YouTube, Apple and Facebook Ban InfoWars, Which Decries 'Mega Purge'
npr.org
npr.org
"""Let’s go all the way back to 1996 and talk about Section 230. I think historians are completely in agreement that this is the law that made the internet what it is today.
We thought it was going to be helpful. We never realized it was going to be the linchpin to generating investment in social media. We envisioned that the law would be both a sword and a shield. A shield so that you could have this opportunity, for particularly small and enterprising operations to secure capital, and then a sword [by allowing them to moderate without facing liability over the practice], which said you’ve got to police your platforms. And what was clear during the 2016 election and the succeeding events surrounding Facebook, is that technology companies used one part of what we envisioned, the shield, but really sat on their hands with respect to the sword, and wouldn’t police their platforms."""
https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/24/17606974/oregon-senator-r...
I think that what's happened here is a normalization of deviance. Moderation action that should have been taken a long time ago has now been delayed so long it will be painful. Instead of setting strong expectations about what is and isn't okay up front (like say, Hacker News); these companies have gotten lax and will now pay a hefty price to use the sword.
What wasn't foreseeable 20 years ago is that protection shouldn't really apply to recommended content that the platforms' algorithms push forward onto users, especially in the case of something like YouTube where they auto-play. Those are editorial decisions made in the company's own voice, and you shouldn't be allowed to disclaim all responsibility for what your platform actively recommends.
CDA 230 doesn't give platforms the right to host content without reviewing or moderating it. That seems to be a very common misperception. Platforms already had that right - that was what was implied by the Cubby and Stratton Oakmont cases [0]. What CDA 230 did was allow platforms to moderate their content without assuming liability for it. If you're saying "there isn't enough moderation, so let's kill CDA 230" in my opinion you've got things completely backwards.
One of the huge fails here is that early Facebook was actually a nice and civil place to be. I’m talking way early, circa 2004-2007, when it was you and your real life friends in college. Compared to the free for all backwater that was MySpace, it felt like a refreshing online community where people acted decently because everything was tied to your real identity. There were no followers or any of the gamified attention seeking nonsense that FB eventually turned into. That was a big part of why it blew up. Because it really felt like an amazing product and community.
You could say that Facebook got lax about moderation, but I think it’s worse than that. As far as I can tell some time around 2008 onward the management made a calculated decision to prioritize growth above everything else. You can see the fruits of this philosophy in the infamous “Boz” memo from earlier this year. But it started years ago, and you better believe this attitude came straight from the top ie Zuck. It’s part of what made the company so ridiculously successful. But now facebook will finally pay the price.
It’s a shame because I think they could still have taken over the world and managed to enforce positive social norms. Focusing on moderation and community quality would definitely have slowed down growth, but after 2008 there wasn’t really any chance for a competing social network. Trust me, I worked at Bebo (#3 social network at the time) before it was acquired by AOL and we already knew before the acquisition that we were getting steamrolled by FB along with all of our competitors. All that to say, Facebook’s competitive advantage meant that it could have afforded to take its time and continue focusing on quality over growth. But company management got greedy and stopped caring about anything other than DAUs.
It’s easy to say in hindsight of course, it’s hard to make these kinds of product decisions when you’re crushing it as hard as Facebook was. And then it IPOs and all the early people are worth 10s of millions in their twenties, which can kind of mess with your head and make you think that you’re basically omnipotent. And for many years it looked like they were.
I’m glad to see the backlash finally hitting where it counts. It’s not that I want Facebook to fail - I drank the koolaid hard early on and genuinely loved the product. Also turned down a PM offer from them in 2007, but that’s another story. But I’m really sad to see what could have been a world changing product for good turn into an absolute cesspool of manipulation, misinformation and narcissism. I view the current backlash as a forest fire, clearing away all the crud that’s been piling up over the years in order to make space for a new vision of online community at scale. If Facebook needs to burn to the ground in order to create that future, so be it. More constructive would be a complete management overhaul where Zuck and co would be replaced by leadership who genuinely cares about the wellbeing of the community. That is unlikely to happen until the stock craters enough that investors will finally revolt and demand change. My prediction is that it will get way, way worse for Facebook and its shareholders before it gets better.
When 3 CEOs get to define who are "decent people" and when they control all 4 sides of the Overton window, you have a problem. They're just too big
Here's the difference: Alex Jones can go create his own video site easily, but he can't create his own worldwide ISP.
