Recently we have had some exchanges on this blog about whether it was right or wrong for big media companies like Facebook and Apple to delete the vile slanderer of murdered children, Alex Jones.
I said that he has no more right to put his content on a private platform than I have a “right” to have my opinions published by a newspaper. When they reject me, I don’t claim censorship. Others disagreed, and thought it was dangerous to ban hate speech, slander, and lies.
Well, for those worried about Alex Jones’s ability to reach his audience, here is good news for you:
“Just days after Google, Facebook and Apple purged videos and podcasts from the right-wing conspiracy site Infowars from their sites, the Infowars app has become one of the hottest in the country.
“On Wednesday, Infowars was the No. 1 overall “trending” app on the Google Play store, a metric that reflects its sudden momentum. Among news apps, Infowars was No. 3 on Apple and No. 5 on Google, above all mainstream news organizations. And the app stood at No. 66 overall on Google, excluding game apps, while on Apple it reached No. 49, above popular apps like LinkedIn, Google Docs and eBay.
“The Infowars app, which includes news articles and the shows of the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, had likely been downloaded a few hundred to a few thousand times a day on average after its introduction last month, said Randy Nelson, head of mobile insights at Sensor Tower, which tracks app data. Now, it is likely getting 30,000 to 40,000 downloads a day, Mr. Nelson estimated based on its ranking.”
I will continue to hope that Mr. Jones loses the many lawsuits filed by those he has defamed and injured, including the families of the children and educators massacred like animals at the Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14, 2014. Because of his vicious claims that the massacre was a hoax, that no one died, and that the victims were actually child actors, these bereaved families have been subject to death threats. Our Founding Fatheres would have put him in the stocks.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The stocks are too good for him.
I’d rather tie Alex Jones to a stake, pile kindling around him to his hips and then set fire to the pile. Once he was crispy, I’d turn to his followers and ask, “Who’s next?”
Of course, I’d only do this if I had a division of heavily-armed US Marines backing me up.
Honestly, I wish Twitter would ban Trump. I don’t follow him. I don’t tweet. But, I have to hear about his idiotic and hate filled rants on t.v. and on the net. Social platforms have every right to ban hate mongers like Alex Jones. Those who want to follow him have found their way. For those of us who’d do better without him in our lives, hooray for banning this danger to society. I certainly won’t go seeking him out.
Twitter should Ban Trump for hate speech.
Heard an interesting exchange tonight taking the position that giving full coverage to Trump’s rallies is definitely turning people off. Trump is hanging on to a base but moderate Republicans and conservative Democrats who saw him as an anecdote to Hillary are rethinking their positions. Trump may be his own worst enemy. It is becoming increasingly obvious by his own and his administration’s antics that Trump is not serving those he claimed to champion during his campaign. The wisest thing we might do is to allow him to show us all who he really is.
Who are the people who take this demagogue, hate monger and conspiracy nut job seriously? His raspy voice alone is nauseating, let alone all the hateful and hurtful things that he conjures up out of his sick mind. Anyone who goes to Alex Jones for information or news needs his/her head examined. AJ has his right to free speech, that has not been denied or revoked. He slandered Robert Mueller, I guess you can get away with that because Mueller is a public figure but I’m not sure? His slandering of the Sandy Hook parents and their slaughtered children was a bridge too far and I hope they win their suits against him, especially the families that have been threatened and harassed by Jones’s crazed fans.
Jones is so obviously a fake, phony and ludicrous figure but he is very dangerous because of the idiots who believe everything that crawls out of his maw. Good riddance to this hideous beast from whatever platforms he his banned.
“Who are the people who take this demagogue, hate monger and conspiracy nut job seriously?”
People who are racists, hate mongers, and conspiracy theory nuts.
The issue is not how vile Jones is. He’s plenty vile, right up there (or beyond) Fred Phelps and his Westboro folks protesting soldiers’ funerals. But in 2011 the Supreme Court ruled that Jones and his jerks (he deserves a much worse word, but I do try to watch my language here) had the free speech right to those protests, regardless of how hateful or even how hurtful they were.
