Jones has finally been banned from YouTube and Twitter. I guess those media do have limits. It’s too bad the limit seems to be set impossibly high, at peddling pedophile conspiracy theories and harassing the parents of murdered children.
But Jones was able to leap that high!
But…..Free speech.
But…..Frozen fruit.
The drip drip drip of public pressure is finally getting to social media giants. One one hand, it’s depressing that they took so long, on the other, it’s somewhat encouraging that they don’t feel completely immune to public opinion… yet.
Jones will survive, but here’s hoping he suffers the same slide toward national irrelevance the likes of Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck suffered when they were deplatformed.
Looks like he’s still on Twitter.
I have no idea why poopyhead thinks either
infocrackpotwars or the crackpot himself is banned from twittering. From the article linked-to in the OP:Sites which now have various sorts of bans are farcebork, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Youtube, and Stitcher.
I’ll wager Trump will get up on his Tweet-Box and scream about the horrible censorship of this Great American by “Fake News” outlets like Facebook and YouTube. “Sad. NO COLUSION!”
Not so sure about that. I doubt even Trump thinks he’s worth tweeting about, so I’ll lean no on this one.
Unfortunately Twitter hasn’t done shit.
In the past, traitor don has appeared on the crackpot’s show (Remember When Donald Trump Appeared on Alex Jones’ ‘InfoWars’), in December 2015. And whilst they are both constantly lying, Jones has claimed in the past “he is in regular, personal contact with Donald Trump. he told the German paper Der Spiegel.”
As The New Yorker points out, Donald Trump and the “Amazing” Alex Jones (June-2016):
Traitor don has a past history with
infocrackpotwars and teh crackpot himself.If they did do something, presumably the same or very similar reasons would also apply to traitor don…
I applaud these steps, no matter how small, as long as it’s in the direction of progress instead of regression.
To walk a mile needs to start with a single step.
Progress may be slower than desired, it still needs to be applauded to encourage it, with great enthusiastic praise. avoid shading it with “gee, what took so long?”.
This is what I’ve done habitually, and am now trying to stop from doing that anymore.
thank you
US law prevents a provider of a public platform – like WordPress or Twitter or YouTube – from being held liable for the content created by independent parties unless other, additional considerations provide a rebuttal to the presumption that liability rests solely with the content creator.
One thing that might be done to show that the platform provider (PP) has taken on some level of liability might be to show that they do in fact have content standards, that they enforce those content standards against some parties, that the content creator (CC) in question violated those standards, that the PP knew or should have known that the CC violated those standards, and that the PP did not edit or remove the work of the CC in question in a way analogous to how the PP had edited or removed the work of other CCs under the same standards.
This is problematic, because the same law that draws a liability distinction between the CC and the PP also explicitly forbids any liability attaching to the PP for blocking any content which (in the PP’s opinion) can be categorized as
emphasis added.
Now, the argument would be that the blocking didn’t create the liability, but rather that the blocking of other content is mere evidence that the PP endorses the potentially actionable content created by the independent CC. The PPs will, of course, argue the broad interpretation that any use of blocking actions in any argument to attach liability for anything will violate the restriction, but I’m not at all sure that’s true.
The absolute best target for such a legal strategy is FaceBook. While the censoring of pictures that include breast feeding mothers isn’t directly relevant (that would be a violation of a different community standard relating to “nudity” which, we all fervently hope, Alex Jones did not violate), their quick censorship of so many people while leaving Jones’ content uncensored for so many years provides a more than ample test. I just don’t know enough about what censoring FB has done on political topics or topics considered potentially defamatory to call to mind the most relevant comparison cases – but for damn sure comparison cases exist.
I’d be very interested in seeing if this strategy really could get legal traction in the US.
Here’s the relevant CDA sections, for those interested. Of course, there’s much more that’s involved here beyond just the CDA.
I used to spend the odd hour or so posting comments on his youtube channel ,some of the comments the wackaloons leave ,god bless America and the POTUS is a fair example .
Can anyone recommend a nice rightit wingnut site where i can go and see how the wackaloons are taking the news .
Twitter & farcebork come immediately to mind.
What is the exposure of Apple or Twitter, etc. to European law? Certainly Apple is viewed as a tax dodger there.
Hate speech, holocaust denial and so on can be costly in the EU. For an actual, unrepentant, holocaust denier, there are sanctions such as jail terms in Germany. For companies there could be some very nasty financial consequences if they were viewed as contributing to the dissemination of such views.
(This is a reconstructed cross-post from the concurrent poopyhead thread Tech companies are not altruistic.)
None as such seems to be mentioned by the SPLC, albeit some of his rants do seem like they have a touch of anti-Semitism.
