OK, change in plans; we’ll be traveling next week, not this week. So our totty dumps have been postponed, for now. Up side; another week before we have to acclimate ourselves to (ugh) New Jersey. Moving on, thanks as always to Pirate’s Cove and The Other McCain for the Rule Five links!
Meanwhile, notorious kook and nutbar Alex Jones and his InfoWars horseshit is just getting banned all over the place. Relevant opening lines from each story:
- Facebook unpublished four pages run by Jones for “repeated violations of community standards”, the company said on Monday. YouTube terminated Jones’s account over him repeatedly appearing in videos despite being subject to a 90-day ban from the website, and Spotify removed the entirety of one of Jones’s podcasts for “hate content”.
- Apple Inc, YouTube, Facebook Inc and Spotify all took down podcasts and channels from U.S. conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, saying on Monday that the Infowars author had broken community standards. The sweeping moves are the broadest actions yet by internet companies that have suspended or removed some of the conspiracy-driven content.
- YouTube has removed Alex Jones’ page, following bans earlier Monday from Apple and Facebook.
Now, I honestly can’t say I give an ounce of rat’s pee about Alex Jones and his nitwittery. But there are a couple of larger, competing principles at stake here.
First: It’s important to note that all of the banning organizations are private companies. There are no First Amendment issues here. These are private companies, and can set guidelines/ban people as they see fit.
Second: These organizations, yes, are showing a bias; they selectively crack down, not just on overt loonies like Jones, but more mainstream folks with conservative/libertarian thoughts.
Not every problem has a solution; in this case, I’d say not every problem has a government solution. The only thing worse than companies like Facebook and YouTube cracking down on right-of-center speech on their servers, is the Imperial government stepping in to mandate what is and is not allowed online. That way lays madness.
There are already alternatives opening up. Let the market work.
