> How do you know you're not the one being radicalized?
How do you know you're not the one being radicalized?
> Have you ever tried to listen to Alex in good faith even if you don't agree and try to understand his view at least? Or is your entire perception based off of John Oliver?
I have, he's entertaining. I don't take a single thing seriously. I've spent some time researching on thing he's said, all of it was gross mischaracterizations and exaggerations on any topic. I won't spend any more. I'm not a journalist, that's their job.
> Do you think you could pick 20 seconds out of John Olivers footage and make him look like a crazy person?
That would be fantastic, go ahead. This isn't idolatry.
> Some would say that claiming the outcome of free speech is radicalization...to be pure idiocy.
Well, it is through free speech that radicalization does happen, however, nobody is talking about free speech here. because alex jones can still say whatever he wants. (as long as he can pay for libel/slander fines), you can exercise free speech. deplatforming has nothing to do with free speech.
If have come to the conclusion that you either get why people defend his presence as a price for many advantages or you do not. These are not the people that buy his "man-oil".
Some say the smarter ones give in, although that should not be applied on this topic in my opinion.
> Free speech doesn't mean everyone is forced to listen to that speech.
It is just a personal dislike of Alex Jones, not an elaborate thought. Not that hard to sympathize with, which makes defense against content regulation quite exhausting. But it is also a lie, since nobody was forced to listen to Alex Jones at all.
We have seen targeted harassment against Russians by mainstream media outlets. It is the same strain of reasoning, although I would put it anywhere near reason to be honest.
> Discuss him. Debunk his ideas one by one. Use whichever tools appeal to you. If youtube wants to help, then youtube algorithms should be tweaked to encourage people to view both sides of the debate.
How would you “debunk” Alex Jones? Certainly not with rational arguments, as if his viewers were at all receptive to reason, they wouldn’t be InfoWars viewers. I am not a regular viewer, but I have seen a few episodes and that I saw, Alex Jones makes no use logic, reasoning, verifiable evidence, or journalistic standards.
So what’s the plan? Counter Alex Jones with an equally unscrupulous manipulator from “our side?”
I think there are valid debates to be had about how much speech should or should not be regulated, even on non-government platforms. But the idea that Alex Jones could be “debunked” seems absurd to me.
>Now those episodes have been controversial, and I only bring them up because it's the example that came to my head (before someone misses the whole point and starts looking at the finger)
As you can see in my initial post.. or maybe you don't, I avoid talking about things like this on HN because most people here are smart enough to look between the lines but some only pretend to look at the finger to win an argument, well..
I was talking about censorship, and I don't "want" or "not want" Alex Jones to be suggested, and I won't pretend to tell a private company how to do their business, so I just stopped using Youtube and most other social media.
>Perhaps your personal freedom must stop when it starts causing violence.
Of course if you call for violence on others, but if I say that people of party X are liars, then my fans start attacking them on the street, am I causing harm or are my fans the ones who cause the harm? If it's my fault then most politicians call each other liars and criminals every other week...
Also about the children thing I'm not up to date with it, but I know he said Sandy Hook was fake and something happened (I'm not American), but the guy says lots of crazy stuff and always has, it's still not a reason to censor anyone.
I doubt you'll understand how small steps like this can lead to somethings that in hindsight we see as catastrophic, but a system (like soviet russia or nazi germany) is built step by step, today we censor you, tomorrow we deepfake the president's face and post it on twitter, very soon we throw you in a concentration camp.
>but is that possible that SUGGESTING Alex Jones is actually causing harm to many people?
There are videos of kids challenging each other to balance on the rooftop of a skyscraper, videos of Islamic priests calling for the death of unbelievers, ads for fast-food with a shit ton of sugar and fat, videos on how to make high powered infrared lasers that can blind someone without even being visible to the naked eye, videos of home made guns, etc... and they all get suggested in the search bar once you type in a few words.
Other thoughts:
Also an important thing to note is that the Alex Jones lies (that he maybe believed since he's not 100% in there) on Sandy Hook resulted in zero deaths. Mainstream media and CIA misinformation on weapons of mass destruction resulted in 1 million+ innocent Iraqis dying in "Operation Iraqi Freedom" yet no one has ever tried to ban them from anything, are those Iraqi kids just not that important? Are they less than us because they're not white?
Alex Jones and Johnny Depp gets publicly televised trials but none for Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein, all the "terrorist suspects" in Guantanamo, Julian Assange, and so on and so forth
I never would have thought that in the 21th century in the first world I'd be arguing FOR freedom of speech while being talked down to as the bad guy.
> What does seem to be the case is that every time someone attempts to deplatform the people writing about the subjects you listed, their audience grows instead of shrinks.
Alex Jones' audience collapsed after he was banned from the major social networks. Denying nonsense a megaphone works.
>The fact that there has been no Jones-inspired violence means that there are literally zero people in his audience who take him seriously. Which is good.
Alex Jones at least indirectly inspired a gunman to fire into a restaurant because he pushed the Pizzagate conspiracy theory.
