Should Alex Jones have been removed from Apple podcasts (and Facebook and YouTube)?

This is the inherent problem with private ownership of media. At some point, a corporation makes a decision that Alex Jones (or anyone else) is bad for their bottom line, so they drop them. It’s part of the reason why many of us on the left have been opposed to liberals’ calls for tech companies to decide what is and isn’t legitimate news.

This discussion has to do with free speech, but we’ll immediately hear from someone who comes to tell us that free speech doesn’t apply to the private sector, and that it’s only about government restriction. But when all media is private, I’m not convinced that this doesn’t apply. Of course, a company shouldn’t be compelled to distribute political views that it finds offensive if it will hurt their business. But what if that company is essentially a monopoly? If Google/Youtube and Facebook decide to make efforts to exclude certain speech, then there are serious consequences.

Alternative media has already taken a hit following Google’s algorithm changes after liberal outcry about fake news. The fact that these huge media companies and platforms are privately-owned, not in any way democratically-controlled, and their rules/algorithms are secret, is a huge threat to speech overall.

When I hear the right (and Jones-style conspiracy theorists) now cry about censorship, however, it appears that they have forgotten how much they support this type of thing. Private power and capitalism is the perfect solution in their mind, and this is what it produces. I’m not sure what they propose as a solution….nationalize Google and Apple? :)

This is why a nationally supported, commercial-free channel is essential and it has to have a charter of some sort that keeps it insulated from the political heat of the day. (like the BBC and other nationally chartered broadcasting channels around Europe) And it isn’t about how commercial he is. It’s the fact that he is spreading lies that people actually believe, even after he admitted in court that he was an ‘entertainer and not a news broadcaster’. I don’t mind these shows and types of ‘entertainment’ but his and his ilk don’t come with disclaimers that it’s all shit, and they should. The Onion, The Red Shstick and Lampoon, everyone knows they are sarcastic and satire. But Jones doesn’t portray his story telling in that way. He counts on his works appealing to the folks who have some need to disbelieve and crave fuel for their hate. That’s what he does. He gleefully fuels hate. Perhaps the NRA simply pulled his funding. I hear they’ve fallen on hard times. Thoughts and prayers.

This is a classic slippery slope. It puts a business in the position of being a moral arbiter.

Yet I do maintain that this is not censorship, which is systematic suppression of some ideology or view. These platforms are not doing anything to prevent a person from saying what he has to say. They’re saying that they don’t owe him the means to say it. That’s their right. The complicated part is that these platforms are not, say, edited journals practicing a policy of responsible selection of material. Their place in the world depends on their being open to pretty much anyone, to the extent of the law.

Loathsome though Alex Jones’s rhetoric may be, I’d rather have it out there than have someone picking and choosing whose thoughts are okay to air and whose aren’t. That works against a just and democratic society in the long run.

If social media are expected to police content for objectionable opinions, who sets the standards and who draws the lines? Who interprets and applies them? And how long before someone wants to require the same of phone companies, mail service, public street corners…?

The mail service in the US has banned certain types of correspondence for a very long time, as far as I’m aware. http://about.usps.com/publications/pub307/welcome.htm is just one example.
Mail fraud is another crime. Not exactly sure how that works, but trying to deceive someone by sending fraudulent papers through the postal service is criminal, so isn’t what Alex Jones doing fraudulent by posing as a journalist? I’m not sure I fully understand how the US media works. We find ITV quite offensive most times. Perhaps I just frustrated that that sort of rubbish has an appeal and that is my real irritation.

Yes: ^^^ it’s done by law, and the law has standards such as libel and slander and fraud. That judgment is not being made by a high school graduate in a minimum-wage clerical job trying to apply vague company policies (of a profit-making business that may or may not recognize its public trust) in between checks of her own social media accounts. Is that whose job it is to enforce those rules at the nitty-gritty workday level? I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure it’s not going to be Mark Zuckerberg.

Oh, you’re talking about the edits done on facebook. Facebook is rubbish and not pretending to be journalism. Even Twitter and Facebook are deleting fake and bot accounts because the system is inherently open to abuse and fraud, that it doesn’t fall under the realm of journalism.

What I’m really talking about is people wanting to punish other people for perceived infractions of some moral standard, which is something we’re suddenly seeing very conspicuously on all sides right now. They want to place the ownership of morality in the hands of commercial businesses. There’s no way that can turn out well.

Is that part of Jeff Session’s Religious Liberty Taskforce?

Well, I just read on facebook that Alex Jones is a paid crisis actor and his show being cancelled and him being banned from YouTube is all faked and never happened. Elaborately staged fake news. /sarcasm.
If we can’t agree on a minimum acceptable standard of behaviour, it’s all going to go to shit. Someone wrote, and I can’t remember who, that it all descends into a maelstrom of fuckwittery.

No. He is nutjob, a.k.a right wing moderate, and is not a danger to anyone.
Now, on the other hand, the Orangutan should be booted off twitter.

LinkedIn and MailChimp have joined in the banning of Alex Jones. He apparently didn’t even have anything posted on LinkedIn yet.

There’s definitely a coordinated effort among the tech companies to oust his content from the digital sphere. Call me crazy for finding this a little disturbing.

YouTube, Facebook, and such are not without responsibility to the public at large. It is okay that they have standards.
Alex Jones’ hate speech needn’t be accepted on those sites, and they aren’t outlawed on sites that share their beliefs.

No.
Because one day, in an other time and space, these corporations could very well decide that it is yoú that should be silenced.
People that oppose this guy’s sentiment and thoughts should be able to fight him (with words).
I suspect that there is a chance that these corporations are not just doing this out of righteousness.
Remember, corporations strive for economic gain first.
I don’t trust them to hold the moral compass.

