I don't see how 1 is an issue when Alex Jones et al were deliberately spreading hateful misinformation.
Aiming to CYA by booting someone off of a private platform and others following suit is not the same thing as "conspiring to censor" someone
Aiming to CYA by booting someone off of a private platform and others following suit is not the same thing as "conspiring to censor" someone
Next time you might not. And then it's too late, you've made your bed.
Imagine a public town square. Would you want any company acting as the gatekeeper, deciding what speech is allowed or not in that setting?
YouTube, Twitter and a few others are effectively the new town square. I don't think we want to end up in a position where a few corporations are dictating acceptable speech and open debate.
> what for many are the principal sources for knowing current events, checking ads for employment, speaking and listening in the modern public square.
The power to ban someone from social media is the power to cut them off from society. That's too much power for any private corporation to hold.
Let's see if this goes any further. If it doesn't, there's no problem.
There's no daylight between "we can't restrict shitty speech because one day we might restrict non-shitty speech" and "we can't have laws against bad things because one day we might have laws against non-bad things". It's an obviously stupid argument and it's not any less stupid because the operating verb is speech.
You are absolutely right. Right now, it isn't an issue, because Alex Jones is a legitimately awful, possibly insane human being who contributes nothing to actual political discourse, and directs hatred at parents of murdered children for his schtick. It's Youtube, not the federal government.
And while I do believe "The Internet" is the public square, I don't think Youtube is /quite/ that protected yet, and I don't think Alex Jones deserves that protection.
Other people may get shut down like AJ did, and I may not like it, and I'll argue against it.
https://wannabewonk.com/gab-and-free-speech-on-the-internet/
tldr - AJ can set up a server at home or on AWS. He may have to do compressed audio only.
Censor - prohibit or restrict the use of something
Yeah, they conspired to censor.
Verb (with object) > to agree together, especially secretly, to do something wrong, evil, or illegal.
verb (without object) > to plot (something wrong, evil, or illegal).
We all know that "conspire" has connotations beyond just to "join or act together", otherwise there would be no difference between "coporate" and "conspire".
in other words : don't assume those that defend people like Alex Jones are defending his opinions.
Many are defending his ability to transmit his message, regardless of the quality of that message, in the interest of preserving that ability for themselves and causes that they support.
Alex Jones isn't legally prohibited from saying lies about Sandy Hook, and the people up in arms defending those hateful lies and saying we should be careful to preserve hateful lies on private platforms are either idiot patsies or purposefully misleading liars(like Alex Jones himself actually.)
Not giving someone a platform isn't taking their free speech away, any more than me telling religious people attempting to convert me to get off my property is violating their religious rights.