Alex Jones and corporate censorship

Anyone agree with the decision by Apple, Facebook and Spotify to remove Jones from their services?
I understand the guy is a bit of a political gadfly and arch conspiracy theorist. But since when do corporations engage in censorship? Who's next?

 

Yep totally and utterly agree

He broke the rules

 

What are the rules he broke?

 

Noam Chomsky doesnt.

https://www.infowars.com/free-speech-icon-noam-chomsky-says-big-tech-was-wrong-to-ban-infowars/

 

Private entities, especially corporations, engage in censorship all the time. Think of every website or service provider you ever visited. Each of them are content/message specific and topics that deviate from the main message are usually censored due mainly to commercial interests. There is a reason private sites ban users over one (perceived) infraction or another.

I understand the arguments concerning the likes of Apple, Facebook, and Spotify. Their massive userbases make them an interest concerning mass communication and censorship. Where these companies lose their hold is that they are held on the internet. None of these platforms can stop newer sites from forming and distributing their own messages online. This is unlike brick and mortar trusts where monopolies can actually prevent upstarts from even entering the market.

The OP itself contains a link to Info Wars and Jones' radio show. What people are ultimately arguing over therefore is a right to another platform's traffic or userbase. E.g. Alex Jones and Co does not have a right to Facebook's userbase. Conversely, Facebook doesn't have a right to Jones and Co's userbase.

The bottom line is the public cannot trust corporations with the freedom of speech because it is actually against their corporate interests. Those who advocate freedom of speech in the private realm should put their own money where their mouth is and start a platform where censorship is limited.

 

Thats an unfair question to ask liberals

Because they dont know

 

Thank you for your work in answering this.
It came up in our local newspaper as an example of corporate censorship.
(I have a serious problem with censoring Nazi material BTW)
I think the argument was that companies like Facebook and Youtube have
a near monopoly - shutting down someone's site can be seen as a form of
censorship. What happens when Google shuts you down? You don't exist
for all intents and purposes.

 

Except on the Internet there is no monopoly. If Google or any other popular venue shuts you down, you can go create your own. No one is owed another's traffic and that's ultimately what all this censorship talk is really about.

 

what happens when this forum shuts you down or censors your posts?

I don't agree with much of the moderator censorship here but the forum has it's own rules we need to abide by if we want to post here. Don't like the rules here we can leave, don't like facebooks rules then don't use facebook...personally I've never used facebook and never will, the same goes for twitter...

 

If someone thinks freedom of speech is unlimited. tell your boss he's an idiot and you want to have sex with his wife.

 

corporations are under no obligation to air the views of anyone who want to pay for an ad.

NY Times, LA Times, doesn't have to publish a Holocaust-denial ad, just cause David Duke forks over the money.

 

Why did they choose to take the actions they did? Short Answer: Money. Long Answer: It was now less profitable to allow him to remain on their platforms then it was to ban him from the platforms. The fact is that the companies are going to ignore violations and be absolutely arbitrary in their enforcement because they are not neutral. They follow the buck.

It is the same reason that the NFL owners made the decision regarding the pledge of allegiance. Until the US military paid for players to stand for the National Anthem, they didn't even come out on the field. Once they started losing money because of people being upset at kneeling during the anthem, they chose to try and get rid of the negative optic. It is purely business.

 

Unlikely, given that liberals tend to use their brains.

Alex Jones threatens Mueller: ‘You're going to get it, or I'm going to die trying’

By John Bowden - 07/24/18 09:17 AM EDT

Infowars host Alex Jones on Monday issued a threat toward special counsel Robert Mueller, accusing him of covering up sex crimes and suggesting he wanted to duel the former FBI chief in an imaginary gunfight.

Jones made the comments on an episode of "The Alex Jones Show," first reported by Media Matters.

"I mean, Mueller covered up for a decade for [Jeffrey] Epstein kidnapping kids, flying them on sex planes, some kids as young as seven years old reportedly, with big perverts raping them to frame people," Jones says in the video, referring to billionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who was convicted of sex crimes after being accused of soliciting multiple teenage girls as young as 13.

