23 ms·

Apple Removes Infowars from Podcast Directory

223 points by uptown 8y ago

tazjin 8y ago
With Apple, Facebook and Spotify doing this (and lots of reporting about it) I'd say ... cue the Streisand effect. Sometimes it's better to just not do anything, but I guess that doesn't get you PR points.
- dublinben 8y ago
  I think the Streisand Effect is overstated. Apple has nearly two thirds of the podcast market.[0] Together with the other platforms that have removed these podcasts, upwards of three quarters of podcast listeners will no longer be able to easily access or discover this content. Starving this show of its largest audiences is more likely to cripple it, not galvanize it. [0] https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-market-share-of-podcast-apps https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-market-share-of-podcast-ap...
- vanderZwan 8y ago
  Eh, no. The Streisand effect applies to getting attention to something that wouldn't have otherwise, and gaining momentum because of it. This is about providing a platform to someone who willfully spreads lies. There has been research into the effects of Reddit clamping down on hate speech a few years ago. Guess what: not giving assholes a platform actually works. It's still a cesspool but less so than it used to be.
  - furyg3 8y ago
    Got a link, I'd (genuinely) like to see this research!
    - samfriedman 8y ago
      That would be this paper from Georgia Tech. http://comp.social.gatech.edu/papers/cscw18-chand-hate.pdf http://comp.social.gatech.edu/papers/cscw18-chand-hate.pdf
  - tonysdg 8y ago
    Could you link if you have it? I'm genuinely curious. I'm also suspicious -- what stops the aforementioned individuals from finding another website/forum? I seem to remember hearing that after Reddit closed down several of the more unsavory/flat-out-awful subreddits, a large contingent of those users moved to another site (can't remember which though). FWIW, I support clamping down on hate speech, but only if it's accompanied by some form of education (otherwise, you're just hiding the problem).
    - foolrush 8y ago
      Social science research indicates that it isn't about "hiding" hate directed speech, but rather to consider the impact on the victims of such speech. That is, when one is able to say the word "hiding", it is spoken from the position of privilege; it is a very real existential threat to those impacted. Constricting hate speech has a notable impact on the dignity and well-being of those impacted[1]. [1] EG: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13504630.2015.1128810?src=recsys&journalCode=csid20 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13504630.2015.11...
      - wycs 8y ago
        Do you care at all about free speech? You are willing kill this beautiful freedom we have for that?
        glenda 8y ago
        Free speech refers to the freedom to not be thrown in jail by the government for things you have said that fall under protected speech. It has nothing to do with being allowed to post anything on any website you’d like.
        wycs 8y ago
        Ok. So you don’t support laws against hate speech?
        8y ago
  - foolrush 8y ago
    The inevitable discussion about the need for hate speech laws in the USA is lurking. Sadly, the USA had a chance at them a while back, but I believe it was Justice Scalia who struck it down?
  - staunch 8y ago
    > Guess what: not giving assholes a platform actually works. In other words, these platforms are powerful enough to silence people. Today, it's people you agree with silencing. Tomorrow, it may be people you disagree with silencing. It's not a good thing that massively powerful private companies are deciding what speech should be allowed and what should not. The law doesn't require it, but as users, we should demand that these major platforms are open to everyone, not just the ones that the majority currently approves of.
    - KozmoNau7 8y ago
      Who gets to define what is a "major platform"? Their platform, their rules, within the confines of the law.
  - TooBrokeToBeg 8y ago
    > The Streisand effect applies to getting attention to something that wouldn't have otherwise, and gaining momentum because of it. This is about providing a platform to someone who willfully spreads lies. Those aren't orthogonal. They seem to both be true in this case (what "it is about" is subjective).
- mgbmtl 8y ago
  I've seen Infowars regularly mocked in mainstream comedy TV shows. Shining light on Infowars misinformation / ill intent is probably a good thing. Adding barriers to passive consumption, by vulnerable (misinformed) people, is probably also a good thing. It's not being censored/outlawed, just made slightly less convenient to access. Fake news are a threat to democracy.
  - jessriedel 8y ago
    "It's not outlawed, just inconvenient to access" is more than enough influence to dramatically (~90%) shape what information is consumed with no natural truth-seeking mechanism beyond your trust in the people imposing the inconvenience. There's a reason it's illegal for the government to do this, and we should demand that neutral platform organizations like Apple, Facebook, or a university don't do it either (which is not the same thing as saying that they should be forced by law to do it).
    - DanAndersen 8y ago
      >and we should demand that neutral platform organizations like Apple, Facebook, or a university don't do it either (which is not the same thing as saying that they should be forced by law to do it) What sorts of demands would be listened to or have any chance of being effective if not having the weight of force of law behind it?
      - internet_user 8y ago
        Might require another constitutional amendment.
      - jessriedel 8y ago
        The same thing that induces universities to behave reasonably well as neutral platforms. It is a combination of pressure from public esteem and the moral principles of the university (both the principles of individual administrators/professors and the principles explicitly endorsed by the organization as a whole). And all of that is interlinked. It is an awful misconceptions that the only way to effectively get other people to act differently is with law. It is lazy and leads to unnecessary use of force. Most things that are bad are not illegal (e.g., lying to your friends, being mean, abandoning your parents, cheating on your spouse) and yet occur at much lower rates than they would without the many extra-legal mechanisms that keep them in check.
- zouhair 8y ago
  I totally disagree. I am sure cutting these dangerous people from the mainstream website will slowly kill them.
- ndespres 8y ago
  Do you really think that this action is going to bring more attention to Infowars? I really doubt whether the Streisand Effect is a factor here. Anyone who didn't know what Infowars is already won't be interested in this news.
- wycs 8y ago
  deleted.
  - pjc50 8y ago
    > Only extremists on the right will be censored. This is obviously not true. Apple has had a ridiculous "no politics" policy on the App Store for years, censoring the anti-war left. https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/538kan/apple-just-banned-the-app-that-tracks-us-drone-strikes-again https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/538kan/apple-just...
    - wycs 8y ago
      That’s pretty terrible.
  - krk83je 8y ago
    It’s also factually true that human violence has enabled certain bloodlines the opportunity to advance, while hindering others. I’m leery of people who cite one scientific data point alone. It smells like an appeal to authority. And you’re throwing up a strawman with your rhetoric about blocking a communist podcast. Alex Jones himself has said in court it’s an act and he’s just an entertainer. Sometimes the act gets old and shows get canceled. Is that censorship? In this case the show isn’t even canceled. Just removed from one of dozens of podcast directories. It’s still findable at the source. Your complaint is really about the creation of a slight inconvenience. There’s no real censorship here.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
- mikestew 8y ago
  Lots of people don’t know where Barbara Streisand lives (despite the Streisand effect, I don’t). It would have to be a pretty deep cave you live in to not have heard of Alex Jones, especially if you stand any chance of enjoying his show.
- garg 8y ago
  I don't think the Streisand effect applies in this case. The site has repeatedly broken the terms of usage of all of these platforms. The ban should therefore appear reasonable to people. The Streisand effect applies when the attempt is to hide or censor information for no reason other than hiding information.
- creaghpatr 8y ago
  I'm most worried about Spotify, who already plays kingmaker for upcoming artists. They could use Twitter-like 'shadowban' techniques take punitive measures against 'bad' music artists. Because isn't there a lot of music that plausibly contains 'hate speech' or 'incitements of violence'? Not saying they will, because they haven't indicated that yet, but they are working with the extremist SPLC to craft a policy around 'hate' content and 'hateful' content (the latter to presumably include content that isn't hate content but could be misconstrued as hate content, perhaps?). https://newsroom.spotify.com/2018-05-10/spotify-announces-new-hate-content-and-hateful-conduct-public-policy/ https://newsroom.spotify.com/2018-05-10/spotify-announces-ne...
  - pjc50 8y ago
    > extremist SPLC No.
    - nailer 8y ago
      Yes. The SPLC put reform Muslim Maajid Nawaz and anti-FGM campaigner Ayaan Hirsi Ali on their list of hate speech advocates until threatened with legal action by Nawaz. Right leaning source: http://dailycaller.com/2018/04/19/splc-maajid-nawaz-muslim-extremist/ http://dailycaller.com/2018/04/19/splc-maajid-nawaz-muslim-e... Left leaning source: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/24/opinion/southern-poverty-law-center-liberals-islam.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/24/opinion/southern-poverty-...
  - maze-le 8y ago
    Already happening: http://www.metalsucks.net/2017/09/14/infant-annihilator-banned-from-spotify-for-allegedly-being-offensive/ http://www.metalsucks.net/2017/09/14/infant-annihilator-bann... That was the moment when I cancelled my spotify account. Oh and to be sure, they don't need to "working with the extremist SPLC" to do that. This ban has more to do with some sort of pseudo moral outrage, wich the right is quite capable of on their own.
- untog 8y ago
  Nah, the Streisand effect only applies when increased attention on a subject would result in a negative result. "Barbera Streisand wants photos of her beachfront mansion removed because she thinks it's an invasion of her privacy" reflects badly on Barbera Stresiand. "Apple is removing Infowars because it traffics in outright lies" reflects badly on Infowars.
- satsuma 8y ago
  arguably having infowars be high up on the "most downloaded" podcast list would be worse. especially if they categorize themselves as news or politics instead of entertainment.
olivermarks 8y ago
important and accurate subhead: 'Move thrusts tech giant into the debate over censoring content on internet platforms'
- sp332 8y ago
  Apple has been censoring podcasts all along. This debate might be about technicalities in the Terms of Service but it's not about censorship.
theseatoms 8y ago
I used to think the name "Infowars" was melodramatic, but I guess not.
nailer 8y ago
FB has also removed Infowars' page. https://www.facebook.com/InfoWars-80256732576/ https://www.facebook.com/InfoWars-80256732576/ FB doesn't cite a specific post (eg, the implication that some of the school shooting victims were part of a hoax), which is a pity.I dislike Infowars, but I like a consistently applied ToS: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dj6T8ppXoAIqbXB.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dj6T8ppXoAIqbXB.jpg 'Glorifying violence' is vague - should all police/military/veterans/people who celebrate July 4 be banned from Facebook? How is 'glorifying violence' treated the same as 'graphic violence'? One is praising violent action, the other is depicting it. They are clearly not the same thing.
- sp332 8y ago
