[The New Yorker] Alex Jones, the First Amendment, and the Digital Public Square

I agree with you almost 100%. Other than calling Crowder a "goober", you are spot on.

 

This is a good post. I do think that users who have large fan bases that are easily riled up by what they say have a greater responsibility to be careful in how they attack other people with their video content. Maybe once a person starts making X amount of dollars on their platform, stricter policies should be in place for speech that can incite hatred/harassment.

 

What do you think if a corporation making massive amount of dollars, such as CNN, FoxNews, or MSNBC broadcasts speech that can incite hatred/harassment?

What if YouTube itself makes more than any "creator" on YT and YouTube propagates much hateful content? Should YT demonetize itself?

(You understand that YT itself propagated Alex Jones and the many examples of "niglets," "wetbacks" etc that I listed previously. And YT makes money being the medium of all these hateful "creators.")

 

I was listening to the Rogan and Pakman podcast and they talked a bit about this.

Especially the bit I mentioned yesterday...sometimes the 'ideas' are so extreme...how do you expect people to react?

If someone on the left goes "I just think we should ban religion, all religion. What? Let's have a discussion about this." How do you expect people to react to that? The left isn't trying to silence talking about taxes or the green new deal. It has always been about rights where it feels like the right wing is becoming a lot more open to the idea of taking away the rights of people and that this should just be a debate and an open discussion

I also look at it like this, should this rule be applied to all of the internet or just youtube and the other big companies? Is that fair to the big companies that they lose control over how to run their business?

What if Clutch couldn't moderate his forums? What if you had a group of people invading the game thread calling players racial slurs and insulting others? How long do you think this site will be successful? Look at the recent drama that happened around here and I won't mention it specifically but is that a free speech issue too? It has certainly pushed some posters away from this website.

It's like @fchowd0311 said earlier. Right wing edgelords aren't good for business and if you let them bully every LGBT person off the platform that's lost business. Those people will just go to a safer place where they don't have to see any of that. They could block/mute/ignore but after a while, you get tired of doing that and you associate the whole place with that toxicity. Would you post on Spurstalk if you were a Spurs fan? Many don't because the place is toxic AF and that's the environment that lax moderation created for that place.

The way the internet works now is that these people have their dark corner of the internet but aren't able to profit off of it. They aren't being banished from the internet entirely, just banished from the mainstream internet. The more I think about it, the more I'm completely fine with it. Youtube and its advertisers are paying a guy like Crowder and he upset his advertisers and so they pulled the plug on him. This is how it works in television so this is how it works on youtube as well.

Gab was supposed to be the 'Freespeech' twitter, no banning, no moderation, etc etc. Who posts there?

 

WOW! No stereotypes there. . . .

1. How do you know they are docile? Many of them are rich and even spoiled. I know them personally, and I do not find them docile. Why do you say they are?
2. How do you know they don't question me? You don't think foreign students have questions, huh? They might even have more questions! Weird thought. . . .
3. Since you obviously have not lived abroad for a significant amount of time, I can tell you that foreigners are generally liberal, because they know there are different ways of doing things in this world, and their way happens to be in the minority when they are abroad!

Where did your "enemy" idea come from? That's all you.

No: read again.I said they are "liberal," not liberal. That's what you mean, right? I don't need the media to know what the dictionary definition of "liberal" is, but I do need the media to tell me what a "liberal" American believes, that a male can actually be a female or whatever. The media tells us what the blue teams and red teams are supposed to believe. That doesn't come out of my head.

"A person can just say anything they want and everybody needs to accept it?" hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha Alex Jones anyone?

I am very offended--nay microtraumatized--that you question my gender identity. Are you trying to shame me about my gender beliefs? As a former "liberal," I have half a mind to get you banned from CF.

After my edifying discussion with students on the trans issue, I discovered that I am neither male nor female. I discovered my own true gender. My gender was: Genderfree.