"Mueller is a monster, man," Jones continues in the video. "People say, 'Well, God, aren't you scared of him?' I'm scared of not manning up. I'm constantly in fear that I'm not being a real man, and I'm not doing what it takes, and I'm not telling the truth."

Jones then pivoted to an analogy where Mueller and he were dueling cowboys, meeting "politically" at high noon for a shootout.

"That's a demon I will take down, or I'll die trying. So that's it. It's going to happen, we're going to walk out in the square, politically, at high noon, and he's going to find out whether he makes a move man, make the move first, and then it's going to happen," Jones said, miming a pistol with his hand.

"It's not a joke. It's not a game. It's the real world. Politically. You're going to get it, or I'm going to die trying, bitch. Get ready. We're going to bang heads. We're going to bang heads."

...
http://thehill.com/homenews/media/3...ure-going-to-get-it-or-im-going-to-die-trying

 

the whole anthem thing at sporting events is over the top patriotism imo....what does a football, hockey, baseball, cricket or any other sporting event got to do with the national anthem? ...much ado about nothing....

 

Corporate platforms have never been bastions of free speech, especially as certain extremists understand it. Just look at televsion. It's always censored a wide range of material, in part to please audiences and in part to please advertisers. Why should a social media corporation be different?

 

https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-...fowars-alex-jones-was-banned-apple-facebook-/

Why Infowars’ Alex Jones was banned from Apple, Facebook, Youtube and Spotify
By Manuela Tobias on Tuesday, August 7th, 2018 at 2:44 p.m.

Over the course of 24 hours, most social media giants kicked one of the most infamous conspiracy theory peddlers off their platforms.

Alex Jones, the creator of the Infowars website and multiple talk shows, has had a hand in spreading hoaxes online, including unproven theories that the Sandy Hook massacre was fabricated, and that Democrats ran a child abuse-ring out of a pizzeria.

But that’s not why he was banned from these platforms on Aug. 5 and 6.

Apple was the first to act. It pulled five of Infowars' six podcasts from the iTunes and Podcasts apps. Those included War Room and the popular Alex Jones Show podcast, which is hosted daily.

Facebook and Spotify followed suit. Facebook unpublished four pages: the Alex Jones Channel Page, the Alex Jones Page, the Infowars Page and the Infowars Nightly News Page. They also suspended Alex Jones’ personal account, for his role in posting the content. Spotify removed all episodes of The Alex Jones Show.

What sparked their removal? The idea is similar throughout: Jones violated the social media platforms’ hate speech policies.

Facebook defines hate speech as "a direct attack on people based on what we call protected characteristics — race, ethnicity, national origin, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, caste, sex, gender, gender identity, and serious disease or disability. We also provide some protections for immigration status. We define attack as violent or dehumanizing speech, statements of inferiority, or calls for exclusion or segregation." Youtube has a similar definition. Apple does not define hate, but writes that content may be removed or rejected if it could be construed as racist, misogynist, or homophobic, or depicts hate themes.

Apple told BuzzFeed News, "Apple does not tolerate hate speech, and we have clear guidelines that creators and developers must follow to ensure we provide a safe environment for all of our users. Podcasts that violate these guidelines are removed from our directory making them no longer searchable or available for download or streaming."

Facebook released a detailed press statement on the matter. Facebook said they recently removed four videos from Alex Jones’ pages, as they violated their hate speech and bullying policies. Since then, they have been notified of more content from his pages that glorified violence and used "dehumanizing language to describe people who are transgender, Muslims and immigrants, which violates our hate speech policies." After multiple strikes, Facebook shut down the pages and suspended the administrator.

The four videos were likely the same ones The Verge reported earned Alex Jones a strike on Youtube in July: two videos contained hate speech against Muslims, one contained hate speech against transgender people, and one entitled "How to prevent liberalism" showed an adult pushing a child to the ground.

Facebook said that misinformation was not the culprit in the case of Alex Jones.

"While much of the discussion around Infowars has been related to false news, which is a serious issue that we are working to address by demoting links marked wrong by fact-checkers and suggesting additional content, none of the violations that spurred today’s removals were related to this," the press release said. (PolitiFact is one of those fact-checkers; read more about the partnership.)

