RE: [Freedom] Alex Jones Kicked From Online Services
You may be right that the SM platforms can censor Alex Jones. It goes against the ethos of free speech but in principle it is their right under the law. It could possibly be that in the terms and services agreement between these private enterprises and their customers it ensures equal treatment of customers on the platform (something quite possible); however, given how slippery corporations are, buried in the contractual legalese there probably is a loophole allowing this.
I for one think this action harms the image of these platforms (which I welcome), pushes Alex Jones to become more radically conspiracy theoristical, and goes against the spirit of Western culture. If legal, then it is legal and not an attack on free speech (a principal regarding state censorship). But government is so corporatist nowadays that these SM platforms are to a not insignificant extent actual wings of the state. In that light, it seemingly is effectively an attack on free speech. Just legally speaking, it is not and the law is king.
In the case of Tommy Robinson, that is a real and outright attack on free speech. I have to disagree. It is a politically motivated miscarriage of justice which silenced and imprisoned Robinson and intimidates others from speaking non-politically supported opinions. That is an attack on free speech.
I shouldn't call them "customers", they're users. The customers are those who by the personal data of the users or buy advertising.
Legally, they absolutely can allow or deny anyone they want and if I felt for a second that Jones was being attacked for his beliefs or views, I too would see this as an attack on free speech. I've listened to his crisis actor rants, and I've also heard his personal attacks on several of the survivors of various school shootings who expressed their right to free speech by speaking up. He is not an advocate for free speech in my opinion, but an out and out confidence man. He has a very clear agenda.
The SM platforms do not treat all their users equally, that much I know. They tend to treat those who earn them the most money with an awful lot more favour than the smaller users, which is why their purges of InfoWars from their platforms is such big news and noteworthy.
On one hand, it might have helped the SM platform's cases if they'd explicitly highlighted the content that had breached the ToS, but drawing a line in the sand like that can also be a bad thing. Does it hurt their image? Yeah, certainly in the eyes of some people, but it's also boosted it in the eyes of others. It's barely been 24 hours so far, but GOOG stock prices are unaffected, but I guess it would take longer to be able to properly gauge that.
Another angle I'm coming at this from is that for most platforms, let's use YouTube as the example here, you are essentially working for YouTube by accepting the community guidelines and ToS and posting content to their platform. If your content is not brand or family friendly, they aren't going to want you anymore.
If Jones was concerned with spreading truth and awareness on topics, he could still do that, but because his wallet is going to be hurting after this purge, that's what he's going to be most upset about.
As for whether SM is another wing of the state, extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, y'know? I'm not denying that, however at the same time it's certainly not the face of government who are controlling SM (especially after watching the Zuckerberg hearing) and if that really is the case, just don't use social media.
I have views that maybe wouldn't be that popular, so I don't post them online. Someone wants to speak with me in private about anything, I'm down for that. We all have the right to free speech, but we don't have the right to protection from consequences as a result of our speech.
I completely disagree with you with regards to Mr Robinson. He isn't free now, just out on bail as the rushed and unfair nature of the last trial was well, wrong. There's a separate conversation to be had surrounding the laws about not reporting on cases to prevent jurys from being swayed or tampered with, but Robinson is no way an advocate of free speech or justice. A convicted fraudster, founder of the EDL which he abandoned because it got out of his control. He's not a journalist as many have called him either.
Tommy Robinson said in his "reporting" nothing that was not already reported by the media; he read from a guardian article.
Alex Jones supposedly violated the companies' Hate Speech policies. Un-personing him online may be within their legal right but legal sanction does not make it right or smart.
It is easier and probably better to let the market decide whether they want to listen toand support Alex Jones. On online social media platforms the market is the users, not the utility operator/rent seeker.
Been doing a bit more reading on this topic, and I ended up going through the ToS on infowars.com:
So you think Linkedon, Facebook, Google, etc. should take editorial responsibility for their users' activity? They'll be like news organizations. That's an insane task when you have hundreds upon thousands of millions of users to thought police. Maybe doable. That's also big brothering the users b/c it takes responsibility for their online activity away from them. So then if the companies make a mistake, the legal responsibility will be on them now. So from a business model perspective this is again stupid.