An Open Invitation To Alex Jones
So, Alex Jones got banned from Facebook, Apple, YouTube and Spotify. This news broke 10 days ago and I saw it in the corner of my eye, but didn't think much of it at first.
And that's because I don't particularly like the man. I don't like the way he ambushes people, however guilty or rotten they may be, with a microphone and a camera, always looking to make himself look like the true knight in shining armor, fighting to bring us truth in a world of universal deceit. I don't like his blind faith in capitalism and I'm not fond of the shady products he sells on his Infowars website.
That's not to say that he doesn't occasionally has something useful to say or that he's wrong about the fact that we're being lied to about almost everything in mainstream media. His style, his political and economical outlook on the world and his voice... that voice... These all made me mostly ignore Alex. So I didn't glance twice when I saw he got banned from almost all biggest social media platforms.
![alex-jones.jpg](https://steemitimages.com/640x0/https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmRbE5pkvVovzAMdT3UvcvXhcQvLxRGPG4AmXFwJV7KGwM/alex-jones.jpg)
Alex Jones
image by DonkeyHotey - source: Flickr
But that's so wrong. The way I reacted as well as the ban itself. This is why I write today's short post. To remind myself and you all, dear Steemians, that freedom of speech is not there to protect the speech that agrees with us. It's to protect the right to express ideas we don't like or agree with! We especially need to stand up for those who we don't agree with because we know that some day the roles might be reversed. A lot of people might not like or agree with what I have to say, but as long as I'm not causing any physical or mental harm to anyone, I should be able to speak my mind.
Another reason to let anyone shout their unwanted or unpopular ideas out loud, is because this keeps potentially dangerous elements and developments in sight. It is much more dangerous to let these movements fester in the dark or underground. And the most important reason of all may be that refusing individuals or groups their right to free speech, shuts off the dialogue completely; every chance of changing the minds of those who are yet undecided or even winning back some lost souls to the side of the light and reason is gone.
The exchanging of opposing ideas in the public sphere is the very basis of a functional democracy and any free and open society. Augist 6th, the day the news of Alex Jones' ban from these social platform giants broke, is a black page in the very young history of the "free and open internet".
All but one of the major content platforms have banned the American conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, as the companies raced to act in the wake of Apple's decision to remove five podcasts by Jones and his Infowars website.
Facebook unpublished four pages run by Jones for "repeated violations of community standards", the company said on Monday. YouTube terminated Jones's account over him repeatedly appearing in videos despite being subject to a 90-day ban from the website, and Spotify removed the entirety of one of Jones's podcasts for "hate content".
source: The Guardian - Mon 6 Aug 2018
Remember: free speech is not an invitation to intentionally hurt someone's feelings or insult them. But it also means that by speeking your mind it's always possible for feelings to get hurt. That's why intent matters. As long as we're able to engage in open and honest dialogue while respecting each other's humanity, we'll be able to build a future together. And that includes the likes of Alex Jones.
Alex, if you by any chance get to read this, please accept my invitation to join us here on Steemit. There will be no banning here, no censorship other than that of your peers. I can't promise you'll be able to monetize your speech because we try to upvote quality content only, but you'll be able to say what you need to say :-) I don't like what you usually have to say nor the way you say it, but I'll always defend your right to do so. So please, come join us! (or are you already here, hiding among us?)
If you are by any chance an Alex Jones fan, rest assured I think no less of you, and I hope you'll join me in extending this invitation to the voice of all conspiracies :-) To the rest of you I say thank you for being here again and I hope to see you back here tomorrow so we can share some more thoughts on whatever comes up ;-)
![wave-13 divider odrau steem](https://steemitimages.com/DQmU6tFLSzDEkxq3xneXTH74gx4vhqbcyurn9NbqxFj8jY5/wave-13.png)
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Great article made about ban by big corporations. The reason we need more people to join the boat of Steemit. ;)
You know it! Thanks @chesatochi! :-)
My pleasure
People like you who stand up for the rights of those who you don't even like are what makes this platform amazing. Keep up the great work!
