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I mean, these are all true. Lots of people chose to avoid particular hosting platforms, components, utility providers and healthcare providers. Do you feel lik

I mean, these are all true. Lots of people chose to avoid particular hosting platforms, components, utility providers and healthcare providers. Do you feel like Jones didn't have his proverbial "day in court"? He's had many, of course, and lost most of them. A basic google search tells me you can buy many books written by Alex Jones on his infowars shop. Even if he was kicked off the DNS system he would be able to host his page through TOR. I do not think that we must provide equal quality of service to all speech. Just like we kick teenagers off online games when they won't stop yelling slurs, there's nothing wrong with banning people from the public square for spreading harmful falsehoods.

ravenstine 6y ago
I don't know if he got his "day in court", and I'm not sure he deserved one since these platforms can do what they want on an individual basis. What is dangerous is a handful of platforms dominating communication and then conspiring to censor the same person all at the same time, which is exactly what happened with Alex Jones. Though it seems reasonable to tell an undesirable to "find your own X", it's also a sentiment that can be taken too far and could be dangerous when taken to its logical extreme. I don't think most reasonable people believe that platforms shouldn't prevent someone from shouting "fire" in a crowded room, metaphorically speaking, but it shouldn't necessarily follow that the same can be said for anything that people may not like. I listen to Alex Jones occasionally. I don't listen to him because I believe what he says. I just think he's hilarious and I consider him to be a comedian. I can't say that anything that he says is dangerous, as ill informed or misleading some of it is. (maybe his stance on vaccines) Not everything that Alex Jones says is wrong. He is also often wrong. That said, depending on where the Overton window lies and the climate of politics, I don't like "find your own X" because it signifies a disdain towards dissidence, and we're not far off from saying "If you disagree with the WHO, go find your own platform." That's scary, but a lot of prominent figures in the media lump in skeptics of the WHO with the likes of Alex Jones, conservatives(i.e. heretics), and anti-vaxxers. When someone says "find your own platform", that is a complete dismissal towards someone and their ideas. Coordinated efforts to expunge people from the public square isn't something to be pleased with, even when Alex Jones is the target. Once we're told to find our own platforms, and that becomes the norm, there's nothing to stop that precedence from propagating to "find your own website" or "find your own payment processor". When these companies are all in cahoots and basically agree about everything, there's absolutely no guarantee that a company's privilege to ban users stops with people like Alex Jones. You might just do or say the wrong thing with good intention. There's a reason why we stopped excommunicating people who have committed no crime, and coordinated efforts to censor people is effectively modern day exile. If someone is to be expunged from the public square, the argument should be "they did (insert bad thing)", not simply "they can go elsewhere". Most people who think Alex Jones deserved to be banned don't seem particularly well informed about Alex Jones, other than that he's crazy and that he'd eat his neighbors.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- JohnBooty 6y ago
  The challenge with giving an equal platform to bad-faith disinformation artists like Alex Jones is that it's simply not a fair fight. Respectable news reporting organizations are bound by an obligation to research and vet their stories. People like Alex Jones are not, and they can look 95% as slickly presented as a "real" news organization for 1% of the cost and 0% of the moral obligations. They can churn this stuff out at a rate that sources of respectable reporting cannot even begin to approach. It's like the information equivalent of a DDOS attack, or the "Gish Gallop." Give the Alex Joneses of the world an equal platform and the world will eventually be nothing but Alex Joneses -- whoever screams the most sensational stuff the most often is going to win. What is dangerous is a handful of platforms dominating communication I agree with the terribleness of this. But I do truly believe it's less terrible than giving a platform to bad-faith creeps like Jones. Ultimately, the answer is an educated populace with strong critical thinking skills that can do a better job of deciding for themselves. That is truly the goal. I'll let you decide how feasible that is in the short term, the long term, or any term whatsoever. 20-30 years ago we all thought the WWW was going to be this incredible marketplace of ideas where the truth would win. What an idealistic crock of shit that was.
  - jaspax 6y ago
    > Respectable news reporting organizations are bound by an obligation to research and vet their stories. Bound by whom? Where is this obligation written? Who holds them to it? What are the consequences if they break it? Or more to the point: what consequences have they suffered for the fact that they have already broken this obligation over and over again over the past decades?
    - JohnBooty 6y ago
      I'll grant you some things. 1. The mainstream news sources have messed up lots of times. (I would argue that their success rate is very high, though) 2. The mainstream news are largely ad-supported and therefore their entire line of work is a bit of a minefield of conflicts of interest. That said... They are not perfect, but comparing them to a disinformation merchant like Alex Jones is an absolute farce. Stories at "real" news organizations are vetted by multiple members of the staff. They make corrections. This cannot be said of wack jobs like Alex Jones. They are not even in the same league in terms of good-faith effort to get things right. Bound by whom? Where is this obligation written? Who holds them to it? What are the consequences if they break it? One, institutions like the NYT and WSJ bank on their reputation as purveyors of the truth and as institutions with rigorous reporting standards. They rely on that in ways that Alex Jones does not. He relies upon being shocking and edgy. Two -- and perhaps more tangibly -- traditionally in mainstream media, reporters caught fabricating stories or otherwise being unethical essentially forfeited their careers. You can see both of those factors at work in the story of Jayson Blair, a reporter who was caught fabricating stories for the NYT. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jayson_Blair#Later_career https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jayson_Blair#Later_career https://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/11/us/correcting-the-record-times-reporter-who-resigned-leaves-long-trail-of-deception.html https://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/11/us/correcting-the-record-... Yes, the NYT was duped. Embarrassingly. But the system worked. They conducted a pretty intense internal investigation to catch the guy. They caught him. They set the record straight. They admitted they screwed up. In that one instance they displayed more journalistic integrity than you'd see from Alex Jones in a lifetime. And what happened to Jayson Blair? As I said above, his journalism career was over. You can point out problems with "traditional" news organizations, and I'll agree with many of them, and they are still miles better than conspiracy hacks with zero journalistic scruples.