One might be able to make the argument that Alex Jones doesn't directly call for violence, but he and people like him make a living out of talking around violence, and when someone pushes conspiracy theories about certain groups of people (jews, muslims, leftists, gays) belief in those conspiracies can create a higher likelihood of violence against those groups.
> Alex Jones was attacked by Google, Twitter, Facebook, and Apple in a short span of time and this certainly does bring noticeable harm. Your argument that Google isn't a monopoly so much as a participant in an oligopoly is pointless.
Alex Jones is not a victim of anyone but his own avarice. He defamed victims of horrible violence and refused to stop. He kept ending up in court trying to use defenses like, "I am actually a comedy show and everyone knows it is a joke." It became so absurd that his liability was spilling over onto other broadcast networks who couldn't deny he was deliberately slandering people.
I'm saying: his speech is about as valuable as shouting "fire" in a crowded movie theater. So maybe he is not your go-to example. May I recommend instead Dan of "Three Arrows," who has been banned for explaining Nazi history in a factual way with the highest standards of evidence, but ends up being banned or demonetized because of brigading organized by pro-fascist elements lead by reactionary channels failing the same standard like Tim Pool.
But I agree that you could probably make a case YouTube is a monopoly.
> Large chunks of the WWW contain Google malware or are at the behest of Cloudflare and that makes avoiding these two difficult,
Your problem is with site runners who do not consider it malware. You're demanding a product with a price of $0, but such things don't have $0 cost. And of course, you can instantly 0 it out by using tools like noscript. But you can't try to blame Google or CloudFlare for the presence of these tools. That's a conscious decision by website engineers who could offer their content free of charge, but cannot afford to. Ain't capitalism great?
May I recommend doing what I do, which is using NoScript on Firefox? I won't lie, FireFox is worse than Chromium and the plugins are worse, but sometimes we gotta take a hit for our principles.
> ReCaptcha it becomes increasingly harder to do certain things without giving Google free work.
Exactly how many street sign identification tasks do you think Google needs for Waymo or Maps? I'll give you a hint: a kid with tensorflow can solve those captchas using off the shelf parts. The primary value of those captchas is forcing a human to interact with the captcha in a very short span of time, which raises the costs of using cheap contract labor solutions to evade the captcha several orders of magnitude.
> You're either misguided or purposefully arguing in bad faith.
"People who disagree with me are all wrong or liars" isn't a very "good faith" argument either.
> What are you saying, exactly? We just fine them increasing amounts of money until they agree with the “generally accepted opinions
Maybe? Alex Jones still hasn't accepted reality regarding the Sandy Hook massacre, even after losing a trial. Éric Zemmour still peddles blatantly racist and false information after being fined multiple times for it. Is there a way to even stop that kind of person? Anyone listening to them ( and Trump, and Nigel Farage, and Boris Johnson) obviously isn't interested in facts, because everything out of their mouths is easily debunkable with a few minutes online
> If you want to end climate change denialism or anti-vaccine sentiment, discuss the facts with people who sympathize with those viewpoints. Convince them on the evidence. Find better evidence if you can’t.
That doesn't work and hasn't for years. You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.
> The people like yourself who want to engage in censorship never have the truth on their side. There’d be no reason to censor anything if you did: just lead with the truth instead. Let the facts speak for themselves. The fact that you can’t convince people of your “facts” is proof that you your ideas are garbage.
That's an entirely useless personal attack. I never claimed any facts, I'm claiming that people peddling easily debunked bullshit they pass as fact can't be allowed to do this constantly without repercussions. Because they are causing real life harm and using "it's just my opinion, I'm just asking questions" as a shitty excuse.
> Alex Jones purposefully tells harmful lies to vulnerable people in order to get them to distrust the institutions
He tells his share of lies. But he also tells his share of truth. No different than any other "news" organization. If he is telling lies, then point it out, debate them. Don't censor them. If lying is grounds for censorship, then every newspaper needs to be shutdown. They all lie or fabricate from time to time. Did we forget about the iraq war and the media lies that allowed it to happen? Or brian williams or the recent florence weather channel farce?
> around them so he can sell them harmful junk
How is that any different than CNN showing pharmaceuticals ad on their network to their vulnerable elderly viewership? Or news putting gambling ads? Should MSNBC or Foxnews be banned because they have soda or potato chip ads? I'd say alex jones is responsible for a minuscule amount of the harmful junk in this country compared to the mainstream media.
> And he didn't even get censored, he got kicked off some platforms like twitter.
That's called censorship.
> To compare him to an actual victim of censorship who was trying to get the truth out is an example of bothsidesm that is attempting to masquerade as rational thought.
He is a victim of censorship. You may support him being censored, but to say he wasn't censored is an outright lie. You can censor people telling truth and people telling lies. It's both censorship.
My god stop watching so much CNN. It's great that you distrust alex jones. Everyone should. But everyone should distrust all media personalities. Skepticism is a very healthy part of citizenship and democracy. And censorship is evil in a democracy. Nothing more harmful than censorship and the people who support it for their political agenda. Nazis, fascists, communists and all extremists love censorship for a reason. Democracies love free speech for a reason.
