Alex Jones, social media and free speech

I know we've talked a little about this on the politics thread, but I was hoping we could discuss it a little more.

To me, Jones' ban from different platforms is justified. Twitter, Facebook and Youtube are not a part of the government. If you're going to use them, you have to play by their rules. As I rather flippantly said in one case, there are a lot of street corners out there and nobody is stopping Alex Jones from standing on one and saying whatever he likes.

Some free speech absolutists disagree. They claim that because Twitter and Facebook are a monopoly and a lot of people and businesses have to use them (Our publications, for example are very big on Facebook because they say that that's how most people get to our web sites), to ban someone from the platform is an infringement on their free speech rights, no different than if the government were doing it.

I'm not buying it.

These people also say that if they ban Alex Jones, what keeps them from banning me someday? Well, I'm not an amoral lowlife who calls parents of murder victims liars and crisis actors so I don't think I have any reason to worry.

The guy used the example of a private commuter rail service not allowing black people to ride and said that's the same thing as Twitter or Facebook banning conservatives.
It's a false equivalence.

Here is some more of this genius's "reasoning"

 

I consider myself pretty darn close to being a free speech absolutist - at least as one can get while still recognizing there are some limits.

Fundamentally, there is nothing wrong with a private enterprise policing content on its own platform. Jones, Milo and others who have been booted seem to have no difficulty getting their voices heard through alternative means.

The social media sites are not consistent in enforcing their terms of service, and that is a problem. But it is a problem between the site and individual users.

I find it intriguing that most of the people complaining would consider government regulation/intervention in other industries to be anti-competitive burdens.

 

If social platforms want to require you to post in pig Latin or they will ban you, it’s their right. And I have no problems with it.

 

Meanwhile, @SomeGuyOnFacebook is back.

 

Alex Jones is going to go out in a terrifying blaze of glory.

His ain't no act.

 

The first amendment has even less to do with the private rail company example than the private company’s ban of particular speech or speakers.

The private company providing a public accommodation is prohibited from discriminating based on race (and some other grounds) by the federal Civil Rights Act and maybe a comparable state law.

 

FIrst of all Alex Jones is commercial speech, not journalism or political speech. His speech is used to drive people to the website to buy products. His products are targeted to a demographic that he attracts using advertisements directed towards the same demographic. As he has testified, its all an act. Right wing capitalist art. He is essentially the commericial version of Andy Kauffman, he’s so good at playing his part you dont know if its real or fake. It’s so fake its real? It’s so real it’s contrived?

 

No, it's so real it's real.

 

You can’t yell fire in a movie theater.

 

Also, discrimination based on someone's political opinions is not illegal, right?

 

FTFY

 

When he attempted to get the lawsuits against him that the Sandy Hook parents filed, he claimed that he was a journalist, asking questions to get to the truth.

I remember one the things he talked about as "evidence" that Sandy Hook was faked was how a photo of one of the victims was included in a collage with victims of a shooting in Pakistan.
He said any journalist seeing that collage would have to ask the question about why the photo of someone killed at Sandy Hook would be included with photos of kids killed in Pakistan.
I don't think a real journalist would ask that question. I think I real journalist would consider that asking that question would cause emotional pain and suffering to the kid's parents and not ask the question.