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Twitter bans Alex Jones and Infowars for abusive behaviour
- IgorPartola 8y agoWhy is Twitter always last to do the right thing? It’s almost like being a publicly traded company robbed them of their last shred of humanity.
- BigChiefSmokem 8y agoIt's their CEO's personality to do things slowly.
- gammateam 8y agobecause it is totally irrelevant to shareholder lockups they only moved because their california employees were having a breakdown
- marcrosoft 8y ago"do the right thing" is difficult when you are suppressing free speech on a platform that's supposed to be all about it.
- Atlantium 8y agoAlex Jones is free to express his speech on his own website as much as he pleases. "Free Speech" is not about forcing a company to host content they don't like. That would be against Twitter's freedoms. Alex Jones will still be heard by his audience.
- nyolfen 8y agomaybe you haven’t noticed, but people have been going after hosting companies and payment processors lately to shut down people they find politically disagreeable. we are increasingly less and less free to host our own speech.
- threeseed 8y agoThen run your own hosting company and accept money via Bitcoin. You can't just force third party companies to do whatever you want.
- nyolfen 8y agohate speech and racism absolutely are political, they are only outside of the overton window. i despise racists as much as anyone but i don’t trust anyone with the authority to police permissible opinions, and i think anybody who does is naive and short-sighted. if you construct these frameworks for suppression, they will be used against you by your enemies the second they have the opportunity.
- 0x4f3759df 8y agoHate speech is a phony political category. Hate Christians and white people? Well that's just fine. Have a Twitter account that retweets verified people saying 'kill all whites'? That'll get you banned.
- nyolfen 8y agojust realized i replied to the wrong comment, apologies
- 0x4f3759df 8y agoI don't see why he can't just terraform Mars and built his own Internet and Twitter there.
- LocalH 8y agoEvery bit of it is done under the assumption that "freedom of speech only applies to the government", which is quite technically true. However, I don't really see how it would have been possible for the authors of the Constitution (since Twitter is a US company, and Alex Jones is a US citizen, it's within scope) to foresee that the greatest danger to freedom of speech would not be the government. Honestly, we're probably at the point in our existence as a nation where we have the least freedom of speech. Sure, you can sit in a private conversion and say pretty much whatever you want. But, if you speak anywhere where the public can see it (even via private means), and you have an unpopular opinion, you have droves of people who try to shut you down. And it's not bad enough that they can get your access to your platform of choice revoked, some of these people will make it their life's mission to ensure that you lose your job or even worse become unemployable. Look at what happened to Conor Daly after something his father said ten years prior to Conor's birth surfaced. I'm waiting for the day when someone legitimately tries to argue that the rights of all of those descended from the Pilgrims should be taken away, since they took away the rights and land of Native Americans.
- marcrosoft 8y agoI completely agree with you. I'm just saying that it must be a hard decision because they've previously chosen what to censor in the past giving them a censorship bias. We now know twitter is not a place of free speech but a place with the slant of X.
- starik36 8y agoThat's like saying: Alex Jones is free to grow his own food on his land as much as he pleases. This supermarket has a policy not to sell food to people who violate our terms of service regarding hate speech.
- henryfjordan 8y agoThe supermarket is free to not sell to any particular person on the basis that they constantly engage in hate speech. It gets murkier when they start banning classes of people or ban someone for something that puts them in a protected class, but any supermarket that banned Alex Jones for hate speech would be well within their rights.
- starik36 8y agoOk, let's take it one step further. All the supermarkets in town decide not to sell food to Alex Jones, essentially condemning him to starvation. Are you still good with that?
- fuball63 8y agoIt isn't unreasonable for a supermarket to forbid someone that is disturbing the peace from entering.
- TheDong 8y agoIf you go into a supermarket and start spewing hate-speech, yes they have every right to ban you. If you make other customers uncomfortable, they have every right to expel you. Alex Jones is spewing hate-speech on twitter, making other twitter users feel unwelcome, and so on. I don't see how this analogy is favorable to him at all. If you're abusive in a space to the point of causing mental pain to others, yes, you should be removed from it.
