Alex Jones Banned From Social Media

He himself is clearly a meshugganeh and a piece of lying garbage. However, the second these tech companies start banning people for political viewpoints, everyone is in trouble.

@DaasYochid To that I say the same thing. I think they are despicable, but we shouldn’t ban people for saying things we don’t like, even really disgusting, horrible things we don’t like. That being said, all private companies can ban whoever they want, and I recognize that. I am just saying they shouldn’t ACTUALLY do it, not that they shouldn’t be ALLOWED. I think people should only be banned if they are encouraging violence.

NOYB
these companies should shouldn’t be allowed to do whatever they desire ,since they have become more than companies ,They’re essentially monopolies and virtually utilities who work hand in had with the Government,

Joseph if u never listened to Alex Jones y would u call him a Looney. I happen to have watched a lot of his stuff. I don’t agree with a lot that he says but he is no crazier than anybody else in the media. Also they banned his channel info wars which has a lot of material which is basically liberals making fools of themselves.

Avi,

Ben Sira was banned,as were some others

Social media are NOT public utilities and don’t operate with FCC authorization on public airwaves. Fox News has repeatedly banned political ads denigrating the Trumpkopf because their listeners would be offended (although they cite to some weird “advertising standards”. We deregulated the media long ago and thats why Twitter may decide NOT to take down some of the Trumpkopf’s more racist and misogynistic comments while others will refuse to carry the messages. Drudge normally carries some really werid stuff along with some great breaking news items. Alex Jones can start his own social media platform and I’m sure there will be plenty of white supremacists, tin-foil hat types and other fringe elements who will gladly listen. For many of us, we can get our fill of conspiracy theories from the usual trollers here in the CR.

Those are different because they are not specific to social media. You can go on the street and constantly repeat the words “I earned five million dollars this year working from home” but you should not be allowed to do that online.

I think people should only be banned if they are encouraging violence.

I believe Alex Jones has been accused of indirectly encouraging violence.

actually, Facebook etc do NOT have a right to ban Jones and Infowar. Congress granted them protection from libel suits precisely because they agreed not to censor. If someone uses AT&T to send out false robocalls, AT&T cannot be sued because they do not exercise editorial control over content. Social media gets the same exemption as long as long as they remain a conduit. Once they start exercising editorial control (censorship) they leave themselves open to lawsuits

Avi, a Sandy Hook victim’s parents were allegedly threatened by a follower and had to move.

DY &Takes, the leaders of the Peleg explicitly incite their followers. An analogous situation would if c”v someone who habitually agrees with DY would allegedly threaten someone. Clarence Brandenburg said much worse things but was cleared by SCOTUS (Brandenburg v. Ohio 395 U.S. 444 (1969)).

He is enciting people with his conspiracy theories. It is similar like yelling fire in a crowded theater causing riots which harms individuals.

Avi KParticipant
DY &Takes, the leaders of the Peleg explicitly incite their followers
—————————————
Well then why aren’t the leaders being banned?

Takes, by whom? If you are asking why they were not arrested or why they were not put in cherem as I am not the spokesman of either the police or any rav nor am I privy to their internal discussions I do not know.

#The_REAL_Peleg

Does “What if the same happened to YWN?” mean “What if YWN blocked Alex Jones?” or “What if YWN was blocked from Facebook and Youtube?”?

There is a common recited but totally false narrative that net neutrality means neutral with respect to access to content and/or social media have some obligation to carry all perspectives like the public airwaves were once required by the FCC under the Fairness doctrine prior to elections. Net neutrality only means not throttling down (aka slowing) the SPEED of access via broadband to certain websites to assure that some users and sites don’t “hog” available bandwidth. The FCC eliminated that Obama era rule although Congress is considering restoring it. There are no longer any federal/FCC rules governing how much time (if any) public airwaves must devote to a particular editorial position although hate speech etc. could be a basis to revoke a channel’s license. Cable channels have ZERO oversight of their editorial content as anyone who has tuned in to Fox News or MSNBC during the evening hours will attest. As you may have notice, Fox no longer even bothers to use its “fair and balance” slogan anymore, although some of their daytime newscasters (e.g. Shep Smith) make a pretense of covering both sides of an issue fairly.

