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Twitter bans Alex Jones and Infowars for abusive behaviour

bbc.com

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Re: Twitter bans Alex Jones and Infowars for abusive behaviour

#71

Post by hoosieree »

marcrosoft wrote: post #8
IgorPartola wrote: post #2

Why is Twitter always last to do the right thing? It’s almost like being a publicly traded company robbed them of their last shred of humanity.

"do the right thing" is difficult when you are suppressing free speech on a platform that's supposed to be all about it.

Twitter is "about" advertising; everything else is incidental. Bans only happen if Twitter believes that doing so (a) gains users or (b) prevents users from leaving.

Hate speech, election meddling, threats of nuclear war - it all gets a free pass until it stops generating "impressions".

But they only do it because we (as a group) let them get away with it. If 30% of Twitter users left, the platform wouldn't last a week.

Re: Twitter bans Alex Jones and Infowars for abusive behaviour

#72

Post by dstroot »

modells wrote: post #28

Crossfire, Alex Jones and Gordon Ramsay need their own shouting as a service platform. It sucks for free speech that he got banned because it gives him notoriety and "credibility" in wingnuttery circles. There ought to be other remedies to manipulative behavior for ratings than simply banning.

Wing nuts will spin no matter what.

I matters little if he is banned or simply “censored”

Re: Twitter bans Alex Jones and Infowars for abusive behaviour

#73

Post by yters »

JauntyHatAngle wrote: post #37
yters wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that doesn't help Alex Jones' cause at all, does it? It also seems quite arbitrary when there are plenty of very abusive people on the other end of the spectrum.

What spectrum? he's a conspiracy theorist telling fabrications, he "fits" on the right wing, but no sane conservative would associate with him.

My point is there is a clear bias as to which extremists get banned from Twitter. I'm not saying Alex Jones is representative of the right.

Re: Twitter bans Alex Jones and Infowars for abusive behaviour

#75

Post by natecavanaugh »

This could have happened sooner, but glad Twitter finally had the gumption to do it.

It always amazes me, the conspiracy theorists, on the right in particular. The government is too inefficient to do anything, but can create these elaborate fictions and instantly turn into bastions of loyalty and commitment to a mission that the right can't even seem to muster.

But when you're beliefs are unfalsifiable, and you have no respect for objective truth, just perception and position, anything is possible.

Re: Twitter bans Alex Jones and Infowars for abusive behaviour

#76

Post by alphabettsy »

aestetix wrote: post #68

Given that Jack Dorsey just testified to Congress that he considers Twitter a digital public square, does the "it's a private company" work to defend them on such matters anymore?

Of course it does. No organization private or otherwise has the obligation to provide you a platform. As far as I’m aware the government doesn’t have to provide you a platform, they just can’t deny you your right to have one of your own making or limit your access to one that they provide to others on an arbitrary basis.

Re: Twitter bans Alex Jones and Infowars for abusive behaviour

#77

Post by TheDong »

nyolfen wrote: post #21
Atlantium wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alex Jones is free to express his speech on his own website as much as he pleases. "Free Speech" is not about forcing a company to host content they don't like. That would be against Twitter's freedoms. Alex Jones will still be heard by his audience.

maybe you haven’t noticed, but people have been going after hosting companies and payment processors lately to shut down people they find politically disagreeable. we are increasingly less and less free to host our own speech.

> shut down people they find politically disagreeable

It's not that. Hate-speech is not political. Racism is not political. Morality is not all that political.

Shutting down someone who denies shootings and is abusive to the victim's families and spews racism is not a political move.

People should condemn disgusting hate speech regardless of their political affiliation.

Re: Twitter bans Alex Jones and Infowars for abusive behaviour

#78

Post by yters »

orf wrote: post #44
yters wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol, and the video was all about how the left censors people! Seriously, I never gave Alex Jones much credence before this, but this getting him banned makes him much more credible in my mind.

I see it less about the left censoring people and more about a grown man harassing a journalist by hurling abuse at his face for 10 minutes straight (whilst invading his personal space with a camera), and topping it off with a racist anti semitic dog whistle comment about his eyes. The guy being, for lack of a better word, bullied in the video took it exceptionally well. Different strokes for different folks I guess.

Yes, the bullying was uncalled for.

And what this has done has motivated me to look further into who Alex Jones is, and reversed my opinion back to him being a scumbag. Seems he is only a few ratings away from going full Holocaust denial in his mission to doubt all official accounts of anything.

Re: Twitter bans Alex Jones and Infowars for abusive behaviour

#79

Post by yters »

chrischen wrote: post #69
yters wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol, and the video was all about how the left censors people! Seriously, I never gave Alex Jones much credence before this, but this getting him banned makes him much more credible in my mind.

Just because you disagree with Twitter, it doesn't mean you have to start agreeing with Alex :/. That is a logical fallacy.

It's not just about disagreeing with Twitter, but the ban fits into his diatribe.

Re: Twitter bans Alex Jones and Infowars for abusive behaviour

#80

Post by TheDong »

LocalH wrote: post #56
nyolfen wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

maybe you haven’t noticed, but people have been going after hosting companies and payment processors lately to shut down people they find politically disagreeable. we are increasingly less and less free to host our own speech.

Every bit of it is done under the assumption that "freedom of speech only applies to the government ", which is quite technically true. However, I don't really see how it would have been possible for the authors of the Constitution (since Twitter is a US company, and Alex Jones is a US citizen, it's within scope) to foresee that the greatest danger to freedom of speech would not be the government. Honestly, we're pro…

> Honestly, we're probably at the point in our existence as a nation where we have the least freedom of speech

I think McCarthyism would like to have a word with you.

People have always been persecuted socially for socially unacceptable beliefs. If you said "I want to eat babies" 100 years ago, your friends wouldn't associate with you, just as they wouldn't now.

100 years ago you could say "I think people of the same gender as me are attractive" or "I wanna do it in the butt" and also be persecuted by your friends, though now both of those phrases are unlikely to see you condemned.

You can say more total things today without being persecuted I posit, however social persecution has been made into a far more public affair with the advent of social media and the 24/7 for-profit news cycle.

I think your speech is more free, but we hear more stories of social consequences due to the nature of news and social media, which creates biases and persecution complexes.

I admit I don't have numbers and facts to back it up, but neither do you have any evidence for your argument.

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