  They removed four pages https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/08/enforcing-our-community-standards/ https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/08/enforcing-our-community... and they mention that the posts were made in the last week, so that probably narrows it down?
philjackson 8y ago
What if we find out the government were making the frogs gay?
- iamdave 8y ago
  As an Austinite (well now Iowan) who grew up with plenty of Alex Jones on the airwaves, it's stuff like this I'll actually-in a morbid kind of way-really miss. I suppose you have to be exposed to it long enough to grow numb to it but Alex Jones became a source of entertainment as I grew older just to see what wackiness he'd come up with next. Gay frogs still manages to put a grin on my face even on my most stressful days. It was almost a contest between he and the considerably less inflammatory but still uniquely weird John Aielli. This isn't, nor should be read as a defense of Alex Jones by any sane person-but an acknowledgement of the absurd. I mean come on. Gay frogs? You gotta admit--it's chuckleworthy.
  - ModernMech 8y ago
    > I suppose you have to be exposed to it long enough to grow numb to it That's why most of us consider Alex Jones to be a joke, but the reason Apple and Spotify are making this move is because many people, exposed long enough to Alex Jones, start to believe what Alex Jones has to say.
    - iamdave 8y ago
      Oh, heard, understood and acknowledged. I get that completely (don't know that I agree that it's a good reason to take him off the air). My story wasn't meant to suggest this isn't the case for many, but to just share an anecdote of the humor Mr. Jones brings to my life because I tend to appreciate absurdity when I see it. I'm still sitting behind this keyboard chuckling slightly at the idea that a human being has the capacity to be so completely apoplectic over homosexual amphibians.
  - satsuma 8y ago
    if he was playing a character, and had disclaimers as such at the beginning, middle, and ending of his podcast, i'd love alex jones. kind of a "what would he say next?" sort of thing, mixed with plenty of onion-esque satire. the problem is he's not. he holds these beliefs, and with his platform, he's leading other people to hold them as well. some are fairly benign, like gay frogs. others are downright sick, like calling the sandy hook kids crisis actors. what i'm getting at is someone needs to mirror him, with disclaimers that everything that comes out of the host's mouth is ludicrous, asinine, and should never be considered rational thought. like the jackass intros, "you, and all your stupid little friends, should never try this at home."
Uberphallus 8y ago
Infowars: "Californian tech communist gay froggers thwart free speech with help of nazi BDSM aliens"
- DownGoat 8y ago
  I'd download that.
thosakwe 8y ago
Only took them long enough.
onewhonknocks 8y ago
It's their store. Surely it's entirely their prerogative to decide which products they choose to sell or not sell.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
e1ven 8y ago
Just to be clear - It looks like iTunes does allow you to subscribe by entering the RSS url directly. They are removing the podcast from their directory of podcasts, not blocking the ability to subscribe.
- rbanffy 8y ago
  There may be a market for an anti-malware that targets content like Inforwars and classifies it as malware. I'd love to see that.
  - DanAndersen 8y ago
    Be careful what you wish for.
    - rbanffy 8y ago
      I kind of half-jokingly made one. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/unpepefy-making-twitter-g/ldjnhcjpldbplikakcfkcmeblikfadpe https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/unpepefy-making-tw... It really doesn't prevent infection, just warns you about stuff that may be unhealthy.
wendy0x2 8y ago
This is purely a political move. The liberals in the US don't want to lose again, so they are censoring the opposition. Instead of censoring, how about coming up with a candidate that actually has some substance instead of !trump?? There are plenty of offensive and overdramatic left-leaning podcasts that aren't censored or removed from any platform. This is what tells me that it has nothing to really do with helping anyone and based on pure hatred for anyone that has an opposing opinion. This is what's dividing our country.
- zouhair 8y ago
  Can you link to some left leaning "government turn frogs gay" kinda podcasts?
  - mizzack 8y ago
    Google "atrazine frogs" and you'll get plenty of left leaning environmental articles talking about pesticide runoff turning frogs from male to female. The "turning frogs gay" is reductive and hyperbolic, but unlike most of the nonsense spouted by Jones it is at least grounded in something resembling fact.
  - dogma1138 8y ago
    Abby Martin a crazy 9/11 truther who constantly lies and bends facts to fit her nerrative to the point where even pRopagandaToday had to boot her out. Today she is affiliated with some Venezuelan news outlet but she still spreading her lies on the Empire Files and other outlets.
- untog 8y ago
  > There are plenty of offensive and overdramatic left-leaning podcasts How many of them accuse the victims of mass shootings of being false flag actors?
  - firic 8y ago
    I can't find something that specific but here is a democratic elected official saying that her supporters should harass her political opponents https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Sus_0zebE-k https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Sus_0zebE-k
megaman22 8y ago
Alex Jones is a fruitcake, but I don't like this as a general trend. Effectively, once things aren't available on the main marketplace, they don't exist anymore for most people. RSS is still kind of a thing for podcasts, but everything wants to use either iTunes or Soundcloud etc. iTunes is so bad on Windows that I want to rip my hair out...
Shivetya 8y ago
First off, I have never listened to or read any of Infowars material, my knowledge is from what is reported. When the censoring is not meted out equally is when I get worried. I noticed in more than one article that they labeled specific groups you cannot say anything derogatory about but left it open that other groups may not be protected. There should be no group selection, it should be all or nothing. We also need to be damn careful of the recent attempt to brand speech some groups do not agree with as "weaponizing speech" which seems to be a new means to get the government to step in. With hate speech the government is still very limited on First Amendment grounds however by branding some speech as "weaponized" it implies violence and that does not have the same protection. Frankly I don't mind the haters being out there, at least then I know who they are. Let them post, let them march, because in public venues we can at least assess when they are truly dangerous or not. tl;dr censoring is fine when applied equally, be wary of anyone trying to change how speech is labeled as a means to get the government to do their censoring for them
influx 8y ago
It’s disturbing to see so many people give up the first amendment because hey it’s just private companies, they can do whatever they want. All hail our corporate overlords.
bengrunfeld 8y ago
The question is: will Apple apply the same rules to equally hate mongering shows on the far left wing. I don’t think so. This is less about censorship and more about Apple making its own political statement of what it believes is “right”.
paulgb 8y ago
I agree with the comments that it's their store and they can do what they want with it, and Jones actively uses his platform to bully individuals so I'm not disappointed to see it diminished. That said, the trend of centralization of Podcasts worries me a bit. Podcasts were one of the few real success stories of an open syndication format that allowed an ecosystem of podcast apps to flourish. I've noticed a trend where podcasts make it hard to find the RSS URL or even make it hidden and require you subscribe on the major platforms. Let's not turn podcasting into the same walled garden we have for every other aspect of syndicated content!
- jessriedel 8y ago
  The fact that private stores can do what they want does not mean that they should do what they want or that consumers shouldn't demand otherwise. More generally, not all bad behavior is or should be illegal. The fact that the first amendment only legally applies to the government does not mean that free speech as a concept doesn't have moral force on other organizations. For instance, we expect universities to act as neutral debate platforms for all sorts of views that are not endorsed by the university administration. When they fail to do this, they are not legally penalized (modulo constraints from accepting government funding), but we (should) lower their public esteem. Newspapers and online media companies like Apple and Facebook could and should be held to a similar standard by the public, although in practice they are unfortunately given more latitude.
  - pjc50 8y ago
    ""Debate"" needs to have a minimum legitimacy requirement to be taken seriously. You can't just make up a string of provably false stuff and use it as a pretext for harassment, Sandy Hook passim.
    - unit91 8y ago
      Sure, by the private individual. The problem is many things that were major moments in world history didn't pass the ruling-class's "minimum legitimacy requirement" at the time. Top-of-my-head examples: the Magna Carta, the Protestant Reformation, Indian Independence, anybody else's independence, Snowden, etc.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
andrewclunn 8y ago
Read through the dead comments here on this topic. Now tell me censorship isn't political.
S-E-P 8y ago
Won't change anything. Do you really think that InfoWars listeners really use Apple as their only point of exposure. Also a little hypocritical of Apple, they have some very inflammatory/deceptive podcasts run by some pretty nasty people, but because they aren't InfoWars it's ok. Apple is not virtuous, nor will they ever be, regardless of what they want you to think.
- CNJ7654 8y ago
  >Apple is not virtuous So much this. Apple is a corporation. Every action the company takes is in the interest of increasing their profits, whether directly or indirectly
xoa 8y ago
Reposting this here since just after I posted in the Ars version of this that got marked as a dupe: I consider myself an extremely strong First Amendment advocate and "free speech absolutist" when it comes to government force, and I am also uncomfortable about where the line should be for "private entities" that manage to achieve quasi-governmental levels of power, though I do not think that any level of non-violent restriction is directly comparable to censorship via the government's monopoly on physical force. That said, a major question for me that has been growing bigger and bigger in my mind over the last decade is what exactly should be Free Speech's answer to denial of cognition attacks (and I want to be extra clear that it is a question, I have not been able to come to at all a satisfactory universal answer myself yet). Likely everyone on HN will be familiar with the concept of resource exhaustion attacks in the context of computers and networks. DOS mitigation has regrettably become a near requirement for any significant public facing Internet service. But fundamentally resource exhaustion attacks apply equally well to humans. In the idealized world of discussion and debate and philosophy abstract models of conduct are often used, but at the end of the day "implementation" still comes down to individual humans, each of whom only has so much mental capacity and so much time. And many arguments involving reality can easily be asymmetric too: it takes very little time and energy to make an assertion but a great deal to disprove it. Reality is under no obligation to be simple and elegant to human preferences. I have seen this get put into practice with ever greater sophistication on a lot of my favorite forums. Someone arguing BS will throw out a bunch of simple stuff that takes a great deal of careful posting to show is wrong. If people volunteer their time to answer in that thread, it does no good in preventing the exact same assertions from being tossed out again (maybe remixed) in a new thread a week or month or whatever later. Eventually people just get tired or are busy. If they try to point towards a centralized source instead, that source can then be attacked and you see "argument from authority durr" and the like thrown out. It's bad faith but in a way that exploits a lot of the norms around free speech and argumentation, which classically didn't have the same scaling and automation threats. In fact, perhaps even more pernicious is when it's not bad faith but someone who has been fed a bunch of stuff they are arguing in all earnestness, yet there simply isn't time to address them individually. They must be directed to authorities and be expected to educate themselves on it. I'm not sure what the answer is but we do clearly have a problem as some of the previous natural barriers due to cost of speech have fallen. It is common to speak of a "Marketplace of Ideas" when it comes to Free Speech, but it's important to remember that "Free Markets" are specific real tools that require regulatory support to function and have no goals of their own. Costs need to be internalized, information and processing ability needs to be symmetric, there needs to be a shared base of legal structure and norms to work on top of. Getting too far away from that results in market failure. I don't know how that might be translated to Free Speech but I do think we're seeing a "market of ideas failure" to some extent right now, and that it could easily get much worse in the near future unchecked. There is a need for better ways to improve the signal/noise cost function, and for systems to re-internalize that the point of Free Speech, of marketplaces of ideas or markets of anything at all, is to come up with good products. They're tools to serve humanity. Bad ones shouldn't be banned by force but they shouldn't be flourishing either, if they are then something isn't working.