People have to take action and opt in to watching something on YouTube. They have a choice. If people don't want to hear someone they never have to.
Youtube doesn't provide the means for publishers to interrupt what you are currently watching (well there's ads but that's a bit different as ads have increase scrutiny).
And if he used an existing infrastructure like AWS, I would hope AWS would kick him off of it.
If they would manage their brand as well as Apple, people would probably praise the end of net neutrality.
Or do many of these companies have commitees that guides such decisions?
Not saying it's ideal, just questioning how the decision was made.
Whatever the case this doesn't make it any better. I imagine Johannes Gutenberg pondering whether to publish the whole bible or censor the parts he didnt like. Whether he decided on his own , or in a party of 5, it's equally evil.
This feels like yet another instance of programmers applying a programming mindset to human problems. When presented with an instance of a problem, we want to solve the general case. That’s fine for code but often falls flat for people. If somebody is doing something terribly wrong, it’s ok to look at the individual case while you figure out how to handle it in general.
Who says they don't? Every time a right wing nut gets chopped you need an equivalent pound of flesh from the left? This just seems like whataboutism to me.
>But the current language is very vague and only emboldens people seeking censorship and coddling.
People always seek whatever they want, it doesn't mean they will get it. Sort of like how you're seeking absolute fairness in equality in corporate censorship. Good luck...
> Let’s see how they come down on censoring holywood blockbuster movies.
I'm not sure what you're getting at, seems apples and oranges to me. I think in this case safe means, "we're not going to tolerate bigoted assholes anymore". Not try and adhere to everyone's possible definition of safe.
I can't say I have any problem with this particular move, but man, you can't just assert that as if that's an obvious fact.
I guess you're asserting that they didn't…
I don’t understand why you’d write this response without looking into the man first. If you’d rather not examine him, I totally get it, but then maybe don’t defend him?
> I don’t understand why you’d write this response without looking into the man first.
I did. I know who Alex Jones is. But of course I didn't read every single one of his rants, I have much better ways to spend my limited time on this Earth, thankyouverymuch. I also think if somebody argues for his exclusion from all major platform, they should already have the examples of the violent calls ready, just saying "yes, he did that, trust us, we wouldn't lie to you would we?" shouldn't be enough.
> but then maybe don’t defend him?
People still can't get an idea that demanding someone to be treated fairly is not the same as liking them or defending them. I mean, we're doing this thing for millenia, the Bible (and I mean the old, Jewish one, not even the newer one) talks about just courts - for criminals, not for good nice people - as one of the basic requirements, and we still don't get it through that being just to someone and defending someone is not the same. How long will it take? Will the collective conscience in year 9000 get it?
"1776 WILL COMMENCE AGAIN IF YOU TRY TO TAKE OUR FIREARMS!"
Note that the second one is directly connected to Sandy Hook, since he tells everyone that it was a hoax done with the purpose of taking people's guns away. He's basically telling people to rise up in armed revolt. He tells his audience that the victims' parents are actually part of a conspiracy to take their guns, tells them that armed revolt is the proper response....
You're not demanding that he be treated fairly. Being treated fairly would mean that if he's advocating violence he should get kicked off these platforms. You're defending him by saying you don't think he does this. That's not being just or fair, that's being counterfactual, and even worse it's coming from a position of deliberate ignorance.
OK you got this one. It's in the middle of the large and mostly incoherent rant, so I missed it, but that's encouragement of violence (even though Jones would probably call it rhetorical figure, but he should have used different rhetoric in this case). For this he does deserve condemnation. Doesn't make him a "threat to our democracy", as one not-very-smart Senator recently proclaimed.
> "1776 WILL COMMENCE AGAIN IF YOU TRY TO TAKE OUR FIREARMS!"
This is not a call to violence - not only nobody is trying to take our firearms, but most gun control proponents specifically and emphatically reject the suggestion that this is their goal. And even if they were lying, it's a predictive, not normative statement, about a very hypothetical situation at that.
> He's basically telling people to rise up in armed revolt.
If "they" try to "take our firearms", which nobody is doing. On the contrary, Supreme Court repeatedly recognized firearms ownership as a personal right (even though some locations have trouble recognizing it). Saying "if you do this policy, people will revolt" is a common rhetorical figure, which is very far from direct encouragement of violence.
> He tells his audience that the victims' parents are actually part of a conspiracy to take their guns,
This is despicable and loathsome. But not a call to violence.
