Day 15. 25 pages, 10,510 words.
I was delighted today to see that Alex Jones, the big crazy stupid daddy of Info Wars, has been taken off some of the big social media platforms.
Now let’s get something straight:
This is absolutely not a violation of his freedom of speech or freedom of expression. He has those rights still. He does not have a right to a platform. Unlike many people, I have read the user agreement for YouTube and they can absolutely remove him if they decide to. He has no rights there. It’s part of what makes these user agreements so scary. Forget shady agencies owning your data and trying to manipulate you – try reading those agreements you’ve signed fifty of.
This was pure and simple a question of his outright harmfulness, not his politics or opinions. If he was going on YouTube and telling everyone it was safe and healthy to drink bleach, I would expect him to be removed – and what he was doing was just as detrimental to civilisation. Right or left, I don’t care. Shout and rant all you like. I might prefer it if you shut the fuck up, but I’d rather debate you and convince you, if that’s even possible. Marketplace of ideas, and all that.
But when you start telling your millions of followers that your ideological opponents are vampires, and get them to go out and shoot them – goodbye, my lad.
The Young Turks, as always, sum this up more fairly and even-handedly than I ever could. I’m just glad the raving fucktumble is finally getting bitch-slapped. I don’t think it will last, because I think those millions of viewers will coordinate an attack and YouTube and the others will fold, because they always do.
But it was a nice gesture. And there’s a dire warning here, of things to come from these crazy, crazy, crazy cunts.
– Posted from my Huawei mobile phone while sitting in the carpark after work.
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Good fucking riddance. I hope it lasts.
I honestly don’t know what’s worse: The possibility that he’s serious, a seriously mentally disturbed man who should be getting professional help and has instead been made into a grotesque celebrity by hate-filled rabid humans; or that it’s all an act, like he has said it all is when he’s been taken to court, an actual act like the right wingers have been saying about people like those school kids who were mad about being murdered … an act, and his followers don’t care.
Actually I think that second one is worse. Either way, I don’t have a lot of sympathy for him now.
I’m leaning towards the latter. It’s a persona for business purposes; he’s making a lot of money with his little media empire. Which, if true, is just… so cynical and dangerous.
Absolutely agreed. Part of what makes it seem worse to me is just how rabidly a lot of the people who follow Info Wars believe those school shooting survivors are planted actors, to the point of actively wanting to murder them. And yet they are prepared to believe this shitbird is for real, when he has said it’s all an act.
In neither case (legit mentally ill, false persona) does anybody involved come out looking particularly good, but I feel that’s just gross. For Jones and his audience.
Agreed! And I also think he’s saying shit he knows isn’t true, for money. Well, not so much anymore! Some of the things he has completely made up about Obama, Hillary, Robert Mueller, and others (Chobani yogurt, which won a lawsuit) are straight-up slander. Criminal acts. Pretty sure these platforms say in their TOS you can’t use them to commit crimes or you’ll be banned. Case closed. I mean, I rest my case.
PS. Nothing to add to TYT or what you wrote. Except this:
Bwaaaahahaha
Relevant:
https://www.theonion.com/first-amendment-experts-warn-facebook-banning-infowars-1828142660