As one libertarian put it—with admirable, if frightful clarity—“We’re an economy with a country, not a country with an economy.” Most Americans—thank God—don’t see it that way. They understand that politics supersedes economics, and for a reason. Politics properly understood must be concerned with the comprehensive good, which means with the highest good. There are limits to what politics can do, both practically and—yes—morally in interfering with the market. But indifference is not an option for a civilization that wants to survive.
The modern tech information monopoly is a threat to self-government in at least three ways. First its aforementioned consolidation of monopoly power, which the techies are using to guarantee the outcome they want and to suppress dissent. It’s working. How much does anyone wanna bet that many will come back with “Well, this is all inevitable anyway.” Whose interests does that argument serve? Which is perhaps one reason they push it so incessantly that people now reflexively repeat it, even people who really ought to know better.
Second, and related, is the way that social media digitizes pitchforked mobs. Aristocrats used to have to fear the masses; now they enable, weaponize, and deploy them. Imagine if the Marquis St. Evrémonde could have utilized, rather than having to flee, the Paris mob. The grandees of Professorville and Sand Hill Road and Outer Broadway can and routinely do use social justice warriors to their advantage. Come to that, hundreds of thousands of whom, like modern Red Guards, don’t have to be mobilized or even paid. They seek to stifle dissent and destroy lives and careers for the sheer joy of it.
Third and most important, tech-as-time-sucking-frivolity is infantilizing and enstupefying society—corroding the reason-based public discourse without which no republic can exist. Libertarians cannot see that, not because I am wrong and tech is actually good, but because libertarianism and degraded “conservatism” have no philosophic or moral framework for judging good from bad or right from wrong. To them, these categories do not exist except at the very lowest level. Little else but outright theft and the (non-consensual) infliction of bodily harm are condemnable.
But all the dynamism and innovation that silicon valley and their choir praise only emerge from a bedrock of republican virtue. This is the core truth that libertarians seem unable to appreciate. Silicon Valley is undermining that virtue—with its products, with its tightening grip on power, and with its attempt to reengineer society, the economy, and human life. When and if that virtue is finally gone, it will be an open question whether anything like the high-tech nirvana that so profess to admire can be sustained. If not, well . . .
If it can, it won’t be in a political environment that is republican, much less conservative or libertarian. And we know who will be in charge.

Time,

Silicon Valley’s products are only that. Products. They are only tools. How they are used is up to the user. As the NRA has always pointed out, guns don’t kill people. People kill people (this is also the halacha – a person who shoots an arrow cannot escape liability by claiming that it is the arrow’s fault). Conservatives (and if you would be even a bit familiar with Edmund Burke and Russell Kirk you would not contend that conservatives have “no philosophic or moral framework for judging good from bad or right from wrong” should get moving and jump on the bandwagon. Unfortunately, so far only the Alt-Right crowd understands this and they are just as bad as the Left radicals.

As fi libertarians, IMHO they are simply way before their time. In the messianic age when all will desire to do Hashem’s will (see Rambam at the end of Hilchot Melachim) there will be no need for government coercion (and BTW, libertarians are split between anarcho-capitalists, who think that insurance companies can take over all of government’s protective functions, and minarchists, who favor in the “night watchman state”). Even today, the extent to which government is needed depends on the extent to which a people is, in John Adams’ word, religious and moral. The Netziv also alludes to this in his commentary on the mitzva to appoint a king.

should’ve put my post in quotes
iirc am personally not a libertarian of any stripe

Indeed,yes
Excuse my shoddiness, it was right before Shabbos

It’s not censorship. Censorship is from the government.
Apple, Twitter, etc. are private companies and don’t need to host him against their wishes.