Tech giants censor Alex Jones and Infowars.

Alex Jones. Via Mike Zimmerman. 

Tech giants Facebook, Youtube, Spotify and Apple have joined together to censor right wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. Fox News. Jones was banned from Facebook and had his podcasts and videos removed from Youtube, Spotify and iTunes. The stated reason was hate speech as Jones is a very loud critic of liberal causes and a critic of Islam. Some pundits, and even Jones critics, have trashed the descion as an obvious case of censorship. 

My Comment:

Let me start out by saying that I am not a fan of Alex Jones. I consider him to be a conspiracy theorist who isn't to be taken seriously. I do admit that I sometimes watch clips and remixes of his rants but I don't respect Jones or Infowars as a journalistic outlet. Not that I respect most mainstream sources either but it's pretty clear that Jones and Infowars are low quality. I do have to say that if Alex Jones wasn't so serious about what he was talking about he'd be a great comedian. The youtube video below is an example. 

Do I agree with everything Jones and Infowars says? Of course not. Some of it is disgusting, much of it is wrong but occasionally they get something right. Do I think they engage in hate speech? Not that I have seen, but with the caveat that I don't watch or read either Jones or Infowars. From what I have seen Jones is just a more shrill right wing pundit that spends too much time hawking his snake oil products and ranting about conspiracies. He's a distraction at best and an embarrassment at worse. 

What really bothers me though is that there is a pretty obvious double standard going on here. There are plenty of conspiracy theorists out there that haven't been banned and many of them are on the left as well as the right. It's pretty sad when Jones' left wing equivalents, like ShareBlue or Thinkprogress are featured un-ironically on Google News but Jones is censored. 

I also think that this has nothing to do with the tech companies being offended by Jones since he has been around forever and done way more controversial things in the past. He was a pretty loud and annoying 9/11 truther back in the day which is way more offensive to me than anything he is doing lately. It has everything to do with the midterm elections. The tech companies believe that Jones is partially responsible for Donald Trump getting elected and they want to make sure that doesn't happen again. It has nothing to do with Jones' character, the fact that he's a conspiracy nutjob or that he says politically incorrect things. All of these things are tolerated all the time on the tech companies sites. It's the fact that he supports Donald Trump and they fear he has influence. 

Funny enough I don't think they really understand what Jones is. Jones doesn't come up with his theories and rants by himself. He gets them from the internet, specifically twitter, 4chan and random people's blogs. Indeed, Jones is usually a couple days behind the internet zeitgeist. Those theories and complaints that influenced the election didn't come from him, he just spread them a bit further than they would have gone. I doubt he had much of an impact on the election, especially compared to things like Clinton just ignoring critical swing states like Wisconsin. 

I have always said that Jones is a good canary in the coal mine. As long as he was tolerated, despite his craziness, free speech was healthy. With him on the way out, it seems clear that the tech companies no longer value free speech as a right and goal. With Jones gone the question now becomes how much further the tech companies will go. 

I am loath to suggest regulation but I do think that something has to be done. It seems very clear that conservative voices will no longer be tolerated on these platforms. Jones was the first and most easy target but I doubt it will end with him. With Infowars gone, who's to say Breitbart or Fox News aren't next? And then the Wall Street Journal and The Federalist? And soon it could be any conservative politician from a random guy running for dogcatcher to the President of the United States himself. If that happens then how are conservatives supposed to argue their points and organize for elections? This seems like a direct threat to the very survival of conservative thought. Jones may be a rouge and a scoundrel, but if we don't defend him it will be everyone else right of Lenin next...