Now, I do understand the difference between that and Fakebook, etc. because those are private companies which are not regulated by the First Amendment. Nonetheless, I think there’s a good case to be made because they are, for all practical purposes, like monopolistic public utilities that are vital for controlling public discourse (frankly, when I rule the world, all of them will be nationalized). I just don’t think it’s a wise idea to invest people like Zuckerberg with the power to decide which websites are or are not “hateful”. He’s given us zero proof that he would use that power benignly. All censorship power inevitably gets turned against the powerless in favor of the powerful.
Not to mention, as this postdemonstrates, attempting to ban or censor certain kinds of speech only makes martyrs of such people and makes them much more attractive and powerful.
I beg to disagree.
Alex Jones is reaching his followers through his own App, which no one controls.
When I read a newspaper or magazine, I’m grateful that the best of them have fact-checkers. Not a word goes into The New Yorker, for example, unless a professional fact-checkers has cleared it.
That’s the difference between responsible journalism and crap. If you prefer the latter, download Jones’ App.
We also must remember that the people who Jones attacks also have first amendment rights. When they receive death threats from his crazed fans who have been incited to attack by his vile rantings, their rights are being violated. He does not have the right to take away other people’s rights.
Yeah,
Zuckerberg — despite some of his rhetoric — has proved to be a dork who cares primarily about money.
But Alex Jones is a true scumbag. Sort of like that orange dude at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Jones can only be a “martyr” to the crazies.
We’ve seen this circus many times before with the antics (and I’m being nice with that term) of R. Limpballs. Anything to drive ratings as ratings = advertising dollars. Unfortunately there are slime ball advertisers who gladly advertise on his program. So one solution is to get the word out that anyone who advertises on his show will be boycotted until they cease doing so. That is probably the only thing that will have an effect other than perhaps the courts.
The second part is that these fame hungry lying scoundrels like AJ, RL, SH, GB, and BO’R (and all the xtian fundie filthy rich bastards, oops I mean pastors) all claim to be “entertainers” (although those fundies proclaim to be men of god) and not newsman, therefore their work should be held to “lesser standards of truth” (as if that is possible) than journalists. I, too, hope that AJ gets thoroughly destroyed in the courts, loses everything he has because aside from fame these cabezas de mierda desire material goods more than anything. And then, just for a little poetic justice he decides to rid the world of the scourge of his own making. (see we all can play the semantics game and I ain’t holding my breath)
I hope you are right.
As for this:
“On Wednesday, Infowars was the No. 1 overall “trending” app on the Google Play store, a metric that reflects its sudden momentum. Among news apps, Infowars was No. 3 on Apple and No. 5 on Google, above all mainstream news organizations. And the app stood at No. 66 overall on Google, excluding game apps, while on Apple it reached No. 49, above popular apps like LinkedIn, Google Docs and eBay.”
What exactly does “trending” mean in this context? Based on the fact that we’re talking about the Google Play Store, I’m guessing it means how many new people download the app, no? If that’s the case, it would certainly be no surprise that AJ’s app is trending more than popular apps like Linkedin, Google Docs and eBay. Most people who have any interest in/need for those apps already have them. AJ is something new and “interesting”, brought to us by media hype. I’ll go out on a limb though and guess that in terms of actual app usage, rather than app download, Linkedin, Google Docs and eBay far, far exceed AJ’s app. Being No. 66 on app downloads, excluding game apps, isn’t really that impressive of a feat.
It means that Alex Jones has not been censored. He is free to spew his filth to as many people as he wishes.
It means that when people read Alex Jones at Infowars, they will ALSO be reading about the FDA creating human mice with aborted body parts. They will also read about Ted Cruz’ dad helped kill JFK. They will also read that Marco Rubio has an illegitimate baby.
