Apple Removes Infowars from Podcast Directory

I think the totality of my comment makes clear the relevance. In the matter of interpreting historical internet posts and judging whether the speaker should be censored or punished for them, or not, the lines are quite blurred.

Is there not something worth discussing here — as we examine the reactions to Sarah Jeong, Quinn Jones, Alex Jones.... to me these are all part of the same movement. By which I don’t mean necessarily something explicitly planned and orchestrated, but rather shifting public consensus on public discourse, what consequences should be dealt, and how the visceral response in these cases may be weaponized and subverted.

Upon second thought though, perhaps the more apt comparison is Roseanne Barr. I certainly agree that bringing up Jeong did not result any useful dialog on the topic, so I’ll be more careful about that in the future.

Honestly curious - I wonder how many people on here that are arguing in favor of limiting access to Infowars have actually spent time watching/listening to it? Or have they formed opinions based on 'what they are told' it is, or blog headlines etc... I see a lot of that these days. A headline comes along and describes something, and a whole bunch of people accept it as literal truth, without bothering to spend time really learning about an opposing viewpoint.

A great example of this is Jordan Peterson - he's sort of an interesting guy who got caught up in limelight for various political reasons, but the bulk of his lectures are truly interesting to me, looking at Christianity from an evolutionary psychology perspective, etc... but to read the headlines, you'd think he was out there whipping up Nazi sentiment and trying to crush democracy. I see a lot of people cherry picking small sentences taken out of context, and repeating them to mischaracterize an "opponent". See the painfully uneducated criticisms of his discussion about 'enforced monogamy'.

I freely admit I haven't seen a lot of Alex Jones' stuff. I've watched it a bit, out of curiosity. What I saw was colorful and impassioned. I saw a dude getting riled up and speaking more from emotion than critical analysis. That's not my favorite thing, so I haven't spent more time watching it.

I just wonder if he's being given the 'Jordan Peterson' treatment because his views are unpopular, and sometimes disagreeable? I saw at least one comment on here accusing him of inciting violence directly. That's the sort of thing I'm talking about. I wonder if that person actually watched/listened to him incite violence? Or if they were just repeating something they heard somewhere else. Several other comments followed that argued that he'd never done that. Hmm.

Like I said, I don't have a valid opinion on Inforwars itself, because I haven't really spent much time watching it. I wonder if our discussions about a topic like Infowars would be more positive and constructive if more people were able to withhold judgement until they'd actually researched the topic directly.

Or maybe they have? Maybe the dislike is valid from people who have spent time looking into it? It just seems questionable when there is disagreement about basic statements like "he incites violence".

I often wonder if there's a way to talk about this without the C word coming up, as it seems to quickly slide down the rabbit hole of definitions and what the substantive merit of 'censorship' is.

Okay, sure YouTube telling Alex Jones to kick rocks isn't censorship, because only the government has that power.

It used to be a go-to move of mine to remind the holder of that opinion that government (supposedly) exists as a stand-in embodiment of the will of the people. The kind of laws we pass (or allow to pass) are macro-indicators of what we value. Certain amendments are passionately argued as being just that-weirdly, except the first amendment. It gets all sort of special treatment that sometimes (operative word) looks like selective application of the argument of "only government" can curtail speech.

Lately though I'm beginning to wonder if a better argument against "only the government can enforce speech" looks something like questioning the power given to corporations (those private enterprises that are free to curtail speech as much as they like) to suppress or hide what Edward R Murrow called "unpleasant or disturbing information"[1] with how much power and influence these corporations have at large, comparatively speaking at the government level.

Or, said much more succinctly: I'm terrified of the eagerness to treat 'freedom of speech' as something that is universally, and singularly granted by the government-and I think it hides some really painful truths about the speaker that they probably would never admit themselves if pressed.

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[1] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/39004-we-have-currently-a-b...

> it merely politicizes it and dehumanizes those who like the content

There's some pretty dehumanizing content out there, Alex Jones included.

Except they're targeting vulnerable people. To some extent, it's not very different from spammers who do on purpose to write full of typos, so that most "smart enough" people will just delete their emails, not bother investigating/reporting it.