Posted on 08/07/2018 5:39:15 PM PDT by Behind the Blue Wall
No, I am not going to start this post with a disclaimer about how much I personally dislike Alex Jones and Infowars. No, I don't believe everything he says, anymore than I believe CNN or any other outlet, but I enjoy hearing a wide variety of perspectives. I also believe that a lot of important political activities happen behind closed doors, and I'm curious to find out as much as I can about the most important of them, and that apparently makes me a "conspiracy theorist". Further, having watched a fair amount of Alex Jones over the years, he has as good a handle on the nature of some of those activities as anyone else out there, particularly with respect to those activities that contribute to quite a bit of human suffering in the world -- unnecessary wars, corruption in government and industry, political fomenting of violence. So yeah, I AM a fan of Alex Jones, even if I don't believe in or agree with everything he says.
That said, even were I not a fan of Alex Jones, if say, for example, the same thing were to be happening to the Young Turks, I would consider this act of censorship one of the most egregious moves of the Left in recent years. First, it was obviously a coordinated politically-motivate event, not directly precipitated by anything that Jones actually did or said, but instead by pressure from the Left, the Deep State and/or the Democratic Party, particularly with the midterm elections approaching.
Second, they aren't really private companies. They all have varying levels of direct connections to the Deep State, and they all enjoy statutory protections from liability as platform not content providers as well as anti-trust laws. But even if they were completely private, their monopolistic position over the public square arguably subjects them to the restrictions of the 1st Amendment, as laid down by the SCOTUS in Marsh v. Alabama, where the court held that the First Amendment prohibited a company-owned town from excluding religious expression in the public square.
Third, the vagueness of the basis for the censorship fails to lay down a standard that can be applied in a non-discriminatory fashion. There's no legal definition of "hate speech" in the United States (thankfully), so it's a completely arbitrary and capricious standard upon which to exclude someone from a platform. We saw that made painfully obvious recently when Candace Owens tweeted the exact same words as Sarah Leong, replacing "white" with "black" or "Jewish" and instead of being hired onto the Editorial Board of the New York Times, she had her Twitter account suspended for violating their terms of service.
I know that many on the right are reluctant to get behind a push to regulate private companies, but I think the calls to regulate them as public utilities miss the point. They can stay completely private and as unregulated in every other way other way that they are currently, except that they should be prohibited from violating the free speech rights of their users, applying the same, well established and thought-out First Amendment principles that apply to government. First Amendment public square cases are rare even as applied to government; it wouldn't be a highly regulated circumstance, with tons of reports, rules, etc. In fact, I'm certain that it would take them fare more money and bureaucracy to apply these arbitrary and capricious standards of censorship than it would for them to just not do so, and restrict themselves to preventing illegal activities only, as defined by the First Amendment.
I hope that we can effectively respond to this; the idea of allowing certain voices to be virtually disappeared by the leftist-controlled technology industry is terrifying. 1984 would prove prescient, just a few decades early in the West.
...There’s no legal definition of “hate speech” in the United States (thankfully), so it’s a completely arbitrary and capricious standard upon which to exclude someone from a platform....
But, there will be and an accompanying prison term for those who use it when Democrats return to power.
Wasn’t Alex Jones a thing before any of those other things were things?
This is an act of desperation on their part, a last-ditch effort to save the destruction of America via the “open borders” Hillary was going to bring about.
If we let them take out Alex, the rest of the dominoes will fall, and FR is one of those dominoes.
There are some things that are privately owned but still public.
Food serving companies, transportation companies, health care facilities, and many others.
Clearly google, Face book and twitter fit the same shoe.
The proprietor here is a big and magnanimous person. I appreciate FR in the extreme.
I do think it’s time for FR to officially support AJ / IW.
Something has happened that is bigger than the disagreements.
Obviously, this is what I think, and I am only a guest.
Thank you FR for allowing me to state this.
If we don’t fight for Jones, we will deserve the loss of other so-called “moderate” YT and FB voices in the future. These legacy internet portholes are essentially public utilities. They should be split up or regulated and users should have constitutional protections... Period.
Well-stated. BUMP!
Well said, friend...Send it also to Rush and post to PDJT’s website...DON’T laugh they read a lot and may use it...
Good point.
Trump should Pinned Tweet these, it would create a firestorm :-)
These are the best competitors to Twitter/GooG..etc
Recorded shows https://www.bitchute.com/channel/rongibson/
Follow him here: https://gab.ai/RealAlexJones
Infowars 24/7 livestream here: https://gab.ai/tv/watch/6671
I’m with U!
Everyone you listed there has the right to refuse service. The only exception is life saving at medical. The simple fact of the matter is all of these companies have acted within their rights and if Jones don’t like it he can work with the entire rest of the internet having been cut off only from a small corner. Really, everybody needs to get over it. They’re wrong. And frankly, they don’t want to be right. If these companies can be forced to keep people then ALL the internet companies (include FR) have to keep everybody.
Actually, one of the Young Turks, Jimmy Dore, fights the Democrat/Media fixation on Russia, saying it doesn’t matter to the average person in the street.
there is more info wars on you tube then before....people are opening accounts and posting his content....LOL ….also some youtubers are live streaming his or posting episodes...LOL this is going to get crazy.
The social media companies have skated by libel laws by saying they are a platform, open to all points of view. Now that they have abandoned any pretense of that being true, they must be held to the same standards as all other publishers are. And that is exactly what is going to happen...
They will regret this choice, but it was their own decision to exercise editorial control, which removes the ability to hide behind a “hold harmless” claim.
Exactly, defending his free speech is defending our free speech
” but I enjoy hearing a wide variety of perspectives”
Can you get to https;//www.infowars.com
??
If so, they are not being censored.
Which destroys your screed.
I very respectfully disagree. I do not want the government telling private companies what speech they must allow or, put differently, mandating free speech. And I don’t want American Hero Jim Robinson told by the government who he is allowed to ban.
I would prefer that this be solved by competition. Alex Jones or anyone else is free to come up with his own Facebook or Twitter. If the public perceives that these companies’ private censorship is too heavy-handed,
they will demand alternatives.
The utility analogy makes little sense to me. There is only one set of telephone poles on your street, only one set of gas or water pipes.... No comparison to Facebook or Twitter.
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