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.
This isn’t race color or religion. Jones is obnoxious, they are media companies, they are judged by the message on their medium, they didn’t want his message on their medium
So that is why they ban Louis Farrakhan, Griffin, Rosie O’Donnell, Al Sharpton and all of the other nut cases.
Now I understand.
Everybody gets to determine what goes on their property. Your house, your rules. Their harddrives, their rules. And there’s no way to weaken the second without weakening the first. Be careful what you wish for.
Not wishing for anything. Just telling you the way it is.
There are certain businesses that do have restrictions on how they can deny service.
But this is not really about a business denying service. Almost any business can deny service under certain conditions.
However this is a case where a very large group of businesses banded together and banished a particular user of their services, and that they did so by a secret agreement.
This is not like the Red Hen where Sanders could go across the street to another.
This like a person whose economic survival depends on world travel and he finds that he is banned from all airlines, all ocean ship lines, all railroads and all U-Drive-It companies.
And that all banks refuse to recognize his credit card and so advise all of their merchants.
The nut case CEO of FaceBook is already banning people that can't be faulted for anything other than their political convictions.
Jones will end up very rich.
I repeat: I am not wishing for anything. Just telling it the way it is.
It is time for the DOJ to enforce the restraint of trade and anti-monopoly laws. But even if they do not, the offended have the option of the civil courts.
That’s a serious rabbit hole right there . . .
Actually it’s a very small group of very large businesses. And so what. There’s a whole lotta internet out there. Actually it is just like the Red Hen, Jones CAN take his business elsewhere. Facebook is NOT the only social media site, Apple is NOT the only podcast source, Youtube is NOT the only video site.
Jones isn’t going to wind up rich from this. If he sues he will lose. It’s right there in the EULAs, all these places assume ownership of content you put on their site. It is theirs to do with as they please. They can redistribute it, they can sell it, they can cull it for information, and they can delete it. What they did he, or his representatives, AGREED they could do. They are free to ban your content ANYTIME, cause it’s their site, and you agreed to it in the EULA. There is no restraint of trade, and they aren’t monopolies. The DOJ won’t touch this.
Indeed.
What I was trying to say was in a perfect world no business should be required to cater to people. It should be their choice whether to remain in business or not. Alas this is not a perfect world so facebook, twitter should not be allowed silence views opposed to their own.
Facebook and Youtube are infested with violent, obscene and violence-advocating content from ISIS and antifa and street gang rappers. Absolutely anything goes as long as it’s anti-white, anti-American, anti-men, anti-Trump, or if it otherwise springs from the protected criminal class.
If you try to do something about it in court, I guarantee you their defense will be to deny responsibility for user-generated content. They seek to have their cake and eat it too.
Mass media and most big tech were co-opted long ago into the service of the cabal. We cannot count on those corporations to act in their own enlightened self-interest, because they’re controlled by entities with over-arching global objectives.
Taking down Alex Jones is a battle they know they can’t win in the long term, but the exigences of the moment require a splashy controversy to divert public attention away from truly damaging (to them) subjects such as shadow-banning and the FISA application which is soon to be un-redacted.
The fact that these giant corporations are clearly acting against their corporate self-interest and risking mortal damage just illustrates what lengths this cabal will go to in trying to preserve ITSELF.
No. He is a Russian bot.
Name the equal to Google.
And the equal to Facebook.
Without going down the list of those who colluded, there are none.
And there are financial institutions who also have joined in.
As for agreeing to be raped, the law is that a contract based on illegality is not enforceable.
I don't know the answer, but I will bet it is tested in court.
As I said earlier, there is nothing wrong with a company deciding it does not want a customer but there is a lot wrong with a long list of companies who offer similar services colluding to lock a business out of all services that business requires to operate.
And even if it is ruled that there has been no law broken, that does not prevent Jones from demonstrating in civil court that their actions have caused him loss of profits. And the killer will be that it was an intentional act designed to ruin his business.
As for your love for the 2nd Amendment, I doubt that it i s equal to mine and you should be aware that this same
technique is being applied to all of the major players in the gun industry, from the smallest gun store to the big manufacturers.
Some credit card companies are refusing to honor charges made to them and some banks are canceling loan agreements. I have read of several cases where the gun retailer had his charges refused after the customer was gone, leaving the store holding the bag. An empty bag.
At a time when the industry is booming, it is obvious these actions are not due to credit ratings, but due to politics.
Big corporations who control large shares of the market have to be very careful about entering into agreements with their competitors. That can get them in deep doo-doo.
I have said my piece and I am done.
Being top of the heap doesn’t make you a monopoly. You need to have well over 50% of the market share to be a monopoly, and able to exclude others from the market. None of these companies people squawk are monopolies are either. Most of them don’t even top 10% of their market, even the big ones hit less than 20%, and they all have HUNDREDS of competitors and clearly aren’t excluding anybody.
If you agree to be raped that’s not raped, that’s #$%^ed, and is legal. There’s nothing illegal in those EULAs, they’ve been tested multiple times already. It’s their harddrives, they can delete and/or sell anything on them.
The answer is it’s already been tested in court, and you’re wrong.
Not the second amendment, second item in the list. If you can force Facebook to keep content they don’t want on their site then YOU will be forced to keep content you don’t want on your property. People will be able to stick whatever political sign they want in your front yard and you’ll have to suck it up.
You’ve said your piece and it is factually in error, short sighted, and ignores the basic reality of how free speech and property rights interact. Learn.
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