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And Then They Came for Ricochet
Infowars represent Conservative media in the same way McDonald’s represents vegan health food. Alex Jones’ brand of “journalism” is anything but. Infowars purport tinfoil-hat conspiracies that are not only discredited and insulting to our intelligence but hurtful to those impacted by their clickbait headlines, such as calling the murders of Sandy Hook Elementary school children in Newtown, CT “fake”. It beggars the mind how this man and his organization can publish such drivel.
Today Infowars has been officially purged by Apple, Facebook, and Spotify. IW is still able to stream directly from its own servers, but these three major distribution channels succumbed to public pressure to have them removed. The reason: unspecified “hate speech.” Most everyone won’t miss something they never wanted to listen to, but this is where my disdain for Infowars yields to my greater concern over who is the arbiter of what is defined as hate speech and what is and isn’t allowed.
As reported on CNBC an Apple spokesman stated, “Apple does not tolerate hate speech, and we have clear guidelines that creators and developers must follow to ensure we provide a safe environment for all of our users.”
“Podcasts that violate these guidelines are removed from our directory making them no longer searchable or available for download or streaming. We believe in representing a wide range of views, so long as people are respectful to those with differing opinions.”
Again, I don’t watch or listen to Infowars and recommend anyone else to not waste their time. But if we are going to play this game, first we must ask Apple, Facebook, and Spotify why they allow podcasts and videos from Antifa, which is a terrorist group. Why does Black Lives Matter have a forum when their members have advocated the killing of police officers and has lead to such? How is Louis Farrakhan, a reviled anti-semite, not banned? And how does the New York Times have a presence on social media when it hires a racist like Sarah Jeong?
Apple, Facebook, and Spotify: Do you stand against “hate speech” or against speech from outlets you hate?
If Infowars can be banned, what about other conservative media? Many on the extreme Left — who use bullhorns and whistles to turn away Trump officials, Candace Owens, and Charlie Kirk from restaurants — consider Turning Point USA, The Daily Wire, and perhaps Ricochet to be “hate speech.”
Are you ready for these people to control your media?
Charlie Kirk and I just got ATTACKED and protested by ANTIFA for eating breakfast. They are currently following us through Philly. ALL BLACK AND HISPANIC police force protecting us as they scream “f*ck the racist police”. pic.twitter.com/x5WUNr9mM6
— Candace Owens (@RealCandaceO) August 6, 2018
When we allow a select few denizens from Silicon Valley to determine what speech is and isn’t “allowed,” don’t be surprised when they come for you.
Update: Monday morning, YouTube, Twitter and Pinterest also banned Jones’ properties.
Published in General
If you were willing to fight the government participation in these private bans now, then when it comes to actual government bans on speaking–bans that are no longer mediated by private companies–you might be able to actually do something to fight them.
It cannot discriminate on the factors such as race and religion listed in the Civil Rights Act and its many amendments. But it can discriminate on every other basis.
How would hotels be able to toss out the unruly drunken woman in the lobby were hotels not allowed to exercise some discrimination. On Cape Cod you can’t enter some restaurants if you have no shoes on. :-)
I have no quibble with these social media platforms banning his content. It was a dumb business move to do so in the way they did it, and I am interested in the collusion aspect of how it was done as a seemingly coordinated attack.
But no one on Ricochet who is questioning this action disputes the right of Facebook to refuse to publish a writer’s content.
I have complete confidence in the free market to correct this. I witnessed the Rush Limbaugh “revolution.” He and his success were responses to a similar censorship climate.
People are questioning the timing, the apparent collusion (like price fixing in the 1970s), and the intent.
Nope. Yet that straw man has been wandering all over Ricochet, moving goal posts as he goes.
Mollie sez: “Don’t be a cowering conservative!”
If we don’t rev up the outrage engine appropriately, we are cowering? Or maybe we are just worn out from all the outraginguh!
Or maybe you didn’t read the article she linked.
Earlier in this thread, while there didn’t seem to be general agreement that these large platforms are obviously utilities, even among those suggesting they should be treated like utilities, it was argued that if they appear to hold themselves out as utilities, perhaps it was only justice for them be treated like utilities, who do have their rights to boot folks out curtailed. Or these platforms should be cut down to size by various other legal means (anti-trust law, just lawsuits in general). However it was phrased, it was suggested multiple times on this very thread that these platforms face legal penalties for booting folks out.
For example,
@davesussman himself called these large platforms utilities. If those using “utility” language didn’t mean to suggest a duty to serve the way other utilities do, perhaps it could have been made clearer?