A few people do seem to understand the difference between (a) a community’s having agreed-upon standards of acceptable behavior and (b) having a profit-making body make and enforce those social norms. Suppose a company that pledges “Don’t be evil” decides to be evil? The fact that they have a public responsibility does not ensure that they will uphold that responsibility—not when their first duty is to their shareholders, and that duty is profit.

It’s one thing to say “This is wrong” or “This is unacceptable in our society” and another to say “Let’s you and me punish them because we don’t agree with them.”

Is it punishment though? Really?

I’m speaking much more broadly than the case of one individual on a certain media platform. In my community, for instance, a high school alumnus went on to achieve some career success and donated a mural to the school. Within the past year someone accused (accused, not convicted) that person of some past sexual transgression, and the school promptly obliterated the mural. This is a mindset that ultimately harms everyone.

If you don’t agree, fine. I’m not going to try to wrestle with you. I’ve said my piece.

It’s a fine line. I would not call infowars “news” it’s a show where they pretend to air sensational news. Alex Jones is more of a performance artist than anything else. That being the case it’s subject to bans and censorship like any other account. Infowars is as fake news as it gets but the slope is steep and slippery when real news is on the other side of the spectrum that we are dealing with.

The best way is probably for someone level-headed to publish a balanced, calm, intelligent reaction to Alex Jones that explains what a horrible phenomenon he is, so he can be calmly dismissed and people will stop paying him attention or believing what he says.

Rather than remove it, they could add a layer to his content which offers a link to the explanation explaining who/what Alex Jones is.

@Jeruba I agree with you about that mindset. It’s good for no one.

I think Facebook and YouTube have a responsibility for what appears on their sites. It isn’t as if Alex Jones has been censored, anyone can see what he has to say on his own Infowars website.

Alex is back up on YT. I don’t agree with his ideas & I also don’t think he should be banned from being heard. Rush Limbaugh spewed forth more hatred than anyone I ever knew & he was considered the darling of the conservative movement. I difdn’t agree with his ideas either but I NEVER felt he should be banned. I simply CHOSE to NOT tune in!!!

I also don’t think that burning objectionable books is the right course of action. I grew up believing that just because it’s wrong for you, it doesn’t mean that it’s wrong for me. IF you feel it’s wrong for you…just DON’T DO IT. IF I feel it’s right for me, I promise to NEVER do it in your house!!!

I don’t do Facebook because I feel that Mark violates every right to privacy that I have. I wouldn’t miss it IF it disappeared today; but I don’t think it hiuld be banned from the internet!!!

@Jeruba this might be of interest. https://www.propublica.org/article/facebook-hate-speech-censorship-internal-documents-algorithms

What about all the hate speech on fluther? If it were removed, we’d all be talking about campfires and glass table cloths and algebra problems.

@Yellowdog The guy is an A%% wipe and can’t stop lying.

This is his quote “There was no Holocaust !”

Of course not. This is just more of the same. He has the right to use a public forum just like we do. The owners of those forums just confirmed their intent that their sites be used as propaganda machines. Jones could bring action against them. We’ll see.

This has nothing to do with whether you like Jones or not. Everyone in this country should be outraged.

Obviously not, Doesn’t matter whether you agree with his views. Unless he’s telling people to harm others or spreading seriously violent info, he’s protected under free speech.
Anyways, if companies are going to ban far-right speakers for being too “extreme” start banning anti-fa and radical feminists (far-left/extreme liberals). It’s a violation of free speech to ban people or remove people from a platform and having a voice just because you don’t agree with their opinion and I guarantee if things were flipped, and Jones was a far left speaker and not a far right one, there would be outrage. Probably would resort to calling youtube, apple, and facebook supremacists and fascists, since those get thrown around at everyone and anyone who has a differing opinion (whether or not they actually are one).

Not violent? Doesn’t threaten violence? Doesn’t suggest to others to take violent action? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMZJNbn241I His tag line is ‘The Frontline of Truth Journalism.’ He’s not joking around as a character like The Cobert Report was.
As someone who holds dear facts and science, I find this man dangerous and I am constantly disappointed at the messages he spreads. My students no longer all start with the same level of education. Some have dug themselves into a hole by believing this shit and I’d rather bury them in that hole, but it’s my job to help them out of it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgUDbvKYbWk Here is the full interview at the BBC. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=807r68cyKSs

Apple, Facebook, and Youtube are private enterprises, so they can, and will, silence anybody they want.

Others will do business with anybody. I remember when I was in college in the mid-to-late-1980s there were people who were horrified that ‘religion’ was allowed online and that computers were using Bible software.

@Yellowdog They aren’t silencing him. They are taking away their platform. Something makes me think nothing will shut this guy up. Nobody is ‘entitled’ to have have a soap box if it is someone else’s soap box. FFS. Every one is up in arms about NFL players taking a knee and THIS is what they get upset about?

Agreed. It is a private enterprise.

As a radio or T.V. network is private enterprise. That doesn’t mean you’re banned from the airwaves. Just that a particular one won’t carry you.

BTW I see that my post does’t reflect that, I did use the word ‘silence’

@Yellowdog just because they can doesn’t mean they should.
They “silence” enough people, they are going to eventually have a lot more issues to deal with.

Update: If you’ve been following the news, you’ve now seen that Alex Jones has been banned from Twitter and his app was removed from iTunes. He has essentially been totally shut out of social media.

I sense we are on a slippery slope.