Later I discovered that other people were already Genderfree gender. So, I discovered that I actually have a unique individual gender called Thebest. Now, don't try to shame me one more time for being Thebest, or ur gone from CF.

 

Are you an English teacher or a psychologist?

I also had gen ed English composition teachers who thought they were subject matter expert in all the subjects we had to write about.

 

Which thing did I claim to be an expert on?

Look at you! If I express an opposing opinion--to a student who is supposed to construct a winning argument in an essay--you think somehow I'm doing a wrong thing. I must agree with all my students? Or at least never oppose them? In an argumentation class. Are you the "liberal" no-talking-allowed type?

"You expressed a different opinion? OMG are you a psychologist?"

Opposing viewpoints freak you out. Even in a course which REQUIRES opposing viewpoints.

 

You seemed freaked out about the opposing view point of your student. Self-awareness much?

I don't understand the exercise here. Did the student request for disciplinary action towards you? Is that why you are upset?

 

I'm not upset.
Someone asked me about "offhand comments." Actually they weren't offhand.

Seems I need to connect the dots a little bit more for you:

Well there are just two dots.

Now, my question to you was serious: you are a "liberal," aren't you? You question my right to speak freely.

 

Kyle Kulinski dove into this a bit too. I recommend watching. His basic thesis is that whatever roundabout logic is used to silence conservatives will ultimately be used with greater emphasis to deplatform the left. I did not agree with Pakman's take, but I respect it, however his channel published a video on it today that is quite bad (he seems to have farmed that topic out to one of his cohorts who basically butchered it).

That's a huge part of the issue. We're in uncharted waters here with technology and culture colliding. The biggest social media players are approaching quasi-public utility status. Their communication platforms are so ubiquitous and popular that being denied access to them is almost like being booted from the public sphere altogether. YouTube in particular has a problem wherein the creators that built the platform are now being tossed aside. That's fine and dandy from a free market point of view, but there's one problem... what's the alternative to YouTube?

That's a gross misrepresentation of what is going on here. FYI, the edgelords get crap thrown at them just as badly, if not worse, than the people they criticize. Guys like Crowder and Shapiro have very high profiles and are virtual punching bags for the left. That's life in the public square and particularly life in the political arena. For some reason one group aims to silence their opposition and the other does not.

That's fine if you want YouTube to be as crappy as television. I do not. And I wish that people like Maza, instead of throwing temper tantrums, would offer refutations and arguments instead of seeking to ruin the platform with their morality policing. I think Crowder sucks massive butt, but I know for sure that the effects of Maza's meltdown and what YouTube is doing to appease the whiners will torpedo what I like about YouTube and ultimately serve to silence voices I agree with and want to be heard.

 

I've noticed a common thread with modern interest debates where people percieve having there freedom of speech being violated because someone expressed disagreement.

So, I would like you to point where I am trying to limit your free speech?

 

I'm going to teach you about you now.

A. You project falsehoods onto others.
1. I never said you're trying to limit my speech.
2. I never said I was an expert.

B. You avoid answering questions directed to yourself.

C. You question others' legitimacy as speakers. These are ad hominem attacks. You ignore the argument and attack the man.
1. "Yeah I knew a guy who thought he was an expert too."
2. "Oh ur a psychologist too?"

All three of these qualities in you prevent real discussion.

Your emotions are interfering with your rationality. It's because the trans subject is sensitive to you that you are exhibiting these counterproductive qualities as an arguer.

 

Triumph of the Will is one of the greatest films ever made, it is an excellent example of subtle propaganda and imagery. There is no way to completely understand what Germany was like between 1920-1940 without either having lived there at that time or to see Triumph of the Will.

 

I think that's fine, it's Youtube's business either way and I think you really open up a bigger pandora's box when you get into government regulating how internet companies run their websites. I think that's just as much a slippery slope.

