Namecheap: Your users can find you at your IP address.
AWS: You can run your own server hardware.
Intel: You can build your own CPU.
Electric Co.: You can generate your own electricity.
VISA: You can take payments in cash.
Hospital: You can use your own butterfly strips and an ibuprofen.
Do you feel like Jones didn't have his proverbial "day in court"? He's had many, of course, and lost most of them. A basic google search tells me you can buy many books written by Alex Jones on his infowars shop. Even if he was kicked off the DNS system he would be able to host his page through TOR.
I do not think that we must provide equal quality of service to all speech. Just like we kick teenagers off online games when they won't stop yelling slurs, there's nothing wrong with banning people from the public square for spreading harmful falsehoods.
What is dangerous is a handful of platforms dominating communication and then conspiring to censor the same person all at the same time, which is exactly what happened with Alex Jones.
Though it seems reasonable to tell an undesirable to "find your own X", it's also a sentiment that can be taken too far and could be dangerous when taken to its logical extreme. I don't think most reasonable people believe that platforms shouldn't prevent someone from shouting "fire" in a crowded room, metaphorically speaking, but it shouldn't necessarily follow that the same can be said for anything that people may not like.
I listen to Alex Jones occasionally. I don't listen to him because I believe what he says. I just think he's hilarious and I consider him to be a comedian. I can't say that anything that he says is dangerous, as ill informed or misleading some of it is. (maybe his stance on vaccines) Not everything that Alex Jones says is wrong. He is also often wrong.
That said, depending on where the Overton window lies and the climate of politics, I don't like "find your own X" because it signifies a disdain towards dissidence, and we're not far off from saying "If you disagree with the WHO, go find your own platform." That's scary, but a lot of prominent figures in the media lump in skeptics of the WHO with the likes of Alex Jones, conservatives(i.e. heretics), and anti-vaxxers. When someone says "find your own platform", that is a complete dismissal towards someone and their ideas. Coordinated efforts to expunge people from the public square isn't something to be pleased with, even when Alex Jones is the target.
Once we're told to find our own platforms, and that becomes the norm, there's nothing to stop that precedence from propagating to "find your own website" or "find your own payment processor". When these companies are all in cahoots and basically agree about everything, there's absolutely no guarantee that a company's privilege to ban users stops with people like Alex Jones. You might just do or say the wrong thing with good intention.
There's a reason why we stopped excommunicating people who have committed no crime, and coordinated efforts to censor people is effectively modern day exile. If someone is to be expunged from the public square, the argument should be "they did (insert bad thing)", not simply "they can go elsewhere". Most people who think Alex Jones deserved to be banned don't seem particularly well informed about Alex Jones, other than that he's crazy and that he'd eat his neighbors.
Respectable news reporting organizations are bound by an obligation to research and vet their stories.
People like Alex Jones are not, and they can look 95% as slickly presented as a "real" news organization for 1% of the cost and 0% of the moral obligations. They can churn this stuff out at a rate that sources of respectable reporting cannot even begin to approach.
It's like the information equivalent of a DDOS attack, or the "Gish Gallop."
Give the Alex Joneses of the world an equal platform and the world will eventually be nothing but Alex Joneses -- whoever screams the most sensational stuff the most often is going to win.
What is dangerous is a handful of platforms dominating communication
But I do truly believe it's less terrible than giving a platform to bad-faith creeps like Jones.
Ultimately, the answer is an educated populace with strong critical thinking skills that can do a better job of deciding for themselves. That is truly the goal.
I'll let you decide how feasible that is in the short term, the long term, or any term whatsoever.
20-30 years ago we all thought the WWW was going to be this incredible marketplace of ideas where the truth would win. What an idealistic crock of shit that was.
Bound by whom? Where is this obligation written? Who holds them to it? What are the consequences if they break it?
Or more to the point: what consequences have they suffered for the fact that they have already broken this obligation over and over again over the past decades?
1. The mainstream news sources have messed up lots of times. (I would argue that their success rate is very high, though)
2. The mainstream news are largely ad-supported and therefore their entire line of work is a bit of a minefield of conflicts of interest.
That said...
They are not perfect, but comparing them to a disinformation merchant like Alex Jones is an absolute farce.
Stories at "real" news organizations are vetted by multiple members of the staff. They make corrections. This cannot be said of wack jobs like Alex Jones. They are not even in the same league in terms of good-faith effort to get things right.
Bound by whom? Where is this obligation written?
Who holds them to it? What are the consequences
if they break it?
Two -- and perhaps more tangibly -- traditionally in mainstream media, reporters caught fabricating stories or otherwise being unethical essentially forfeited their careers.
