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they went after definitely more than Alex Jones, who and what will be next? . . .

I see "the good" (to call it something) in the latest news about Alex Jones.

Not only have the media conglomerate put themselves in the position of defining what is "hate speech" (which not only is undefinable syntactically and semantically, but it should be part of one's own private business), but I think they are making a crass political mistake.

They will be not only discrediting themselves even more and reducing their customer base in number and kind, but their decision is silly because, technically speaking, Alex Jones can go ahead and start his own site (that is cheap and easy). Then, what would come next? Are they pushing USG to take it from there? Will USG then officially and openly become thought police? Would that not only be unconstitutional (well, whatever is left of that sacrosanct Constitution), but "unAmerican"?

I very much doubt USG has the brains and spine to heed some sort of

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_Librorum_Prohibitorum

to the chapter, page and paragraph as the Catholic Church did for 10 centuries (which, incidentally, was very industrious to business after the invention of the printing press). In those times they didn't have such things as cell phones, the NSA and FISA courts. So, they actually had to read and think about what all kinds of stuff "heretic minds" were writing about (including Giordano Bruno's and Galileo's preposterous ideas about the earth being round). The officers of the Index even gave them the right to legally and openly defend their points. Galileo's case was extreme because he was vertically making fun of the status quo in ways no one had ever dared and the Catholic Church in those times was politically stronger than USG has ever been. Of course, the NSA does the technical work for them, but it would really be a funny show if they actually start persecuting people for such things as "hate speech".

Alex Jones is some character:

https://www.infowars.com/about-alex-jones/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Jones

https://www.theonion.com/search?q=alex jones

and, of course, not all he talks about are "conspiracy theories". If you spend decades freely talking about all kinds of stuff relating, among many other things, to covert and disinformation operations by USG you will, statistically speaking, say a few things that will be more than half way off, like what he was saying about the Sandy Hook school, fake Moon landings and that pizza parlor in Washington DC serving as front for a child abuse business and of the millions of users and fans he has there will always be some who would take what he says too seriously.

But here is the thing, doesn't USG use the media and all kinds of actors, including "celebrities"?, don't they deceive people in all kinds of ways people can’t even begin to imagine? Are those folks in Washington DC so morally pure? Is child and all kinds of crass abuse really unheard of by USG?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Plutonium_Files

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction

and the most important aspect would be: would the U.S. media touch any of those issues with a 10 foot pole? I mean even the NY Times would not explicitly mention his name while vaguely talking about Snowden’s revelations and that is definitely effective:

// __ Government Surveillance: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEVlyP4_11M
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What I think is really happening here is the reaction of the media who are losing ground in irreversible ways. I think one of the reasons why people chose Trump is because they have been conditioned to hate U.S. media. Gringos say to the British: "don't judge us based on our media and we won't judge you based on your royalty", but actually those are not such irrational ways of judging one another. I had always heard that lies are tools, then I discovered in the US lies are actually industries.

The most interesting thing is how will USG bring about and enforce laws and regulations relating to their role as thought police when they can't even keep up with all that "Vladimir Putin" nonsense?

Ben Shapiro, not exactly an Alex Jones enthusiast himself, was giving a good example of why such things as "hate speech", which are essentially interpretative, you can't realistically codify and enforce, as moralistically self-righteous as you think yourself as being. He uses the example of he, himself, not saying to someone who biologically is a man and wants for other people to believe he is a woman and, among many other things force people's language usage. He asks: will they tell me that is "hate speech" and even possibly prosecute me for that? Even if you cut your pennies, balls, inject whatever to look like you got some boobs, ... want to be called "she", "legally" change your name, ... you are still a man who cut his pennies, balls, ...

I have worked for a shelter in Harlem, NYC. At times women (actual women should I say) come to us asking for shelter and we can't take them in even during a gelid winter night even though we have had beds. I don't like to do that (I was raised by a single mother), but, "per regulations", I have to. They tell us to give them a sheet with addresses of shelters for women in NYC. Now, I have nothing against that particular person I am using that case as a concrete example of what Shapiro is talking about. That could be seen as "hate", not PR, not quite kosher speech: there is a man there cross-dressing and acting as if he was a woman (which to me, even though very weird, I rationally see it is basically a mild and unimportant kind of delusion, probably a mental illness). He wants to be called "she" and even go by a girl’s name. Now, why doesn't "she" then go to a shelter for women? I have wondered about it, but I guess this very basic question could be deemed "inappropriate", "hateful", . . . when to me it is entirely appropriate, very basic and just. In one of my previous posts I asked a very simple question: "why doesn’t USG ‘freedom-love’ China?" Now, even though I am talking about "love" as USG does (yes, in my case, sarcastically), they could say and have said, that I am really talking about "hate" ...

