I hate Alex Jones, but I have to agree. There's a difference between being kicked out of a restaurant for being an ass, vs being kicked out of EVERY restaurant on Earth for the rest of your life - without due process.

These online services aren't small mom/pop shops that you can just replace and patronize another. They are global near-monopolies that you cannot function without.

Google isn't just my search provider - they run my email, my internet connection, my cell service, my company's cloud repository, etc... They could destroy me at the drop of a hat.

> I hate Alex Jones, but I have to agree. There's a difference between being kicked out of a restaurant for being an ass, vs being kicked out of EVERY restaurant on Earth for the rest of your life - without due process.

That's a bit of a straw man, no? Jones still has plenty of perfectly-functioning restaurants to visit, with quite extensive menus. If one of the biggest assholes on the internet still has a platform to spew his hate, I don't think we're in any danger of this dystopian society existing where people can be completely silenced based on the will of a few corporations.

> Google isn't just my search provider - they run my email, my internet connection, my cell service, my company's cloud repository, etc... They could destroy me at the drop of a hat.

That's a choice you've made, not a required state of being. There are plenty of other companies that provide search, email, internet service, cell service, cloud repos, etc. that are just as (if not more) functional and featureful.

I don't see how this is a straw man. He's been banned from all major social media platforms, for life, without due process.

> That's a choice you've made...

No, not really. Because my argument (perhaps wrongly) focused on Google, but it's still true that I have to choose a major near-monopoly corporation to do email, mobile, social media, telephone service, cloud, etc...

There are no alternatives. Have you ever tried to stand up your own email server? You can't. Google won't even relay the emails.

> Google isn't just my search provider - they run my email, my internet connection, my cell service, my company's cloud repository, etc... They could destroy me at the drop of a hat.

More fool you. Maybe you should diversify a bit.

Aye, a bit part of my push this year has been de-googling my life. Along with de-facebooking and de-microsofting.

A more apt comparison is being banned from every bar/pub in town for causing issues, without due process and without having set foot in some of them.

Which is perfectly fine and acceptable

Being banned from every bar and restaurant in the world for something he said? Have you ever heard of such a thing? It would be ludicrous.

> Google isn't just my search provider - they run my email, my internet connection, my cell service, my company's cloud repository,

You have no alternative to any of those services?

I'm skeptical of "kicked out of EVERY restaurant on Earth"

The Daily Stormer is fairly bad as sites go "Jews Howl as Portuguese Move to Shut Down Their Citizenship Scam" typical story - and after various attempts to get rid of them all you have to do to go to the site is google them and click on the link in the wikipedia page.

About the only sites that are really kicked out of all restaurants are paedophila ones and they deserve that and more IMO.

Twitter has actually vowed to support pedos, as long as they don't talk about plans to hurt actual, particular children.

But the community of "MAPs" is protected by social media these days. Repeat the 13-50 statistic, though, and you're out (though the likes of "kill all white people" appears to be ok).

So where were you when the Isis videos were taken off YouTube and ISIS twitter accounts were deleted? The thing is the outcry always only comes when companies don't want to be associated with some right-wing nutjobs hate speech, while I never hear the same people shouting that ISIS promo videos should not be taken down because of censorship. If all censorship is always bad, why not complain about those cases? Call me sceptical, but to me this sounds very much like, "hey they remove content that I sympathise with, instead of content that I don't like" and almost always aimed at propagating the myth of right-wing victimhood.

You really cannot differentiate between content that should criminal murder in progress versus Alex Jones's conspiracy theories?

That's a pretty soft shell you have.

If I advocate for criminal activity and my advocacy is likely to produce said criminal activity, that speech is not protected.

I think you missed the parent's point. I read it as, "if you get kicked out of every restaurant on the planet, it might be your fault."

Of course there are protections for certain classes of people based on their attributes or fundamentals, but society can call your bullshit out.

You're arguing this as if the censorship you're talking about has actually happened to anyone ever. We're literally talking about Alex Jones because he's the most extreme example, but actually the opposite is true. We have Alex Jones as a great demonstration of the most objectionable person on the internet. Is he censored?

I don't know, I suggest you ask him here: www.infowars.com or listen to one of his 6 podcasts a week, or subscribe to his newsletter, or buy his Tubo Force tablets in his shop, or download his app, or his soundcloud, or his reddit account, or his Gab account, or his Telegram account, or on liveleak.

The fact of the matter is that Alex Jones has more ability to braodcast his speech to people around the world than any single individual who was living before 1980.

> You're arguing this as if the censorship you're talking about has actually happened to anyone ever.

It has happened.

When Gab tried to compete with Twitter, Apple and Google banned their app.

Payment processors have banned controversial sites like Wikileaks too.

You can download the Gab android app here: https://apps.gab.com/application/5d3f982c9dd49a5b1d9fc881

Or visit gab.ai on your Chrome browser.

Wikileaks explains the 5 different ways you can donate to them here: https://shop.wikileaks.org/donate

Including about 75 different cryptocurrencies

It's still censorship if a school library bans a book even if you can still buy it from Amazon. The existence of alternatives doesn't mean censorship hasn't happened.