> No one is saying that Alex Jones literally should not be allowed to speak, but that letting him speak to your curated audience of millions, without challenging their horseshit, makes you an enabler to those bad ideas.
Actually lots of people are saying that. He was deplatformed from youtube, facebook, and twitter which is exactly why Rogan had him on the show. He is a personal friend and explains that many times. Having Alex Jones on his show is not some dumb idea enabling bullshit, all of his ideas are not completely wrong.
Let people come to their own conclusions. Why do you think people listening to him will not see for themselves? If they can't listen to a rational discussion and make an informed decision there isn't much credit to ones opinion anyway. Just banning him from media is a childish perspective in my opinion.
> Maybe? Alex Jones still hasn't accepted reality regarding the Sandy Hook massacre, even after losing a trial. Éric Zemmour still peddles blatantly racist and false information after being fined multiple times for it. Is there a way to even stop that kind of person? Anyone listening to them ( and Trump, and Nigel Farage, and Boris Johnson) obviously isn't interested in facts, because everything out of their mouths is easily debunkable with a few minutes online
Do you have any examples of left-wingers producing misinformation? You know, people on CNN or MSNBC? Or are you going to produce only right-wing examples because you live in an absolute bubble and have no ability to see that there is daily misinformation on all corporate-owned networks: Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, etc... and even in a very egregious way.
It is clear to me that you only read Democratic-party aligned news sources and have a terribly biased and skewed worldview where apparently only "tHe RiGhT-WiNgErS aRe RaCiSt hurr durr". Your guy Joe Biden has produced more racist outcomes with his Crime Bill than Donald Trump has ever done in his tweets.
This brings to mind the war on drugs, war on terror, etc. Typically war is used when we are meant to take sides in support of drastic action without too much thought getting in the way.
> He and his ilk are about weaponizing the norms of society to destroy society.
I'm honestly not sure from this comment if you are deliberately trolling/baiting or if you just feel a tremendous amount of righteous indignation and emotion about Alex Jones.
In my view, if we start to assume that all content on the internet has somehow been vetted by responsible elders who know what's best for us, we lose the (essential) ability to filter out the garbage for ourselves.
In today's world, people seem to flock toward authority figures of all kinds and wish to wield authority against others (by suppressing their speech, etc.). So your comment strikes me as an appeal to authoritarianism and a call to authoritarian action to crack down on morally objectionable content.
Some people think that a picture of two men holding hands is morally objectionable content, and they seek authority to make their view dominate the public discourse. How is your goal different from theirs other than in the small detail of which content is objectionable?
> Alex Jones and brietbart are sensationalists, not extremists.
Can you expand on this? I understand Breitbart more since people like Milo were more clearly trolls. But Alex Jones frequently talks about conspiracy theories and is promoting the current insurrection (see below). But if many extremists frequent your sites then maybe the line is pretty blurry and you should expect others to confuse them. And to quote from an article that is on Info Wars' front page (in its entirety)[0]
> They continue twisting the occupation of our nation’s Capitol by frustrated citizens and using it to destroy anyone that stands in their way.
> As DC Mayor Bouser lords over her potential future state with a 15 day emergency order following the Capitol Building siege, the National Guard, including 1,000 soldiers from New York, are stationed in the nation’s Capitol to protect the illegitimate inauguration of the Manchurian Candidate Joe Biden while the old establishment propaganda ratchets into full protection mode and the defenders of the New World Order crawl out of their holes to justify the plague that is exterminating liberty.
How do you differentiate this from extremism? Reading words like "occupation", "illegitimate inauguration", "New World Order", and "exterminating liberty" seem to me like extremist views. I'm not sure how you differentiate the two, but saying that a deep state rigged the election and calling those who attacked the capital "frustrated citizens" is in my view an extremist stance. These words encourage those actions. Extremists always use inflammatory language, so where is the line drawn? When does sensationalism because extremism? When you have followers that act on your words? I feel like we're there.
But he's insinuating that people like Alex Jones should be protected by freedom of speech as if their fucked up ideads are some sort of alternative view that's just not for everyone.
This is a form of gaslighting that tries to establish credibility for extremists that they don't have.
ok, here's 5 full hours https://youtu.be/-5yh2HcIlkU
> How do you know you're not the one being radicalized?
How do you know you're not the one being radicalized?
> Have you ever tried to listen to Alex in good faith even if you don't agree and try to understand his view at least? Or is your entire perception based off of John Oliver?
I have, he's entertaining. I don't take a single thing seriously. I've spent some time researching on thing he's said, all of it was gross mischaracterizations and exaggerations on any topic. I won't spend any more. I'm not a journalist, that's their job.
> Do you think you could pick 20 seconds out of John Olivers footage and make him look like a crazy person?
That would be fantastic, go ahead. This isn't idolatry.
> Some would say that claiming the outcome of free speech is radicalization...to be pure idiocy.
Well, it is through free speech that radicalization does happen, however, nobody is talking about free speech here. because alex jones can still say whatever he wants. (as long as he can pay for libel/slander fines), you can exercise free speech. deplatforming has nothing to do with free speech.
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