And the people reading at Infowars will eventually either believe every word they read or realize their source of news often lies to them. It will just be like them buying the tabloid that reports on the Montana woman who married Bigfoot.
There is no need for any outlet that wants to be considered legitimate media to post tabloid stories about the woman who had Bigfoot’s baby. But if Alex Jones’ followers want to read all about it along with what Alex Jones says is true, then they should be free to do so.
Just like neo Nazis have always been free to read David Duke’s “news” in the White Supremacy Times. The fact that the NY Times doesn’t print all of David Duke’s lies does not infringe on his first amendment rights.
Yes, I think “trending” means that it’s being downloaded at a higher rate than other apps. The law of small numbers would apply.
That means a best seller. Nothing small about that. He will continue to reach millions of people.
I think Dienne’s question was what does “best seller” mean in this context.
It means that it’s harder to get the lies and the stupid from Alex Jones, but that the die-hard crazies are making the effort to do so.
If Alex Jones can only be seen on the sites that actively promote Nazis, white power, hatred of all who aren’t white Christians, the Ku Klux Klan, taking babies from their parents and incarcerating them, and promoting the right of all Americans – including children and the mentally ill — to own as many assault weapons and bump stocks as they want, that places Alex Jones exactly where he belongs — on the fringe.
Americans used to buy the National Enquirer and other supermarket tabloids. But only a small subset of the people who read something in the National Enquirer believed that Hillary Clinton really adopted an alien (meaning from another planet) baby or that a paid hooker killed Justice Scalia with a lethal injection or that Marco Rubio had a love child and Ted Cruz dad killed JFK. (FYI those were headlines when those men were running against Trump in the primary). They didn’t believe a woman in Montana really had Bigfoot’s baby or that Cher only had months to live (10 years ago). That’s because Americans read that “news” on a platform — the National Enquirer — that is known to publish outlandish things without evidence and never correcting their errors. Most readers understood that. They did not believe it because they read it ONLY in a tabloid that is known to publish outlandish lies.
What happened is that these fringe elements started getting published on legitimate news platforms. It started with the purchase of Fox News and an expensively funded media campaign in which any media that didn’t print the made up lies of the far right and give it equal billing with the truth was considered “biased”. So you got the NY Times and other “legitimate” media organs printing Trump’s birther lies about him having Obama’s Kenyan birth certificate along with “Obama says that isn’t true” — leaving readers without a clue as to who was telling the truth. It is similar to the media giving equal weight to the lie that Al Gore was a congenital liar to prove they weren’t “biased”.
The media has been played. I will not be surprised if soon they publish a screed by Alex Jones about how American Jews kill Christian babies to make their Passover matzohs and include the line “American Jews deny that this is true”, and claim that Alex Jones’ first amendment rights would be infringed if they don’t give his lies equal weight with the truth.
The first amendment protects Alex Jones and he is welcome to spew his lies on the platforms that spew lies. If twitter wants to be known as the platform that spews lies I think that the left should inundate it with the same kind of lying tweets that Alex Jones and Trump use. “Ten thousand babies taken from their legal immigrant mothers and sold to pedophiles by ICE”. “Republican Senators hire prostitutes to service their needs with American tax dollars.” Imagine twitter being overrun with a plethora of outrageous lies about Alex Jones? What would happen if tens of thousands of twitter users started tweeting outrageous lies about Alex Jones being a rapist or pedophile or murderer over and over again?
Would he try to sue?
What would happen if the platforms like twitter that claim that Alex Jones’ “free speech” would be violated if Alex Jones wasn’t allowed to lie about the Sandy Hook parents was overrun by lies about Alex Jones? Not corrections or criticisms of Jones, but the same non-stop blatant lies that he directs towards others?
What would Jack Dorsey do if twitter started getting non-stop tweets that are blatantly untrue that claim that “they heard from a lot of people” that Alex Jones has raped 20 children? Would Dorsey say that is worse than Alex Jones saying that desperately grieving parents in Sandy Hook are evil and greedy paid actors who have invented children who never existed?