> We have Alex Jones as a great demonstration of the most objectionable person on the internet. Is he censored?

Oh come on there must be far more objectionable characters on the internet. Genuine terrorists and pedophiles and whatever. Or at least they would be, but they are so toxic they actually are censored by most every platform.

Of course it is censorship to remove someone because of the content they create. Plain and simple.

And no, he isn't the only one by far. He was just the notorious one to sell people the practice of content controls on platforms. Since then many content creators have either been removed or demonetized.

Nothing controversial will ever find a home on Youtube as a consequence. You will just get the most benign shit you will get on TV if trends fortify themselves.

Where are you drawing that line, I'm really curious. Can you put me live on Zoom in your house so I can talk about things I like? If not, are you participating in censorship?

It's censorship to stop someone saying something, not to stop them saying something on your property. The New York Times isn't censoring me by choosing not to publish my incoherent ramblings on their front page.

It is still censorship if you do it on your property. It is your right to do so, not the point here but still censorship. The NYT is a publisher and we did a lot of work separating the two. Currently there are ambitions to moderate platforms because those have more listeners.

As I said, there are enough creators demonetized because they are just controversial. Advertisers don't like that. So what are you arguing here for exactly?

If all publishers, persons and organizations are censoring everyone who is not allowed to use their platform/property to express whatever they want... then it seems to dilute the meaning of censorship into nothingness.

> Stray far enough onto the wrong side of history, and society may voluntarily decide you're an asshole and show you the door. And that'll be on you.

Remember kids, there's no such thing as being an actual arsehole, harassing people and endangering people. It's just that they are people who strayed on "the wrong side of history". My neighbour who's kicking his cat? Not an arsehole.

I mean, at some point in history your asshole who’s kicking his cat was probably not seen as an asshole. If only because domesticated cats haven’t always been a thing.

He could end up like Laura Loomer and get banned from Uber, Uber Eats etc as well.

Maybe smarter people (Zizek?) have already talked about this, but for me the current global political compass is very weird. I consider myself a hard-leftist and yet somehow I sometimes feel ideologically closer, or at least not so estranged from your salt-of-the-earth Trump/Brexit voter than to the current modern western progressives, or what people in the 60s used to call a somewhat similar group: Champagne socialists. For me, at least, using my conspiracy hat this is a big big victory for the dominant class, because the existent cries for stricter corporate oversee, dismantling of the lobbying system , unjust labor conditions are totally drowned in a sea of political correctness, in which many of the issues are less important. Many people counter-argue saying that all injustices are worth to be talking about, and I of course agree, but not to the expense of the most important ones, and even less to the expense of basic issues like freedom of speech and equality before the law. The same people who cheer and request the banning of all platforms for their political enemies are scandalized if the workers demographics of any "chic" industry or company does not match exactly their perceived ideal.

This possibility seems lost on far too many people: if they can do it to him, they can do it to you, too.

This feeling of closeness is not new (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory)

Nice try, but no. I would say it is more an orthogonal thing. Most of the worries of the common folk(left and right leaning) are not shared by the vocal pieces of the progressive movement.

Nice try? Look, mate, I intentionally only provided a reference to show that the idea of commonality between hard-left and hard-right is not a new one without going into the correctness of it or if it is the same as what you feel. My point is that it is not new and not weird. It is not even only an idea, as one can already observe both sides cooperating on some issues in Europe.

Apparently my bland non-committal comment was already provocative enough to get down-voted.

I don't have an inclination to debate it further as both of your comments are peppered with descriptions (salt-of-the-earth Trump/Brexit voter, common folk...) that suggest this would unlikely be fruitful.

The one dimensional left-right spectrum is clearly inadequate, as there are many more axes. 2D maps are more useful (e.g. the Pournelle and Nolan Charts) but still a bit simplistic.

I doubt this is just your perception and companies notice it too and are already trying to leverage the desires for indiction.

> Zizek

50% of what he says is him talking out of his ass.

> what people in the 60s used to call a somewhat similar group: Champagne socialists. For me, at least, using my conspiracy hat this is a big big victory for the dominant class, because the existent cries for stricter corporate oversee, dismantling of the lobbying system , unjust labor conditions are totally drowned in a sea of political correctness

Absolutely. That's the point. Talk a big game about tolerance and blowing the progressive dog whistles... but keep data mining the fuck out of people and racking up insane profits.

> society may voluntarily decide you're an asshole and show you the door

For all people who support the "marketplace of ideas" argument (which I don't, not least because there is fairly compelling research that documents why a marketplace is a bad metaphor for how ideas spread and damaging ideology takes hold) – wouldn't this be evidence that your idea is failing in said marketplace? Your comment seems to confuse a laissez-faire approach with supporting and subsidising anyone who comes along no matter how problematic their speech is.

Being anti-censorship is not the same being pro-megaphone: freedom of speech doesn't require giving everyone the widest possible audience with no restrictions.

(obligatory XKCD https://xkcd.com/1357/)