staunch 8y ago
When it comes to the internet, Apple, Facebook, and Google are more powerful than the most powerful governments in the world. They should uphold the principles of free speech, despite not being required to by law. Everything that is legal to say, which is almost everything, should have a equal access to these major platforms. Everyone else should have the basic faith in humanity that whatever problems this causes are a price worth paying of living in a free society. I'm more concerned with the cynical fools gleefully espousing the anti-free speech perspective than I am with the relatively(!) small number of dumbos that follow people like Alex Jones. Whatever happened to the beautiful American principle of defending the right of your fellow humans to have equal rights as yourself? Is it young people that don't know history, people becoming more cynical, or are we just hearing more from the loud fools? My fundamental faith in humanity makes me believe we'll have a backlash from the freedom-loving majority. Most people are smart and principled and will see the error of going down this dark path. It may take a while but I'm not worried.
- eksemplar 8y ago
  The principal of free speech isn’t the same thing as the right to an audience though. It’s the right to say what you want without being prosecuted. Alex Jones wasn’t prosecuted and he had the right to say what he wants, he just can’t do it on Facebook. But that isn’t an infringement of his rights, it’s a simple consequence of being a total asshole. If you always talk about how great eating feces is at every dinner party you attend, you’re not going to go to jail, but you’re probably going to find yourself without any dinner party invitations. You could argue that Facebook and Apple are big platforms, but so what? I’m fairly sure infowars wouldn’t publish your submission if you sent an anti-trump article. Does that mean they are hindering your free speech? No.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- corerius 8y ago
  It's amusing to watch so many people, for probably the first time in their life, fight so hard for the 'rights' of a large multinational corporation. The basic problems, of course, are the natural monopolies and near-monopolies that came from networks. Given the amount of power you'll find in those companies given the surveillance society, I wish that antitrust law would actually come into existence again. The be fair, there's nothing new here. Whether it was the day of Hearts newspapers or the big 2 1/2 TV networks, mass media outlets have always been political tools that are argued over.
okket 8y ago
Previous discussion from 8 hours ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17695323 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17695323 (107 comments)
duxup 8y ago
There's a weird balance where just saying "hey we don't want to censor things" doesn't seem to make you seem very neutral when you're hosting something that is hateful towards others or just straight false information.
- djrogers 8y ago
  Apple doesn't host any podcasts in iTunes - it's just a directory. And you can still use iTunes or the iOS Podcasts app to subscribe to the podcast via it's RSS feed.
  - duxup 8y ago
    I guess I was thinking of "hosting" more generically. Feel free to substitute a better term, I'm operating on limited sleep ;)
enterx 8y ago
so wrong. Freedom of speech is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or a community to articulate their opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation, censorship, or sanction. - Wikipedia
- eksemplar 8y ago
  None of those things happened to Alex Jones. Freedom of speech isn’t the right to be heard, mind you. If you came by my house wanting to sell Jesus and I shut the door on you, you’d still have free speech.
  - enterx 8y ago
    True, he was using a private media outlet. They do have a legal right to discriminate which they used against him. But still that does not change the fact that the media outlets are the ones that choose who has a right to speak and discriminate.
zaroth 8y ago
This is an interestingly coordinated move. It seems a most like each of the platforms was waiting for one of the others to make the first move at wiping InfoWars off their platform entirely instead of just censoring specific episodes, and then the dominoes fall. I’ve never listened to an InfoWars podcast, so I don’t know what I’m missing. But from what I gather Alex is an entertaining quack who is ultimately harmless except in the sense that his message is subversive to the “wrong” groups. We’ve come a bit further along the slope from banning Daily Stormer now haven’t we? The more interesting contrast which I’ve been watching the last few days is between how NYT handled Quinn Norton’s firing for old tweets which actually used banned words in an positive context versus NYT claiming hundreds of racists tweets by Sarah Jeong amount to the same thing and now that’s a reason not to fire her. I don’t know anything at all about Jeong, other than some highly... erm... problematic old tweets. I knew a bit about Quinn and was very disappointed to see her fired for what I thought were highly misconstrued old tweets... but I think the contrast between how they were each handled really demonstrates how poorly companies tend to handle these matters, and specifically how much it matters which group is apparently being slighted. And so it all just makes me wonder. When we selectively censor or fire people for specific views, when these views dont actually cross red lines into illegal speech (inciting to violence), how the decision really comes down to a political one. Companies are of course free to make political choices about who works for them or what content they host, but they’re only lying to themselves if they think it’s about morales or ethics. Various campaigns have been trying to downrank, delist, or demonetize sites like InfoWars or Breitbart. This is no doubt a form of asymmetric information warfare trying to limit the audience for contrary messages. Personally I find the drive toward censorship all extremely concerning.
- marijn 8y ago
  > I don’t know anything at all about Jeong, other than some highly... erm... problematic old tweets. That's the power of a smear campaign, right? Planting a negative perception in people who previously had no attitude about a person. I recommend researching a bit before repeating the message of the campaign ("racist tweets"). Jeong is okay.
  - deleted 8y ago
curiousgal 8y ago
They should've made their Podcasts app actually usuable while they were at it.
ianwalter 8y ago
It's crazy to me that they banned pornographic apps from the app store but still let this hot garbage be listed on their platform for so long.
- pentae 8y ago
  They go further than that. We had an app for models and fans to interact which showcased Instagram models and celebrities with profiles built using the Instagram API for verification. Apple told us we had to tone it down and censor a lot of the sexier photos like bikini and so on that was found on their Instagram profiles. We explained they were simply using the same photos found on their Instagram and if they had a problem with their images they should report them to Instagram. They basically told us no, we would have to manually censor the profiles instead. They found another reason to remove us from the store in the end flushing years of work down the toilet for us. They are completely arbitrary in how they censor the stores, there's no equitable standard. Basically, if you're Instagram or Twitter you can push the limits, but smaller businesses like ours get thrown out.
qrbLPHiKpiux 8y ago
I may disagree with what you say but I'll defend with you the right to say it. Apple's wrong here.
- rounce 8y ago
  Only problem with that is when the other uses the rights you have afforded them to either infringe or incite infringement upon your freedoms.
  - wu-ikkyu 8y ago
    What do you mean?
    - iamdave 8y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imminent_lawless_action https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imminent_lawless_action
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- eksemplar 8y ago
  So Apple isn’t allowed the freedom to do as they want? On a smaller scale, you couldn’t get your content posted on infowars if they didn’t like it. Does that mean infowars is stepping on your rights? No, because freedom of speech isn’t the same thing as the right of being heard. You can say what you want, but I don’t have to listen to you.
  - 394549 8y ago
    > So Apple isn’t allowed the freedom to do as they want? Giving for-profit corporations "freedoms" like they were people was a mistake. Once an organization grows to a certain size, it has more in common with a government than a person. When that happens, their "freedoms" should be appropriately circumscribed.
InTheArena 8y ago
I'm not familiar with Infowars, or the podcast. That said, I think we have to be very very cautious about allowing corporations, especially corporations as powerful as Twitter, Facebook, Google and Apple, to act as gatekeepers on speech. It's hard to get the balance right on speech issues, and that's when the determination is being governed by a democratic government. Apple, Facebook, Google and Twitter are in no way beholden to a representative electorate, and just because this particular instance makes sense, this is a massive shift of power from government to private corporation. History has shown that this power has and will be abused. Even if it is not here, it will be in the future.
- throwawaymanbot 8y ago
  Twitter never de-platforms far-right types/Nazi's, except with the one case where Milo was removed. (And rightly so) It almost seems like Jack D is inthrall or beholden to someone. De-Platforming Nazis works. More should do it.
resters 8y ago
Anyone of average intelligence who spends 30-60 seconds listening to Alex Jones will quickly realize that Jones suffers from some kind of mental illness or personality disorder, and that there is nothing of interest or value to learn from his rants. Those who ignore the obvious signs and still choose to listen to it do so for their own, identity-driven or emotional reasons. This is the same process that causes humans to rally behind demagogues of all kinds. When uncensored, Jones' folly is obvious and can be easily evaluated and dismissed. But when it's censored, those inclined toward conspiracy theories will assume that Jones is speaking some kind of truth to power, etc. So Apple's move strengthens Jones in all the worst ways and does a great disservice to American civil society. The only way to prevent dark ages beliefs is to shine light on them.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- eksemplar 8y ago
