Blanket banning platform users based on hate speech, is still the loss of freedom of speech. The question is where do you draw the line? There is an good conversation about this on the JRE podcast with Jimmy Dore. https://youtu.be/k3YcGRCGEuY
What about the people trying to redefine freedom of speech from a concept to a legal definition?
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech"
"Free speech" in the US is a specific legal limitation on congress. It doesn't mean that individuals or companies have some obligation to provide others with the means of spreading their ideas.
I wouldn't say Twitter would be violating the Constitution by banning Alex Jones. I would say I'd like to live in a world where private corporations didn't censor digital mass communication.
Why on earth would you want that? We already have a tonne of mechanisms by which anybody can say anything they like, within the confines of the law, and ignoring that arguably infowars breaks that, why does _everything_ need to be like that?
If you go to, say, a forum about cooking, and start talking about cars, then ten years ago getting your posts deleted for being off topic was simply considered good moderation. Now it's a political statement that causes controversy! Sets of rules and codes of conduct have been a mainstay of almost every serious digital community since day one. Everything from 4chan to mailing lists to twitter to niche forums to basically anything else has _always_ "censored" content which is against the rules.
A world where nobody gets to set any rules is a world in which good communities cannot grow. We've seen this over and over again, with every mature community having enforced rules, and every attempt to create "rules free" or "uncensorable" communities ending up collapsing in on themselves.
I think we need to frame this discussion in the reality of the situation: This "censorship" is nothing different to what has always been done, and the people who are now claiming that it is wrong are the ones pushing for a massive change in how we operate. Reasons and justifications for this must be provided.
> We already have a tonne of mechanisms by which anybody can say anything they like, within the confines of the law, and ignoring that arguably infowars breaks that, why does _everything_ need to be like that?
Because digital communication is important, and I think it should follow the same mechanisms as analog communication.
I think this is the central disagreement. He _is_ breaking the rules of twitter, by any interpretation, but even were he not, I don't think you can just wipe away concerns with that the things he's saying are "disagreeable".
We're having a lot of problems currently around the fact that we have people who have gotten very good at propagandising and communicating in malicious, duplicitous ways. Alex Jones and friends aren't coming to the table in good faith, and asking to be treated as if they are is one of the tools they're using to twist polite discourse for their own profit.
While it's incredibly important that anybody who has something to say in good faith be allowed to say it, we still need to be able to protect ourselves against people like Alex Jones, who is simply trying to extract profit from a gullible audience.
No one is saying anything about not suffering consequences for speech. Even though that argument is a holy bucket as well. Prison is a consequence of many things so saying "freedom of speech doesn't mean you shouldn't suffer the consequences of it" technically allows for imprisonment based on speech.
Freedom of speech is the freedom to say whatever you want.
However, everyone also has the freedom of association. And on my personal property, my rights trump yours. I am free to curtail your speech, to censor you, to deplatform you. And my line can be whatever I want it to be.
And in doing so, I could say I'm for freedom of speech up to a certain point. I'm not going to let certain views persist where I can control it.
But those people are free to say what they want in areas they control or in areas where no one has control. And the government in the US has taken the stance that it will not make any law abridging the right of people to say whatever. So if you want to go to the public park and say whatever, that is your right. No one has to listen.
The (US) government has legal limitations on what it can do that results limiting of free expression.
Corporations do not.
Twitter, FB, and any other platform run by a private company is not obligated to provide a platform for anyone, nor is it obligate to suppress anyone whose actions do not break laws covering private individuals.
FWIW I terminated my Twitter account yesterday. The platform provided no value to me, and I did not care to provide value to them.