Twitter Suspends Alex Jones for Seven Days Over Tweet

Why is he entitled to my platform and resources, exactly? I own stock in Twitter, why is he allowed to use my money for his voice?

Let him use your property as you see fit, by all means, but don't insist others do the same.

But of course you're equating Twitter with the State or a "voice" which is ridiculous. Please stop.

> The first amendment is scoped to the government because the constitution is scoped to the government.

Yes and no. It's true that he Constitution is scoped to government, so if there was a free speech principle that was not it might have been limited in the Constitution.

But the free speech principle actually underlying the Constitutional text is also scoped to government in that involves and relies on the freedom of all actors except government to choose what speech to make, endorse, support, relay, or associate themselves with to promote the competition of ideas and the success of good ones and elimination of bad ones, on the concept that the former will be more likely to be relayed and the latter will die out from failure to convince people to participate in spreading them.

If platforms of overwhelming reach and intrusiveness actively relay content blindly, it makes it much harder for the winnowing process to work.

I agree that it is and I'm not arguing it isn't made up of people. It isn't the only thing it is made up of though. Its also made up of news coverage, editorial, opinions, bias, and agendas/direction as some examples. I'm sure there are more examples makes up media but these are just some I can think of. These things of course are created by people but there is a difference between attacking the people and attacking a platform/object or ideas. I can't speak for him (nor would I want to), but I think that is the question of what he means. It looks like Twitter decided it was inciting violence toward people and/or violated their rules and suspended him.

Correct, they can't be attacked with literal guns, which means it could be a figure of speech. Could being the keyword since he is the only one who could settle that debate.

Lets assume it wasn't a figure of speech. I'm with you in that I don't condone if he calling for physical attacks on people be it with a gun or some other physical means. I don't condone or agree with that in general regardless of what side its on.

From the article: "calling for supporters to get their “battle rifles” ready against media and others,"

battle rifle is in part taken out of context of what he said in the video and is editorialized to an extent to paint it in a way that could be construed as him calling to attack.

Taken out of the video with a little more context: "Because they're coming...This is it... So people need to have battle rifles ready at their bedsides..." https://twitter.com/mmfa/status/1029477795561463808

I didn't put everything in that quote, but linked the video where I listen to it from so you can hear it in whole. If you take it in those terms he isn't calling for attacks or acts of violence, but is saying they are coming for you and you need to be ready to defend yourself. You can argue that defending yourself could become violent, but I see defense a little different then the aggressor.

By the way appreciate the discussion we having.

That claim would appear to be a lie. I decided to go get the other side of the story and watch the actual video in question, which can be found embedded in this article on Jones' website:

https://www.infowars.com/new-york-times-media-matters-lie-cl...

This is the first time I ever watched or listened to Alex Jones so I have no dog in this fight. However, I do not trust outlets like the New York Times to tell the truth about conservatives who are being shut down online. Apparently my lack of trust was correct.

There are two aspects of what Jones said that make me say the NYT is lying:

He starts by outlining the people he's talking (really, ranting) about, namely commies/the reds/antifa etc. Then he says people should move against them "politically, economically, judiciously, legally, criminally" which is pretty garbled, but I don't think he meant criminally as in literally "break the law" because he prefixed it with "legally" and "judiciously". I suspect he meant "via the criminal justice system".

The reference to battle rifles comes much later in the video and it's in the exact opposite sense of what the NYT is implying. He says:

And they're coming. And they're coming. They think they can really take down America. And ... this is it. So, people need to have their battle rifles and everything ready by their bedsides, and you've gotta be ready, because the media are so sophisticated in their deception [snip]

Having them "ready by your bedside" shows very clearly this is meant in the sense of defence not unprovoked attacks and moreover defence against the people who read the media not the media itself. Jones doesn't seem to be arguing that journalists will literally be coming for people in their sleep.

It's rather unfortunately ironic that the NYT's coverage of a video in which Jones claims the media is "coming for us" and "they're so sophisticated in their deception" seems to prove him right - they are using sophisticated deception to whip up a mob that is trying to "get" him.