Alex Jones's channel deleted from YouTube ft. MUTV presenter appreciation

Damien said:
@jojojo interesting choice of thread merge
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The cat did it

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Raulduke said:
Alex Jones and his ilk are fully on board with bakers refusing to bake gay cakes but up in arms when Facebook, Youtube et al simply enforce their own terms of service. :rolleyes:
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I know what you're saying, but Youtube/Facebook etc are effective monopolies. Not sure how I feel about it.

Having looked into Alex Jones' banning a little bit, it seems that he recently did things that could definitely be construed as incitement (simulating shooting someone or something?) which is obviously a crime - plus the horrible Sandy Hook shit could easily be taken as harassment.

Jones aside, I'm not sure that "YouTube are a private company so they can ban whoever they want" sits well with me. It is so ingrained in our modern society that the people who run YouTube can effectively become the arbiters of which ideas can be easily disseminated and which can't. Personally I'm not a free-market absolutist by any stretch of the imagine so yeah, again, not sure how I feel about it in principle. There will probably be a big discussion to be had regarding how much power these large tech companies have.
 
horsechoker said:
Doesn't this legitimise him more in the eyes of his fans?

These kinds of people always claim the mainstream media etc is shutting them down and censoring them because they speak 'the truth'.
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How much more could he be legitimised? His fans consume his supplements without question, they buy his apocalypse gold and believe anyone in power with a hook nose is a bona-fide pedo.

I can't see his stock rising any higher but then I might he underestimating his followers.
 
People should boycott YouTube. Not for the banning. But for it being so overdue.
 
afrocentricity said:
I'm struggling to give a feck. How do you feel about it?

I'm assuming he broke some of their rules and I heard they took down some of his videos recently so I'm guessing he didn't heed the warmings. It's not like it's going to stop anyone who wants to listen to his feckries... Meh.
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If he broke their T&C's then I have absolutely no problem with it as they are a private company and can do whatever they want. If it's on the basis of 'hate speech' then it's problematic as it sets a dangerous precedent. There is free speech or there isn't. I'll always take the ultra-liberal position and defend people's rights to say even the most heinous things imaginable.
 
Pagh Wraith said:
If he broke their T&C's then I have absolutely no problem with it as they are a private company and can do whatever they want. If it's on the basis of 'hate speech' then it's problematic as it sets a dangerous precedent. There is free speech or there isn't. I'll always take the ultra-liberal position and defend people's rights to say even the most heinous things imaginable.
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There isn't blanket free speech on YouTube afaik anyway...
 
If I've said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times; Feck. Alex. Jones.

He's a weapons-grade thundercnut. In a more intelligent society he'd be seen a comedy act, but there's people out there who actually believe the shit that comes out of his mouth. feck him.
 
You can say what you want about Jones but theres not doubting that his twin peaks analysis was on point

 
Pagh Wraith said:
If he broke their T&C's then I have absolutely no problem with it as they are a private company and can do whatever they want. If it's on the basis of 'hate speech' then it's problematic as it sets a dangerous precedent. There is free speech or there isn't. I'll always take the ultra-liberal position and defend people's rights to say even the most heinous things imaginable.
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There is free speech, but that doesn't supersede a private entity's right to tell you to feck off from their property if they don't like what you're saying.

But yeah, he got nailed for breaking their T&C. I don't see how him sicking his rabid, unhinged fanbase on the families of the Sandy Hook-victims wasn't a breach, but whatever. YouTube's gonna YouTube, I guess.
 
Pagh Wraith said:
If he broke their T&C's then I have absolutely no problem with it as they are a private company and can do whatever they want. If it's on the basis of 'hate speech' then it's problematic as it sets a dangerous precedent. There is free speech or there isn't. I'll always take the ultra-liberal position and defend people's rights to say even the most heinous things imaginable.
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Free speech only means the government won't jail you for what you say (and even there it has limits). It doesn't mean you at all times have to be allowed to be on the biggest platforms of speech, especially privately owned platforms.
 
Alex Jones banned from YouTube, hell no, he should be winning the Turner prize every year. He's a performance artist and his show is obviously an art project.
 
Pagh Wraith said:
If he broke their T&C's then I have absolutely no problem with it as they are a private company and can do whatever they want. If it's on the basis of 'hate speech' then it's problematic as it sets a dangerous precedent. There is free speech or there isn't. I'll always take the ultra-liberal position and defend people's rights to say even the most heinous things imaginable.
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I've heard that they were in danger of being sued. It had been suggested that they were the publisher of his content so if his content was lies that hurt people then YouTube could be sued for billions for allowing it on their site.

 
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Taibbi: Beware the Slippery Slope of Facebook Censorship
The social network is too big and broken to properly function, and these “fixes” will only create more problems
MATT TAIBBI
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Read this jarring quote from Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) about the shutting down of the “inauthentic” accounts:

“Today’s disclosure is further evidence that the Kremlin continues to exploit platforms like Facebook to sow division and spread disinformation… I also expect Facebook, along with other platform companies, will continue to identify Russian troll activity and to work with Congress…”

This was in a story in which Facebook stated that it did not know the source of all the pages. They might be Russian, or they might just be Warner’s idea of “sowing division.” Are we comfortable with that range of possibilities?

