Twitter bans Alex Jones and Infowars for abusive behaviour
bbc.com
bbc.com
What I can't understand is the decision of major social media platforms to ban him now. His content now isn't any more out of the ordinary or abusive than at any other point in his broadcasting history. So it just seems strange that facebook, twitter, youtube, apple and spotify all come together and ban him at the same time. And it seems even stranger that none of these companies can give even a vague hint at the specific content he was banned for. I'm not saying they have to broadcast the actual content but something along the lines of "harmful, defamatory and malicious speech directed against Sandy Hook victims" could work.
Silicon valley is starting to look more and more like a tech oligopoly. It seems like these huge corporations are having discussions behind closed doors and making decisions that have a major impact on the public discourse.
Twitter needs to be more transparent about this stuff. Especially when banning one of the most influential conspiracy theorist in the world.
Not to mention a vague and/or arbitrary banning policy is always a bad idea.
From an outside observer, there is no way to distinguish between the claim that the ban is for "good reasons", or that the ban is a result of bias on the part of the company.
Perhaps this is fine in situations where the banned entity is a malicious actor, but it presumes a zero false-positive rate. My opinion is, if even one person is wrongly punished without recourse (other than rolling the dice with social media) then the whole system is unjust and should be reworked.
Why do you assume that it is integral to modern open communication? (hint: it's not, for plain reason that twitter does what's best for twitter)
For example, when it comes to publicly-available services such as this, we often hear about people referring to "Twitter's freedom of speech" in terms of censorship of its users, which boggles my mind. Twitter provides a publicly-accessible service that allows users to post short entries, and when they prevent someone else from posting something, it basically amounts to "Twitter's right to free speech is more important than the user's ability to speak" and that seems a bit counter-intuitive.
If Twitter's policies are unjust, then Twitter does not deserve the level of influence that it has. My opinion is that such a service could not have been foreseen by the writers of the Constitution. In their day, the greatest threat to freedom of speech was the government. Remember, they had just fought for their independence from England. I don't think they could have envisioned a world where the greatest threat to free speech would come from the private sector.
And if we're not careful, we're about to be making it worse. As it stands, platform operators are not generally liable for the things they automatically publish on behalf of their users, outside of certain highly egregious things (such as child abuse imagery), and even then only if they don't follow the proper procedure with regards to reporting to law enforcement, etc. If that ever changes, expect freedom of speech to be null and void in context of the Internet.
What transparency would you find acceptable? Do you hold other companies to that level? I dont know the books for my local grocery store, I dont know their justifications or reasonings for what they do or dont stock, when they decide to hire, or what rules they hire for.
I'm not trying to be antagonistic or dismissive - I am far from an "anything goes" libertarian (or a libertarian of any kind) but if rules about rules are arbitrary, then we're just doing what we complain about.
It also seems quite arbitrary when there are plenty of very abusive people on the other end of the spectrum.
And in general I see very virulent rants directed against pro-life people, with death threats and the like.
This is where he compared a journalist eyes to a rats, which I believe is what caused the ban?
Your line of reasoning is no different from blaming video games for mass shootings.
People know video games are fictional, and the worlds they portray aren't real. Alex Jones, meanwhile, doesn't present himself as a fictional character, rather he convinces people that what he says is true, and the world he describes is the real world, so he's more of a charlatan or demagogue. One doesn't have to directly and explicitly call for harassment to be responsible for having inspired it.
Why? Unless being opaque harms their bottom line, I don't see the business case.
> Ironically, it was the initial CNN story—or rather, Jones' unhinged response to it—that proved his eventual undoing. On Wednesday, just before Dorsey was set to testify at his second congressional hearing of the day, Jones approached Darcy as he waited in line with media colleagues to be let into the hearing room. Jones, flanked by his entourage, cornered Darcy, jabbed a phone in his face, and harassed the reporter for more than 10 minutes about his work, his employer, and his looks, saying he has the "eyes of a rat." The entire ordeal streamed on Periscope, which is owned by Twitter.
https://www.wired.com/story/twitter-bans-alex-jones-infowars...
> Important to note that tech platforms did not enforce their own rules and take action against Alex Jones / InfoWars on their own accord.
> It took media outlets to point out for weeks that InfoWars was skirting the rules on these tech platforms for them to enforce own standards.
Previous offenses include: "dehumanizing trans people". That looks very bad on paper, so you search for the video, and you see him discussing an over-the-top drag queen reading a book for children in a public library. To me, with the long nails and the thick make-up and the wig, the drag queen really looks demonic/ridiculous/freaky and he remarks on that. You should have the right to call that abnormal and refuse to want to see that normalized.
Look at what happened with Pewdiepie when a media company goes on a crusade with an agenda, it is very similar.