  Maybe, or maybe he’s just making a lot of money selling hatred.
- Eric_WVGG 8y ago
  > The only way to prevent dark ages beliefs is to shine light on them. This is the sort of principled belief I used to hold that I’m no longer sure holds up to scrutiny. There's always been a fringe that was willing to believe anything. But how do you call something like Infowars “fringe” when it’s on the same “network” as NPR and CNN podcasts? Placement like that legitimizes Infowars. That “light shining” on Infowars was a spotlight. You’re probably right that this will galvanize the true believers, but what was going to turn their beliefs around? The flipside is that this move may cauterize a growing infection.
  - nailer 8y ago
    I like CNN a lot more than InfoWars, but there's a few instances - the Trump fish feeding video editing incident, and claiming the Obama admin rep said they didn't seperate children when they just recorded him doing so - where CNN has deliberately and demonstrably lied / misrepresented the truth. Would you support banning them? FB has a strong 'anti fake news' stance. Jones is an asshole, but we should have specific ToS violations, not "we banned you because we've decided glorifying violence is the same as graphic violence now" (which, logically, it is not) and then apply them consistently. We currently have people seeming banning anything they don't like, and allowing ToS violations by people they do like (not just on FB, but also Twitter recently). FB should have said: "we're taking action because we believe your video on this date harassed the Sandy Hook survivors". And they should punish fake news wherever they see it, in the same way Twitter should punish racist trolls.
fareesh 8y ago
The bigger story is that Facebook removed several Infowars pages. That's a big hit in terms of their ability to grow through shares/likes and reach a wider audience. I don't know if the Podcast directory is a big source of newcomers, is it?
- r3bl 8y ago
  I do agree that the Facebook news is bigger than both Apple and Spotify combined. And InfoWars seems to agree as well, as they've published a video complaining about Facebook's decisions almost immediately. However, I don't think that's the biggest damage they could face from a single provider. I'd say that YouTube could absolutely break the entire thing down to pieces. There are dozens of YouTube videos on their channel with millions of views, often multiple hours long. Hosting multiple hour long video files in a way that millions of people can stream them reliably, that's going to take some effort (and a non-negligible amount of resources). Since YouTube offers them both discoverability and unlimited video bandwidth, if YouTube made a similar decision to Facebook, they would most probably be destroyed in an instant.
  - fareesh 8y ago
    YouTube has now banned them as well so they will probably move to dTube / HookTube or one of the blockchain / p2p alternatives. Ironically a big channel like Infowars moving to these alternatives might start the ball rolling in making those platforms more popular. I occasionally listen to Alex Jones for background noise and entertainment value. There is something amusing in his voice, delivery and absurdity - perhaps I am a little privileged to be able to feel that way because he is nowhere close to home for me, as I live in India.
CNJ7654 8y ago
While it is true that Apple is (and should be) allowed to do whatever they want with their services, as they are a private company, these kinds of actions reaffirm how important an open, decentralized standard for media consumption really is.
throwawaymanbot 8y ago
Its time to deplatform maniacs. Especially ones who send links to people who dont know any better. (even though the should) I value having a functioning Democracy over his right to spew insane dangerous garbage. (Which hes still able to do)
eksemplar 8y ago
If you send Alex Jones a submission on how great Hillary Clinton is, do you think it’ll get posted on infowars? No Does that mean Alex Jones is limiting your free speech’s by denying you access to his platform? You can argue that Facebook, Apple and twitter are bigger platforms, but the principal is really the same. Free speech is the right to say what you want, the way you want it, without being procecuted by the government or murdered by a violent mob. Free speech is not the right to be heard. I see the problem of the idea of huge media platforms banning content, but only as an idea. Alex Jones is a hate mongering asshole, that while entertaining, is also dangerous. When infowars ran a piece on the Sandy Hook tradegy, labeling it as a false flag and the victims as actors, some of those parents who lost their children received death threats. Some of those parents are still in hiding today, thanks to infowars and their insane audience. I don’t think the free world, or free speech, suffered anything from this asshole being banned from iTunes.
- nailer 8y ago
  I don't think Infowars has ever advertised itself an a non-political way for people to connect with each other.
sctb 8y ago
All: there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of intellectual gratification happening in these threads, but please try at least to avoid things like gratuitous inflammation, generic politics, and all such low-information flameage. Those things do actual damage to the community, and for what?
21 8y ago
> The one platform that they CAN'T ban and will ALWAYS have our live streams is http://infowars.com/show http://infowars.com/show Challenge accepted. Where are they hosted? The videos stream from Akamai CDN. CNN can now press Akamai to remove Infowars. Do they use CloudFlare? CloudFlare is know to censor far-right sites (but not jihadi sites).
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- CM30 8y ago
  This is basically the issue with the internet as it stands now. There is no space outside of the control of a company that might wish to protect their reputation at your expense, meaning that anything unpopular enough can be de facto banned by no one ever hosting it. It's like if the streets and town square didn't exist, and shopping malls owned every 'public' area.
amerkhalid 8y ago
I see a lot of comments regarding freedom of speech. But this has nothing to do with freedom of speech. It has everything to do with hate. I would not eat at a restaurant that has hate propaganda on their walls. This is same thing. He is free to publish his podcast on the internet, no one is stopping. If US government bans him, then we are in a big trouble.
- thezealot 8y ago
  Hate speech labeling is just the left picking politically expedient winners and losers.
mancerayder 8y ago
Am I disturbed at the idea of a centralized publishing / distribution platform censoring videos/recordings that it characterized in a certain way? I'm actually far more concerned that not a lot of people are challenging the question of whether those characterizations can one day become (if they are not already becoming) arbitrary, self-serving, overly broad, or even simply 'by popular demand' removing items based on an increasingly politicized/bifurcated population. I would argue that choosing winners and losers in the realm of ideas -- which is different than, say, graphic videos, where the criteria are easier to craft ["no nudity" or "no violence" examples of criteria with fewer edge cases] -- goes against core concepts of Western ideals of liberty and the marketplace of ideas. For if there's an objective reality out there, and each of us can seek it out for his/her self, there's no need for an overarching authority to remove "conspiracy theories" to protect our simple minds from accidentally becoming infected with false ideas. I never enjoyed the screaming histrionics of Jones, nor his absurd obsessions, but I'm increasingly concerned that this Postmodern society is more concerned with what it views as Correct and Incorrect Ideas in such realms as comedy and discourse (the overly used "political correctness" that we often argue over so much) than letting individuals think things out for themselves. I have a cultural foot in the door in both Europe and the U.S., and one point of contention I'll forever have with the European leg of the value system is the absurd notion that laws or norms should protect people from being offended and root out "false ideas." Not because I want people to be offended or because I think false ideas are good; instead, I simply don't trust anyone -- not a European judge nor some Apple bureaucrats -- to have better judgment than the rest of the population in this matters. Applauding Jones getting wiped clean from these channels of distribution is short-term: one day there might be something less vile, less clear-cut, an edge-case, that gets removed and you'll have to shout to get it back. Be careful.
claytongulick 8y ago
Honestly curious - I wonder how many people on here that are arguing in favor of limiting access to Infowars have actually spent time watching/listening to it? Or have they formed opinions based on 'what they are told' it is, or blog headlines etc... I see a lot of that these days. A headline comes along and describes something, and a whole bunch of people accept it as literal truth, without bothering to spend time really learning about an opposing viewpoint. A great example of this is Jordan Peterson - he's sort of an interesting guy who got caught up in limelight for various political reasons, but the bulk of his lectures are truly interesting to me, looking at Christianity from an evolutionary psychology perspective, etc... but to read the headlines, you'd think he was out there whipping up Nazi sentiment and trying to crush democracy. I see a lot of people cherry picking small sentences taken out of context, and repeating them to mischaracterize an "opponent". See the painfully uneducated criticisms of his discussion about 'enforced monogamy'. I freely admit I haven't seen a lot of Alex Jones' stuff. I've watched it a bit, out of curiosity. What I saw was colorful and impassioned. I saw a dude getting riled up and speaking more from emotion than critical analysis. That's not my favorite thing, so I haven't spent more time watching it. I just wonder if he's being given the 'Jordan Peterson' treatment because his views are unpopular, and sometimes disagreeable? I saw at least one comment on here accusing him of inciting violence directly. That's the sort of thing I'm talking about. I wonder if that person actually watched/listened to him incite violence? Or if they were just repeating something they heard somewhere else. Several other comments followed that argued that he'd never done that. Hmm. Like I said, I don't have a valid opinion on Inforwars itself, because I haven't really spent much time watching it. I wonder if our discussions about a topic like Infowars would be more positive and constructive if more people were able to withhold judgement until they'd actually researched the topic directly. Or maybe they have? Maybe the dislike is valid from people who have spent time looking into it? It just seems questionable when there is disagreement about basic statements like "he incites violence".
- nailer 8y ago
  Jordan Peterson cites research that people don't agree with. Because they don't want to take him to task over research, they often create strawmem. Jones makes things up (and has admitted he's acting in court). Some of the things he makes up - like the parents of the dead lids being actors, or a pizza shop being a storefront for pedophiles - mean that people who believe him might be tempted to expose the secret actors, or punish the seemingly-immune pedophiles (who obviously are just people running a pizza shop). This is a serious danger.
jgrowl 8y ago
Regardless of your views of specific individuals, I hope the big corps enjoy their censorship abilities now because it won't be very long before they lose their positions of power. Decentralization is coming...
se30b 8y ago
Alex Jones got banned for telling the truth. Crazy people are allowed everywhere, because their arguments can easily be refuted. Jones was shut down because he is speaking uncomfortable truths that cannot be easily waived away.