If the left starts doing what the right does and tweets non-stop lies about Republican politicians and supporters the way that the right does, most people would not trust anything they read on twitter anymore, just like they don’t believe what they read in the News of the World tabloid. That seems to be what Jack Dorsey wants. Twitter can be the “News of the World” with stories about how Republicans are planning to legalize Bigfoot – Human marriages in November.
And that would be a good thing. And the LEGITIMATE media would continue to print facts.
Quit normalizing the far right fringe by giving their outrageous lies a platform on legitimate news sites. They should never have been able to make as much inroad with their outrageous lies as they have. If the mainstream media had not repeated Trump’s LIES that he had Obama’s Kenyan birth certificate — if those LIES had only been printed only in the same News of the World that reports on Bigfoot marriages — fewer people would believe it.
I hope now that twitter CEO has made it clear that Jack Dorsey welcomes all kinds of lies and slander to be tweeted, that the left starts demonstrating exactly what that looks like.
I love this idea & thanx for the many giggles (esp Bigfoot-Human marriages!). I’m going to start my own list of hilarious anti-rightist headlines in case this comes to pass 😉
Great idea. Let’s start an anti-Alt-Right conspiracy theory website and blog and post “real news” stories about Trump being a reptilian alien from another galaxy where he has dozens of wives and hundreds of concubines.
The reason he ran away from that distant planet and family was to escape all the costs of raising all those reptilian children.
Lloyd, that could be a lot of fun.
Did you know that Trump is a transvestite? That’s why he is so afraid of trannies.
Yes, I have heard from many, many people, thousands of people, that know Trump is not only a transvestite, but he is also into bestiality.
Lloyd,
It isn’t just starting a website. Alex Jones has always been perfectly free to have his own website. His first amendment rights have never been violated.
It is forcing twitter to carry all tweets from the anti-alt right website right next to their Alex Jones lies. Remember, the twitter CEO says he doesn’t care if they are true. “New evidence that Alex Jones conspired with the Sandy Hook shooter and wanted him to kill 50 first graders instead of 20.” “Insiders say that Alex Jones was good friends with the Las Vegas shooter and knew of his plans to mow down hundreds at the concert in advance”. “Alex Jones runs pedophile ring for billionaire Russian oligarchs to thank them for their NRA funding.” Remember, the twitter CEO says it doesn’t matter if it is true — that twitter will post it anyway because the first amendment demands that he does. The rest of us know that is ridiculous, but I think the people who still believe it should have a demonstration of what it is they really are saying.
This was never about the first amendment — the only person who wants to repeal the first amendment is Donald Trump who says that journalists should only be allowed to print what he says is true.
This is about whether platforms must be forced to carry blatant lies designed only to incite hatred because Alex Jones and his ignorant defenders believe they must.
No one can force any private sector media company, Twitter included, to carry hate message from Alt-Right sources. The public opinion of a mob of millions might pressure a private sector company like Twitter to cave in, but it will never be the 1st Amendment.
Amendment 1
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
Nowhere in the 1st Amendment does it say that it applies to private sector businesses. The 1st Amendment was written to protect us from our own government.
He’s a Trumpsvestite from Trumpsylvania.
Not sure what the reasoning was, if any, but it seems odd that Apple and Google would pull Jones’ content and channel but leave his app in their app stores.
I think big internet “platforms” are trying to avoid being classified as “publishers.” The owners are not just providing platforms but acting as if publishers with editorial control. They want to be neutral anything goes platforms, but are being called out for the stuff that gets published. To edit or not to edit, that is the question that they cannot yet answer with any clarity.
The internet hosts many platforms (e.g., Twitter, Goggle,Facebook). Each platform hosts content and services paid for by users and by advertising.