The bottom line for this decision is not harassment or abuse, it is the political preference of Twitter's employees. Maybe it is not a good idea to have a left-leaning workforce police online debate, even if it is their platform. For all the talk about diversity, SF companies sure could do with some more political diversity.
They should have banned Alex Jones from public discourse when he had this crazy conspiracy theory that high-ranking politicians and businessmen workship Moloch and child sacrifice. They should have banned Alex Jones when had the crazy conspiracy theory that chemicals and pesticides in the water change the sex of frogs. They should have banned Alex Jones for saying that Lady Gaga turns satanism into a performance and flirts with illuminati symbology. They should have banned Alex Jones for stating that weather manipulation is still a thing after the Environmental Modification Convention.
It always amazes me, the conspiracy theorists, on the right in particular. The government is too inefficient to do anything, but can create these elaborate fictions and instantly turn into bastions of loyalty and commitment to a mission that the right can't even seem to muster.
But when you're beliefs are unfalsifiable, and you have no respect for objective truth, just perception and position, anything is possible.
Seriously, I never gave Alex Jones much credence before this, but this getting him banned makes him much more credible in my mind.
Different strokes for different folks I guess.
And what this has done has motivated me to look further into who Alex Jones is, and reversed my opinion back to him being a scumbag. Seems he is only a few ratings away from going full Holocaust denial in his mission to doubt all official accounts of anything.
Not to just be mean, but taken without further elaboration, this looks like petty contrarianism. It reminds me of the disturbing, poisonous following that so-called "banned" TED talks get from conspiracy-minded people based on nothing but the fact that it was banned. I'd like it if you'd elaborate more on what made you say it.
How can you say the words he said to that journalist and still have that big following? We have a huge information, media and education problem all over the globe, because similar things are happening in EU. Twitter just did the right thing, shutting one of the channel he had to insult, humiliate and contaminate brains of people with fake news.
It may not be a violation of the First Amendment, but it could be bumping up against antitrust law. Taken together, these companies have a significant near-monopoly in content distribution.
It's more like the power company or the gas company cutting you off because they don't like your politics. Yes, technically you can use a generator or get propane delivered, but the question is whether they should be legally allowed to cut you off.
If they are truly a public square and common carrier, then these platforms need to permit all content that does not violate the law.
If I feel Apple is doing well with social responsibility I can buy more Apple stuff. I certainly won’t click more ads on Twitter to reward them. So what incentive do they really have to foster good behavior?
The ultimate teardown is getting Twitter to un-person them.
(not my take, but thought it was interesting none the less)
Secondly, Q just posted that this is retaliation for action against @jack, amongst other claims regarding infowars
Can anyone close to TWTR confirm?
Also, who are the “unwitting agents”?
And why did this comment receive a downvote? Just asking for clarification.
You are one of them, as an example.
What evidence is there that it’s a Russian psyop?
Have you noticed that if someone disagrees with a Qanon claim the followers ask, “What evidence is there that my claim is false?”
But if someone makes a claim contrary to Qanon orthodoxy, the followers ask, “What evidence is there that your claim is true?”
You can’t have it both ways.
You can’t make claims and expect people to prove that you’re wrong when they don’t believe you, then turn around and expect them to prove that they’re right when you don’t believe them.
That said, I'm subscribed to the Qanon subreddit and spent quite a bit of time looking into it, and I can't see the whole phenomenon as anything other than bafflingly insane.
It's like someone took the worst conspiracy theories, the worst of evangelical-ish paranoia, quite a bit of legitimate discontent with the status quo, and let it metastasize.
As such, I downvote pro-Q comments because as far as I'm concerned they're noise on the level of climate-change deniers, flat-earthers, and vaccine-causes-autism level comments.
EDIT: that said, I curious enough about the whole thing to hear a good argument as to why Qanon should be taken seriously. But privately, by email.
they only moved because their california employees were having a breakdown
You can't just force third party companies to do whatever you want.
Honestly, we're probably at the point in our existence as a nation where we have the least freedom of speech. Sure, you can sit in a private conversion and say pretty much whatever you want. But, if you speak anywhere where the public can see it (even via private means), and you have an unpopular opinion, you have droves of people who try to shut you down. And it's not bad enough that they can get your access to your platform of choice revoked, some of these people will make it their life's mission to ensure that you lose your job or even worse become unemployable.
Look at what happened to Conor Daly after something his father said ten years prior to Conor's birth surfaced.
I'm waiting for the day when someone legitimately tries to argue that the rights of all of those descended from the Pilgrims should be taken away, since they took away the rights and land of Native Americans.
I think McCarthyism would like to have a word with you.
People have always been persecuted socially for socially unacceptable beliefs. If you said "I want to eat babies" 100 years ago, your friends wouldn't associate with you, just as they wouldn't now.
