InfoWars Removed from Streaming Sites

[OnionsAndDragons]

I hashed this one out with the wife the other night after posting, to really gel my thoughts and I've settled here:

The whole situation still creeps me out.

I agree that the platforms have the right to do this and that isn't the concern right now. I even agree that it might be a good thing to make AJ a little less visible ( though I do see how it can fuel confirmation bias in his audience/acolytes).

I think there can be good, reasonable criteria for booting someone like this. Something like: consistently slanderous and hateful rhetoric combined with the portrayal of views or opinions as factual, hard news without any real verifiable evidence to support it.

My main issue with this is that deplatforming people from the biggest social media outlets is a very serious power, and could get really squicky if not applied quite judiciously. And without a, at least secondary, criteria like falsehood or consistent false light portrayals, it can become a tool for furthering identity politics and cultural engineering if used on anyone but the worst examples.

In short: I'm not sure the action is bad, but I do think the justification for the action is bad and too subjective for me to feel good about it. I don't like the way the wind is blowing on this one.


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[Zincwarrior]

Why is this an issue. If a private company - with no monopoly mind - can't ban fraudulent, crazy, and potentially legally slanderous posters (depending on the current court case) then who can they ban?

Captain Crazy has his own site. There has never been a requirement I am aware of that a private publisher publish someone absent discrimination laws.

[hufnagel]

This is exactly the problem.
Jones is a nutbag. Even nutbags are protected by the constitution.

At what point does owning the broadcast infrastructure become an obligation to allow the expression of views with which the infrastructure owner may disagree?
Does Comcast or ATT or Verizon have a different obligation (if any) than FB or Google or Twitter (f**k Apple)?

I could argue both sides of those discussions.

I'm 100% with you on all of this.

I would also like to add: nutbags are the ones that we need to most protect in terms of preserving the Constitution.
Once you create the Box of Disapproved Free Speech and place it around all speech, it's only a matter of time before they box shrinks to exclude YOUR speech, no matter how "correct" you feel it is.

Again, I don't care how disgusting your (global your, not your in the specific case of you, Roy,) expressions are; I will still defend to the death your right to express them, and will rail against any monopoly or government that suppresses it.

[ffhounddog]

Amazon and Apple have a right to not be associated with someone whose speech inspires people to make death threats towards the parents of murdered children.

You mean like Hillery Clinton did to NRA and its members over Las Vegas?

[RoyGBiv]

Why is this an issue. If a private company - with no monopoly mind - can't ban fraudulent, crazy, and potentially legally slanderous posters (depending on the current court case) then who can they ban?

Captain Crazy has his own site. There has never been a requirement I am aware of that a private publisher publish someone absent discrimination laws.

Huffnagel laid it out well in the post below the one I'm quoting.

FYI... There is SCOTUS precedent that says... Paraphrasing... That if you own a public square you have to tolerate free speach in that public place. Even if the owner doesn't agree with said speach. The case was about people handing out leaflets at a shopping mall. Fairly on point, IMO.

ETA: Reconsidered... Maybe not exactly on point.. but... I could still make the argument that FB, Tweeter, et. al. are in the business of providing a public platform and that part of their responsibility as the owners of a widely used public platform for making speeches is to protect the 1A rights of ALL, not just those with whom they agree. It's the limitations part that gets tricky...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruney...nter_v._Robins

This holding was possible because California's constitution contains an affirmative right of free speech which has been liberally construed by the Supreme Court of California, while the federal constitution's First Amendment contains only a negative command to Congress to not abridge the freedom of speech. This distinction was significant because the U.S. Supreme Court had already held that under the federal First Amendment, there was no implied right of free speech within a private shopping center.^[3] The Pruneyard case, therefore, raised the question of whether an implied right of free speech could arise under a state constitution without conflicting with the federal Constitution. In answering yes to that question, the Court rejected the shopping center's argument that California's broader free speech right amounted to a "taking" of the shopping center under federal constitutional law.

[Zincwarrior]

I don't see how they are providing a public platform. It's a private space, just a very large online bulletin board. In essence, they are not the street corner, but the bar next to it.

[RoyGBiv]

I don't see how they are providing a public platform.

Words escape me.

[ffhounddog]

I don't see how they are providing a public platform. It's a private space, just a very large online bulletin board. In essence, they are not the street corner, but the bar next to it.

"As a general rule the internet is a public space in the same sense as the sidewalks or the hallways at the mall" A public place is where people go and with Facebook having over 2.23 billion users on Facebook. If that is not a public place then what is?

Also: President Obama said the internet is a public good.

[Zincwarrior]

"As a general rule the internet is a public space in the same sense as the sidewalks or the hallways at the mall" A public place is where people go and with Facebook having over 2.23 billion users on Facebook. If that is not a public place then what is?

Also: President Obama said the internet is a public good.

It's not public. You have to be a member to enter.

[ffhounddog]

It's not public. You have to be a member to enter.

I have to get out of my car to enter a Mall.