The minute that the big platform operators like Google, Facebook, and Twitter edit content they are functioning as publishers. For more on the consequences of these differences and hedging about them see
https://earlyamericanists.com/2018/08/07/from-platform-to-publisher/
good article. Thanks.
The highly visible conservative, Alex Jones, differs from highly visible Republican women. The women get placed in positions by virtue of the status of their fathers e.g. Meghan McCain and Abby Huntsman.
I presume that the 53% of White women who voted for Trump, many of whom are one paycheck away from bankruptcy, prefer women of vast inherited wealth to speak for them.
It’s a brave new different world. The internet with the protocols and integrity of true journalism isn’t going anywhere.
The problem is the people – not laws but people – in positions of authority and power are silent. Or worse, “see good on both sides.”
There have been white supremicist marches (Skokie), racist posters and confederate flags, and outrageous rants on “old school” radio.
What’s different today? The president’s validation and wimp scared congress(white)men.
Today, the American people get a lesser share of national income than at any time in past recorded U.S. history. That deprivation provokes desperation in those losing out, which plays out in the election of Trump and in voters’ knee-jerk attachments to racial and gender entitlement. Sen. Warner has proposed legal restraints similar to the principles that regulators applied to past business monopolists. Open Markets Institute has information about it.
Clearly people value their 1 second of fame rather than leaving something good, something worthy, something of value to all humankind. Are people that desperate for approval? Or money? It’s sickening. What are people teaching their children that some little boy would grow up tp be an AJ, an RL, or any number of men or women perpetuating hate and evil deeds? What kind of world have we created? I lose sleep over all of this because no matter how much I do, the hate seems to continue to grow.
Clearly, any kind of declaration that allows free speech needs to come with precise laws about limitations. The same applies to any declaration of freedoms. Otherwise, one person’s practice of his freedoms may result in taking away other people’s freedoms.
In this case, Alex Jones’ practice of unlimited free speech has resulted in taking away the ultimate freedom from other people: the freedom to live.
The gullible are sucked in by the Koch’s “freedom” and “liberty” PR, which is bait and switch for oligarchy.
Today, Huffpo lists the 13 Trumpiest politicians in D.C.
We have seen over and over again that technology companies only listen to the public when it affects their bottom line. Charters school only listen to parents when parent go public about how bad there schools are. Technology companies are enslaving people while at the same time stealing privacy. Anyone with an ounce of sense will get off of every platform and take control of their lives again.
I am sorry that the people who believe that children who are murdered , killed are part of a hoax when in reality there deaths are on the hands of everyone who believe in hate ,stupidity, police officers, starting with the man at the top who is laughing all the way to the bank with his deposit slip
Vote, show up at school board meetings and hold every political representative responsible, democrats, republicans, independents and every talk show host. They are not your friends but people who want to destroy democracy. Force them to do their jobs or get out of office.
We have the best education system ,learn and protect our rights.
Did Jean Paul Marat have the right to call for heads to roll in the French Revolution? His opposition to the Girondin moderates was so violent that Marquis de Layfaette broke up the presses a time or two to try to cool things in Paris off a bit. Layfaette, of American Revolution fame, was the head of the national guard during the first part of the revolution, before the jacobins pushed it in Marat’s screaming direction.
Marat regularly took rumors and printed them as fact. One good one was the rumor that the nobility had desecrated the French tricolor at a party at Versailles. It sounded good, and may have happened, but there was no pause in Marat’s reporting to determine the truth, for he was going for maximum effect.
At what point does even the truth become the social equivalent of standing up in a crowded theater and yelling “fire”? (This would never affect southerners. They would hear the word far, and assume that the speaker was talking about the farm and they missed the m) The issues surrounding the first amendment are thorny indeed. It strikes me that the best way to counteract the existence of hate speech is with love speech since those two are opposites. How can we, like Martin Luther King, confront hate and prejudice in a way that calls out the practioners of it without bringing attention to these people? I say it is not easy.