100 years ago you could say "I think people of the same gender as me are attractive" or "I wanna do it in the butt" and also be persecuted by your friends, though now both of those phrases are unlikely to see you condemned.
You can say more total things today without being persecuted I posit, however social persecution has been made into a far more public affair with the advent of social media and the 24/7 for-profit news cycle.
I think your speech is more free, but we hear more stories of social consequences due to the nature of news and social media, which creates biases and persecution complexes.
I admit I don't have numbers and facts to back it up, but neither do you have any evidence for your argument.
The effects of that persecution are completely different. Sure, in the past you were more likely to be physically attacked for certain socially unacceptable beliefs. But nowadays, you're more likely to suffer long-term damage if you speak too controversially without taking great pains to hide your real identity, and even if you do the people who you anger with your speech may attempt to dox you anyway.
It's funny (in the sad way) that there are so many people of all types who will use certain "weasel" tactics themselves, but when their opponents use the same tactics, they scream "that's wrong, that's unfair, that's dirty". Almost like "the ends don't justify the means" has been perverted into "the ends justify the means only towards my opponents but never towards me".
I don't have evidence, no. But that's because this is a casual discussion for me.
It's not that. Hate-speech is not political. Racism is not political. Morality is not all that political.
Shutting down someone who denies shootings and is abusive to the victim's families and spews racism is not a political move.
People should condemn disgusting hate speech regardless of their political affiliation.
It gets murkier when they start banning classes of people or ban someone for something that puts them in a protected class, but any supermarket that banned Alex Jones for hate speech would be well within their rights.
If you make other customers uncomfortable, they have every right to expel you.
Alex Jones is spewing hate-speech on twitter, making other twitter users feel unwelcome, and so on.
I don't see how this analogy is favorable to him at all. If you're abusive in a space to the point of causing mental pain to others, yes, you should be removed from it.
Current audience. What about a new young audience? What about the part of the audience that wants to listen to him on Twitter?
> That would be against Twitter's freedoms.
I think you should be able to fire your users for being assholes. But I do realize the slippery slope here. I could discriminate on race, political preference, smell, weight, sexuality, age, etc. and that causes me to label someone an asshole.
Now Twitter, the biggest public and digital town square of our future, labels you an asshole, but does not specify exactly why. The global media town crier goes around town telling everyone you are now the new village idiot. Even if you vehemently agree with their decision, this should give you pause: How could such a system be hacked by adversaries/what vulnerabilities are exposed? How much unchecked social/tribal power is held in the hands of the few? What would such a system look like if it is artificially/clumsily converged to a majority opinion ideology chamber? Then, will you still be heard by your audience if you have a dissenting/unpopular/asshole opinion? Not too long ago "homosexuality is not a mental disorder" was an unpopular opinion. Do you trust our current evolution enough to say: "We are there. We can now freeze our morals and views."
The analogy would be kicking someone out of your house for harassing your other guests.
I’d argue Twitter is the modern day town square and it doesn’t matter if it is privately owned.
Furthermore, Jones is a symptom. Banning him does cure the true problem. Does banning the likes of Jones make the MSM any more trustable? Or the MSM any more responsible? That seems unlikely.
https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/hateful-condu...
Hate speech, election meddling, threats of nuclear war - it all gets a free pass until it stops generating "impressions".
But they only do it because we (as a group) let them get away with it. If 30% of Twitter users left, the platform wouldn't last a week.
It sucks for free speech that he got banned because it gives him notoriety and "credibility" in wingnuttery circles.
There ought to be other remedies to manipulative behavior for ratings than simply banning.
I haven't heard much from Milo Yiannopoulos since he was banned from Twitter and other platforms. I suspect Alex Jones has a similar future.
The other is just a liar, blowhard, asshole. Alex Jones has never done anything else of note besides the aforementioned.
I matters little if he is banned or simply “censored”
Jones already has one, but the problem is, not enough people listen to it. So he wants to get on everybody else's shouting platforms as well. He could make more shouting platforms, but... well, "a platform for Alex Jones and Alex Jones wannabes to shout at you" isn't really much of a compelling MVP.
If anybody listens to him thinking it's not real, they are a tiny and insignificant minority. What his lawyer admits in court means nothing to his audience.
"The Rule of Goats applies. Slightly paraphrased — for this family newspaper — the rule states: If you kiss a goat, even if you say you're doing it ironically, you're still a goat-kisser. Alex Jones, playing a character or not, is a goat-kisser."
From Ken White, notorious free speech attorney who blogs as Popehat:
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-white-alex-jones-...
I think there's overwhelming evidence to support Alex Jones as a true conspiracy theorist. Whether he truly holds all the ludicrous beliefs that he consistently espouses, that's harder to tell.