- Atlantium 8y agoExactly. You may not like that but that's the way it is.
- enraged_camel 8y ago
- trophycase 8y agoJack Dorsey frequently said in the hearing that he wanted Twitter to be like a "public square" or "public forum". In fact he used the word "public" quite a bit, which is weird if you don't want to be regulated.
- boxspam 8y ago> Alex Jones will still be heard by his audience. Current audience. What about a new young audience? What about the part of the audience that wants to listen to him on Twitter? > That would be against Twitter's freedoms. I think you should be able to fire your users for being assholes. But I do realize the slippery slope here. I could discriminate on race, political preference, smell, weight, sexuality, age, etc. and that causes me to label someone an asshole. Now Twitter, the biggest public and digital town square of our future, labels you an asshole, but does not specify exactly why. The global media town crier goes around town telling everyone you are now the new village idiot. Even if you vehemently agree with their decision, this should give you pause: How could such a system be hacked by adversaries/what vulnerabilities are exposed? How much unchecked social/tribal power is held in the hands of the few? What would such a system look like if it is artificially/clumsily converged to a majority opinion ideology chamber? Then, will you still be heard by your audience if you have a dissenting/unpopular/asshole opinion? Not too long ago "homosexuality is not a mental disorder" was an unpopular opinion. Do you trust our current evolution enough to say: "We are there. We can now freeze our morals and views."
- mmanfrin 8y agoTwitter is not 'supposed to be all about [free speech]'. It's a microblogging platform, not a political stance.
- pokemongoaway 8y agoWhat's your evidence of this? They've banned a variety of people who criticize the mainstream. I support the parent message - they are a platform, not a publisher. Twitter is the one making this political by deciding who is worth censoring and who is not. They would never censor pro-war NYT/Post folks...
- natex 8y agoThis is wrong. Is Twitter suppressing Jones' ability to say what he wants to? No. So they are not suppressing free speech. Twitter is banning a serial harasser from using their (privately owned) platform. The analogy would be kicking someone out of your house for harassing your other guests.
- sheepmullet 8y ago> So they are not suppressing free speech. Twitter is banning a serial harasser from using their (privately owned) platform. I’d argue Twitter is the modern day town square and it doesn’t matter if it is privately owned.
- chiefalchemist 8y agoYes. Agreed. Furthermore, Jones is a symptom. Banning him does cure the true problem. Does banning the likes of Jones make the MSM any more trustable? Or the MSM any more responsible? That seems unlikely.
- themoonbus 8y agoNobody's free speech rights were violated? I can't believe this has to be explained on hackernews... https://xkcd.com/1357/ https://xkcd.com/1357/
- noisem4ker 8y agoOther than a constitutional right, free speech is a principle in itself.
- HBlix 8y agoHow are they suppressing free speech? They’re not the government, they get to control their service just like any business, because they are also free.
- colordrops 8y agoThis is a narrow view of the reality of speech in the US. Almost all public speech goes through private entities that are controlled by a small number of powerful connected people, giving them the de facto ability to censor speech.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- lostlogin 8y agoI can’t see anything that says it’s all about free speech. I can see this though. “Freedom of expression means little if voices are silenced because people are afraid to speak up. We do not tolerate behavior that harasses, intimidates, or uses fear to silence another person’s voice. If you see something on Twitter that violates these rules, please report it to us.“ https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/hateful-conduct-policy https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/hateful-condu...
- hoosieree 8y agoTwitter is "about" advertising; everything else is incidental. Bans only happen if Twitter believes that doing so (a) gains users or (b) prevents users from leaving. Hate speech, election meddling, threats of nuclear war - it all gets a free pass until it stops generating "impressions". But they only do it because we (as a group) let them get away with it. If 30% of Twitter users left, the platform wouldn't last a week.