Let me repeat and in no ambiguous terms that, as Shapiro, I really don’t give a **** about what people do with their very rear ends, it is theirs after all; but when we start calling a man a woman, a tree a bird, a gun some flowers, ... we won’t ever be able to solve any actual issues and politicians will be the only ones profitably exploiting that game.

Holy Wall Of Text, Batman!
 
ALEX JONES HAS BEEN TAKEN OFF THE INTERWEBS AND SILENCED! OUTRAGE!!! FIRST AMENDMENT!!1! ILLUMINATI!! BILDERBURGS!!!

Oh, no...wait...

No, he hasn't been silenced after all. Seems he sneaked back in via...his own existing, untouched website!

LOL

https://www.infowars.com/
 
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I would argue that since they own the server, it is also property rights in the case under discussion.

If they pay for the hard drive space, they can damn well control what goes on it...seems simple to me.
It's amusing seeing all these "conservatives" embracing and defending Alex Jones,since sliming conservatives was Alex's stock in trade during the Dubya years Guy will twist to the left or the right depedingd on where he thinks the suckers are.....
 
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RE: The USG has nothing to do with any of this.

This is joke, right? At least make your sarcasm a little plain, because there are many people who think like that. Some people actually believe O'Reilly was removed as one of the most followed U.S. prestitudes for looking at a co-worker's butt.


Actually, most people understand clearly that the USG has nothing to do with it. If you'd like to present any sort of evidence at all to the contrary, now is the time to do so. Proclaiming "yeah-huh!" doesn't cut it.
 
I think I saw a tweet where someone tried to discredit all of the "Facebook is a private company and can make whatever rules it wants" arguments by "revealing" the fact that Facebook is publicly traded. The tweet had quite a self-satisfied tone to it, but of course it went over about as well as you might expect.

If I were a shareholder in FB, (I don't think I am unless indirectly through an index fund), I'd be pissed if they hosted content that kept users away.
 
No we don't.

The Equal Time Rule might have made some sense in an age when you had a limited number of channels and standard broadcasting was the only game in town, but in an age of social media and satellite broadcasting with limitless channels it does not make sense. Fox News is balanced by MSNBC,
 
I think there should be an (international) organization setup that assigns a star rating to particular news outlets in a similar way that financial institutions get AAA ratings.

They loose their rating score the more unverified facts (lies) they publish. Then all media outlooks like facebook would publish this rating along with content to provide a level of trustworthiness.

Seems like it would be difficult to administer and regulate. But perhaps the rating could be assigned based partly on users contributions - a bit like Wikipedia.

You could even set facebook personal settings to not see news stories from a source below a 3 star rating. There must be a way for the internet to regulate itself, and also keep freedom of speech.
 
We may need a revision of the radio and TV broadcasters Equal-time rule or some similar rule to stop the large new media companies from unfairly discriminating against the candidate(s) they don't like.


It would have to be one heck of a revision. The original was predicated on the (somewhat shaky) premise that the government owned the airwaves. In order to rent a bandwidth from them, the radio or TV station had to agree to abide by FCC regulation and other laws.

But we now have a forty year history of cables, satellites, towers, fiber optics, etc. that have never been thought to be "owned" by the feds. It'd take some doing to get them under that sort of government control.

And seeing as how the current administration dismantled net neutrality, I don't believe that the fed is going to change its mind now.
 
There is no first amendment issue involved, but that doesn't mean that there is no free speech issue involved. Free speech is a larger concept than just the first amendment.
Thank for bringing that up. I accept that the government can't curtail freedom of speech because it says so in the constitution, and I accept that I have no right to prevent anyone from exercising their right to free speech in a public arena. But doesn't mean I have to accept it in my own home. If anyone starts saying things I don't like at my place then I will exercise my right to tell them to stop it or get kicked off the property.

