There are plenty of reasons to be concerned about the influence of major media and tech companies on freedom of speech, and about their control of and curation of social media.
But all this handwringing over Alex Jones, a man who’s been abusing his right to free speech for years, and who’s only survived on these sites because the companies running them were willing to overlook his constant breaches of their own terms of service because he brought them clicks and audience, leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
If there’s ever been anyone who deserves to lose his audience and be deplatformed, it’s Jones.
There is all this hand-wringing about censorship of Jones; arguments about whether the 1st Amendment applies (it doesn’t); and whether it’s chilling for monopolistic platforms to silence his content.
Pointing out just how closely he plays to outright illegal speech just highlights that there should be no controversy at all. He may be able to play semantic games to keep out of jail, but it doesn’t protect him from everyone else calling bullshit on his shenanigans.
I dunno… maybe one day. It’s going to be a biographical sketch tied into the larger red scares in the postwar period, with a back drop of the left-leaning activism in Hollywood in the 1930s.