- dmix 8y agoAnyone know what videos or tweets were 'abusive'? Twitter didn't say which ones they were. Twitter needs to be more transparent about this stuff. Especially when banning one of the most influential conspiracy theorist in the world. Not to mention a vague and/or arbitrary banning policy is always a bad idea.
- twmb 8y agoWouldn't drawing attention to bannable offenses be Streisand effect-y?
- espeed 8y agoYes. Jones and Trump both subscribe to the philosophy of "there's no such thing as bad publicity...all publicity is good publicity." Jones was overjoyed when Clinton referenced him publicly in her campaign.
- maxander 8y agoTwitter isn’t going to broadcast or link to tweets that were bad enough to merit a ban, for obvious reasons- they’re banning it precisely to avoid having that content be propagated any further.
- tomohawk 8y agoThis is circular reasoning, and it conveniently excuses any abuses or hypocrisy by the company by disappearing the evidence and not allowing anyone else to judge for themselves. From an outside observer, there is no way to distinguish between the claim that the ban is for "good reasons", or that the ban is a result of bias on the part of the company.
- LocalH 8y agoThis is the same reasoning that leads to people getting banned from a service for a reason, and then given a cold shoulder and absolutely no information about why. Perhaps this is fine in situations where the banned entity is a malicious actor, but it presumes a zero false-positive rate. My opinion is, if even one person is wrongly punished without recourse (other than rolling the dice with social media) then the whole system is unjust and should be reworked.
- siruncledrew 8y agoIf Twitter wants to ban him, then they can ban him. I honestly don’t know how he gained so much publicity as a conspiracy theorist, but he sounds like someone who’s drive is to continuously poke the sleeping bear and bother people for the sake of being an asshole. Abusive behavior was his business model.
- newnewpdro 8y agoThe horrifying thing is how many people his antics resonate with.
- vixen99 8y agowhose drive
- andrewclunn 8y agoHere's where I'd make the informative comment about how that Rubio video is heavily edited and post a link to the full video, but that wouldn't be effective because I'm shadow banned on here. Ah censorship. Nope nothing wrong here. Move along.
- adamrezich 8y agoDoes anyone still actually think that Alex Jones isn't a character or persona being put on by an actor, like Colbert's Colbert Report character? Not that this excuses anything he says or does of course (though apparently what he said here wasn't a big deal at all)... but how anyone can think Jones acts the way he does on-camera after the cameras are turned off and nobody is looking is beyond me. His lawyer essentially admitted as much in court!
- mmanfrin 8y agoDoes it matter? His viewers see him as genuine and believe the things he says. When people watched Colbert, most of them got the joke because it was clearly satire. Jones hiding behind 'its a character' is such a flimsy and useless excuse.
- epistasis 8y agoAre you serious, have you ever run into one of his listeners? If anybody listens to him thinking it's not real, they are a tiny and insignificant minority. What his lawyer admits in court means nothing to his audience.
- pokemongoaway 8y agoSo the same thing the mainstream media said about Trump supporters before he got elected. Want to cite some evidence that Info Wars is actually tiny and has the abysmal following you're claiming?
- adamrezich 8y agoYes I have, and he literally showed me his water filter and offered me a glass. Doesn't change my point one bit.
- rosser 8y agoIt's somehow "better" that he behaves that way to make a buck, than because he believes it?
- 8y ago
- orf 8y agoThe video that got him banned: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ne_wFdA-1oU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ne_wFdA-1oU
- yters 8y agoLol, and the video was all about how the left censors people! Seriously, I never gave Alex Jones much credence before this, but this getting him banned makes him much more credible in my mind.
- orf 8y agoI see it less about the left censoring people and more about a grown man harassing a journalist by hurling abuse at his face for 10 minutes straight (whilst invading his personal space with a camera), and topping it off with a racist anti semitic dog whistle comment about his eyes. The guy being, for lack of a better word, bullied in the video took it exceptionally well. Different strokes for different folks I guess.