YouTube removed Infowars channels as well, including the most popular: The Alex Jones Channel, which had 2.4 million subscribers. In response to our query about Jones’ removal, a YouTube spokesperson said that accounts are terminated for users who "repeatedly violate their policies against hate speech and harassment or our terms prohibiting circumvention of our enforcement measures."

Spotify struck The Alex Jones Show from its podcast library due to "repeated violations of Spotify’s prohibited content policies." Spotify's hate policy bans content that "expressly and principally promotes, advocates, or incites hatred or violence against a group or individual based on characteristics."

The only major social media outlet that has not banned Jones is Twitter.

A spokesman told us Infowars and its associated channels were not in violation of Twitter rules, as content posted on other social media sites is not often posted to Twitter. He said that tweets debunking Jones’ false claims were plentiful and surfaced among his replies.

The short time frame prompted Paul Joseph Watson, Infowars editor-at-large, to dub the bans a coordinated purge.

"The Alex Jones Channel has been permanently DELETED by YouTube. This is a coordinated PURGE. This is political censorship," Watson tweeted. "Apple, Spotify, Facebook and now Google (which owns YouTube) - all within 12 hours of each other. A coordinated purge. This is a total abuse of power."

David Karpf, an associate professor of media and public affairs at George Washington University, said social media platforms have been wrestling with the Infowars issue for a long time. Jones’ mass following and acceptance by Republican politicians (President Donald Trump once appeared on his show) made him a thorny subject, and he often skirted the boundaries of acceptable behavior by not expressly issuing incitements to violence.

"Once one of the sites finally took a step toward banning or removing Alex Jones, it becomes easier for the other sites to follow suit," Karpf said. "It's herd behavior, both because that offers a buffer against political repercussions directed at a single site, and because no major content platform wants to stand out as uniquely supportive of Infowars' awful rhetoric."

 

I accept this. The Australian newspaper article about this being "censorship" I take to be wrong.

 

looks like Facebook and Youtube were right.

 

Yep. Given the hate and nonsense he has been spewing for so long, it's kind of surprising that it took even this long. I read that Trump's endorsement of the moron made things a little more difficult for them, though.

 

GET RID OF MODERATORS! NO MORE CORPORATE CENSORSHIP ON POLITICALFORUM.COM! MY PROFANITY LACED TIRADE LAST WEEK WAS DELETED! THIS IS CENSORSHIP! FREEDOM OF SPEECH!

But I like almost half of Republicans am fine with Trump getting the power to shut down the news organizations he decides are inaccurate.
https://www.esquire.com/uk/latest-n...-give-trump-the-power-to-shut-down-the-media/

 

its years too late

 

There is another side to this. It's not just Alex Jones who is being denied here. The millions of people who subscribed to him are being denied as well. These corporations colluded to deny the public of content that they wanted, and to shut out a competitor to big media. Jones is just the canary in the coal mine, and now that they've gotten away with this, expect to see them selectively ban or shadowban alternative media that they don't like in any way.

True, which is why we cannot allow the public discourse, which now occurs online, to be controlled by private corporations. We need to regulate these spaces as public utilities.

Who can seriously compete with multibillion dollar multinational corporations? If it were possible to break through the near monopolistic hegemony to be a viable alternative to YouTube or Facebook, we wouldn't be waiting on people to do it for free speech reasons; if it were feasible, people would already be doing it for financial reasons.

 

Since when? Since corporations became corporations..

 

Quote "True, which is why we cannot allow the public discourse, which now occurs online, to be controlled by private corporations. We need to regulate these spaces as public utilities."

There is one problem with this. "Regulate" usually means being captured by the Left.
Just think of a generation of young humanity students from our august universities
with their thought control, attacks on free speech etc as in the Australian ABC, the UK
BBC, the European parliament. These up and coming students wind their way into
the media, the parliament, the courts etc.. They have no understanding of commerce,
little grasp of history, no real notion of Enlightenment values etc..
And they will "regulate" us all?

 

In more ways than one. I fear the damage has been thoroughly wrought and is still being wrought, and has spread well beyond the likes of that wacko entertainer.