Apple iTunes, YouTube, and Facebook Delete Alex Jones' InfoWars Social Media Pages
As if Alex Jones' controversial political opinions and often incisively relevant news reports were the very worst of the tidal wave of decadent litter that flows through these channels on a daily basis, the Apple iTunes store deleted Alex Jones' InfoWars podcast Monday, followed by YouTube, which deleted InfoWars' YouTube channel, and Facebook, which deleted the conservative talk personality's Facebook pages.
Facebook says:
"We believe in giving people a voice, but we also want everyone using Facebook to feel safe. It’s why we have Community Standards and remove anything that violates them, including hate speech that attacks or dehumanizes others. Earlier today, we removed four Pages belonging to Alex Jones for repeatedly posting content over the past several days that breaks those Community Standards."
Who the hell are these people that don't feel safe while using Facebook? Do they know they have a block feature?
BuzzFeedNews says:
"Some of the world's largest social media and tech companies kicked Alex Jones and his conspiracy-theory driven show, InfoWars, off their platforms on Monday after months of hand-wringing about how to handle a personality who claimed he was delivering news but didn't deal in facts."
"...claimed he was delivering news but didn't deal in facts."
That could describe most of the mainstream media. Almost all of the media-driven paroxysms of the masses that have led to the many radical programs to completely reorganize our society by force over the last hundred years are based on conspiracy theories and fear mongering. The bread and butter of the journalistic establishment is peddling fear.
This is a brazen act of politically motivated censorship and a bad precedent for the future of relevant journalism in a chaotic era. This act of top-down decision-making regarding what is acceptable to say on a public forum will have a chilling effect on the future expression of controversial opinions on these platforms, which is a dangerous game to play because progress is often made in society by voicing controversial and unacceptable opinions. Maybe Alex Jones is no Galileo, but because he has been effectively silenced by these tech giants, it is now more likely that a true Galileo will be.
These tech companies have also now painted themselves into a corner and by exercising this extraordinary prerogative to decide what is and isn't acceptable, they have now taken the onus upon themselves to be responsible for everything that is said on their platforms, and will invite more pressure from politically motivated factions to inspect and police every bit of content on their networks. By doing this they have unnecessarily burdened and weakened themselves and weakened the user experience.
Users already have controls to cultivate and filter their own individual feeds. Let individuals decide for themselves what content is acceptable and what isn't by using the already available block and mute functions. Deciding from the top down instead invites prejudice and corruption.