223 points by uptown 8y ago

With Apple, Facebook and Spotify doing this (and lots of reporting about it) I'd say ... cue the Streisand effect. Sometimes it's better to just not do anything, but I guess that doesn't get you PR points.

dublinben 8y ago
I think the Streisand Effect is overstated. Apple has nearly two thirds of the podcast market.[0] Together with the other platforms that have removed these podcasts, upwards of three quarters of podcast listeners will no longer be able to easily access or discover this content. Starving this show of its largest audiences is more likely to cripple it, not galvanize it. [0] https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-market-share-of-podcast-apps https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-market-share-of-podcast-ap...
vanderZwan 8y ago
Eh, no. The Streisand effect applies to getting attention to something that wouldn't have otherwise, and gaining momentum because of it. This is about providing a platform to someone who willfully spreads lies. There has been research into the effects of Reddit clamping down on hate speech a few years ago. Guess what: not giving assholes a platform actually works. It's still a cesspool but less so than it used to be.
- furyg3 8y ago
  Got a link, I'd (genuinely) like to see this research!
  - samfriedman 8y ago
    That would be this paper from Georgia Tech. http://comp.social.gatech.edu/papers/cscw18-chand-hate.pdf http://comp.social.gatech.edu/papers/cscw18-chand-hate.pdf
- tonysdg 8y ago
  Could you link if you have it? I'm genuinely curious. I'm also suspicious -- what stops the aforementioned individuals from finding another website/forum? I seem to remember hearing that after Reddit closed down several of the more unsavory/flat-out-awful subreddits, a large contingent of those users moved to another site (can't remember which though). FWIW, I support clamping down on hate speech, but only if it's accompanied by some form of education (otherwise, you're just hiding the problem).
  - foolrush 8y ago
    Social science research indicates that it isn't about "hiding" hate directed speech, but rather to consider the impact on the victims of such speech. That is, when one is able to say the word "hiding", it is spoken from the position of privilege; it is a very real existential threat to those impacted. Constricting hate speech has a notable impact on the dignity and well-being of those impacted[1]. [1] EG: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13504630.2015.1128810?src=recsys&journalCode=csid20 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13504630.2015.11...
    - wycs 8y ago
      Do you care at all about free speech? You are willing kill this beautiful freedom we have for that?
      - glenda 8y ago
        Free speech refers to the freedom to not be thrown in jail by the government for things you have said that fall under protected speech. It has nothing to do with being allowed to post anything on any website you’d like.
        wycs 8y ago
        Ok. So you don’t support laws against hate speech?
        8y ago
- foolrush 8y ago
  The inevitable discussion about the need for hate speech laws in the USA is lurking. Sadly, the USA had a chance at them a while back, but I believe it was Justice Scalia who struck it down?
- staunch 8y ago
  > Guess what: not giving assholes a platform actually works. In other words, these platforms are powerful enough to silence people. Today, it's people you agree with silencing. Tomorrow, it may be people you disagree with silencing. It's not a good thing that massively powerful private companies are deciding what speech should be allowed and what should not. The law doesn't require it, but as users, we should demand that these major platforms are open to everyone, not just the ones that the majority currently approves of.
  - KozmoNau7 8y ago
    Who gets to define what is a "major platform"? Their platform, their rules, within the confines of the law.
- TooBrokeToBeg 8y ago
  > The Streisand effect applies to getting attention to something that wouldn't have otherwise, and gaining momentum because of it. This is about providing a platform to someone who willfully spreads lies. Those aren't orthogonal. They seem to both be true in this case (what "it is about" is subjective).
mgbmtl 8y ago
I've seen Infowars regularly mocked in mainstream comedy TV shows. Shining light on Infowars misinformation / ill intent is probably a good thing. Adding barriers to passive consumption, by vulnerable (misinformed) people, is probably also a good thing. It's not being censored/outlawed, just made slightly less convenient to access. Fake news are a threat to democracy.
- jessriedel 8y ago
  "It's not outlawed, just inconvenient to access" is more than enough influence to dramatically (~90%) shape what information is consumed with no natural truth-seeking mechanism beyond your trust in the people imposing the inconvenience. There's a reason it's illegal for the government to do this, and we should demand that neutral platform organizations like Apple, Facebook, or a university don't do it either (which is not the same thing as saying that they should be forced by law to do it).
  - DanAndersen 8y ago
    >and we should demand that neutral platform organizations like Apple, Facebook, or a university don't do it either (which is not the same thing as saying that they should be forced by law to do it) What sorts of demands would be listened to or have any chance of being effective if not having the weight of force of law behind it?
    - internet_user 8y ago
      Might require another constitutional amendment.
    - jessriedel 8y ago
      The same thing that induces universities to behave reasonably well as neutral platforms. It is a combination of pressure from public esteem and the moral principles of the university (both the principles of individual administrators/professors and the principles explicitly endorsed by the organization as a whole). And all of that is interlinked. It is an awful misconceptions that the only way to effectively get other people to act differently is with law. It is lazy and leads to unnecessary use of force. Most things that are bad are not illegal (e.g., lying to your friends, being mean, abandoning your parents, cheating on your spouse) and yet occur at much lower rates than they would without the many extra-legal mechanisms that keep them in check.
zouhair 8y ago
I totally disagree. I am sure cutting these dangerous people from the mainstream website will slowly kill them.
ndespres 8y ago
Do you really think that this action is going to bring more attention to Infowars? I really doubt whether the Streisand Effect is a factor here. Anyone who didn't know what Infowars is already won't be interested in this news.
wycs 8y ago
deleted.
- pjc50 8y ago
  > Only extremists on the right will be censored. This is obviously not true. Apple has had a ridiculous "no politics" policy on the App Store for years, censoring the anti-war left. https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/538kan/apple-just-banned-the-app-that-tracks-us-drone-strikes-again https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/538kan/apple-just...
  - wycs 8y ago
    That’s pretty terrible.
- krk83je 8y ago
  It’s also factually true that human violence has enabled certain bloodlines the opportunity to advance, while hindering others. I’m leery of people who cite one scientific data point alone. It smells like an appeal to authority. And you’re throwing up a strawman with your rhetoric about blocking a communist podcast. Alex Jones himself has said in court it’s an act and he’s just an entertainer. Sometimes the act gets old and shows get canceled. Is that censorship? In this case the show isn’t even canceled. Just removed from one of dozens of podcast directories. It’s still findable at the source. Your complaint is really about the creation of a slight inconvenience. There’s no real censorship here.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
mikestew 8y ago
Lots of people don’t know where Barbara Streisand lives (despite the Streisand effect, I don’t). It would have to be a pretty deep cave you live in to not have heard of Alex Jones, especially if you stand any chance of enjoying his show.
garg 8y ago
I don't think the Streisand effect applies in this case. The site has repeatedly broken the terms of usage of all of these platforms. The ban should therefore appear reasonable to people. The Streisand effect applies when the attempt is to hide or censor information for no reason other than hiding information.
creaghpatr 8y ago
I'm most worried about Spotify, who already plays kingmaker for upcoming artists. They could use Twitter-like 'shadowban' techniques take punitive measures against 'bad' music artists. Because isn't there a lot of music that plausibly contains 'hate speech' or 'incitements of violence'? Not saying they will, because they haven't indicated that yet, but they are working with the extremist SPLC to craft a policy around 'hate' content and 'hateful' content (the latter to presumably include content that isn't hate content but could be misconstrued as hate content, perhaps?). https://newsroom.spotify.com/2018-05-10/spotify-announces-new-hate-content-and-hateful-conduct-public-policy/ https://newsroom.spotify.com/2018-05-10/spotify-announces-ne...
- pjc50 8y ago
  > extremist SPLC No.
  - nailer 8y ago
    Yes. The SPLC put reform Muslim Maajid Nawaz and anti-FGM campaigner Ayaan Hirsi Ali on their list of hate speech advocates until threatened with legal action by Nawaz. Right leaning source: http://dailycaller.com/2018/04/19/splc-maajid-nawaz-muslim-extremist/ http://dailycaller.com/2018/04/19/splc-maajid-nawaz-muslim-e... Left leaning source: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/24/opinion/southern-poverty-law-center-liberals-islam.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/24/opinion/southern-poverty-...
- maze-le 8y ago
  Already happening: http://www.metalsucks.net/2017/09/14/infant-annihilator-banned-from-spotify-for-allegedly-being-offensive/ http://www.metalsucks.net/2017/09/14/infant-annihilator-bann... That was the moment when I cancelled my spotify account. Oh and to be sure, they don't need to "working with the extremist SPLC" to do that. This ban has more to do with some sort of pseudo moral outrage, wich the right is quite capable of on their own.
untog 8y ago
Nah, the Streisand effect only applies when increased attention on a subject would result in a negative result. "Barbera Streisand wants photos of her beachfront mansion removed because she thinks it's an invasion of her privacy" reflects badly on Barbera Stresiand. "Apple is removing Infowars because it traffics in outright lies" reflects badly on Infowars.
satsuma 8y ago
arguably having infowars be high up on the "most downloaded" podcast list would be worse. especially if they categorize themselves as news or politics instead of entertainment.

olivermarks 8y ago

important and accurate subhead: 'Move thrusts tech giant into the debate over censoring content on internet platforms'

sp332 8y ago
Apple has been censoring podcasts all along. This debate might be about technicalities in the Terms of Service but it's not about censorship.

theseatoms 8y ago

I used to think the name "Infowars" was melodramatic, but I guess not.

