Alex Jones, an opportunity for Blockchain?
I'm sure many by now are aware of Youtube's ban on Alex Jones and Infowars. This recent event comes right after he was kicked off iTunes and Facebook. Now the claims against Alex and Infowars can't be quickly dismissed, but does this mean that we are seeing the beginning of true censorship? Does this mean that this could be the golden opportunity for the Blockchain to show its true potential?
As the host of a weekly free speech show, I basically don't agree with any kind of censorship. Not because of law, or constitutional fortitude or holyness, but because of the basic human right of expression (and I also want to know where the stupid people are). Aside from that, how do the self-appointed rulers of mankind think this whole thing is going to play? Will Alex Jones be stopped? Or will he simply be validated? Will his theories, as crazy as someone might call them, be thought "true" just because these actions were taken against him?
These actions, these events, are going to have giant ripples for the world. Not only because it's painfully obvious now to see that there is nothing remotely close to freedom of speech on the "traditional" online mediums of communication, but because now it seems that the "diversity at any cost" people are celebrating the destruction of diversity of opinion with no sense of irony. As was seen with Stefan Molyneux and Laura Southern in New Zealand, the mainstream media driven cult is doing everything it can to push the counter-culture underground.
It takes but one gander on twitter to see the lemmings celebrating the destruction of Alex Jones, as if said thing actually happened. It seems to be they are up for a rude awakening, all this has done is reinforced everything he has ever stood for, and the "Streisand Effect" is now in full swing.
If you know your history, you should be able to see the problem with these events. Are the people at Facebook, Youtube, etc in such a bubble that they can't see these glaring pitfalls? Do they have enough confidence in their dominance of the market to just not care? Do they want to drive people to new platforms to find the content they want?
Regardless of your political spectrum, of where you think your stand on this, you must accept one thing, and one thing alone. The ideas we may hold on freedom don't exist as we think, and the Eagle we think represents these ideals is nothing more than a mask for the power behind it.
Do we really believe this is society protecting itself? Do we really think the government had no hand in this? I don't know, but I can't help but to be extremely suspicious and so should you. What I do know is this presents an opportunity to direct him here, which could lead to a mass exodus of content creators flooding to steem if we can get his attention.
I'm @r0nd0n, and I wrote this entire thing. If it looks like two people wrote this, that's just your bias.
What almost everyone is forgetting and nobody is addressing though is the ROOT CAUSE of the problem.
I've just made a post explaining what it is and what we can do about it:
Mass Censorship: The Real Root of the Problem...(and what to do about it)
#freealexjones #freeinfowars
A truly sad day for free speech!
I hope it motivates people to explore other platforms and leave youtube/fb/etc in the dust.
DLive would be a good place for INFOWARS/Alex Jones. #FREESPEACHfearFREE
I'm cautiously optimistic about dlive. The site has been working pretty well for me recently, but I'm afraid that a big name driving big traffic could actually hurt the platform if they fail to handle the extra bandwidth properly. I've seen this happen elsewhere when a mass exodus of users go to a new site, but that site had only handled a small userbase until that day, and because most people only pay for what they need (including website hosts), what ultimately happens is the only people left at the end are the patient ones who will deal with the bugs, wait for loading screens, and refresh the page instead of going elsewhere.
I hear you. I have noticed improvements since finding DLive. I hope they keep moving forward and anticipate a possible influx due to recent and ongoing censorship on the other video sharing platforms. I also appreciate the time you put into replying to my comment. RESPECT
All we would need is a blockchain based video platform with long term retention.
I think people need to get a more realistic idea of what it takes to retain videos. Google is paying huge money to store all the videos on youtube, and in fact has lost money for years doing so. Now I don't believe this is some pathologically altruistic behavior, they want this information for other purposes, so the cost is worth it to them. In the same sense, to expect dlive or dtube to retain videos forever is entirely because of bias that exists because youtube exists, and that's what we compare against when making our value judgements.
Understanding the costs, if we want to have free video hosting, we're left with a company that wants to use our personal info for possibly nefarious means, or we're left with a company that can't host forever. Now the blockchain may be able to fund some of the hosting like we're seeing now, but I struggle to see it scaling to be able to afford hosting every video uploaded + all the overhead (dev, admin, marketing, etc). Ultimately, I think this means self-hosting will need to become easier for the average user, or people will need to expect to pay if they don't want an invasion of privacy.
Well said.
https://vid.me/ failed because of the crushing cost.
https://www.bitchute.com/ uses web torrent with it's own problems.
So yes, having your own IPFS server might be the way forward.
I was thinking that too - when is Alex Jones coming to steemit ? Even if he just did a blog, that would be awesome. He could link to his infowars.com website - blog format of Alex Jones might be easier for some to digest too :)
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