It amuses me to see how now Alex Jones fans are all for enforcing antitrust laws on Google and company. It never seems to cross their mind that their dear leader in the Whitehouse doesn’t like such laws or regulations. I guess they can’t parse how markets can be abused by its largest institutions can they? I’m not saying I’m for Alex Jones having a platform but the fact he won’t admit capitalism led to this situation is just delicious to me. It’s like these folks will literally throw themselves into volcanoes to keep their faith in capitalism intact.
Furthermore, I think this is a great time to extol the virtues of a well functioning democracy to the tinfoil hat crowd by pointing out how capitalism fails them and how they can take control of their lives with mutual aid and progressive politics. I doubt most will listen but it’s worth a shot. At least we can make fun of the ones that sputter on about “this isn’t real capitalism blah blah blah…” XD
This was a coordinated effort by incredibly powerful tech companies.
Back in the day, when BoingBoing would host loads of stuff by Assange, what if ISPs had done the same to you, my BBS Captain?
Now I know, Alex Jones is a maniac, and a racist, and all that – but the problem is that we have good reason to keep the powerful out of arbitrating what is truth, what is hate, and so on.
Even though I think many people here are too easily skimming over the “chilling effect” posed by this kind of action, I definitely agree with the spirit of this point – the big tech companies will always enjoy profiting on content like this, until they get too much heat, and by that time, they have the data and the money.
But that also tells me that why they should be hands-off regarding “speech” – because if it’s all just motivated by content, then if the tide shifts, they’ll come for content providers on the political left, or anywhere in-between.
It’s a bad precedent, even though I can’t think of anything quite as vile as his comments about Sandy Hook.
I didn’t get to be a BBS Captain by not knowing the difference between a common carrier (e.g. an ISP) and a content posting service (e.g. YouTube or this site). That some of these companies are monopolistic does not change the fact that they are the latter rather than the former (and have no desire to be categorised as such by choice or government fiat).
I believe that the government needs to expand its definition of what a monopoly is, which would reduce the power of these companies in the way you seem to desire.
Pretty much this is the right course of action at this point. It’s just amusing to see conservatives and reactionaries get smacked with the gilded fist of tyranny. It’s like they didn’t imagine social liberals would ever rise to economic heights. Like come on, greed is universal being for gay marriage or legalization of weed don’t mean you won’t sell your mom’s ashes for a nickel if you’re a capitalist.
Look at James Gunn – this is slightly different, but the mob turned on him (and yes, some were from the political right, but plenty of lefties even thought his gross tweets were… well, particularly gross).
It’s very unlikely that he will ever make a film again – maybe indie stuff, but the film business kills careers so fast, and so hard… I’m sure his agency is trying to figure out whether to drop him right now or pray this storm will pass…
Now, it can also have the paradoxical effect – how many people do you think went and got the INFO WARS APP now?
But social media companies (and Apple is not strictly social media, BTW) are incredibly powerful.
Facebook can already predict that you’re going to break up with your partner (long before you break up with them) – do we really want powerful companies, with all this raw data and intelligence on people – to be the arbiters of “real news”?
I’ll take a more hands-off approach and risk the quacks like Alex Jones cropping up once in a while over the rather chilling alternative.
I feel no particular need to pile on James Gunn but I don’t think “making jokes about child molestation might endanger your future chances of working with Disney” is really a new phenomenon.
I wish you were right. I’m still creeped out that they had Victor Salva direct “Powder” in 1995. He had a criminal record for child molestation (with one of his actors!) as well as child porn from just 7 years prior. Disney claimed that they didn’t know about the conviction until production had already started, but still pretty inexcusable that they stuck with him, especially since the subject matter of the movie was a lonely kid, and there’s a whole scene where Jeff Goldblum is teaching him that it’s ok to be touched.
Still. Maybe some of them will realize eventually that ideally, it’s healthier for the market in the long run to have more competition, meaning more companies, all of which refuse to carry Alex Jones’ crap.
Alex Jones is powerful. And he controls a sizable mob of arbiters as well. And he just got cut off at the knees by nongovernmental entities who facilitated that.
Cause, meet effect.
Oh, Twitter. Such promise squandered on committing to doing nothing in the face of evil.
I am big on free speech and freedom on the Internet. Fuck, I donate to the EFF. But he is not kicked off the internet, he’s kicked off of free-to-use, private media platforms. He can run InfoWars, Bretbart can do their thing, and Nazi’s can slap each other’s assess on Stormfront from here to eternity. What YouTube and others are doing are extricating themselves from blowback from angry users bitching to advertisers.
All of these platforms probably made bank on InfoWars content. But at the same time, you have indie horror or occult YouTube channels being banned or demonetized for “objectionable content.” It’s good to finally have them catch the fuck up with their own terms of services and not look the other way.
He can have his InfoWars. He can have his fucking misappropriated outrage and solipsist conspiracy tales about the Jewish-globalist-reptilian kabal trying the censor him, but it is kind of satisfying that the rules finally apply to him as well.
There will always be racist morons. There will always be conmen and liars.
In the end, we can support First Amendment Rights fully and say good on Spotify/Facebook/Stitcher/YouTube/Apple for kicking him off their free-to-use platforms. In the case of YouTube, I could bet 98% of the advertisers really didn’t know they were being advertised on InfoWars and/or didn’t know what kind of shit he was about. So basically he had a platform to get free money from companies who would find his materials more than objectionable. And the advertisers, not the users, are the ones paying for us to watch millions of videos for free.
This isn’t too much different from Pewdiepie saying the n-word or have people hold up a sign saying kill all Jews in a way… He lost his YouTube Red deal and his fat fat Disney money. Here, people became savvy that he just wasn’t some blustering buffoon playing a fake Bill Cooper, but someone who is really interested in spreading false information (knowing full well it could ruin innocent people’s lives) for his own profit and ego. America and the Internet are big enough to allow for lying assholes, but he has no innate rights to continuing on these platforms after repeatedly violating all their terms and content standards.
James Gunn voluntarily and proactively apologized for all of those old joke tweets five years ago. He brought them all to light, himself, and explained the context behind them (trying to gross people out, Troma-style), then apologized and promised to never make gross-out jokes like that again.
That brings us to a few weeks ago, when right-wing conspiracy theorists who were angry at his leftie political tweets started retweeting his old Troma jokes at Disney (who clearly already knew all about them for many, many years), and demanded he get fired. For some reason, Disney bowed to right-wing conspiracy nuts and did so.
Hollywood is pissed. Fans are pissed. James Gunn’s casts, crews, and friends have all come out in force to defend the guy. His reputation is solid: a top notch screenwriter and director who treats his casts and crew awesomely. He may not work for Disney for awhile, but he’ll have no trouble finding work aplenty.
Heh. That’s a good imitation of what Libertarian dopes on Twitter are claiming liberals believe. They’re touting the banning of Infowars as the slippery slope to censorship of all conservative sites. I mean, check out this nonsense:
As usual it’s a gross mischaracterisation of what Chris Murphy actually tweeted (unless Libertarians and conservatives actually agree that conservative sites like those you listed do indeed “knowingly spread lies and hate”)
Gary Kasparov, who knows first-hand about censorship thanks to Dolt-45’s mancrush, has a message for them:
And someone else points out the irony of these so-called Libertarians’ position:
I was unaware that Pizzagate conspiracies, screaming false flag accusations at Newtown parents, and professing a desire to shoot Robert Mueller were part of a “healthy conversational environment”.
