(I’ve highlighted a word here, in case the small font made it read as “legal.”)
I’m not sure why you’re asking me for legal advice—I’ve already written “IANAL”—but I’ll play along.
If I ask you whether you want cream or sugar in your coffee, are you allowed to just answer ‘No’? I asked whether Jones’ crime was a felony or misdemeanor.
I don’t recall where I saw this op-ed, but it made a good point.
The major social media platforms are going to have to spell out explicit standards that apply to everyone and devote energy and money to policing themselves in a consistent fashion, or they’ll wind up careening from crisis to crisis every time enough hell is raised about the next Alex Jones. Sources perceived as far left will not be immune from campaigns started by their political enemies.
I mentioned the following in the Jones thread but it sort of slid by unnoticed. One of the Jones-banners (Apple, I think) primly said that it welcomed all opinions, but that they had to be expressed in a properly respectful way.
Really? Things are going to get awful quiet in electron-land if that gets enforced.
Which pretty much makes your Maxine Waters question irrelevant. So what was your point again?
So, I thought I’d link to this YouTube video from one of the channels I follow, America Uncovered (it’s by Chris Chapel, the guy who also does China Uncensored): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pFIlOS2hGs&feature=em-uploademail
Basically, he is talking about this very issue. His take is close to mine, FWIW. While Alex Jones and Inforwars isn’t a very sympathetic victim and easy to just say, yeah, he should be banned, it’s probably not a good thing these tech companies can arbitrarily enforce their own rules when they want to or not, if they choose not too. I think the quote from Aggressive Progressives sums it up (to paraphrase): The solution to bad speech in a free society isn’t censorship, but instead it’s more speech countering the bad speech.
Anyway, it’s not a long video if you want to check it out. It’s his new channel that talks about issues in the US.
Boy, talk about ideas that haven’t aged well over the last few years…
I disagree…I think it’s a timeless idea.
Really?
Lately, I’ve seen two communities (one far more sophisticated than the other) full of people dedicated to rational thought, logic, reason, physical evidence, etc. become increasingly antisocial, racist, misogynistic, and intolerant by following what they thought was the truth. I’ve seen fake news become more popular than real news on social media, to the point where our social media had to stand up and say, “Hang on, we have a responsibility to do something about this”. I’ve seen said fake news aid the rise of Donald Trump, a president who lies to the public the way my grandma pisses - 6-9 times a day - and his teeming masses of joyful supporters who seem to have just as little interest in the truth as they have for public decency. I saw the ascendancy of the anti-vax movement, the death of meaningful action on climate change, and more.
When it comes to liberal ideas, the “marketplace of ideas” is one of those ideas which simply has not held up at all. The problem with this idea is that sometimes, the truth just does not win. Sometimes it loses - if not permanently, then long enough and hard enough for it to be fundamentally unfixable. And what do you do then? What do you do when it doesn’t matter what is and is not true if the effects are any less obvious than when you run a red light and get smacked by a bus? Do you just give up?
If we’ve learned nothing else in the last three years, we should have learned this.
[ul]
[li]When truth and facts run counter to what people want to believe, they lose.[/li]
[li]When truth and facts make people uncomfortable, they lose.[/li]
[li]When truth and facts are harder to accept than simple, false explanations, they lose.[/li]
[li]When truth and facts would, if accepted, force people to change their behaviors in ways the won’t enjoy, they lose.[/li]
[li]When truth and facts can be countered by a national media network that manufactures its own, they lose.[/li][/ul]
We can’t count on the truth winning on its own merits. Not anymore.
I should add that this is not an argument for silencing, censoring, blocking or shutting down the bullshit purveyors. I’m just saying we have to call out their bullshit at every opportunity and do whatever it takes to drag their bullshit motivations into the sunlight. It’s not enough to just counter bullshit with truth.