By the way, I'm not a fan of him either.
That's so sweet of you to say @snowpea :-) <3 Thanks so much for that support :-)
I was with you until you got here:
That's not correct, the "mental harm" is irrelevant, because if you establish that as the standard then anyone can silence anyone else by claiming "mental harm", that's essentially what other countries have with their "hate speech" laws, any country with any sort of hate speech laws does not have the right to free speech. Insulting, offensive or upsetting speech is really the only speech that needs any legal protection, nobody complains about or tries to silence "love" speech do they?
Yes, it is, that's basically what it is for. The only type of speech anyone ever tries to silence is that which upsets, insults or offends them. Where the line needs to be drawn is at defamation, you can upset and insult people but you cannot lie about them, that's crossing the line.
Thanks for a well thought out response @funbobby51, I appreciate that a lot :-)
Yours is a valid way of looking at it, that's why I consciously added the remark about "intent". We have experience with this, right here on the internet on social media. Regarding "free speech" as a right to insult is just not the right way to approach it in my view. You will inevitably insult of hurt feelings when being honest, that's why a good understanding of intent has to play a role on both sides. And it is an area where we'll always be experimenting; humor, for example, is a way to insult without having the intent to hurt anyone. To intentionally hurt someone's feelings is always wrong when there's other ways to communicate what you have to say. So an atheist can go around and ridicule faith at every chance he has, or he can try and have a dialogue with "the other side" on equal footing where both sides at least try to respect each others feelings. Which you think is best to do or which will have the desired result has solely to do with the intent of your conversation. Free speech is not for insulting, my friend, not taking away that insults can sometimes be functional to. Does this make sense..?
Being insulted is subjective. There is not any right to not be insulted thus insulting people is a great example of the sort of speech that free speech rights are intended to protect. I can say what I want, even if I intend it to insult someone, think about it, if no one was insulted or offended who would try to silence that speech?
If someone chooses to be jerk and debates with insults then they may not convince whoever they are arguing with but if we make that a crime then anyone can silence anyone else by claiming to feel insulted.
I made a meme that explains it:
![meme10.jpg](https://steemitimages.com/640x0/https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmPxdbV8D2J7HJm8rgspihZKuQxYjtN2G6H5k13asCZqcb/meme10.jpg)
Great idea, I had the same already...
Did you invite him personally?
Best regards
Tom
Thanks for this response @zanoni :-) I'm glad you're able to contact the man personally; I wouldn't know how to do that and honestly have never tried to. I'm just throwing the idea out here, and it would be a little dishonest for me to personally invite him I think. But, I would gladly forward him a link to this post if you can tell me how :-)
https://www.prisonplanet.com/contact-information.html
Best regards
Tom
Hi there mr. Jones, writers @infowars,
I write you this message to express my utter disappointment in the way you all have been treated by the large social-media platforms, I don't believe naming them again is necessary or even appropriate; they should all be banned and never be spoken of again...
If it just were so easy... Even I myself cannot escape the use of those damned machine-learning algorithms by the hands of those internet-demons! But I'm glad to be able to present you with an alternative that may be worth your attention.
Truth be said: I'm not a fan, on the contrary. But that doesn't take away from my conviction that anyone should be able to speak their minds, especially in these times of almost universal deceit in the mainstream.
That's why I took the liberty to to speak my mind on this whole rotten subject on my favorite online social platform, Steemit. This is a blogging platform that runs on a public decentralized blockchain which means anything published there is eternally encoded into this highly secured blockchain and that there's no way for the government or whoever else to remove said content or to censor it in any way.
Since it runs on a blockchain with its own crypto-currency, it's also designed for popular content to be monetized by readers' likes (upvotes). So, I would like to invite you to join us freedom loving souls there! You can read my article here: An Open Invitation To Alex Jones If you want to join, and why wouldn't you, please visit Steemit.com
Keep fighting the good fight, and I hope to see you join the best blogging platform on the web soon!
Best regards,
So, that;s the message I sent them :-) Thanks for your suggestion!
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