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Comment by tyre | Hacker News Reader

No we're not, calm down.

Alex Jones is riling people up on conspiracy theories that actively do harm in order to make money. What happens if a private company removes him from their platform?

…

he can still post on his website?

This isn't some Orwellian nightmare.

A lot of people are trying to figure out how to balance absolute freedom with building a better collective human society.

It's messy! People are messy! And sometimes we make mistakes, even with the best of intentions, even when we make the best choice with the information we have.

It's not like they're kicking math off of YouTube. And, no, this isn't one step towards that.

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"It's not like they're kicking math off of YouTube."

Actually, a funny thing happened to me recently that is sort of in this vein. I made a simple app for tuning theory nerds, for examining how a given equal temperament approximates different whole number ratios. I couldn't link to it when posting on a Facebook group; I was told it violated Facebook community standards (I think they just completely blocked the 1mb.site domain that I hosted it on).

> Alex Jones is riling people up on conspiracy theories that actively do harm in order to make money.

This is literally what Rachel Maddow did with the Russia conspiracy nonsense.

It doesn't count when the popular side does it.

They only think they’re popular because they’re raving so loudly in the public square that they can’t hear the silent majority.

I avoid Rachel Maddow for the same reason I don't bother with the majority of Fox presenters. MSNBC is quite liberal and as much as I like Ari Melber, Chris Hayes and Nicole Wallace, they don't always keep their biases in check. Can be amusing* though to watch Wallace lose it over something Trump said.

*I'm Australian, so my interest in US politics is largely entertainment.

Let's go to specifics. Alex Jones is facing a civil suit alleging that he defamed the families of Sandy Hook victims, the harm from which include harassment and death threats from Jones' followers [0]. When you say that Maddow's coverage of Russiagate is "literally" the same: what actual harm – both in layperson's terms and legally actionable – do you see as a consequence? Defamation? Who would be the aggrieved and threatened party? Trump, personally? The U.S. law affords a much higher legal burden for the president of the U.S. (or anyone as public and powerful) to prove defamation.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/dec/31/alex-jones-p...

Calm down, Sparky! Perhaps you misread what I wrote. I did not bring up defamation at all. The term used was conspiracy theory. Rachel Maddow pushed a conspiracy theory. It was completely disproven by the FBI investigation. She pushed it for three years with literally not a shred of evidence.

Perhaps you misread the discussion, Goofus! Youtube didn’t ban Alex Jones for being wrong about something.

Where did I refer to Alex Jones? I fear you may be responding to someone else.

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