules. Jones was banned after years of public outrage over lies spread by Infowars, including the infamous "Pizzagate" conspiracy and the false claim that the Sandy Hook shooting, in which 26 elementary school children and staff members were killed, was a hoax. Jones is also known for tirades against Muslims, immigrants, and transgender people.
Some critics have claimed that, given the monopoly-like power that Silicon Valley giants now exert over the internet, encouraging them to regulate content based on ideology, hate speech, or arbitrations of "truth" and "falsity" will jeopardize internet freedom and vest a handful of corporate executives too much control over it. But others have defended the choice to ban Jones, citing the anti-hate speech rules and nonviolence policies almost universally adopted by major internet platforms. Because terms of service are open to interpretation — "hate speech," for example, can be difficult to define — there is a significant risk that standards will be inconsistently applied. The ambiguous policies also present a threat to controversial speech from the left — think, for example, of speech related to the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, or expressive speech about bad cops or white men.
Twitter had been heavily criticized in the days following a Aug. 8 statement by CEO Jack Dorsey explaining that Alex Jones and InfoWars had not been banned because they had not violated Twitter's rules.
Taibbi: Beware the Slippery Slope of Facebook Censorship:
Many of the banned pages look like parodies of some paranoid bureaucrat's idea of dangerous speech. A page called "Black Elevation" shows a picture of Huey Newton and offers readers a job. "Aztlan Warriors" contains a meme celebrating the likes of Geronimo and Zapata, giving thanks for their service in the "the 500 year war against colonialism." And a banned "Mindful Being" page shared this, which seems culled from Jack Handey's Deep Thoughts bit: "We must unlearn what we have learned because a conditioned mind cannot comprehend the infinite." Facebook also wiped out a "No Unite The Right 2" page, appearing to advertise a counter-rally on the upcoming anniversary of the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Facebook was "helped" in its efforts to wipe out these dangerous memes by the Atlantic Council, on whose board you'll find confidence-inspiring names like Henry Kissinger, former CIA chief Michael Hayden, former acting CIA head Michael Morell and former Bush-era Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff. (The latter is the guy who used to bring you the insane color-coded terror threat level system.) These people now have their hands on what is essentially a direct lever over nationwide news distribution. It's hard to understate the potential mischief that lurks behind this union of Internet platforms and would-be government censors.
Deplatforming: does it work?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Sunday August 19 2018, @01:27AM (14 children)
What free market? There is no such thing within the United States.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Sunday August 19 2018, @01:48AM (4 children)
Shhhh, don't let that out, the peasants will revolt.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 19 2018, @03:15AM (3 children)
They're already revolting..... and they smell bad too.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Sunday August 19 2018, @03:20AM (2 children)
They haven't bathed in years.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 19 2018, @02:57PM
"They haven't bathed in years."
They're jewish then, eh?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 20 2018, @09:19PM
De MONET! Don't get saucy with me, Bernaise!
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 19 2018, @03:27AM
FTFY.
(Score: 4, Informative) by ilPapa on Sunday August 19 2018, @03:28AM (4 children)
Welcome to the Resistance, brother. There has never been a free market in the United States because free markets do not exist. There is no such thing as a free market. Free markets don't exist in nature. They are a fiction created in order to get people who work for a living to behave, and to give cover to the neo-feudalists.
You are still welcome on my lawn.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by idiot_king on Sunday August 19 2018, @03:57AM
No no no no, don't let the secret out! The free market is whatever the banks and CEOs say a free market is! Just look at Amazon and Walmart - that's what freedom looks like!
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Sunday August 19 2018, @06:00AM (2 children)
Which part of "Independent" have I failed to impress upon my reading audience? No, I'm not part of your "resistance". Those who are members of the much publicized "resistance" against Trump are even more smelly, unwashed, and bovine than the administration and it's supporters.
As for the existence of free markets in other places and times - I'm not ready to argue either side of that argument. If I were to enter into such an argument, the book market in Iraq would definitely be one of my major points. Before the invasion of the US and allies, you could find any book you desired. Some books may have been kept out of sight of the religiously uptight, but the books were available. It seemed to be a pretty damned free market.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 19 2018, @06:18AM
Bullshit!
I present my briefs for your nose and thus refute your assertion - one can't be bovine with a natural smell of a hog.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 19 2018, @07:05PM
You are one large sack of fast moving air molecules.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 19 2018, @10:28AM (2 children)
Because dumb people just love utopias. Free market leads to monopoly dictatorship. On the other pole, socialism leads to stealing even if some "comrade" finds it out and orders to destroy everything which could be stolen (yes, there was such even in history). The problem is that in all these cases the result is the same: In extreme cases people stop thinking.
Any corporate censorship is based on assumption that people cannot think. If it is not, then we're living in an illusion in some domain, there are also such cases, but they're more rare and highly localized and are based on mutual consensus that the fallacy will be the paradigm for reality. As a result, more and more "free" read corporate-ruled market, more ddos on minds, less thinking.
So it's not about having some goal reached, but about the process of reaching these states. This maintains ability to adapt to changing conditions. What was keeping this system not fall to a full totalism was some opposite force always present. Now, when information can be easily manipulated and people just like it - locking themselves in "info bubbles" - this force is nullified. The "civilized" men from western civilization are not any better than highly-indoctrinated men in religion-oriented tribes in the eastern wild devil's arse now. They just don't see this as it's their own extremism.
And now, "so much thinking" people go to a battle for free market under the flag of monopoly company :).
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 19 2018, @09:22PM (1 child)
Try learning what socialism actually is before you spout off and make yourself look stupid. Too late now, but for next time!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 19 2018, @11:18PM
Wrote too much from perspective of people in my country, which is:
1. "socialism==communism"
2. Fighting communism and socialism, free market ftw...
3. ...while still praising socialist-like government moves and using it as much as possible,
4. Simultaneously criticizing the same steps, but done by opposing parties, as communism they're fighting with.
Yes, many people may get lost here :).