Source: Youtube
Summary and Analysis:
Alex Jones, a conservative radio host recently had his account and his Infowars account permanently banned from Twitter. While he was suspended before, there were no other consequences to his actions. Both accounts posted conspiracy theories with no evidence, and misinformed the audience, including claims that the Sandy Hook mass shooting was a hoax and the survivors were paid actors. Twitter is not the first social media platform to ban Jones, as Apple, Facebook, Spotify, and Youtube have already taken action to suspend or remove the accounts. Twitter at first did not consider Jones' posts to violate their policies. On Wednesday, Jones live-streamed a video through Twitter-owned Periscope app that showed him confronting a CNN reporter, Oliver Darcy, in Washington D.C., yelling about Darcy's support for censorship and calling him a rat for ten minutes.
At the same time, Republican officials have been complaining about the liberal bias of social media websites, citing the Russian election interference issue and various instances of attacks on free speech. Although net neutrality has been repealed during Trump's presidency, it is actually now exactly what some Republicans need. According to Quartz, the repeal of net neutrality "ended strong protections against any online provider selectively discriminating against content." While Republicans claim that social media sites are discriminating and censoring right-wing content, Facebook and Twitter say they "filter for abusive behavior, not ideology."
Opinion:
I believe that people should not be spreading misinformation especially when they have an audience as large as Alex Jones (900,000 followers on personal Twitter, 430,000 followers on Infowars Twitter). However, this brings us to how a misinformer could even reach that many people. How was Jones able to garner such a large following? How could his trolling thrive for such a long period of time? If the 1 million+ followers are just well informed citizens that want a laugh, then there is no problem. However, that is most definitely not the case and there are probably people who believe what Jones posts. Is that purposeful ignorance or a lack of education? Or both?
Questions:
How would you define censorship? Is censorship a good thing, to a certain degree?
Does the current political landscape affect how information is spread online?
Should Alex Jones have been banned on Twitter long ago?
Sources:
https://money.cnn.com/2018/09/06/technology/twitter-suspends-alex-jones-infowars/index.html
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/06/twitter-permanently-bans-alex-jones-and-infowars-accounts.html
https://qz.com/1380495/trump-ditched-net-neutrality-now-he-wants-it-back-for-conservatives-on-social-media/
https://www.wsj.com/articles/twitter-permanently-bans-alex-jones-after-new-violations-1536269663
https://www.npr.org/2018/09/06/645352618/twitter-bans-alex-jones-and-infowars-cites-abusive-behavior
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-twitter-bans-alex-jones-20180906-story.html
http://nymag.com/selectall/2018/09/twitter-bans-alex-jones.html
4 comments:
The limits of free speech are really difficult to define on social media. Obviously, everyone has the right to say what they want -- even if what's being said is that the government controls the weather. So be it. Weirder things have been said.
There is, however, a line that has been crossed. Alex Jones' comments have dangerous consequences. After he popularized a conspiracy theory claiming and a pizzeria called "Comet Ping Pong" and the Democratic Party were running a satanic pedophilia ring ("Pizzagate"), a 29-year-old man ran into the restaurant and started firing a military-grade assault rifle. Yes, Alex Jones even suggested that he was going to kill Robert Mueller.
There's a difference between spreading hurtful lies -- like claiming survivors of a school shooting are fakers -- and spreading lies that almost cost people their lives.
Besides encouraging violence (directly or indirectly), he frequently uses hate speech, which many of these social media companies have cited as a reason for banning him.
People who build their careers on anti-semitic and racist remarks don't deserve to have a platform, especially when there are about a million people who might be believing every word he says. And I fully agree that hate speech and threats of violence should not be tolerated on Twitter or any other sites.
Ummm .... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuC2tdSPMVg
CNN has some very interesting perspectives on the topic: https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/06/opinions/infowars-opinion-roundup/index.html
Pedophilia, pizza, satan, and democracy? That's a lot of evils in just one conspiracy theory. What did pizza ever do to Alex Jones? Jones definitely does not deserve a platform that has allowed him to gain and misinform such a large following. However, I find it interesting that he was able to gain that many followers in the first place. In a sense, he earned his following by somehow appealing to his audience, whether through outrage, fear, or absurdity (there is some extreme clickbait on the Infowars website). It is true that the polarization has lead to far right clusters that are interested in hearing the Republican opinion and only the Republican opinion, but how can the propaganda spread by just one person be taken as pure fact by many of his followers, especially when most of the other major Republican leaders are not depicting the Infowars conspiracy theories in the same way that Jones has.
I think it is dangerous because a lot of people that follow him actually get their information from him. They genuinely believe all his conspiracies and risk other people by sharing these ideas to those who also aren't educated on the topic. This is probably how he got such a big following in the first place. I think twitter should have banned him a long time ago when apple and all other medias did. What is really concerning is that there are enough uneducated people to believe the things he says and use this information to form their political opinion as well as give him a popular platform and allow it to grow.
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