nailer 8y ago

FB has also removed Infowars' page. https://www.facebook.com/InfoWars-80256732576/ https://www.facebook.com/InfoWars-80256732576/ FB doesn't cite a specific post (eg, the implication that some of the school shooting victims were part of a hoax), which is a pity.I dislike Infowars, but I like a consistently applied ToS: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dj6T8ppXoAIqbXB.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dj6T8ppXoAIqbXB.jpg 'Glorifying violence' is vague - should all police/military/veterans/people who celebrate July 4 be banned from Facebook? How is 'glorifying violence' treated the same as 'graphic violence'? One is praising violent action, the other is depicting it. They are clearly not the same thing.

sp332 8y ago
They removed four pages https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/08/enforcing-our-community-standards/ https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/08/enforcing-our-community... and they mention that the posts were made in the last week, so that probably narrows it down?

philjackson 8y ago

What if we find out the government were making the frogs gay?

iamdave 8y ago
As an Austinite (well now Iowan) who grew up with plenty of Alex Jones on the airwaves, it's stuff like this I'll actually-in a morbid kind of way-really miss. I suppose you have to be exposed to it long enough to grow numb to it but Alex Jones became a source of entertainment as I grew older just to see what wackiness he'd come up with next. Gay frogs still manages to put a grin on my face even on my most stressful days. It was almost a contest between he and the considerably less inflammatory but still uniquely weird John Aielli. This isn't, nor should be read as a defense of Alex Jones by any sane person-but an acknowledgement of the absurd. I mean come on. Gay frogs? You gotta admit--it's chuckleworthy.
- ModernMech 8y ago
  > I suppose you have to be exposed to it long enough to grow numb to it That's why most of us consider Alex Jones to be a joke, but the reason Apple and Spotify are making this move is because many people, exposed long enough to Alex Jones, start to believe what Alex Jones has to say.
  - iamdave 8y ago
    Oh, heard, understood and acknowledged. I get that completely (don't know that I agree that it's a good reason to take him off the air). My story wasn't meant to suggest this isn't the case for many, but to just share an anecdote of the humor Mr. Jones brings to my life because I tend to appreciate absurdity when I see it. I'm still sitting behind this keyboard chuckling slightly at the idea that a human being has the capacity to be so completely apoplectic over homosexual amphibians.
- satsuma 8y ago
  if he was playing a character, and had disclaimers as such at the beginning, middle, and ending of his podcast, i'd love alex jones. kind of a "what would he say next?" sort of thing, mixed with plenty of onion-esque satire. the problem is he's not. he holds these beliefs, and with his platform, he's leading other people to hold them as well. some are fairly benign, like gay frogs. others are downright sick, like calling the sandy hook kids crisis actors. what i'm getting at is someone needs to mirror him, with disclaimers that everything that comes out of the host's mouth is ludicrous, asinine, and should never be considered rational thought. like the jackass intros, "you, and all your stupid little friends, should never try this at home."

Uberphallus 8y ago

Infowars: "Californian tech communist gay froggers thwart free speech with help of nazi BDSM aliens"

DownGoat 8y ago
I'd download that.

thosakwe 8y ago

Only took them long enough.

onewhonknocks 8y ago

It's their store. Surely it's entirely their prerogative to decide which products they choose to sell or not sell.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

e1ven 8y ago

Just to be clear - It looks like iTunes does allow you to subscribe by entering the RSS url directly. They are removing the podcast from their directory of podcasts, not blocking the ability to subscribe.

rbanffy 8y ago
There may be a market for an anti-malware that targets content like Inforwars and classifies it as malware. I'd love to see that.
- DanAndersen 8y ago
  Be careful what you wish for.
  - rbanffy 8y ago
    I kind of half-jokingly made one. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/unpepefy-making-twitter-g/ldjnhcjpldbplikakcfkcmeblikfadpe https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/unpepefy-making-tw... It really doesn't prevent infection, just warns you about stuff that may be unhealthy.

wendy0x2 8y ago

This is purely a political move. The liberals in the US don't want to lose again, so they are censoring the opposition. Instead of censoring, how about coming up with a candidate that actually has some substance instead of !trump?? There are plenty of offensive and overdramatic left-leaning podcasts that aren't censored or removed from any platform. This is what tells me that it has nothing to really do with helping anyone and based on pure hatred for anyone that has an opposing opinion. This is what's dividing our country.

zouhair 8y ago
Can you link to some left leaning "government turn frogs gay" kinda podcasts?
- mizzack 8y ago
  Google "atrazine frogs" and you'll get plenty of left leaning environmental articles talking about pesticide runoff turning frogs from male to female. The "turning frogs gay" is reductive and hyperbolic, but unlike most of the nonsense spouted by Jones it is at least grounded in something resembling fact.
- dogma1138 8y ago
  Abby Martin a crazy 9/11 truther who constantly lies and bends facts to fit her nerrative to the point where even pRopagandaToday had to boot her out. Today she is affiliated with some Venezuelan news outlet but she still spreading her lies on the Empire Files and other outlets.
untog 8y ago
> There are plenty of offensive and overdramatic left-leaning podcasts How many of them accuse the victims of mass shootings of being false flag actors?
- firic 8y ago
  I can't find something that specific but here is a democratic elected official saying that her supporters should harass her political opponents https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Sus_0zebE-k https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Sus_0zebE-k

megaman22 8y ago

Alex Jones is a fruitcake, but I don't like this as a general trend. Effectively, once things aren't available on the main marketplace, they don't exist anymore for most people. RSS is still kind of a thing for podcasts, but everything wants to use either iTunes or Soundcloud etc. iTunes is so bad on Windows that I want to rip my hair out...

Shivetya 8y ago

First off, I have never listened to or read any of Infowars material, my knowledge is from what is reported. When the censoring is not meted out equally is when I get worried. I noticed in more than one article that they labeled specific groups you cannot say anything derogatory about but left it open that other groups may not be protected. There should be no group selection, it should be all or nothing. We also need to be damn careful of the recent attempt to brand speech some groups do not agree with as "weaponizing speech" which seems to be a new means to get the government to step in. With hate speech the government is still very limited on First Amendment grounds however by branding some speech as "weaponized" it implies violence and that does not have the same protection. Frankly I don't mind the haters being out there, at least then I know who they are. Let them post, let them march, because in public venues we can at least assess when they are truly dangerous or not. tl;dr censoring is fine when applied equally, be wary of anyone trying to change how speech is labeled as a means to get the government to do their censoring for them

influx 8y ago

It’s disturbing to see so many people give up the first amendment because hey it’s just private companies, they can do whatever they want. All hail our corporate overlords.

bengrunfeld 8y ago

The question is: will Apple apply the same rules to equally hate mongering shows on the far left wing. I don’t think so. This is less about censorship and more about Apple making its own political statement of what it believes is “right”.

paulgb 8y ago

I agree with the comments that it's their store and they can do what they want with it, and Jones actively uses his platform to bully individuals so I'm not disappointed to see it diminished. That said, the trend of centralization of Podcasts worries me a bit. Podcasts were one of the few real success stories of an open syndication format that allowed an ecosystem of podcast apps to flourish. I've noticed a trend where podcasts make it hard to find the RSS URL or even make it hidden and require you subscribe on the major platforms. Let's not turn podcasting into the same walled garden we have for every other aspect of syndicated content!

jessriedel 8y ago
The fact that private stores can do what they want does not mean that they should do what they want or that consumers shouldn't demand otherwise. More generally, not all bad behavior is or should be illegal. The fact that the first amendment only legally applies to the government does not mean that free speech as a concept doesn't have moral force on other organizations. For instance, we expect universities to act as neutral debate platforms for all sorts of views that are not endorsed by the university administration. When they fail to do this, they are not legally penalized (modulo constraints from accepting government funding), but we (should) lower their public esteem. Newspapers and online media companies like Apple and Facebook could and should be held to a similar standard by the public, although in practice they are unfortunately given more latitude.
- pjc50 8y ago
  ""Debate"" needs to have a minimum legitimacy requirement to be taken seriously. You can't just make up a string of provably false stuff and use it as a pretext for harassment, Sandy Hook passim.
  - unit91 8y ago
    Sure, by the private individual. The problem is many things that were major moments in world history didn't pass the ruling-class's "minimum legitimacy requirement" at the time. Top-of-my-head examples: the Magna Carta, the Protestant Reformation, Indian Independence, anybody else's independence, Snowden, etc.

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andrewclunn 8y ago

Read through the dead comments here on this topic. Now tell me censorship isn't political.

S-E-P 8y ago

Won't change anything. Do you really think that InfoWars listeners really use Apple as their only point of exposure. Also a little hypocritical of Apple, they have some very inflammatory/deceptive podcasts run by some pretty nasty people, but because they aren't InfoWars it's ok. Apple is not virtuous, nor will they ever be, regardless of what they want you to think.