> tells them that armed revolt is the proper response....
If his conspiracy proves true and people actually come to take his guns - which of course it won't and they won't (unless he commits a felony, which is different business).
> You're not demanding that he be treated fairly.
Yes I do. I am kind of an expert on what I am demanding, you can believe me at least on that.
> Being treated fairly would mean that if he's advocating violence he should get kicked off these platforms.
So far we've seen he advocated violence once, and even that in kinda rhetorical (though no doubt very objectionable) fashion, along the lines of "punch the Nazi" that we've heard so much recently, or one press member expressing a desire to "wring the neck" of one press secretary for not giving responses to this press member's liking. I've seen the same and way worse literally on every platform that banned Jones, with no consequence to speak of, certainly not total ban (maybe sometimes short suspension). This is certainly what should be condemned, but way below total ban. So I continue to think he was not treated fairly.
I leave you with this quote from Noam Chomsky:
If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.
I don’t see how your quote applies. Inciting violence is not typically considered protected speech, and even if it is, getting kicked off of YouTube is not a restriction on one’s freedom of expression.
I didn't say it doesn't count. I said it is not a call to violence.
> there is a large, active conspiracy to take their guns. They believe him.
They may be believing him there's a conspiracy (though with people jumping around calling for repeal of Second Amendment I'd say the conspiratorial part of it is rather weak) but they can't believe somebody has already came to take their guns. For a simple reason that nobody did, they'd notice something like that. And, I don't think there was a single instance of violence caused by the fact that somebody listened to Alex Jones and thought somebody came to take their gun and reacted violently. Either Alex Jones is very bad at his job (which is not hard to believe - but then why ban him?) or maybe whoever listens to him does not interpret his message in this way?
> In that context, saying to be violent if they take their guns is a call to violence.
No, it is not. For example, I would consider if US (or any other) government starts rounding up Jews and putting them into concentration camps, violence to resist such governmental action is justified (and, I think, morally necessary, if there's no other way to stop it). This is not "calling to violence" in any sense that relates to current discussion - because nobody is actually rounded up and put into concentration camps. Confusing two situations - discussion of something that might happen (and what we want and hope to prevent much earlier than there would be even close to the theoretical situation) and what would be proper action in that theoretical case of an unacceptable infringement of the rights, and call to violence right here, right now, in our current situation (which we consider acceptable enough that our society condemns calls to violence) - is completely erroneous.
> Inciting violence is not typically considered protected speech, and even if it is, getting kicked off of YouTube is not a restriction on one’s freedom of expression.
Simultaneously kicking him from all major platforms is clearly designed to limit his freedom of expression and suppress his message (as much as non-governmental bodies can). You can argue that it is a good thing, but if you argue this is not the goal you are either very naive or willfully ignorant. And one count of rhetorical "incitement" we've seen so far can not be a reason for such action. People routinely say same and worse things online and do not get banned from everything (some even get hired to work in major newspapers).
It is clear that Jones was banned not because of one or two occasional (and very rare if in all his very prolific expression so far we've found one or maybe, maybe two such instances) references to violence. But because of his despicable character and his despicable message. It is clear that a lot of people consider silencing him be a good thing, a desirable thing to happen.
After all, nobody is forced to download his stuff from Apple or go to his pages on Facebook. If somebody wanted to just ignore him, it's very easy to do - I did it for decades without even trying a little bit. But people don't want to just not hear him - people want him silenced. And thus my quote is very relevant.
And yes, it most certainly is when mainstream politicians get banned.
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/heng-gets-facebook-blo...
https://twitter.com/h3h3productions/status/10280470081440808...
Germany obviously has had a troubled past in this area. Another concept that may be useful: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streitbare_Demokratie
Jones, whatever you think of him, is not an existential threat to society, and using the "paradox of tolerance" to censor him is intellectual cowardice.
I'm really sick of the so-called paradox of tolerance being used as a justification for arbitrary political censorship.
Precisely. This should be the beginning and end of every conversation about policy regarding the weaponized social media of today.
We should stop pretending like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter et al. are some kind of public good or utility. They are private message boards. Message boards which already decide what you see by showing you an endless stream of content designed to optimize ad revenue.
You can find all of these things on the web, but they are far from widely accepted.
Here's a prime example:
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/heng-gets-facebook-blo...