Yes, this is a 'free speech' issue - the issue being that free speech shouldn't be a universal right that trumps the right of others to have a private space where they don't have to hear it.

...free speech conflicts with property rights, and property rights justifiably win. And you can argue that freedom of association should win here.
You could argue it, but you would be wrong. There should not be any 'freedom to associate' on private property against the owner's wishes.

LSSBB said:
Yeah, it's a free speech issue when they wipe graffiti off their railroad cars too!
Somebody spray-painted a rude word over the front of my house. So guess whose free speech rights were trampled on? mine! when the City 'suggested' that I remove it. I should have the right to decide what speech I allow on my property - not the government.
 
first, they went after Alex Jones, and I said nothing.
Then, they came for ...
then...
Then they came for me

??

Well, I'll put aside for the moment the distinction between "government" and "private business" to make another point.

Alex Jones is really closer to Goebbels than any group listed in the poem. You know, the intolerant, violence-formenting conspiracy peddler that has the favor of the also intolerant government authority, and that the poem was warning you would wreak havoc if allowed to run wild. The guy's even a pretty obvious antisemite.

The list of victims this time are shooting victims and their families, Hispanic and black people, trans people, all of whom risk getting banned from these platforms by false reports from hate mobs, and have for years, and on rare occasions are actually imprisoned by the actual real world government for what they say online. And lots of people have noted that, while people like "@ki1488kekiller" are apparently free to post holocaust denial on Twitter while having an avatar of Pepe the frog with swastikas for eyes, but replying that he's a "knucklehead" will get you banned for a day.

So I can't really get too worried about "whose next", but I do kinda hope it's Stephan Molyneaux.

Now, getting back to the central point, I suppose that one could argue that, if these sites are so important, they should be governed as public utilities rather than as private companies whose actions have little to no importance (no, crescent, you are not overthinking it at all as far as this goes) - but first, as we see every so often, this won't solve every problem, and second, that's not what they are at the moment in any case.
 
RE: ... as long as they do so consistently, then failing to abide by those standards can and often will have your service terminated

That is exactly my point how can you do that "consistently"? Explain to me philosophically or specifically if you want. To me it is like saying you can codify what truth be. How on earth can we mere mortal do that?

Because we determine where the line is and then follow that. Say someone says that "all Jews are traitors to the human race and deserve death" on my platform, I can say, that's hate speech, and ban them because it's my platform. In the same way, if I am being consistent, then anyone that says "all Whites are traitors to the human race and deserve death" would be banned too.

The fact is though, if you agree to the ToS for my platform to use it, and I decide you have breached the ToS, I can ban you. That's how the private world works. It's like if you are in my living room and say something I don't like, I can kick your butt out the front door and slam it in your face. That's my right, and in the private world, that right trumps your right to say whatever you like.

[Edited to Add] Take this board for an example, we are here at the board staff's tolerance. If they determine if we have broken the User Agreement (the ToS) and they determine the punishment for doing so. If they decide to ban us, they can. We hope that they do as consistently as possible, but in reality, it's entirely up to the staff to determine if our actions require discipline, be it a warning, a suspension, or a ban, and it's totally their right as the board staff to do that, and that right outweighs and overwrites your right to say whatever you want on this board.
 
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RE: Um ... Do you have any evidence that the federal government actually was involved in banning Jones from FB and YouTube?

What I mean is that they are one and the same thing anyway. In the 90's (after the technological and societal adoption of the Internet) "we the people" stopped being the ones being offered products and services and became the products and services to be offered. Both business and politicians benefit from that. In fact, what I see as one of the greatest maladies of our times (down to every single individual: social control to the point that they have been playing God (well, not that smartly, anyway)), was actually suggested by business (U.S. IT companies) to the NSA. It was from them the NSA "saw the light" under which they see everything now, from where they got their: "collect it all ... " (both content and metadata) incantation.

business, politics and akademia have become one and the same thing in the U.S. just look at the board of those institutions and you will see they are all CIA, FBI, ... it didn't use to be that way. That is a falsifiable trend anyone can check. Why does Coca-Cola care about PETA activists? Why is amazon involved in widespread none consensual experimentation of the homeless population in Seattle? ...

