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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
But posting bilge is the service they offer.
I’m not a lawyer, but as far as I know, ISPs are not currently considered common carriers. Then it becomes a decision for them to make.
Well, Jones has been inciting something in his followers:
If they had to move seven times, that suggests the doxxing was the “we know where you live” type. It’s not necessarily violent — plenty of people who harass online wouldn’t go through with showing up in person to carry out violence. But it could be, as the PizzaGate gunman Edgar Maddison Welch demonstrated:
Could the news this week that Jones has been counter-suing the Pozner family have something to do with the timing here? I don’t know. But it’s easier to stop Jones from using your platform to incite doxxing than it is to stop all the doxxers.
I worked for a bit in a deli. We had reeeeaaalllky good bratwurst. And bread. Someone came in once and wanted bratwurst and cream cheese on French bread with ketchup. Vile? Offensive? A sin against gastronomy? All of the above. We still made it.
Read what I said earlier. There’s a societal aspect to free speech whereby banning certain speech may not be illegal but yet still has a negative effect on society and a chilling effect on a citizen’s willingness to speak.
If you want people to have to always watch what they say for fear of losing their jobs, their reputations, or even their lives, then yes, let’s continue down this “ban everything we don’t like!” road. The left is already there. Let’s not emulate them by agreeing that it’s okay.
But did they then insist that you post a photograph of this gastronomic travesty in the store window and advertise it on the menu?
It’s one thing to request something for private use and enjoyment and something else entirely to insist that a service provider then carry that thing for ever and always.
Should they be considered common carriers and required to provide access to the internet to all who want to buy it?
I agree with this. But the threat of getting doxxed and another Edgar Maddison Welch showing up at your home also has a chilling effect on citizens’ willingness to speak.
Alex Jones is a kook. He seems to attract kooks as followers, people who do not have a normal sense of boundaries or even reality. If giving Jones a platform gives them a platform on which to be incited by Jones into doing stuff which puts a chill on their fellow citizens’ free speech, then the platform provider has to decide which chill is more repugnant.
Isn’t that the world we’ve always lived in? When was it ever wise for a person to bad-mouth their employer, spread conspiratorial lies about the government or their neighbors or generally act like a fool? I’m old enough to remember when there was no internet to remember forever, but the world wasn’t a free-for-all even back then.
No, the internet has simultaneously created a class of people whom I would call “entrepreneurial exhibitionists” and exposed some garden-variety crankery to mass audiences that didn’t previously exist to consume it.
Don’t overstate the case: Jones still has his platform. Other people shouldn’t be forced into carrying his toxic message.
If they are considered common carriers (the ISPs that is) then what choice do they have? Even nazis can get access to city sewer and water.
My position on that is that the ISPs should not be considered common carriers… which is the lynch-pin of the net neutrality debate and a concept I am adamantly opposed to.
I agree. The uses of bratwurst and cream cheese should be kept private and personal.
Slather a hot dog rather than a bratwurst with the stuff, though, and you’ll become famous in Seattle. I suspect a generous quantity of sauteed onions is what makes the whole thing palatable.
Try substituting Donald Trump for Alex Jones.
We have Bingo!
@Jamie I don’t think anyone’s suggesting private companies should be ‘forced’ to carry podcasts. The OP’s referring to the double standard applied by those companies.
If we all agree that Apple, Facebook, and other tech titans have not become a consequential societal infrastructure, then this discussion is irrelevant.
However, if the flow of mass information is controlled by a handful who’s decisions determine what you and I can access, then we should question what constitutes ‘hate speech’ and why some are banned while others practicing similar infractions are not.
I think we all probably understand this difference, and are more worried about liberal incrementalism. Once it becomes set in the public consciousness that conservative ideas are hate speech, they’ll take the next step and try to make it illegal, and then the horse has left the barn.
Use DuckDuckGo.
Well, I would, except Trump hasn’t told anybody that the airplanes are spreading mind-control drugs.
Yet.
Oh please.
Sarcasmometer: on!
I go to more work to avoid those reporters than anybody I know, and still the news I get is influenced by them far more than I would like.
And when all the “private” phone and cable companies decide in concert to cut off your internet and phone service, there’s always two cans and a string.
What bothers me is less that Facebook etc. control the content.
What bothers me is that billions of my fellow humans are content to flock to Facebook etc.’s content like sheep.
With the federal budget the size it is, our wallets don’t count for much in comparison. The left would be glad for us to be marginalized and go off and play in our inconsequential corner, so that doesn’t deal with the threat to free speech.
But if those people who claim that the social media are private companies that can do whatever they want would also go to work and demand that governments at all levels make a strict separation between themselves and social media, i.e. eliminate all use of those media for government business, then I’d be more willing to take their recommendations seriously.
“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”. “
What constitutes a “safe environment?”
That’s for me to know and you to find out.
So why did the ACLU defend the right of the KKK to march? And did it make the KKK seem sympatheteic to ACLU ideals?
Because the ACLU used to be interested in defending people’s rights… like those of people to assemble in the public square.
But Facebook isn’t the public square. There are no “terms of use” for the actual public square aside from “following the law” or “pulling an appropriate permit” in some cases for large groups.
The State of Michigan has a facebook page. A lot of them, probably.
Michigan’s Calhoun County has several facebook pages for interacting with the public.
The USDA has a facebook page.
All those governmental facebook pages, but here is the count of alleged Ricochet libertarians who have gone to work to demand that their governments sever all ties with partisan political social media companies: Zero (0). These alleged libertarians keep saying we should let the markets work this out, but I have not seem them lift a finger to get government out of it so the markets can do their work.
Not getting doxxed and having crazed gunmen show up to confront you in person might have something to do with creating a safe environment for users.
Basil suggested,
but that only highlights the fact that Trump supporters are a lot less kooky than Jones fans. The vast bulk of Trump supporters are normal people, right?
A following of mostly-normal people seems less likely to egg itself on until someone pulls an Edgar Maddison Welch than Jones fans are. That Welch was a Jones fan itself suggests this.