- yters 8y agoYes, the bullying was uncalled for. And what this has done has motivated me to look further into who Alex Jones is, and reversed my opinion back to him being a scumbag. Seems he is only a few ratings away from going full Holocaust denial in his mission to doubt all official accounts of anything.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- sheepmullet 8y agoHopefully the banning of Alex Jones puts us on the path to breaking up the tech giants.
- vixen99 8y agoNow I wonder why some folk would not approve of that. Interesting!
- modells 8y agoCrossfire, Alex Jones and Gordon Ramsay need their own shouting as a service platform. It sucks for free speech that he got banned because it gives him notoriety and "credibility" in wingnuttery circles. There ought to be other remedies to manipulative behavior for ratings than simply banning.
- mkbgw 8y agoI think Gordon Ramsey deserves better than to be grouped with Mr. Jones. I haven't heard much from Milo Yiannopoulos since he was banned from Twitter and other platforms. I suspect Alex Jones has a similar future.
- Memosyne 8y agoAfter watching https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1X11aLACso https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1X11aLACso I would have to disagree; they both made money by verbally abusing others.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 8y agoNo, one gained notoriety by making incredible food. Incidentally, he was also an abusive asshole boss, but that was not how he made his fame. Eventually Gordon was so famous for his skills that people would volunteer to be abused by him on TV just to stand near his light. The other is just a liar, blowhard, asshole. Alex Jones has never done anything else of note besides the aforementioned.
- dstroot 8y agoWing nuts will spin no matter what. I matters little if he is banned or simply “censored”
- mcphage 8y ago> Crossfire, Alex Jones and Gordon Ramsay need their own shouting as a service platform. Jones already has one, but the problem is, not enough people listen to it. So he wants to get on everybody else's shouting platforms as well. He could make more shouting platforms, but... well, "a platform for Alex Jones and Alex Jones wannabes to shout at you" isn't really much of a compelling MVP.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- dstroot 8y agoIn the eyeball economy there seems to be no way I can personally reward Twitter for good behavior. I’d like to send them $100 for banning the creep. If I feel Apple is doing well with social responsibility I can buy more Apple stuff. I certainly won’t click more ads on Twitter to reward them. So what incentive do they really have to foster good behavior?
- hsienmaneja 8y agoFirst off, there is compelling evidence that the Q movement is actually controlled by senior intel close to Trump Secondly, Q just posted that this is retaliation for action against @jack, amongst other claims regarding infowars Can anyone close to TWTR confirm?
- boxspam 8y agoQanon is a Russian psyop and a bunch of unwitting agents.
- hsienmaneja 8y agoWhat evidence is there that it’s a Russian psyop? Also, who are the “unwitting agents”? And why did this comment receive a downvote? Just asking for clarification.
- WalterGR 8y agoAlso, who are the “unwitting agents”? You are one of them, as an example. What evidence is there that it’s a Russian psyop? Have you noticed that if someone disagrees with a Qanon claim the followers ask, “What evidence is there that my claim is false?” But if someone makes a claim contrary to Qanon orthodoxy, the followers ask, “What evidence is there that your claim is true?” You can’t have it both ways. You can’t make claims and expect people to prove that you’re wrong when they don’t believe you, then turn around and expect them to prove that they’re right when you don’t believe them.
- WalterGR 8y agoTo be clear, when I responded to “Also, who are the ‘unwitting agents’?” I was explaining what boxspam meant.
- mercer 8y agoI can't speak for others, and I'm not convinced this is a Russian 'psyop'. That said, I'm subscribed to the Qanon subreddit and spent quite a bit of time looking into it, and I can't see the whole phenomenon as anything other than bafflingly insane. It's like someone took the worst conspiracy theories, the worst of evangelical-ish paranoia, quite a bit of legitimate discontent with the status quo, and let it metastasize. As such, I downvote pro-Q comments because as far as I'm concerned they're noise on the level of climate-change deniers, flat-earthers, and vaccine-causes-autism level comments. EDIT: that said, I curious enough about the whole thing to hear a good argument as to why Qanon should be taken seriously. But privately, by email.
