https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/07/techn...peech.html

Quote:When asked about Infowars last month, Facebook’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, said he wouldn’t remove pages hosting popular conspiracy theories of the type Mr. Jones is known for sharing. Mr. Zuckerberg then turned the conversation to the subject of the Holocaust, defending Facebook users who deny the Holocaust occurred.

His awkward explanation prompted outrage, and less than a day later, Mr. Zuckerberg offered a public apology.

Now, less than a month later, Facebook has banned Mr. Jones and removed four pages belonging to him — including one with nearly 1.7 million followers — for violating its policies. The ban means that while Mr. Jones still has an account and can view content on Facebook, he is suspended from posting anything to the platform, including to his personal page or any pages on which he is an administrator.

In a post, Facebook said it banned Mr. Jones and his pages for “accumulating too many strikes.”

The company has refused to say how many strikes is too many, however. It has also not answered questions on how long Mr. Jones will be banned or whether Facebook will be reviewing similar content posted by other right-wing conspiracy theorists.

It’s unclear whether the actions Facebook has taken against Mr. Jones signal a new approach by the company against hate speech or whether they are, once again, responding to an isolated case because of public pressure.

I may be missing something here, but I find the title "Infowars" hilarious. It indicates to me a war about what is and isn't information, as if they're fighting to give their fake information credibility.

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(August 7, 2018 at 2:56 pm)Minimalist Wrote: Infowars "reporter" fucks up.

https://www.rawstory.com/2018/08/infowar...umiliated/

Quote:InfoWars reporter tries to ‘fact check’ claim that Facebook is a private company — and gets utterly humiliated

Quote:InfoWars reporter Millie Weaver on Tuesday publicly humiliated herself by botching the basic terminology of economics journalism to try to claim Facebook is a public utility.
After Facebook axed Jones’ Facebook page this week, Weaver and other InfoWars supporters have tried to claim that this amounts to an unconstitutional violation of the website’s free speech.
The flaw in this argument is that Facebook is a privately run company that can make decisions about whether to give individual media outlets a platform — and the Constitution clearly states only that the government cannot do anything to restrict free speech.

Apparently you have to be an idiot to work at Infowars.

This is also hilarious! I'd just posted on the page before this about people viewing social media sites as a public service.

At least Alex Jones is taking his collapse quite well

These are my thoughts:

1. Alex Jones is a c***!

2. However, now that he is being censured, some people might get the impression - rightly or wrongly - that some of things he has said may have been true.

3. He thrives on attention: so don't give him attention.

4. It sent a dangerous prescient and the establishment could start ti censor anyone they don't like and claim that they are promoting conspiracy theories (even if what is being reported is factually correct).

The official line is that it's to do with hate speech, and not fake news. I don't watch his shit in detail, so I don't know how much hate speech he does. The complaints people have seem to do with the lack of transparency and examples given, although I would guess there's more going on behind the scenes that they don't want to publically air.

If he's inciting hatred and/or violence, then I fully support pulling his channels just based on that.

When you tell the parents of dead children that the whole school shooting was staged by "crisis actors" and their kids are actually alive somewhere, no doubt to help Obama get re-elected, and their own grief is faked as well...

(August 7, 2018 at 11:54 pm)Jörmungandr Wrote: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/07/techn...peech.html

Quote:When asked about Infowars last month, Facebook’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, said he wouldn’t remove pages hosting popular conspiracy theories of the type Mr. Jones is known for sharing. Mr. Zuckerberg then turned the conversation to the subject of the Holocaust, defending Facebook users who deny the Holocaust occurred.

His awkward explanation prompted outrage, and less than a day later, Mr. Zuckerberg offered a public apology.

Now, less than a month later, Facebook has banned Mr. Jones and removed four pages belonging to him — including one with nearly 1.7 million followers — for violating its policies. The ban means that while Mr. Jones still has an account and can view content on Facebook, he is suspended from posting anything to the platform, including to his personal page or any pages on which he is an administrator.

In a post, Facebook said it banned Mr. Jones and his pages for “accumulating too many strikes.”

The company has refused to say how many strikes is too many, however. It has also not answered questions on how long Mr. Jones will be banned or whether Facebook will be reviewing similar content posted by other right-wing conspiracy theorists.

It’s unclear whether the actions Facebook has taken against Mr. Jones signal a new approach by the company against hate speech or whether they are, once again, responding to an isolated case because of public pressure.

If he got banned for breaking the rules, absolutely. That's how rules work.

This is literally several companies deciding that they won't do business with Alex Jones anymore. It's not an establishment conspiracy to silence someone speaking truth to power (the guy still has his own fuckin website, retail store, endorsements, and radio shows, so if it's a conspiracy it's a shitty conspiracy). The guy just had a pattern of acting in a way that those platforms felt brought damage to their image, so they dumped him.

That's it. No nefarious precedent, no great illuminati plan, just people deciding that they don't want to be associated with Alex Jones' particular brand of bullshit.

(August 7, 2018 at 5:19 pm)Neo-Scholastic Wrote: Personally, I don't use Facebook or Twitter. I have flirted with doing so in the past but I really don't see the value of them either as a user or as an advertiser. I'm not boycotting them. They just aren't part of my life. It amazes me that people think they are indispensable. But they aren't. Just ask MySpace or IBM.

They're not indispensable, but Twitter in particular is an easy way to keep up on your preferred news sources.

I don't see how any basic rights were infringed. Free speech doesn't include forcing anyone to provide a platform for it. The provider sets the rules, and presumably anyone who signed up for the service provided agreed to follow the rules.