The ADL says:
Crip Dyke:
One thing that might be done to show that the platform provider (PP) has taken on some level of liability might be to show that they do in fact have content standards, that they enforce those content standards against some parties, that the content creator (CC) in question violated those standards,
It’s been a while since I looked at the safe harbor provisions closely (and I was looking at them from a copyright angle) but it struck me that the safe harbor does not survive constructive knowledge, i.e.: they are presumed to be not responsible for content because they do not control what a user uploads – but if they are informed that a piece of content is illegal or infringes, then they are required to act oce they have constructive knowledge. After all, they do control content to the degree that they can (and do) remove it when notified. It seems to me, then, not being a lawyer and with helpings of waffle applied, it ought to be reasonable to tell a content provider: “you are hereby notified that videos accusing me of being a crisis actor are disparagement and are the subject of litigation, you can no longer claim you are not aware of this – take them all down immediately wherever they are on your site.” Note that large copyright holders such as Disney basically already do that; youtube takes down copies of Star Wars automatically when it finds them.
I think some expensive lawyers could drive a truck through the safe harbor provisions. They exist only because small content providers cannot enforce their rights as effectively as the larger ones. But that’s copyright – something like Alex Jones’ ranting could actually be determined to be disparagement or worse and the publishing platform may no longer be indemnified if they continue to publish the disparagement once they come to know that it is disparagement.
@ 18 blf
Thanks for that. I find Jones to be ‘dégoûtant’ which may be a bit stronger here than in France. Pity we can not get him on a Holocaust denial charge.
Jones found a cheap and simple way to laugh all the way to the bank, be the loudest and most prolific wingnut in the history of hardware.
Alas, when the utterly predictable happens and the rare exception to the rule that most mentally ill people only harm themselves via their own actions or more often, the stigma associated with their illness and does cause harm, it’s not his fault.
Because, it’s not your fault when you hand a three year old a loaded gun and due to the geometry of their hands and the weapon, the child shoots him or herself. It’s an act of God, the devil, bad luck, poor parenting, anything but the idiot that gave the child a loaded gun.
Where I taught our children from when they could comprehend speech and had them recite it to me, “A guns are loaded, no matter how loaded anyone tells you they are. Come to me and I’ll check it and ensure it’s unloaded and then you can look at it or hold it, if you’re interested”. Words that they repeat to this very day in their mid and mid-late 30’s.
Jones teaches that all guns are unloaded and safe, then hands the kid a gun.
Interestingly, our children had precisely a 50% interest in ever accompanying me to a range. Our eldest had a bucket list nonsense idea to fire a firearm, with me for safety, before she reached age 30. She did, wants no part of them. The youngest never had the interest.
Probably an effect of that quarterly drilling of the dangers inherent in loaded (they all are until cleared by someone skilled in their handling) firearms.
Yes, a method behind the madness. If either wanted to enter into sane competition shooting, I’d have supported that. But, otherwise, be knowledgeable, know the risks, analyze if the risk is worth the benefit and act upon the greatest benefit for the least risk.
So, here’s to Alex Jones! The man most likely to be tripped by my cane, should we ever have the misfortune to meet. Something I studiously try to avoid the possibility of.
Disinfecting a wooden cane is a royal pain.
Marcus @19: you are completely wrong about that; you’re confusing copyright cases with other forms of legal liability.
There is no unitary “safe harbor” provision anywhere under US law. There are three (at least) scenarios that are covered under three completely different legal regimes: 1) Federal criminal law; 2) Copyright (DMCA) and other intellectual property; 3) basically everything else in which the platform provider is being held liable for posted material (section 230, aka CDA).
In cases 1 and 2 the provider’s knowledge and/or receipt of notification matters. In case 3 it does not. There is only ONE way to break the platform’s immunity under section 230 where published material is at issue, and that is to show that the platform played some actual role in creating the content. For example, cases where a website operator added headlines or editorial commentary to user-submitted material resulted in the website being held liable for that part of the content.
Courts have specifically rejected (e.g. in Barrett v. Rosenthal) the position that immunity is negated by notification of the nature of the material, even if that notification is in advance of publication.
I’m not a lawyer, but I followed the progress of section 230 litigation actively for a decade or more after it was passed in 1996. During that time a lot of lawyers were actively trying to poke holes in it in order to impose traditional publisher or distributor liability, and they all failed.
wzrd1 @21:
Can we please not conflate “being an awful person” with “mentally ill”? The mentally ill have enough trouble with people assuming that they are all mass murderers, they don’t need people like you spreading the assumption that their illness might make them malicious bullies as well.
Andrew G.:
Courts have specifically rejected (e.g. in Barrett v. Rosenthal) the position that immunity is negated by notification of the nature of the material, even if that notification is in advance of publication.
Ok, well that’s that.
What did he do to push so many places to ban him in such a short time? They all could have banned him long ago, what happened to make this the moment they couldn’t take anymore?
David Corn: “By the way, Alex Jones was a special guest at the Republican convention in Cleveland in 2016. He had a VIP pass.”
LOL.