This is just what shows up as the first item from a Google search. Think of it as a teaser. I'm sure there are more comprehensive videos, but it's kind of exhausting to even look through his material since he does this for several hours every day all year round. Alex Jones himself probably produces 100+ hours of audio and video a month of just him ranting. He also has other people now who do the same thing. The amount of content that they actually create is pretty incredible. And when he really steps over the line and directly threatens someone he then removes the video and backtracks. It just happens over and over and over again.
But if you really want to promote free speech on the Internet then you should support Net Neutrality and go a step further and support the re-nationalization of telecom as a public utility so that it gets first amendment protection.
EDIT: I presume the down-votes on this comment are because I referred to some of Alex Jones' fans as mentally ill. I don't say this lightly: I know a handful of people who are legitimately mentally ill who think Alex Jones is the lone truth-teller in the media. You should be very scared of what these people might do if they think their hero is being martyred.
Alex Jones could easily show the emails from these companies where he was warned multiple times.
>My biggest concern is that this crackdown on a crackpot will set off one of his high-functioning, mentally ill fans to pull a Timothy McVeigh type of vigilante response on one of the companies who have canned him in the last 24 hours. Is my concern unwarranted?
It's not unwarranted. But nor should our society walk on eggshells for fear of upsetting these people. It would give a lot of power to a very extreme minority... and probably not a minority that can be expected to be responsible with any power...
Since there is no legal definition in the US, it would seem necessary for each TOS to create its own. If they have, I'd be curious to know how much they overlap, and how specific/vague they are.
EDIT: why the downvotes? I am honestly asking a question about how specific and consistent the definitions are. I didn't realize I would be punished for doing so.
http://itunespartner.apple.com/en/podcasts/faq ("Why was my podcast rejected or removed?") - Content depicting hate themes
The TLDR on these hate speech definitions:
YouTube: promotes violence against or incites hatred against protected groups
Apple: content including hate themes
Facebook: violent speech, dehumanizing speech, statements of inferiority, or calls for exclusion/segregation of people of protected classes
So it seems like YouTube's definition is the narrowest. Facebook's definition is much broader because it includes "statements of inferiority", and Apple's definition is vague.
Private entities do not need to have any TOS to justify banning anyone on their services. They can do so without a single reason.
There is no expectation to have access to any private service.
> There is no expectation to have access to any private service.
Does that mean that people just expect to get banned from Facebook without reason?
I'm not quite sure I get that.
Unchecked corporate power to control public discourse was considered bad not long ago, wasn't it?
Maybe I'm still stuck at the anti net neutrality mindset we had a while ago and can't flip fast enough to now suddenly trust ISPs and platform providers to regulate my news diet.
Just imagine they do that with future political campaigns. That'd just be a sudden, corporate pre-approval process of potential future electables.
The radio show isn't banned. They can host it on their on platform with their own money. It's simply no longer being promoted and paid for by a private website.
Alex Jones has his own website. He can go to the FCC and get a broadcast license and play by the same rules as everyone else and broadcast his show on terrestrial radio if he wishes.
His speech isn't being stifled. No one is telling him he's not allowed to say it, and his listeners are free to continue to listen to his drivel.
But they didn't have to give one to a member of the Communist Party, or to a National Socialist, or to a member of the KKK. It was major players only. They didn't have to give equal treatment to the fringe, of any flavor.
It's too bad they couldn't get Twitter on board.
America is pretty alone in the lunacy that is the First Amendment.
The worst part is when Americans claim that without all the extreme extent of the First Amendment there cannot be Free Speech.
Many free western countries would disagree. Most of them are quite a bit higher in the Press Freedom Index (with press freedom as one part of free speech) than America.
[1] the foremost idea other legal systems could borrow from the German constitution is that of "practical concordance", where no basic right is paramount to the others, but the legal system recognizes that there is a natural tension between all those basic rights and the goal should be to interpret them in such a way that a "global maximum" is reached. So no "free speech above all", but let's see where we can keep most of what free speech could maximally mean and still keep most of all the other basic rights.
The Press Freedom Index's assessment cannot be taken seriously because it lists UK in the same tier as the US. I'm a citizen of neither so I don't have a horse in this race.
The former regularly engages in thought policing the social networks with real prison sentences handed out to such "heinous" criminals like Tommy Robinson.
I'm Russian. My country's rating is in the gutter and rightly so.
It also regularly imprisons people for social media likes/reposts. You know who else does? The UK.