I picked up that the commitment among those calling these “utilities” to treating these platforms exactly like utilities seemed halfhearted, but I wouldn’t blame others for missing this.
It does contain amusing understatement:
Yes, someone “who has destroyed lives” is merely “frustrating”. Not really different from him being the sort of kooky bigot who hasn’t destroyed lives. Why should the destroyed lives matter? They’re just little people, after all, not a big deal like Jones is.
What she said in #488. ^
Thanks for doing this research, MFR, I tried it myself but kept getting sidetracked.
You realize he was talking about Al Sharpton, right? That was the joke.
I didn’t. I prefer to just go off half-cocked.
I keep saying that this is a complicated issue with multiple approach angles and vertical depth.
In my formulation you quoted here, I am still not forcing FB to do anything. It’s entirely up to them. However, their choice has consequences to them under current law. As I understand it they are currently enjoy safe harbor protections under certain laws because they purport to be more like a common carrier neutral platform. However, they are obviously acting more like a publisher. Fine, they’re welcome to choose to do that. It’s just that they shouldn’t then enjoy the safe harbor from those laws referred to earlier if they’re going to discriminate. But it’s their choice.
That’s one angle. Another is a broader more general conversation about how we should view these giant social media applications and about distinctions between various types of speech and when restrictions or obligations are justifiable. That is quite apart from the discussion of what FB already did or is doing now. Many people are making blanket statements that private companies shouldn’t be restricted from using their assets and shouldn’t be compelled to do something with their assets. As a general principle I agree with that. However, there are obviously common exceptions to that. I do not support the phone company restricting who can make or receive calls. I do not support UPS refusing to pick up or deliver BLM or klan packages. This ties in to the other angles: is FB, Twitter, YouTube, etc more like the phone company or more like Simon and Shuster? More like T-Mobile or more like MGM Productions? More like the public square or more like a giant version of my living room?
As I mentioned in comment 488, those advancing the “utilities” argument do express some ambivalence about it, which I respect. But given that “urilities” arguments are being made, what should we make of them? How far should they go, really?
You mentioned in 493, “In my formulation you quoted here, I am still not forcing FB to do anything. It’s entirely up to them. However, their choice has consequences to them under current law.” Arguments of the form, “Do whatever you want, but I won’t object to the law punishing you when you do,” can strike people as endorsing legal force.
I suspect platforms are in a bind. They argue that platforms cannot feasibility held responsible for all the speech falling *outside* First-Amendment protections that happens on them, whether perpetrated by the Sharptons or the Joneses of the world. Yet at the same time, it’s reasonable for them to curtail this kind of not-protected-by-the-First-Amendment-speech when they can. And it’s also in their interest to be vague about doing so, so they’re not sued by every harasser and defamer who gets booted for his bad behavior. The vagueness, though, and its potential for abuse (and it has been abused, though not I think in Jones’s case) is itself a problem.
Wheels within wheels. I think looking at this issue through the leftism-run-amok lens misses the tangle of legal liabilities any platform, no matter the politics, has an interest in avoiding.
Which speech is that?
I’m not endorsing legal force. I’m not endorsing the creation of legal force to fix this particular issue.
I’m claiming that there are existing legal realities FB is subject to, which depend entirely on FB’s choices. I also don’t view the particular dilemma facing FB as punishment. I view it as equal application of existing law.
Could it be that this equal application of the law will indirectly affect the discrimination against conservatives and others? Maybe. If they more consciously embrace neutrality then I think free speech in general would benefit from that.
I don’t know about ambivalence. Is not having all the answers the same as ambivalence? Right now I’d settle for acknowledgement that such a question as I posed in the quote here is even worth discussing instead of it being an indication of tribalism, inconsistency, statism, or acceptance of everything that Alex Jones says or does.
Yes, it’s a complicated issue with many angles of approach. I don’t think leftism-run-amok is the only lens here, but it’s a big powerful one we shouldn’t avoid.
Here is a general introduction. Here is more specific info on how it applies to Jones.
I wonder who gets to apply the categories in the first piece. As to the second piece, I like much of what French has to say, although the “A better way of banning Alex Jones” title doesn’t give me much confidence in his objectivity.
This is pure politics cloaked in a PC wrapper. Facebook, Apple, et all, are playing to the crowd, avoiding looking anything other than left-wing partisan. Sad really. Don’t use Apple or Facebook. Not easy really– we’re all attached to our devices. If you post on said platforms, be subversive as possible.