You can see both of those factors at work in the story of Jayson Blair, a reporter who was caught fabricating stories for the NYT.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jayson_Blair#Later_career
https://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/11/us/correcting-the-record-...
Yes, the NYT was duped. Embarrassingly. But the system worked. They conducted a pretty intense internal investigation to catch the guy. They caught him. They set the record straight. They admitted they screwed up. In that one instance they displayed more journalistic integrity than you'd see from Alex Jones in a lifetime.
And what happened to Jayson Blair? As I said above, his journalism career was over.
You can point out problems with "traditional" news organizations, and I'll agree with many of them, and they are still miles better than conspiracy hacks with zero journalistic scruples.
I was making a tongue-in-cheek comment about his many legal troubles, but I also think that he had extended periods on all the platforms that he's been removed from where he knew that he was violating policies and did not change his behavior.
> What is dangerous is a handful of platforms dominating communication and then conspiring to censor the same person all at the same time, which is exactly what happened with Alex Jones.
Is this what happened with Alex Jones? The wikipedia article lists a somewhat piecemeal series of bannings in 2018[1]. You can still find videos about alex jones on youtube and there are still conspiracy videos here and there[2] I don't see much evidence that Alex Jones, the person, has been exiled from the public square. He's very much still a subject of valid conversation on the platforms that banned him. I'm not sure how the same platforms I've been using to find his content can be engaged in a conspiracy to censor him.
What you can't find on youtube[3] are video from Alex Jones's own accounts. It's also hard to find videos promoting various theories and ideas that youtube considers dangerous (like covid-19 conspiracies). I don't think this is a problem. I think there are all sorts of problems with the tech ecosystem, but I do not think a public, meandering process where one organization was removed because it continually broke website standards is going to lead us to fascism.
>When someone says "find your own platform", that is a complete dismissal towards someone and their ideas.
I don't think this is true in any situation. If I'm running a fictional video site "teentube" which hosts videos about teenage life in the US, I am not censoring anyone if I refuse to host amazing, essential, gory documentaries on terrorism and current events. Saying "go find another place" is not saying "your content has no value," it's saying "this is not your place!"
In general, I agree that we could use more specialized media hosts and economic models to support them. But it's not like the current crop of media hosts (Alphabet, Facebook, etc) are dealing with fundamentally different questions than the previous crop (ABC, CBS) did in the broadcast TV era. There were no fewer conspiracy theories in the 60s, but good luck getting a tv station to broadcast your tape on one!
>When these companies are all in cahoots and basically agree about everything
I think, to the degree that payment platforms and website hosters are in cahoots, that it is because they are all members of society. That is to say they are subject to international law and the laws of their own country. Within the boundaries of "not breaking international law," I think there's a lot of diversity in terms of perspective.
Edit: To add a summation: There's a world where people are forced out of society without the appropriate process, a world where going "elsewhere" isn't practical. I don't think we're in that world and I don't think Alex Jones is either.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Jones#Social_media_restri...
[2] I found this one (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGDuyDyMMDg), which I don't recommend watching, just by searching "alex jones" and scrolling down.
[3] Of course, if you want them, they are right there on infowars. Google will take you straight there.
Even if one concedes that any given platform has total authority over their private property (there is a case for regulating tech giants as utilities), one is still perfectly within their rights to vehemently disagree with those decisions, or find them to be grossly counter-productive.
Walmart can't put me in jail. Walmart cannot kill me.
In many perspectives, government is considered special because of the "monopoly on force."
Having a compelling platform is very different from that. Nobody is saying "you can't say that under threat of force" they say "I choose to respond to you saying that by exercising my own rights." Do you think anyone who waves a sign on the side of an intersection should also be entitled to an editorial in the local newspaper, say?
People today have fairly limited imaginations after a couple decades of "algorithmic search and recommendation" platforms. But the internet before Google was quite successful with organic word of mouth and hyperlinks. And nobody in that world was forced to provide links to anyone they didn't like either.
Incidentally, YouTube, Twitter, etc. should be subject to far stricter regulation when they enforce speech codes and don't behave as neutral platforms.
The same can be said of jackasses spouting harmful drivel within the confines of free speech.
> So if Joe is moving off of YouTube because he doesn't like the censorship, he's not getting anything better with Spotify.
(not a Jones supporter. nor can I imagine how anyone would be)
Likewise, if the WSJ decides not to publish my letter to the editor, they aren't violating my freedom of speech, they are just deciding not to amplify it.
If this is referring to Section 230, I think it's a misinterpration. Section 230 gives platforms the ability to moderate without being (legally) treated as a publisher, but it doesn't make them into a utility. If it's referring to a different law, I'm curious which one.