Also, the FBI, CIA, ... are not the kinds of folks that would do things in the open anyway. They consider acting in covert ways as being smart

RE: I don't know of any. The last time I looked, the chief executive of the US was a big Alex Jones fan.

Yes, they are friends and they are kind of like, but Trump is not really the kind of politician that the status quo likes and wants, so their friendship is partially why I think they targeted Jones.
 
RE: No, he hasn't been silenced after all. Seems he sneaked back in via...his own existing, untouched website!

Well, yes, this is part of what I meant when I said that was silly and counterproductive on a number of important counts, so, let’s see what happens next.

The net neutrality thing has become an issue. Are they using Alex Jones as circus monkey for their show? What they did to him I found so stupid, that I can’t help but think it is part of a wider plan.
 
It would have to be one heck of a revision. The original was predicated on the (somewhat shaky) premise that the government owned the airwaves. In order to rent a bandwidth from them, the radio or TV station had to agree to abide by FCC regulation and other laws.

But we now have a forty year history of cables, satellites, towers, fiber optics, etc. that have never been thought to be "owned" by the feds. It'd take some doing to get them under that sort of government control.

And seeing as how the current administration dismantled net neutrality, I don't believe that the fed is going to change its mind now.

It may be you have an old understanding of the equal time rule. After revisions decades ago it was limited so that currently all it does is guarantee that any political candidate can buy air time from any station that sells air time to their opponent. In the new media space I envision something similar where when one candidate in a race is allowed to buy access the competing candidates are also allowed to buy access. Keep in mind I quoted and was specifically responding to the hypothetical where new media companies where explicitly not allowing other candidates from having access to the space. I am not talking about Jones or any other situation, only the narrow case of opposing candidates for public office.
 
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Facebook and the other content concentrator are private US companies operating on a global medium. So if there is another internet content concentrator called TubeYou operating out of, say, China that will host Jones' crapulence then good for them. They get that business.

Your free speech laws do not operate outside the USA. So unless you are going to filter the internet for US citizens (like in China), Jones' crapulence on TubeYou will be just as readily available to them. And us too, more's the pity.

In short, Jones has nothing to complain about. And neither do "freedom loving Americans". This is like complaining that Ford doesn't provide toilets in their cars because a toilet is an American right. It's not, they are not going to, and the reason is because doing so quickly fills the car with crap and ruins the ride for everyone. Just like Jones does.
 
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RE: I think there should be an (international) organization setup that assigns a star rating ...

there used to be that thing called "we the people" and they should have the right to decide themselves whatever they pay attention to and to the extent they believe it
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RE: Yes, this is a 'free speech' issue - the issue being that free speech shouldn't be a universal right that trumps the right of others to have a private space where they don't have to hear it.

What is that "private space" thing you are talking about?
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RE: Alex Jones is really closer to Goebbels than any group listed in the poem.

Please, if it is not just a case of motivational metaphor, explain to me how exactly do they compare?
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RE: So I can't really get too worried about "whose next", but I do kinda hope it's Stephan Molyneaux.

One of my points is that once they go down this path there is no end or logic to it. My only question was: has USG what it takes to become some sort of Catholic Church thought police with some "decency", openness, integrity and structure as the Catholic Church did? Quite honestly, I don't think so. They can't even cope with their own delusive nonsense they themselves create about "Vladimir Putin"
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RE: Because we determine where the line is and then follow that. Say someone says that "all Jews are traitors to the human race and deserve death"

but, first, do you see that you are cleverhansing yourself? Language is not the kind of tool which is good for doing what you propose. People who have lived under open day light police states where the government outrightly owns the media can give you all kinds of examples, some of them quite hilarious to show to you what I mean.
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RE: The fact is though, if you agree to the ToS for my platform to use it, and I decide you have breached the ToS, I can ban you. That's how the private world works. It's like if you are in my living room and say something I don't like, I can kick your butt out the front door and slam it in your face. That's my right, and in the private world, that right trumps your right to say whatever you like.

but again, this is not what I am talking about even though what you are saying is right and just. We are talking about wide societal aspects here and unless you can kick Alex Jones and all his infowarriors into utter space and keep that leg, boot, ... ready to keep kicking people non stop, I really don't know how your "solution" will work
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