How is an essential oligopoly in this area by a few companies with virtually no government regulation not a problem? Mass media has been replaced by social media, yet none of the regulation that held media to a modicum of standards exists for these companies.
24 hours? Who the hell knows? But did you not just watch the last election where advertisers could spread lies to wide reaching audiences with no repercussions? And these companies were happy to take the money of whomever would pay them to provide viewers for these lies.
These companies want to provide and curate content to sell ad space without the responsibility that every other publisher has to live up to with regards to accuracy or libellous content. If you don't see why that's a problem then I don't know what to say.
Well, if you’re going to use this thread as an excuse to talk about how social media is dictating public discourse, I’d assume you’d have an example related to it on why that is. Something that happened within 24 hours. You know... that’s why you’d be in the thread... I’d think.
Aside from that, mass media hasn’t been replaced by social media, but it’s certainly changed it.
The biggest disconnect I think that exists, though, is your desire for social platforms to be held to the standard of publishers. They’re not that, nor are they curators in the sense that actual news media is. How you interact with the platform and the information you give it dictates how it interacts with and provides information to you. The traditional media, and people from across the globe, are the publishers, YOU are the curator. Sure, there’s ad space to be had, like literally every other place in the internet. And yes, if you pay a lot, you can push your ads to whoever you want. But like everything else in these platforms, there are rules that are required to be followed, and no, you cannot break the law in Facebook advertisements.
So I just fail to see your issue. You get what you pay for. Know how you’re paying for it, get what you want from it, and it’ll be everything you expect it to be.
Maybe it’s a difference of growing up in a world where it pretty much always existed, but sorry, Spotify pulling a podcast doesn’t scare me as a warning against free speech and the absence of proper regulations.
Alex Jones is the worlds biggest troll there is no way what you saw was anything but an act, a character. But that doesn't actually matter he was the coal mine canary, what's going to happen is other people and organizations will be removed from the various platforms using the same flawed reasons as were applied to Jones. Some of you may cheer now and think it's great but at some point censorship is going to bite you in the ass as well.
Nothing good will come of this.
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what's going to happen is other people and organizations will be removed from the various platforms using the same flawed reasons as were applied to Jones. Some of you may cheer now and think it's great but at some point censorship is going to bite you in the ass as well.
Ok, name why HE was removed (with a source) and why those reasons are flawed.
Alex Jones is the worlds biggest troll there is no way what you saw was anything but an act, a character. But that doesn't actually matter he was the coal mine canary, what's going to happen is other people and organizations will be removed from the various platforms using the same flawed reasons as were applied to Jones. Some of you may cheer now and think it's great but at some point censorship is going to bite you in the ass as well.
Nothing good will come of this.
Even a fluke stumble upon Alex Jones on youtube was a nightmare to most. I couldn't stand his face, voice, agenda..nothing.
Like false advertising, libel and incitement of violence and harassment are pretty well established exceptions in the concept and law around free speech. I am aredently pro free speech, I have no problem with him being kicked off these platforms in this case.
Like false advertising, libel and incitement of violence and harassment are pretty well established exceptions in the concept and law around free speech. I am aredently pro free speech, I have no problem with him being kicked off these platforms in this case.
maxine waters is next i guess!
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Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information, on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient" as determined by a government or private institution.
[Emphasis mine]
Yes, he's being censored, either in a literal sense or - if you're the type of person who will argue that wikipedia isn't a valid choice of dictionary - in a very slightly figurative sense. However, he is not being censored in a way that infringes on his freedom of speech rights.
Yes, he's being censored, either in a literal sense or - if you're the type of person who will argue that wikipedia isn't a valid choice of dictionary - in a very slightly figurative sense. However, he is not being censored in a way that infringes on his freedom of speech rights.
If you're the type of person who is okay with sources that allow non-subject matter experts to contribute to the body of knowledge that establish the basis for which millions use for their baseline understanding of issues, then okay, we know the depths to which you will go to distill the facts - in a very slight figurative sense of course.
Just busting your chops SebC. I think Wikipedia is a wonderful source of information, with the above caveat. Wikipedia should be your stepping off point - a place to find the most basic of information on a subject, and establish the artifacts which distill the facts on an issue from actual primary sources of information. Wikipedia is a worse version of the Encyclopedia Britannica, and I'm a big believer in the wisdom of crowds.
