621–630 of 781 posts
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You're really going to delegate censorship decisions to big tech? What's classes as "misinformation" should be our choice as consumers, not theirs. Example: David Icke may be a conspiracy theorist, but banning him is one step closer from Alex Jones towards a censorship nightmare. The slippery slope is 10ft behind and we're cruising down at 100 mph.
“Big tech”? What are we 5?
Spotify giving him 100M in the middle of a crisis seems particularly tone deaf.
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Alex Jones being kicked off those services isn't the same thing. He was spreading major misinformation and targeted harassment at innocent people that were involved in a tragedy. He wasn't "conspired" against. They just told him to go host his hate somewhere else. And stop with these "censorship" BS. Alex Jones has every right to start his own network if he wants and put anything on it. There's nothing stopping him f…
You are conflating two forms of free speech: The right to freedom of speech enshrined in the constitution and the norm of free speech that we all tend to grant each other. Of course YouTube is a private company and can ban and delete whatever they want. But they are breaking a norm and the consequences of that may be worse than the consequences of letting us watch videos of crazy people. I've said it before and I'll…
Not necessarily related to Alex Jones (I am not informed about what happened with him), but I would like to mention that YouTube in the US need not to be politically biased toward content curation, otherwise it becomes possible to sue them directly for defamation based on videos the users upload.
That to say that they can do whatever they want, but currently they are promising not to act with political motivations in mind, so a possible venue of criticism is claiming that they are not upholding this promise.
(again, I have no idea of how this relates to Alex Jones, this is only to mention that it is not only about a freedom of speech issue when it comes to online platforms)
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And when upstream service providers cut him off, he can start his own one of those. When payment processors close all his accounts, he can start one of those. Remember, kids, censorship refers to the government and only the government. Stray far enough onto the wrong side of history, and society may voluntarily decide you're an asshole and show you the door. And that'll be on you.
Maybe smarter people (Zizek?) have already talked about this, but for me the current global political compass is very weird. I consider myself a hard-leftist and yet somehow I sometimes feel ideologically closer, or at least not so estranged from your salt-of-the-earth Trump/Brexit voter than to the current modern western progressives, or what people in the 60s used to call a somewhat similar group: Champagne sociali…
It's literally impossible for me in Europe to discover any american podcast becasue I all the categories for podcasts are full of my native language only content.
Same with music playlists by spotify - they are mix between English and my Native language -> shite.
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And when upstream service providers cut him off, he can start his own one of those. When payment processors close all his accounts, he can start one of those. Remember, kids, censorship refers to the government and only the government. Stray far enough onto the wrong side of history, and society may voluntarily decide you're an asshole and show you the door. And that'll be on you.
I hate Alex Jones, but I have to agree. There's a difference between being kicked out of a restaurant for being an ass, vs being kicked out of EVERY restaurant on Earth for the rest of your life - without due process. These online services aren't small mom/pop shops that you can just replace and patronize another. They are global near-monopolies that you cannot function without. Google isn't just my search provider -…
More fool you. Maybe you should diversify a bit.
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By this logic Bernie Sanders endangered lives because one of his supporters shot Steve Scalise. To my knowledge Jones just said something like Sandy Hook was fake, which is clearly a bad thing to say, but it doesn't threaten people.
Alex hammered his Sandy Hook conspiracy theory to the point of being sued for defamation, and losing ( https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=alex+jones+sandy+hook+lawsu... ). Families were forced to move multiple times, unable to visit graves. When the families faced hardship, Alex doubled down on his claims. He never took a moment to ask his supporters to back off or seek a calmer resolution. Whereas Bernie immediately d…
This is an interesting point, because had he done that it could be used against him as an admission of guilt.
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And when upstream service providers cut him off, he can start his own one of those. When payment processors close all his accounts, he can start one of those. Remember, kids, censorship refers to the government and only the government. Stray far enough onto the wrong side of history, and society may voluntarily decide you're an asshole and show you the door. And that'll be on you.
I hate Alex Jones, but I have to agree. There's a difference between being kicked out of a restaurant for being an ass, vs being kicked out of EVERY restaurant on Earth for the rest of your life - without due process. These online services aren't small mom/pop shops that you can just replace and patronize another. They are global near-monopolies that you cannot function without. Google isn't just my search provider -…
Which is perfectly fine and acceptable
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I'm no longer convinced of that. He should be kept in the light where we can see him and respond. Kept in the outer fringe he will operate in a bubble and the others who are attracted to him will also exist in that bubble. This also means no opposing views to pop that bubble. I actually think this is worse for society overall. The more light shining on him to keep him honest the better.
Deplatforming works. https://icct.nl/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/J.-M.-Berger-Maki... https://www.cc.gatech.edu/~eshwar3/uploads/3/8/0/4/38043045/...
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You are conflating two forms of free speech: The right to freedom of speech enshrined in the constitution and the norm of free speech that we all tend to grant each other. Of course YouTube is a private company and can ban and delete whatever they want. But they are breaking a norm and the consequences of that may be worse than the consequences of letting us watch videos of crazy people. I've said it before and I'll…
> But they are breaking a norm Media companies selectively choosing what to publish has been the norm since forever. My local paper won't publish libellous comments I may write against a particular person whom I hold grudge against. And my local TV station wouldn't show a pornographic commercial that I thought would be hilarious to see. Private media companies ultimately answer to their advertisers and most of them s…
would your paper do that it would become a likely target of defamation. Youtube claims to be a platform and is exempt from that risk.