ravenstine 6y ago

I don't know if he got his "day in court", and I'm not sure he deserved one since these platforms can do what they want on an individual basis. What is dangerous is a handful of platforms dominating communication and then conspiring to censor the same person all at the same time, which is exactly what happened with Alex Jones. Though it seems reasonable to tell an undesirable to "find your own X", it's also a sentiment that can be taken too far and could be dangerous when taken to its logical extreme. I don't think most reasonable people believe that platforms shouldn't prevent someone from shouting "fire" in a crowded room, metaphorically speaking, but it shouldn't necessarily follow that the same can be said for anything that people may not like. I listen to Alex Jones occasionally. I don't listen to him because I believe what he says. I just think he's hilarious and I consider him to be a comedian. I can't say that anything that he says is dangerous, as ill informed or misleading some of it is. (maybe his stance on vaccines) Not everything that Alex Jones says is wrong. He is also often wrong. That said, depending on where the Overton window lies and the climate of politics, I don't like "find your own X" because it signifies a disdain towards dissidence, and we're not far off from saying "If you disagree with the WHO, go find your own platform." That's scary, but a lot of prominent figures in the media lump in skeptics of the WHO with the likes of Alex Jones, conservatives(i.e. heretics), and anti-vaxxers. When someone says "find your own platform", that is a complete dismissal towards someone and their ideas. Coordinated efforts to expunge people from the public square isn't something to be pleased with, even when Alex Jones is the target. Once we're told to find our own platforms, and that becomes the norm, there's nothing to stop that precedence from propagating to "find your own website" or "find your own payment processor". When these companies are all in cahoots and basically agree about everything, there's absolutely no guarantee that a company's privilege to ban users stops with people like Alex Jones. You might just do or say the wrong thing with good intention. There's a reason why we stopped excommunicating people who have committed no crime, and coordinated efforts to censor people is effectively modern day exile. If someone is to be expunged from the public square, the argument should be "they did (insert bad thing)", not simply "they can go elsewhere". Most people who think Alex Jones deserved to be banned don't seem particularly well informed about Alex Jones, other than that he's crazy and that he'd eat his neighbors.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
JohnBooty 6y ago
The challenge with giving an equal platform to bad-faith disinformation artists like Alex Jones is that it's simply not a fair fight. Respectable news reporting organizations are bound by an obligation to research and vet their stories. People like Alex Jones are not, and they can look 95% as slickly presented as a "real" news organization for 1% of the cost and 0% of the moral obligations. They can churn this stuff out at a rate that sources of respectable reporting cannot even begin to approach. It's like the information equivalent of a DDOS attack, or the "Gish Gallop." Give the Alex Joneses of the world an equal platform and the world will eventually be nothing but Alex Joneses -- whoever screams the most sensational stuff the most often is going to win. What is dangerous is a handful of platforms dominating communication I agree with the terribleness of this. But I do truly believe it's less terrible than giving a platform to bad-faith creeps like Jones. Ultimately, the answer is an educated populace with strong critical thinking skills that can do a better job of deciding for themselves. That is truly the goal. I'll let you decide how feasible that is in the short term, the long term, or any term whatsoever. 20-30 years ago we all thought the WWW was going to be this incredible marketplace of ideas where the truth would win. What an idealistic crock of shit that was.
- jaspax 6y ago
  > Respectable news reporting organizations are bound by an obligation to research and vet their stories. Bound by whom? Where is this obligation written? Who holds them to it? What are the consequences if they break it? Or more to the point: what consequences have they suffered for the fact that they have already broken this obligation over and over again over the past decades?
  - JohnBooty 6y ago
    I'll grant you some things. 1. The mainstream news sources have messed up lots of times. (I would argue that their success rate is very high, though) 2. The mainstream news are largely ad-supported and therefore their entire line of work is a bit of a minefield of conflicts of interest. That said... They are not perfect, but comparing them to a disinformation merchant like Alex Jones is an absolute farce. Stories at "real" news organizations are vetted by multiple members of the staff. They make corrections. This cannot be said of wack jobs like Alex Jones. They are not even in the same league in terms of good-faith effort to get things right. Bound by whom? Where is this obligation written? Who holds them to it? What are the consequences if they break it? One, institutions like the NYT and WSJ bank on their reputation as purveyors of the truth and as institutions with rigorous reporting standards. They rely on that in ways that Alex Jones does not. He relies upon being shocking and edgy. Two -- and perhaps more tangibly -- traditionally in mainstream media, reporters caught fabricating stories or otherwise being unethical essentially forfeited their careers. You can see both of those factors at work in the story of Jayson Blair, a reporter who was caught fabricating stories for the NYT. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jayson_Blair#Later_career https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jayson_Blair#Later_career https://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/11/us/correcting-the-record-times-reporter-who-resigned-leaves-long-trail-of-deception.html https://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/11/us/correcting-the-record-... Yes, the NYT was duped. Embarrassingly. But the system worked. They conducted a pretty intense internal investigation to catch the guy. They caught him. They set the record straight. They admitted they screwed up. In that one instance they displayed more journalistic integrity than you'd see from Alex Jones in a lifetime. And what happened to Jayson Blair? As I said above, his journalism career was over. You can point out problems with "traditional" news organizations, and I'll agree with many of them, and they are still miles better than conspiracy hacks with zero journalistic scruples.