Again, I disagree. I think that, eventually, the truth wins out. As long as those trying to counter the lies or falsehoods don’t give up. I look at the 9/11 Truth movement as a prime example. Sure, there are still a lot of folks who believe that horseshit…but over time it’s faded. You will never, ever convince everyone of some truth, regardless. My dad, for instance, will never be convinced that marijuana is less harmful than alcohol or cigarettes, no matter what proofs I give him. He is absolutely convinced it’s a conspiracy to allow every drug all the time, and that the outcome of legalization will be a nation chocked fully of heroin addicts (yeah…makes no real sense), or people going crazy from reefer madness or some such horseshit. You will never convince the Alex Jones’s of the world that their crazy conspiracy crap is, well, crazy. But over time you can continue to pound the real information.
I look at Trump and his message and how he tries to control and spin that message. Then I look at folks like John Oliver and that, to me, is EXACTLY what it means to not try and stifle bad speech but to counter with more speech. If you watched the video I linked too, the end of it is where Chris says that the bannings by Facebook, Youtube and the rest have had the unexpected consequence of making Alex MORE popular, of having his Infowars website going up in hits and subscriptions. I think that this is the real effect of trying to stifle speech…it will become a martyr it never was before and folks will check it out that wouldn’t…and you’ve lost your ability to directly counter the horseshit, since now it’s silo’ed into it’s own space completely separated from the broader discussion.
While I am all for social media companies controlling the content within their domain, I do fear that doing so will result in silos, as XT mentions. That we will end up with the “you have your sources for news, information, data, and truth, and I have mine” mentality. We already have that today with some medial outlets, who have embraced the silo.
It’s so clear as to be practically a black-and-white distinction!
Death threats and armed workplace invasion are crimes.
Telling politicians “Hey, you! Get lost, asshole!” is not a crime.
Come back when you understand the distinction.
Twitter has suspended Alex Jones for a week.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-15/twitter-temporarily-restricts-infowars-alex-jones-account
Right-wing lies are pushed by the Koch brothers, Trump, FoxNews, and the entire Republican Party. Who was pushing the “9/11 Truth Movement”? Not George Soros, not even Michael Moore; it was just nutcases.
Have you forgotten the guy who showed up a pizza parlor, egged on by Trump’s National Security Adviser and his son, to free the child sex slaves? Did Obama’s National Security Adviser push 9/11 Truth??
What percentage of Trump supporters do you think watch John Oliver? An approximate number is good enough.
What percentage of left wingers watch Fox News? And why would it make any difference? It has nothing to do with my point. Re-read what I said…you can’t convince the faithful, regardless of who the faithful are. If that’s your plan, that everyone is going to be in lockstep with The Truth™, then you will be sadly disappointed. However, if the point is to fight lies and ignorance, that can and has been done. Sometimes it simply takes longer than we all thought…
One upon a time MySpace had the monopoly on social media until Facebook stole its thunder. And there’s nothing to prevent another potential big player from wiping Facebook’s dominance (unless Facebook attempts to buy out all potential competitors, then we’re getting into antitrust issues). Didn’t Zuckerberg launch FB from his Harvard dorm room? It’s not like it’s exceptionally hard for someone with decent coding skills to create another social media site that can capture a significant portion of FB users. I mean, wasn’t Tumblr Facebook’s main competition for a while? Starting your own telecom company however, isn’t simple or feasible for the overwhelming majority of people, even for those who are well-off and well educated.
I will concede that you do have a point about YouTube. Even before YouTube video-sharing sites weren’t popular, certainly not anywhere near the extent that YouTube even at its earliest stage was. Vimeo and Dailymotion were just as irrelevant to the larger public then as they are now. YouTube really centralized video sharing.
Stefan Molyneux suspended for 2 weeks from youtube and may be on the verge of a ban
This one is definitely a case to keep an eye on. As much as right wingers like Molyneux cry wolf all the time, I think the issue is he may have been targeted and not about serious TOS violations.
Molyneux is an anti-Semite.
Let me know if I’m mischaracterizing you here.
Your position is that the correct way to fight misinformation, and the negative effects misinformation has when exclusively consumed by 40% of the populace, is to ensure that counterarguments to the misinformation are equally available to the populace.
You recognize that 40% of the population exclusively consumes information sources that will not allow counterarguments.
Am I good so far?