There's b****ute and plenty of other video sharing websites. They aren't as popular but they do certainly exist. Nothing is stopping Crowder for example at making an intro to every video he puts on youtube to go watch him on b****ute. Nothing at all.

I don't think it is silence though, these people are still allowed to speak, just not on those platforms. I bring up the clutchfans example again. What if you had people invading the gamethread calling players n-words? You think people would put up with that? They would get banned. Is that a violation of free speech? We had this incident here where a poster insulted another poster's child and people were not happy that this poster was allowed to continue posting. Was that also a free speech violation? I think websites should be able to run their websites as they see fit.

Maza was doxxed and harassed, that can't be accepted. Whether Crowder is to blame for that or not is another discussion but when people get doxxed it crosses over into life-threatening territory and something has to be done about that.

And yes, a lot of those that were banned were edgelords. Ignore Crowder but there were plenty of edgelords like Jesse Lee Peterson, Red Ice TV, these people that exist to be controversial and push hate, that were demonetized.

I don't think it is about youtube being as watered down as television just that this is what advertisers demand. They don't want to look like they are supporting homophobia and so will threaten to pull their ads if youtube doesn't fix the issue. Even if you make another platform, advertisers will still not give money to these creators. No matter what you do or how much free speech you allow, you can't force companies to give money to people they don't want to give money to.

I don't think the issue is about free speech really. People go on and on about this being a free speech issue but these people are all allowed to continue speaking. It's on these people to advertise new platforms and support new platforms. It is also just an issue with youtube's algorithm.

Youtube could have its cake and eat it too but because they heavily rely on bots and waffle on their stances it makes everyone angry.

 

I will also add, we are going to be entering an odd...a very odd place where people can fake videos completely. (Think, fake a politician saying something s/he did not.)

Should youtube allow that?

My opinion is that no, it shouldn't, it should delete these videos entirely if the purpose of these videos is to create propaganda...but is that also free speech that should be protected?

 

Attention everyone: you think "fake video" is really new technology?

Seriously? Like, cutting edge tech hits the public right away? The FBI and CIA don't have any tech that's not in public yet?

How long ago do you think the CIA had fake video tech? One year ago? Twenty years?

 

The concern that any censorship on Youtube can bite ourselves in the butt by eventually having content we enjoy being censored is a very valid concern. Who is the arbiter of what is considered ban worthy in such a mega platform is an important debate and I agree that these are very valid concerns.

I don't want to assume what your background is, however, I believe your perspective might change just a little if your personal life might have been negatively effected in a tangible way because of rhetoric from Crowder, Shaprio and others like Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux. Their rhetoric has fueled the fire amongst many to be more expressive in their hate for Muslims, black people, homosexuals etc. My mother has experienced verbal harassment by random individuals because of her Muslim attire. When you know it only takes one crazy nutjob who is a fan of all these people to go to a mosque when my mother is attending and shoot up the place, I can understand the sympathy for wanting these type of people deplatformed. I;m sure that these right wing Youtubers have caused many individual incidents of harassment towards gays and other minorities. Maza also has experienced this. Maybe he's coming from a perspective where he understands the history of violent harassment towards the LGBTQ community and believes that these people only add fuel to the violence? When their rhetoric can personally effect your life, it becomes a rational desire to want them silenced or at the very least desire a private company to not megaphone their rhetoric.

The rhetoric by people who are overly vitriolic towards the likes of Shapiro and Crowder as you have mentioned have effected far less personal lives than the rhetoric that Shapiro and Crowder have expressed.

It's a very difficult conundrum. I understand that both arguments for and against deplatforming these individuals have strong merits.

 

Yes, deepfakes are a relatively new technology, it's not a CIA developed technology and now, this is something anyone in the world can use.

If you believe the CIA has had it all this time you are going to go down a conspiratorial rabbit hole that I'm not prepared to go down without evidence. Otherwise, why believe anything you've seen the past 10 years on TV? Maybe the last Trump interview was a deepfake...