CNJ7654 8y ago
>Apple is not virtuous So much this. Apple is a corporation. Every action the company takes is in the interest of increasing their profits, whether directly or indirectly

xoa 8y ago

Reposting this here since just after I posted in the Ars version of this that got marked as a dupe: I consider myself an extremely strong First Amendment advocate and "free speech absolutist" when it comes to government force, and I am also uncomfortable about where the line should be for "private entities" that manage to achieve quasi-governmental levels of power, though I do not think that any level of non-violent restriction is directly comparable to censorship via the government's monopoly on physical force. That said, a major question for me that has been growing bigger and bigger in my mind over the last decade is what exactly should be Free Speech's answer to denial of cognition attacks (and I want to be extra clear that it is a question, I have not been able to come to at all a satisfactory universal answer myself yet). Likely everyone on HN will be familiar with the concept of resource exhaustion attacks in the context of computers and networks. DOS mitigation has regrettably become a near requirement for any significant public facing Internet service. But fundamentally resource exhaustion attacks apply equally well to humans. In the idealized world of discussion and debate and philosophy abstract models of conduct are often used, but at the end of the day "implementation" still comes down to individual humans, each of whom only has so much mental capacity and so much time. And many arguments involving reality can easily be asymmetric too: it takes very little time and energy to make an assertion but a great deal to disprove it. Reality is under no obligation to be simple and elegant to human preferences. I have seen this get put into practice with ever greater sophistication on a lot of my favorite forums. Someone arguing BS will throw out a bunch of simple stuff that takes a great deal of careful posting to show is wrong. If people volunteer their time to answer in that thread, it does no good in preventing the exact same assertions from being tossed out again (maybe remixed) in a new thread a week or month or whatever later. Eventually people just get tired or are busy. If they try to point towards a centralized source instead, that source can then be attacked and you see "argument from authority durr" and the like thrown out. It's bad faith but in a way that exploits a lot of the norms around free speech and argumentation, which classically didn't have the same scaling and automation threats. In fact, perhaps even more pernicious is when it's not bad faith but someone who has been fed a bunch of stuff they are arguing in all earnestness, yet there simply isn't time to address them individually. They must be directed to authorities and be expected to educate themselves on it. I'm not sure what the answer is but we do clearly have a problem as some of the previous natural barriers due to cost of speech have fallen. It is common to speak of a "Marketplace of Ideas" when it comes to Free Speech, but it's important to remember that "Free Markets" are specific real tools that require regulatory support to function and have no goals of their own. Costs need to be internalized, information and processing ability needs to be symmetric, there needs to be a shared base of legal structure and norms to work on top of. Getting too far away from that results in market failure. I don't know how that might be translated to Free Speech but I do think we're seeing a "market of ideas failure" to some extent right now, and that it could easily get much worse in the near future unchecked. There is a need for better ways to improve the signal/noise cost function, and for systems to re-internalize that the point of Free Speech, of marketplaces of ideas or markets of anything at all, is to come up with good products. They're tools to serve humanity. Bad ones shouldn't be banned by force but they shouldn't be flourishing either, if they are then something isn't working.

staunch 8y ago

When it comes to the internet, Apple, Facebook, and Google are more powerful than the most powerful governments in the world. They should uphold the principles of free speech, despite not being required to by law. Everything that is legal to say, which is almost everything, should have a equal access to these major platforms. Everyone else should have the basic faith in humanity that whatever problems this causes are a price worth paying of living in a free society. I'm more concerned with the cynical fools gleefully espousing the anti-free speech perspective than I am with the relatively(!) small number of dumbos that follow people like Alex Jones. Whatever happened to the beautiful American principle of defending the right of your fellow humans to have equal rights as yourself? Is it young people that don't know history, people becoming more cynical, or are we just hearing more from the loud fools? My fundamental faith in humanity makes me believe we'll have a backlash from the freedom-loving majority. Most people are smart and principled and will see the error of going down this dark path. It may take a while but I'm not worried.

eksemplar 8y ago
The principal of free speech isn’t the same thing as the right to an audience though. It’s the right to say what you want without being prosecuted. Alex Jones wasn’t prosecuted and he had the right to say what he wants, he just can’t do it on Facebook. But that isn’t an infringement of his rights, it’s a simple consequence of being a total asshole. If you always talk about how great eating feces is at every dinner party you attend, you’re not going to go to jail, but you’re probably going to find yourself without any dinner party invitations. You could argue that Facebook and Apple are big platforms, but so what? I’m fairly sure infowars wouldn’t publish your submission if you sent an anti-trump article. Does that mean they are hindering your free speech? No.
- deleted 8y ago
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corerius 8y ago
It's amusing to watch so many people, for probably the first time in their life, fight so hard for the 'rights' of a large multinational corporation. The basic problems, of course, are the natural monopolies and near-monopolies that came from networks. Given the amount of power you'll find in those companies given the surveillance society, I wish that antitrust law would actually come into existence again. The be fair, there's nothing new here. Whether it was the day of Hearts newspapers or the big 2 1/2 TV networks, mass media outlets have always been political tools that are argued over.

okket 8y ago

Previous discussion from 8 hours ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17695323 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17695323 (107 comments)

duxup 8y ago

There's a weird balance where just saying "hey we don't want to censor things" doesn't seem to make you seem very neutral when you're hosting something that is hateful towards others or just straight false information.

djrogers 8y ago
Apple doesn't host any podcasts in iTunes - it's just a directory. And you can still use iTunes or the iOS Podcasts app to subscribe to the podcast via it's RSS feed.
- duxup 8y ago
  I guess I was thinking of "hosting" more generically. Feel free to substitute a better term, I'm operating on limited sleep ;)

enterx 8y ago

so wrong. Freedom of speech is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or a community to articulate their opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation, censorship, or sanction. - Wikipedia

eksemplar 8y ago
None of those things happened to Alex Jones. Freedom of speech isn’t the right to be heard, mind you. If you came by my house wanting to sell Jesus and I shut the door on you, you’d still have free speech.
- enterx 8y ago
  True, he was using a private media outlet. They do have a legal right to discriminate which they used against him. But still that does not change the fact that the media outlets are the ones that choose who has a right to speak and discriminate.

zaroth 8y ago

This is an interestingly coordinated move. It seems a most like each of the platforms was waiting for one of the others to make the first move at wiping InfoWars off their platform entirely instead of just censoring specific episodes, and then the dominoes fall. I’ve never listened to an InfoWars podcast, so I don’t know what I’m missing. But from what I gather Alex is an entertaining quack who is ultimately harmless except in the sense that his message is subversive to the “wrong” groups. We’ve come a bit further along the slope from banning Daily Stormer now haven’t we? The more interesting contrast which I’ve been watching the last few days is between how NYT handled Quinn Norton’s firing for old tweets which actually used banned words in an positive context versus NYT claiming hundreds of racists tweets by Sarah Jeong amount to the same thing and now that’s a reason not to fire her. I don’t know anything at all about Jeong, other than some highly... erm... problematic old tweets. I knew a bit about Quinn and was very disappointed to see her fired for what I thought were highly misconstrued old tweets... but I think the contrast between how they were each handled really demonstrates how poorly companies tend to handle these matters, and specifically how much it matters which group is apparently being slighted. And so it all just makes me wonder. When we selectively censor or fire people for specific views, when these views dont actually cross red lines into illegal speech (inciting to violence), how the decision really comes down to a political one. Companies are of course free to make political choices about who works for them or what content they host, but they’re only lying to themselves if they think it’s about morales or ethics. Various campaigns have been trying to downrank, delist, or demonetize sites like InfoWars or Breitbart. This is no doubt a form of asymmetric information warfare trying to limit the audience for contrary messages. Personally I find the drive toward censorship all extremely concerning.

marijn 8y ago
> I don’t know anything at all about Jeong, other than some highly... erm... problematic old tweets. That's the power of a smear campaign, right? Planting a negative perception in people who previously had no attitude about a person. I recommend researching a bit before repeating the message of the campaign ("racist tweets"). Jeong is okay.
- deleted 8y ago

curiousgal 8y ago

They should've made their Podcasts app actually usuable while they were at it.

ianwalter 8y ago

It's crazy to me that they banned pornographic apps from the app store but still let this hot garbage be listed on their platform for so long.

pentae 8y ago
They go further than that. We had an app for models and fans to interact which showcased Instagram models and celebrities with profiles built using the Instagram API for verification. Apple told us we had to tone it down and censor a lot of the sexier photos like bikini and so on that was found on their Instagram profiles. We explained they were simply using the same photos found on their Instagram and if they had a problem with their images they should report them to Instagram. They basically told us no, we would have to manually censor the profiles instead. They found another reason to remove us from the store in the end flushing years of work down the toilet for us. They are completely arbitrary in how they censor the stores, there's no equitable standard. Basically, if you're Instagram or Twitter you can push the limits, but smaller businesses like ours get thrown out.

qrbLPHiKpiux 8y ago

I may disagree with what you say but I'll defend with you the right to say it. Apple's wrong here.

rounce 8y ago
Only problem with that is when the other uses the rights you have afforded them to either infringe or incite infringement upon your freedoms.
- wu-ikkyu 8y ago
  What do you mean?
  - iamdave 8y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imminent_lawless_action https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imminent_lawless_action
deleted 8y ago
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eksemplar 8y ago
So Apple isn’t allowed the freedom to do as they want? On a smaller scale, you couldn’t get your content posted on infowars if they didn’t like it. Does that mean infowars is stepping on your rights? No, because freedom of speech isn’t the same thing as the right of being heard. You can say what you want, but I don’t have to listen to you.
- 394549 8y ago
  > So Apple isn’t allowed the freedom to do as they want? Giving for-profit corporations "freedoms" like they were people was a mistake. Once an organization grows to a certain size, it has more in common with a government than a person. When that happens, their "freedoms" should be appropriately circumscribed.