Many of the banned pages look like parodies of some paranoid bureaucrat’s idea of dangerous speech.
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And a banned “Mindful Being” page shared this, which seems culled from Jack Handey’s Deep Thoughts bit:

“We must unlearn what we have learned because a conditioned mind cannot comprehend the infinite.”

Facebook also wiped out a “No Unite The Right 2” page, appearing to advertise a counter-rally on the upcoming anniversary of the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Facebook was “helped” in its efforts to wipe out these dangerous memes by the Atlantic Council, on whose board you’ll find confidence-inspiring names like Henry Kissinger, former CIA chief Michael Hayden, former acting CIA head Michael Morell and former Bush-era Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff. (The latter is the guy who used to bring you the insane color-coded terror threat level system.)
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The complainants in the Jones case included parents of Sandy Hook victims, who have legitimate beef with Jones and his conspiratorial coverage. The Infowars reports asserting the grieving parents were green-screen fakes were not just demonstrably false and rightfully the subject of a defamation suit, but also seemingly crossed a separate line when they published maps and addresses of family members, who experienced threats.

When Jones and his like-minded pals cried censorship and bias, they came across as more than a little disingenuous. After all, right-wingers have consistently argued on behalf of the speech rights of big corporations.

Conservative justices have handed down rulings using the First Amendment to hold back regulation of big tobacco and the gun industry, and to justify unlimited campaign spending. Citizens United was a crucial moment in the degradation of the First Amendment, essentially defining corporate influence as speech.

The complainants in the Jones case included parents of Sandy Hook victims, who have legitimate beef with Jones and his conspiratorial coverage. The Infowars reports asserting the grieving parents were green-screen fakes were not just demonstrably false and rightfully the subject of a defamation suit, but also seemingly crossed a separate line when they published maps and addresses of family members, who experienced threats.

When Jones and his like-minded pals cried censorship and bias, they came across as more than a little disingenuous. After all, right-wingers have consistently argued on behalf of the speech rights of big corporations.

Conservative justices have handed down rulings using the First Amendment to hold back regulation of big tobacco and the gun industry, and to justify unlimited campaign spending. Citizens United was a crucial moment in the degradation of the First Amendment, essentially defining corporate influence as speech.
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The First Amendment, after all, only addresses the government’s power to restrict speech. It doesn’t address what Facebook, Google, YouTube and Twitter can do as private companies, enforcing their terms of service.

So it’s true, there was no First Amendment issue with the Jones ban. But that’s the problem.
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In order to have power to distribute widely you needed resources, but you put those resources at risk if you defamed people.

That all changed with digital media. Way back in 1996, when mastodons roamed the earth and people used dial-up to connect to the Internet, Congress passed the Communications Decency Act. It contained the following landmark language:

“No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.”

Essentially this meant that Internet providers wouldn’t be treated like news organizations. In the eyes of the law, they were less like CBS or Random House than they were bookstores or newsstands.

The rule allowed platforms to grow exponentially without the same fear of litigation. Companies like Facebook and Google became all-powerful media distributors, and were able to profit from InfoWars-style programs without having to be liable for them.


This led to the flowering of so much obnoxious speech that the First Amendment acquired a reputation as a racist con, and online media distributors, instead of being sued themselves as publishers, began to be viewed as potential restorers of order, beneficent censors.

Now, at a moment of crisis and high political tension, the public seems unable to grasp the gravity of allowing the government or anyone else to use that power.

It is already a scandal that these de facto private media regulators have secret algorithmic processes that push down some news organizations in favor of others. Witness the complaints by outlets like Alternet, Truthdig and others that big platforms have been de-emphasizing alternative sites in the name of combating “fake news.”

But this week’s revelation is worse. When Facebook works with the government and wannabe star-chamber organizations like the Atlantic Council to delete sites on national security grounds, using secret methodology, it opens the door to nightmare possibilities that you’d find in dystopian novels.
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https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/facebook-censor-alex-jones-705766/

Not sure he's made the case for Alex Jones personally (as he says in the article, there's a legitimate case against him by Sandy Hook parents), but it's a good argument otherwise.
 
In a way, Jones is the perfect poster child for the moral bankruptcy and conspiratorial demagoguery of the post tea party right.
 
Alex Jones' face looks like it was made to get punched right in the fecking mouth.
 
Pagh Wraith said:
If he broke their T&C's then I have absolutely no problem with it as they are a private company and can do whatever they want. If it's on the basis of 'hate speech' then it's problematic as it sets a dangerous precedent. There is free speech or there isn't. I'll always take the ultra-liberal position and defend people's rights to say even the most heinous things imaginable.
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Youtube is not a private company but a public company.
 
barros said:
Youtube is not a private company but a public company.
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I think he was referring to them being a private entity, rather than how their stocks are traded.

Also, I'm not an expert, but you're referring to public as in 'publicly traded', right? YouTube is a wholly owned subsidiary of Google, and their stocks are not publicly traded. I don't know if they count as a public company if the closest you can get to buying YouTube stocks is buying stocks in the parent company's parent company (Alphabet Inc).
 
barros said:
Stock exchange = public
I'm not defending that looneyI just see people calling public companies like Facebook, Apple, etc, private when they aren't.
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Right, but from the point of view of freedom of speech it's surely a distinction without a difference.
 
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