I've enjoyed the rants of Alex Jones in the past, just like I've enjoyed Joe Scarborough at MSNBC, Rush Limbaugh, Rachel Maddow, Keith Olbermann, and even Art Bell, so I find this coordinated attack and take down of one of these outlets to be worrisome.
Are we going to accept this current meme that "hate speech" (whatever the hell that is currently defined as) can only come from the Right?
If so, I'll pass on that idea...it's totally political in nature if that's the case and the last thing that I believe is helpful to the world is to have one political viewpoint, Right or Left, to totally run the show.
I think examples of Mr. Jones's banning "hate-speech" should be required if these companies are going to revoke his 1st Amendment protections and censor him, if nothing else then to warn others where the line is to be drawn.
The first amendment has nothing to do with getting moderated on a private company platform.
Like reasonable, responsible members of any community, what people want to take away from this is "where is the line set" and "where did IW's trajectory take them over the line"? If those questions can't be answered to satisfaction, then this is not custodial, it's political activism coming from the top down i.e. tyranny.
(My personal belief, having looked into a few of IW's productions, is that they are disingenuous provocateurs, and I generally support their sort of product being sidelined from mainstream discourse on the basis that it's an anti-pattern, or a kind of virus that infects and deflects rational discourse.)
And also by who views his show/content--e.g. the president, the right-wing, etc.
https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/08/enforcing-our-community...
They just made Alex Jones in a sympathetic character, a martyr for free speech.
And now the pressure to regulate social media platforms will increase.
Can Alex Jones be banned from using toll roads, if those toll roads are operated by a private company?
> Spotify has now completely banned Infowars too. Apple, Facebook, Spotify all within 12 hours of each other. This isn't enforcement of [terms of service], it's coordinated big tech censorship. This is real election meddling.
I'd guess this will increase his popularity among his followers, just as the NYT recently reported that "Goop's Haters Made Gwyneth Paltrow's company worth $250 million" [1].
1: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/25/magazine/big-business-gwy...
They (the big three) should not be allowed to own our internet interactions anymore than the phone company could listen to and profit from our conversations or regulate what we talk about.
If you think people just simply didn't like what InfoWars would spew, you have another thing coming.
Read up on Pizzagate. Someone went into a pizza parlor with a gun to investigate Alex Jones's claims that Hillary Clinton was running a child sex trafficking ring in the basement. Innocent lives could have been lost for bullshit InfoWars was spouting.
This goes well beyond "I just don't like you." InfoWars is outright dangerous and is poisoning the minds of Americans.
> They (the big three) should not be allowed to own our internet interactions
They don't.
You're still free to use other messaging platforms, or even make your own! The startup costs for creating a web site/app are astronomically low.
That article even says that there was "extensive reporting showing that the Bush administration was making plans for an Iraq invasion before the advent of intelligence used to justify it."
The point is that it was an integral part of a propaganda campaign to sell the Iraq War.
The meme of "fake news" fuels an environment of groupthink deciding what should be outright ignored. It is thus a tool of power, not truth.
[0] I am aware of the general blindspot created by writing these people off as idiots, alas.
There's also the question of can something like youtube, where there's pretty much no restrictions on who can upload and how much they can upload, be profitable at a smaller scale or without being the subsidiary of a larger corporation with another huge money pipe?
Info Wars is not at all typical. Last week's delusional paranoid conspiracy from Info Wars was that Obama has been banging 10 dudes a day at taxpayer expense. Typical conspiracies for Info Wars and the POTUS, perhaps. But not typical among all conspiracists. These are well beyond fully crazy.
More interesting to me is the number of people who believe this stuff and apologize for it. Fox News has multi-million dollar salaried entertainers who defend Alex Jones.
Edit: thanks for the downvotes, can we not have a discussion about this? Should we ban hateful books too? I happen to have learned a lot from historically hateful books.
These aren't public spaces -- they are private spaces that are available to the public.
The notion that a private company has some obligation to uphold First Amendment rights at its own expense is ridiculous.
We need swift and clear action to remove it from the commons.
PS. I am not fan of Jones show, just like I am not fan of KKK that still existing in USA; but I do remember what Niemöller wrote.
I don't think Niemöller was worried about the persecution of Nazis...
It's not comparable since the one describes something you believe and the other something you have done.
Rape comparisons should not be used as discussion jokers to win an argument.
First they came for the trolls, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a troll.
Then they came for the shitposts, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a shitposter.
Then they came for the memes, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Memer.
Then they came for me—but there was no one left to like my posts.