Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/08/06/tech-platforms-quit-alex-jones.html
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Come on, Google.
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Good, giving a platform to conspiracy and/or hate speech is not a good thing. You can’t legitimize an ideology that caused the holocaust.
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I’m glad he’s getting the boot. But I also took some solace when scum bags like him were kept online. For this reason:
Larry Flynt: “If the First Amendment will protect a scumbag like me, it will protect all of you.” (Yes, I know 1st amendment is tangential here)
I would have rather Jones been left online and humiliated with obscurity because people saw through his bullshit. But banning will have to do.
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This guy orchestrated a conspiracy that caused someone to go into a pizza parlor with an ar-15. Someone could’ve died.
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Then don’t bring it up. There are already too many right-wing dolts out there who think the First Amendment has anything to do with these companies denying him a platform.
Also, his site is still on-line and, in time, will end up like Stormfront.
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Good.
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Which is when the public should have stopped paying any attention to him so he could die lonely and bitter. Maybe well before that. Should have, but people love conspiracies.
Fortunately for him, or unfortunately for everyone else, he didn’t cross the terms of service lines (or corss them enough) that would get him banned. Not that time.
You start banning people because they are crazy assholes, then you, me, and 99% of people online are goners. He had to rise to the special crazy deluxe asshole, believe he was untouchable, then cross those lines to get banned.
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He crossed those lines years ago when his conspiracy theories started destroying the lives of innocent people.
The response to crackpot should and must become faster and more decisive than this.
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Tangential, but still a good principle. People, of all political stripes, who think the 1st amendment is the law outside of government are dolts. Those that believe in protecting unpleasant speech are not.
I’m glad his platforms are more limited now. Glad he crossed a line and got his ass shut down. But I’d rather he be able to shout from rooftop and be seen universally as an idiot than mutter from the gutter and be proclaimed a prophet by some.
But I rarely get my wishes.
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Yes, but please leave the First Amendment out of it to avoid a derail, especially in a thread that will likely attract his followers. Your other points are more on topic, although I believe a charlatan is a charlatan whether he’s famous or obscure (preferably the latter, but the former can be addressed easily enough).
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I think the point is that he did cross a lot of TOS’ a long time ago, he’s just such a bringer he was given shitloads of leeway. getting kicked off of Facebook and getting kicked off the internet are two very different things. the bar can be pretty low for the former. I wouldn’t even be all that bruised/surprised if Fuck Trump pages were banned or Abolish ICE. It’s a corporate playground. You wouldn’t expect to be able to hold a protest at a McDonald’s playplace and this guy has been targeting private families of disaster victims for years.
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Media doesn’t work that way m8. How many people watch Jerry Springer or the Steve Wilkos show?
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This just re-affirms he is a target of the Illuminati, controlled by George Soros and the Liberal Elite™ who are in league with both the Gay Martians™ and the Reptillians.
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Not at all. The First Amendment to the US Constitution includes the right not to publicize speech. Private entities that chose not to be a platform for hate speech are exercising their First Amendment rights.
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Yeah, that’s the part that does bother me. I have so little interest (and am frankly disgusted by what little I know), that I don’t want to research what he said and when that might have violated TOS years ago. But I wouldn’t be surprised in the least that because he has so many followers, he was given, as you say, shitloads of leeway. I also wouldn’t be surprised if he wasn’t clever enough that he put his toes on those red lines hundreds of times, but never crossed them.
Again, I would have rather he be exposed as a fraud and lost his whole audience than be banned from some platforms and shift his audience to his own site. And if wishes were horses …
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Touche! Well played.
Unfortunate for me, I was referencing the philosophy of the 1st amendment (i.e. tolerating unpleasant speech) using a quote that directly references it.
The other famous quote ‘I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it,’ … I ain’t about to die to protect this asshole’s right to say his stuff.
1st amendment confusions vs offering to die. Yeah, I’ll take confusion.
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Oddly, I was trying to defang the application 1st amendment. But I get your point.
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I’m not interested in sparring. I’m interested in productive discourse.
Flynt was specifically referencing government censorship, and I fully agree with him. I’m pointing out that these companies kicking people off their platforms is literally the opposite of what Flynt was talking about.
I also agree with Evelyn Hall. And again, the right to say something includes the right not to publish it. The details here matter.
But confusion isn’t necessary. What you’re alluding to is the wisdom of being aware of ideas antithetical to one’s own. And guess what, I even agree with that. But don’t blur the line between awareness of what your opponents and even enemies are saying and the discretion of private entities. The violence of state censorship is a real threat not to be conflated with private companies closing social media accounts.
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