In your view, if YouTube is not a publisher, should they be required to host pornography? Are the community features part of the platform, or is YouTube entitled to host content but make it undiscoverable?
You really don't see the moral hazard in that?
Besides, who decides who is and who isn't a conspiracy theorist. You? A twitter mob? The government? Some people in San Francisco?
The fact that there is apparently such strong disagreement (most of which probably is from people who believe that it is appropriate to use the strong market share of these platforms to mold political discourse) is a bit alarming. No way that ends well.
Alex Jones is banned from Youtube. People, largely, do not give a shit. Now try banning gay people from a resturant.
Good luck with that.
And in many jurisdictions it is illegal to discriminate over sexual orientation. There is no such law protecting conspiracy theorists.
I think we're done here.
The "host your own" argument is done to death truly. If one type of speech can be hosted for "free" by a company with 80%+ market share, so should another without discrimination.
To allow otherwise is to risk of erosion of our values and enable corruption. Even if you don't like Jones.
Alex Jones is a thoughtless jerk though, and can still find/provide his own hosting/distribution.
Having said that, I understand that practically avoiding those companies is tough.
When Alex Jones gets pulled from Youtube, it's because he is effecting their business relationships and ability to make money.
But would it be morally right to ban those couples from a restaurant?
Someone spouting asshole opinions is not the same as an immutable trait by birth.
Alex Jones is not even being sincere in his quackery, this has been explored in court and he admitted to being a fraud.
See how the "it's a private business so they can discriminate!" works?
Keep in mind, as you mention, the shoe has been on the other foot and it will be again. It's better to enshrine and uphold these principals at all times. Not be like a dirty cop planting evidence because "he knows the suspect did it" and try to get to "Right" by cheating. In the end that blows up and it was wrong all along anyway.
But now you and I are in the weeds.
I hope you see my point, that's all. Discrimination isn't good. Even if you don't agree with the other party.
Discrimination isn’t good and propping it up in the name of free speech is gross.
Agreed, we aren't trying to come to agreement, on that we apparently agree.
Speech might be hateful, but isn't discrimination. Discrimination is discrimination.
Free spread of ideas is vital to the continued progress of humanity but sometimes it will offend people.
But I agree, if you open a public service you can't not rent to blacks, you can't not serve gays nor Democrats. That is how it should be.
When you open an upload streaming service to the public, _particularly_ if you have the majority market share, you have certain obligations of non discrimination. This should include religious and political viewpoints as well as race and sexual orientation.
Maybe Jones does cross the line from political discourse into trolling and incitement to violence. Not sure because I haven't watched him except on Joe Rogan. But we need to be very careful about moving that line.
> Couldn't you make the same argument about gay couples in a small town rural restaurant?
And the answer is "no, you can't."
Perhaps the restaurant is in a religiously conservative community and people won't eat there with their children if the restaurant has openly gay couples in attendance. So the gay couples being in the restaurant could negatively impact business.
What law prevents this? I'm not sure there is one in most of the U.S. Twitter and Reddit's opinion aren't so far law.
So the bottom line is yes, you could make the same argument.
But I think we both recognize this is morally unfair. When you provide a public venue, or offer something for sale to the public you have certain responsibilities towards non discrimination.
The fact the people being discriminated against are people you don't like or disagree with is irrelevant to this.
https://www.legalzoom.com/articles/the-right-to-refuse-servi...
You learned something today!
I also thought these laws were more prevalent then they actually are until I looked into it.
It's a simple formula: Take the most awful idea you can imagine, that any reasonable person would also find unworthy of the public square. Now walk it back it by 1%. Still worth banning? Okay, do it again. Rinse and repeat, until anything anyone finds even vaguely controversial or upsetting is verboten. I can trivially produce a compelling argument that any opinion on abortion or the military (for or against), is hateful, vile, and dangerous.
In practice, we need specific exemptions for libel, slander, conspiracy to commit a crime, etc. (It's worth remembering that the infamous "fire in a crowded theater" line was used as a justification for suppressing pamphleteering against the draft [2].) We have such exemptions, and their details are certainly debatable. But they must be targted very narrowly, and the burden of proof must be high, lest moral panics or realpolitik throw out the baby with the bathwater, and outlaw thinking itself.
[0] https://mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1447/2-live-crew
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faurisson_affair
[2] https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-tim...
If only that were true. Most people who look into this are dumbfounded at Chomsky’s support of Faurisson—not just his right to speak, but his insistence that we take this holocaust-denying nutjob’s “research” seriously.
Alex Jones has a right to free speech, but if he's going to claim Sandy Hook was a hoax causing grieving parents to be harassed, nobody owes it to him to give him a platform. He can pay his own hosting fees.