Every great advancement looks like a crackpot idea until it doesn't. The beauty of a public space is that anyone can bring their soapbox and share their beliefs, that most minority beliefs are wrong doesn't detract from the value of accessible minority beliefs.
Alex Jones is a crackpot–but banning him from Facebook might be a bad idea
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Re: Alex Jones is a crackpot–but banning him from Facebook might be a bad idea
#12No it's not. Dangerous people shouldn't be allowed platforms. You have to make it harder and harder for them to get a following.
Obvious question: who decides who the dangerous people are? You?
Re: Alex Jones is a crackpot–but banning him from Facebook might be a bad idea
#13well, here are the stakes.
de-platforming emboldens and somewhat substantiates their narrative that they are being persecuted. peripheral followers may view this as a confirmation of what they have said, and draw closer to them, following them to a new platform.
NOT de-platforming them allows their repeated publications to reach a wider audience. gradually, peripheral followers are attracted anyway, and the loyal followers may become more zealous over time.
the real problem here is that both of these possibilities assume that people are 100% passive and 100% fixed in terms of their susceptibility to propaganda or non-mainstream theories.
the sad thing is that alex jones is not remotely persuasive to anyone with a modicum of critical thinking. the debate around whether de-platforming is useful or not is the wrong debate. the debate should be about how we can make the public more critical and more endowed with the ability to think! an intellectually vicious public is not a public that cares much about whether alex jones is allowed to blather because the blathering has little impact even if it is in a public area.
the elitists will jump in and say that the public will never be able to think for themselves. but it's to the advantage of those in power to never try to make the public intelligent and critical. we haven't even tried.
Re: Alex Jones is a crackpot–but banning him from Facebook might be a bad idea
#14No it's not. Dangerous people shouldn't be allowed platforms. You have to make it harder and harder for them to get a following.
Platforms are more dangerous than people. Especially when they get to decide who's dangerous and who's allowed what.
I mean- that’s one opinion. Any evidence that that’s the case?
Re: Alex Jones is a crackpot–but banning him from Facebook might be a bad idea
#15No it's not. Dangerous people shouldn't be allowed platforms. You have to make it harder and harder for them to get a following.
Indeed. It's long been rather clear that giving crackpots a platform is very different from shining a spotlight on their crackpottery, and the last decade or so have confirmed it even further, platforming crackpots and handing them ways to reach a wider audience is a net detriment to society.
Agreed. Also, freedom of speech doesn’t mean unlimited rights to all broadcast venues for speech.
If these guys want to publish stuff on their own website, no one is stopping them.
Re: Alex Jones is a crackpot–but banning him from Facebook might be a bad idea
#16No it's not. Dangerous people shouldn't be allowed platforms. You have to make it harder and harder for them to get a following.
Obvious question: who decides who the dangerous people are? You?
We should obviously let the current President or House Majority leader decide. Nothing bad could happen.
Re: Alex Jones is a crackpot–but banning him from Facebook might be a bad idea
#17I believe the term being looked for is "martyr". Being banned from prominent platforms in a country which professes to believe in free speech (professes, because there's a bunch of caveats) is only going to boost the signal. This (in concert with the banning of certain DNS entries) is going to bite us in the ass. Of course, what else are we to do?
It is free expression for the privately run platforms to ban him.
Re: Alex Jones is a crackpot–but banning him from Facebook might be a bad idea
#18No it's not. Dangerous people shouldn't be allowed platforms. You have to make it harder and harder for them to get a following.
> Dangerous people shouldn't be allowed platforms
MLK was a borderline enemy of the state in the 1950s because he petitioned for equal rights. Who gets to decide who is "dangerous"?
Re: Alex Jones is a crackpot–but banning him from Facebook might be a bad idea
#19> Booting someone like Jones from Facebook or YouTube altogether could easily turn him into a martyr among his paranoid fans.
This would be significantly less of a problem if he didn't somehow have a legion of paranoid fans ready to consider him a martyr. Wonder how they got there.
This article understates Jones' Sandy Hook activities, by the way: the parents of one of the victims have moved seven times because their address keeps getting published to those paranoid fans, and they now live hundreds of miles from their child's grave. In response to the lawsuit, Jones has claimed that the parents are public figures because of their involvement in gun control politics, so he can say what he likes about them to those paranoid fans.
Re: Alex Jones is a crackpot–but banning him from Facebook might be a bad idea
#20Not that I agree with it but the safe strategy for any big company is to ban anything that seems risky since 95% of content most users consume is benign which is what keeps them on the platform.
If social media platforms have devolved into only cat memes and sponsored clothing shoots, that's pretty disappointing for the human race. While crackpots like Alex Jones are objectionable to all people of sense, I don't trust Facebook/Twitter/Et Al to act as arbitrators of free speech.
They wouldn't have to be the arbitrators if there was a free market for social networking with different instances that set their own rules.
The real issue is that Facebook is a publisher only when it benefits them, and a dumb pipe all other times. Either regulate it like a phone company, and force free speech on the platform, or force interoperability so Facebook alternatives can have a level playing field.