Back to the issue of censorship, a private enterprise is eliminating content from their service that is deemed beyond the window of acceptable. Mr. Jones understood there were limitations to what he could host on these services and agreed to those conditions when he signed up. Mr. Jones has ultimately censored himself by not complying with the expectations of the end user license agreement between himself and the service provider, allowing them to delete objectionable content or terminate his account on their platform. The service provider gave him many opportunities to clean up his act, but he elected to continue down the path of posting objectionable media, and as a result, lost access to the service. That is not censorship.
Yes, he's being censored, either in a literal sense or - if you're the type of person who will argue that wikipedia isn't a valid choice of dictionary - in a very slightly figurative sense. However, he is not being censored in a way that infringes on his freedom of speech rights.
Sure he is - he's just not being censored in a way that infringes on his first amendment rights. If you believe in natural rights, anyway, which perhaps you don't.
At the end of the day, youtube, facebook and the like are basically Calgarypuck writ large, and the powers that be running those platforms are essentially CP mods. If CP can have community standards, so can they, and just as posters here will have varying opinions about whether a user should have been banned, so will people have those opinions about the removal of a youtube account.
The broader free speech issue surrounding these social media platforms is about whether the powers wielded by the people who decide who gets to have a youtube channel or a twitter account or a facebook live feed have too much control over the public discourse as a result of their ability to promote the views they see as good and suppress those they don't like. It's totally fair to be concerned about that, whether it's being done as a result of political bias or profit-seeking or some combination of both. In this case, most people seem to think they flexed that muscle in a way that's more or less unobjectionable, but that doesn't alleviate the concerns about the fact that they can do it and are doing it in a variety of cases. Reasonable people can disagree about whether it'd be worth putting up with the existence of an Alex Jones channel that you can ignore at your leisure in exchange for safeguards against that sort of concentrated private control over the public discourse.
Obviously that doesn't even address the fact that in other cases, much of this isn't being done by conscious actors - the hand on the scale is that of an unconscious algorithm that self-adjusts to the point where the people overseeing it don't even know what it's doing. Which is also probably bad.
__________________ "The great promise of the Internet was that more information would automatically yield better decisions. The great disappointment is that more information actually yields more possibilities to confirm what you already believed anyway." - Brian Eno
I have no clue never been to it. It doesn't change the fact that these large social media platforms are censoring him from their platforms. I don't see why some of you are in total DENIAL. You can easily say it is censorship and he deserves it but nope.
What you don't realize while complaining about your guy getting banned is the fact that you are aren't actually fighting for any rights here. What you are doing is advocating to take rights away from others.
What this is actually about is freedom of association. Or, more accurately, the freedom to disassociate. Alex Jones is not entitled to a platform on anyone else's private forum. You can keep screaming CENSORSHIP over and over again as if it is an actual argument. It doesn't make their decision wrong, and it doesn't make your position right.
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You can keep screaming CENSORSHIP over and over again as if it is an actual argument. It doesn't make their decision wrong, and it doesn't make your position right.
This is pretty ironic given that this post was also devoid of any argument, and merely contained a smear that attempts to associate the guy with Alex Jones ("your guy") in order to discredit him. Unless he's declared himself to be a Jones supporter and I missed it.
Anyway, what are the "rights" that he's proposing taking away from others? The ability to control who has an account on the platform you run? That's not a right. It's just a business decision that isn't currently subject to government regulation. They could totally pass a law if they wanted to preventing youtube from banning accounts.
__________________ "The great promise of the Internet was that more information would automatically yield better decisions. The great disappointment is that more information actually yields more possibilities to confirm what you already believed anyway." - Brian Eno
Last edited by CorsiHockeyLeague; 08-07-2018 at 07:06 AM.
The far better option would be to prohibit libel or slander on their platforms. To be sure, this would tie their hands more: Unlike “hate speech,” libel and slander have legal meanings. There is a long history of using libel and slander laws to protect especially private figures from false claims.
Is this more helpful? What is libel and slander is not necessarily clear, and to be determined by a court in each set of circumstances.
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