- aestetix 8y agoGiven that Jack Dorsey just testified to Congress that he considers Twitter a digital public square, does the "it's a private company" work to defend them on such matters anymore?
- alphabettsy 8y agoOf course it does. No organization private or otherwise has the obligation to provide you a platform. As far as I’m aware the government doesn’t have to provide you a platform, they just can’t deny you your right to have one of your own making or limit your access to one that they provide to others on an arbitrary basis.
- theorique 8y agoGiven the apparently coordinated action taken by Facebook, Twitter, Apple, and YouTube (Google), it doesn't seem to be independent, private companies acting independently. It may not be a violation of the First Amendment, but it could be bumping up against antitrust law. Taken together, these companies have a significant near-monopoly in content distribution. It's more like the power company or the gas company cutting you off because they don't like your politics. Yes, technically you can use a generator or get propane delivered, but the question is whether they should be legally allowed to cut you off. If they are truly a public square and common carrier, then these platforms need to permit all content that does not violate the law.
- fosco 8y agoDupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17929417 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17929417
- natecavanaugh 8y agoThis could have happened sooner, but glad Twitter finally had the gumption to do it. It always amazes me, the conspiracy theorists, on the right in particular. The government is too inefficient to do anything, but can create these elaborate fictions and instantly turn into bastions of loyalty and commitment to a mission that the right can't even seem to muster. But when you're beliefs are unfalsifiable, and you have no respect for objective truth, just perception and position, anything is possible.
- vivekd 8y agoI'm not a fan of Alex Jones. I think Alex Jones was at his worst during Sandy Hook when he accused the victims families of being crisis actors. I think if social media platforms had banned him then, I would have understood the decision and applauded them. What I can't understand is the decision of major social media platforms to ban him now. His content now isn't any more out of the ordinary or abusive than at any other point in his broadcasting history. So it just seems strange that facebook, twitter, youtube, apple and spotify all come together and ban him at the same time. And it seems even stranger that none of these companies can give even a vague hint at the specific content he was banned for. I'm not saying they have to broadcast the actual content but something along the lines of "harmful, defamatory and malicious speech directed against Sandy Hook victims" could work. Silicon valley is starting to look more and more like a tech oligopoly. It seems like these huge corporations are having discussions behind closed doors and making decisions that have a major impact on the public discourse.
- boxspam 8y agoThis may have something to do with: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/ny-news-conspiracy-subpoenaed-mueller-roger-stone-20180905-story.html http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/ny-news-conspiracy-... I think the Russia investigation has unearthed links between conspiracy theorists and efforts to divide and undermine US politics and these companies were warned behind the scenes to stop being complicit (or perhaps they had a inter-company meeting, Bilderberg-style). Also there was a concerted effort by media companies to have Jones banned. They kept him in the news cycle for weeks. Finally, the left united to have him banned, made him an issue and visible to employees of these companies.
- baxuz 8y agoSoo... When is Trump getting banned?
- xolorg 8y agoWhat happened to the HN I once knew. Anti-censorship no matter who the individual. The fact that we have the majority of people here celebrating censorship truly scares me.
- humantiy 8y agoI find this alarming as well but its not just HN, its the tech industry as a whole seems to be moving in this direction in the last few years.
- tomjen3 8y agoIt is not just HN. That seems to be the direction the entire IT section has taken. Used to be we would respect DVD John and demand no censorship -- now all with get is that meme that free speech is exactly the same as the US admentment and that it can't be done by private parties, oh and it is not censorship if your employer is haunded down, your livelyhood ruined and everybody hates you if you say something somebody disagree with.
- enterx 8y agoWhat is Twitter?! :D
- forgottenpass 8y agoTwitter is a shithole of humanity where people get off on tearing people down. The ultimate teardown is getting Twitter to un-person them. (not my take, but thought it was interesting none the less)