InTheArena 8y ago

I'm not familiar with Infowars, or the podcast. That said, I think we have to be very very cautious about allowing corporations, especially corporations as powerful as Twitter, Facebook, Google and Apple, to act as gatekeepers on speech. It's hard to get the balance right on speech issues, and that's when the determination is being governed by a democratic government. Apple, Facebook, Google and Twitter are in no way beholden to a representative electorate, and just because this particular instance makes sense, this is a massive shift of power from government to private corporation. History has shown that this power has and will be abused. Even if it is not here, it will be in the future.

throwawaymanbot 8y ago
Twitter never de-platforms far-right types/Nazi's, except with the one case where Milo was removed. (And rightly so) It almost seems like Jack D is inthrall or beholden to someone. De-Platforming Nazis works. More should do it.

resters 8y ago

Anyone of average intelligence who spends 30-60 seconds listening to Alex Jones will quickly realize that Jones suffers from some kind of mental illness or personality disorder, and that there is nothing of interest or value to learn from his rants. Those who ignore the obvious signs and still choose to listen to it do so for their own, identity-driven or emotional reasons. This is the same process that causes humans to rally behind demagogues of all kinds. When uncensored, Jones' folly is obvious and can be easily evaluated and dismissed. But when it's censored, those inclined toward conspiracy theories will assume that Jones is speaking some kind of truth to power, etc. So Apple's move strengthens Jones in all the worst ways and does a great disservice to American civil society. The only way to prevent dark ages beliefs is to shine light on them.

deleted 8y ago
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eksemplar 8y ago
Maybe, or maybe he’s just making a lot of money selling hatred.
Eric_WVGG 8y ago
> The only way to prevent dark ages beliefs is to shine light on them. This is the sort of principled belief I used to hold that I’m no longer sure holds up to scrutiny. There's always been a fringe that was willing to believe anything. But how do you call something like Infowars “fringe” when it’s on the same “network” as NPR and CNN podcasts? Placement like that legitimizes Infowars. That “light shining” on Infowars was a spotlight. You’re probably right that this will galvanize the true believers, but what was going to turn their beliefs around? The flipside is that this move may cauterize a growing infection.
- nailer 8y ago
  I like CNN a lot more than InfoWars, but there's a few instances - the Trump fish feeding video editing incident, and claiming the Obama admin rep said they didn't seperate children when they just recorded him doing so - where CNN has deliberately and demonstrably lied / misrepresented the truth. Would you support banning them? FB has a strong 'anti fake news' stance. Jones is an asshole, but we should have specific ToS violations, not "we banned you because we've decided glorifying violence is the same as graphic violence now" (which, logically, it is not) and then apply them consistently. We currently have people seeming banning anything they don't like, and allowing ToS violations by people they do like (not just on FB, but also Twitter recently). FB should have said: "we're taking action because we believe your video on this date harassed the Sandy Hook survivors". And they should punish fake news wherever they see it, in the same way Twitter should punish racist trolls.

fareesh 8y ago

The bigger story is that Facebook removed several Infowars pages. That's a big hit in terms of their ability to grow through shares/likes and reach a wider audience. I don't know if the Podcast directory is a big source of newcomers, is it?

r3bl 8y ago
I do agree that the Facebook news is bigger than both Apple and Spotify combined. And InfoWars seems to agree as well, as they've published a video complaining about Facebook's decisions almost immediately. However, I don't think that's the biggest damage they could face from a single provider. I'd say that YouTube could absolutely break the entire thing down to pieces. There are dozens of YouTube videos on their channel with millions of views, often multiple hours long. Hosting multiple hour long video files in a way that millions of people can stream them reliably, that's going to take some effort (and a non-negligible amount of resources). Since YouTube offers them both discoverability and unlimited video bandwidth, if YouTube made a similar decision to Facebook, they would most probably be destroyed in an instant.
- fareesh 8y ago
  YouTube has now banned them as well so they will probably move to dTube / HookTube or one of the blockchain / p2p alternatives. Ironically a big channel like Infowars moving to these alternatives might start the ball rolling in making those platforms more popular. I occasionally listen to Alex Jones for background noise and entertainment value. There is something amusing in his voice, delivery and absurdity - perhaps I am a little privileged to be able to feel that way because he is nowhere close to home for me, as I live in India.

CNJ7654 8y ago

While it is true that Apple is (and should be) allowed to do whatever they want with their services, as they are a private company, these kinds of actions reaffirm how important an open, decentralized standard for media consumption really is.

throwawaymanbot 8y ago

Its time to deplatform maniacs. Especially ones who send links to people who dont know any better. (even though the should) I value having a functioning Democracy over his right to spew insane dangerous garbage. (Which hes still able to do)

eksemplar 8y ago

If you send Alex Jones a submission on how great Hillary Clinton is, do you think it’ll get posted on infowars? No Does that mean Alex Jones is limiting your free speech’s by denying you access to his platform? You can argue that Facebook, Apple and twitter are bigger platforms, but the principal is really the same. Free speech is the right to say what you want, the way you want it, without being procecuted by the government or murdered by a violent mob. Free speech is not the right to be heard. I see the problem of the idea of huge media platforms banning content, but only as an idea. Alex Jones is a hate mongering asshole, that while entertaining, is also dangerous. When infowars ran a piece on the Sandy Hook tradegy, labeling it as a false flag and the victims as actors, some of those parents who lost their children received death threats. Some of those parents are still in hiding today, thanks to infowars and their insane audience. I don’t think the free world, or free speech, suffered anything from this asshole being banned from iTunes.

nailer 8y ago
I don't think Infowars has ever advertised itself an a non-political way for people to connect with each other.

sctb 8y ago

All: there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of intellectual gratification happening in these threads, but please try at least to avoid things like gratuitous inflammation, generic politics, and all such low-information flameage. Those things do actual damage to the community, and for what?

21 8y ago

> The one platform that they CAN'T ban and will ALWAYS have our live streams is http://infowars.com/show http://infowars.com/show Challenge accepted. Where are they hosted? The videos stream from Akamai CDN. CNN can now press Akamai to remove Infowars. Do they use CloudFlare? CloudFlare is know to censor far-right sites (but not jihadi sites).

deleted 8y ago
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CM30 8y ago
This is basically the issue with the internet as it stands now. There is no space outside of the control of a company that might wish to protect their reputation at your expense, meaning that anything unpopular enough can be de facto banned by no one ever hosting it. It's like if the streets and town square didn't exist, and shopping malls owned every 'public' area.

amerkhalid 8y ago

I see a lot of comments regarding freedom of speech. But this has nothing to do with freedom of speech. It has everything to do with hate. I would not eat at a restaurant that has hate propaganda on their walls. This is same thing. He is free to publish his podcast on the internet, no one is stopping. If US government bans him, then we are in a big trouble.

thezealot 8y ago
Hate speech labeling is just the left picking politically expedient winners and losers.

mancerayder 8y ago

Am I disturbed at the idea of a centralized publishing / distribution platform censoring videos/recordings that it characterized in a certain way? I'm actually far more concerned that not a lot of people are challenging the question of whether those characterizations can one day become (if they are not already becoming) arbitrary, self-serving, overly broad, or even simply 'by popular demand' removing items based on an increasingly politicized/bifurcated population. I would argue that choosing winners and losers in the realm of ideas -- which is different than, say, graphic videos, where the criteria are easier to craft ["no nudity" or "no violence" examples of criteria with fewer edge cases] -- goes against core concepts of Western ideals of liberty and the marketplace of ideas. For if there's an objective reality out there, and each of us can seek it out for his/her self, there's no need for an overarching authority to remove "conspiracy theories" to protect our simple minds from accidentally becoming infected with false ideas. I never enjoyed the screaming histrionics of Jones, nor his absurd obsessions, but I'm increasingly concerned that this Postmodern society is more concerned with what it views as Correct and Incorrect Ideas in such realms as comedy and discourse (the overly used "political correctness" that we often argue over so much) than letting individuals think things out for themselves. I have a cultural foot in the door in both Europe and the U.S., and one point of contention I'll forever have with the European leg of the value system is the absurd notion that laws or norms should protect people from being offended and root out "false ideas." Not because I want people to be offended or because I think false ideas are good; instead, I simply don't trust anyone -- not a European judge nor some Apple bureaucrats -- to have better judgment than the rest of the population in this matters. Applauding Jones getting wiped clean from these channels of distribution is short-term: one day there might be something less vile, less clear-cut, an edge-case, that gets removed and you'll have to shout to get it back. Be careful.

claytongulick 8y ago

Honestly curious - I wonder how many people on here that are arguing in favor of limiting access to Infowars have actually spent time watching/listening to it? Or have they formed opinions based on 'what they are told' it is, or blog headlines etc... I see a lot of that these days. A headline comes along and describes something, and a whole bunch of people accept it as literal truth, without bothering to spend time really learning about an opposing viewpoint. A great example of this is Jordan Peterson - he's sort of an interesting guy who got caught up in limelight for various political reasons, but the bulk of his lectures are truly interesting to me, looking at Christianity from an evolutionary psychology perspective, etc... but to read the headlines, you'd think he was out there whipping up Nazi sentiment and trying to crush democracy. I see a lot of people cherry picking small sentences taken out of context, and repeating them to mischaracterize an "opponent". See the painfully uneducated criticisms of his discussion about 'enforced monogamy'. I freely admit I haven't seen a lot of Alex Jones' stuff. I've watched it a bit, out of curiosity. What I saw was colorful and impassioned. I saw a dude getting riled up and speaking more from emotion than critical analysis. That's not my favorite thing, so I haven't spent more time watching it. I just wonder if he's being given the 'Jordan Peterson' treatment because his views are unpopular, and sometimes disagreeable? I saw at least one comment on here accusing him of inciting violence directly. That's the sort of thing I'm talking about. I wonder if that person actually watched/listened to him incite violence? Or if they were just repeating something they heard somewhere else. Several other comments followed that argued that he'd never done that. Hmm. Like I said, I don't have a valid opinion on Inforwars itself, because I haven't really spent much time watching it. I wonder if our discussions about a topic like Infowars would be more positive and constructive if more people were able to withhold judgement until they'd actually researched the topic directly. Or maybe they have? Maybe the dislike is valid from people who have spent time looking into it? It just seems questionable when there is disagreement about basic statements like "he incites violence".

nailer 8y ago
Jordan Peterson cites research that people don't agree with. Because they don't want to take him to task over research, they often create strawmem. Jones makes things up (and has admitted he's acting in court). Some of the things he makes up - like the parents of the dead lids being actors, or a pizza shop being a storefront for pedophiles - mean that people who believe him might be tempted to expose the secret actors, or punish the seemingly-immune pedophiles (who obviously are just people running a pizza shop). This is a serious danger.

jgrowl 8y ago

Regardless of your views of specific individuals, I hope the big corps enjoy their censorship abilities now because it won't be very long before they lose their positions of power. Decentralization is coming...

se30b 8y ago

Alex Jones got banned for telling the truth. Crazy people are allowed everywhere, because their arguments can easily be refuted. Jones was shut down because he is speaking uncomfortable truths that cannot be easily waived away.