Right now, my greatest source of Schadenfreude is seeing companies removing their ads from Alex Jones' YouTube channel. Jones is perhaps the worst thing to happen to American discourse- a mendacious grifter who sells hate and paranoia along with the snake-oil. Caught lying about the Parkland, Florida school shooting survivors being 'crisis actors', he's one 'strike' away from being banned from YouTube. More broadly, the platform seems to be cleaning house, suspending the accounts of multiple right-wing provocateurs. It's about damn time, it's a cesspool out there, and irresponsible d-bags are going to get people hurt.
The Schadenfreude is particularly delicious because Yannoflopolous is now hawking snake-oil for Jones, so he will be negatively impacted by sanctions levied against Jones. Now, that's a better two-fer than a Tangy Tangerine sale!
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Alex Jones is yet another black mark on humanity coming from Texas, so I I guess I have to apologize for this one, too.
He seems to be an awful, awful person. When he was forced to talked about the crap he slings under oath in a family law case, he readily admitted (or claimed,anyway) it was all an act. Which means he knows he slinging crap, but his fans are taking it seriously.
On the other hand, moving against people like him makes the followers more fervent. The guns crowd is seeing recent moves by corporaitons like Delta as proof that there's a conspiracy against them, and it's riling them up to MORE activism.
All in all, though, I think it's a plus. This is, after all, a money-making venture for Jones, so if it's less profitable, where's the incentive?
I dunno.
Frankly, it worries me.
People have been publishing hate for centuries, and somehow we were always able to rise above. The John Birch Society was, first and foremost, a publisher, and National Review was unabashedly racist for years.
But here's what worries me. Conservative viewpoints are everywhere, from the NYT to MSNBC and CNN to PBS to Fix and WSJ. Liberal viewpoints are much more scarce, and nobody seems interested in publishing them.
If we accept a standard where certain speech cannot find outlets, the American right-wing - never one to shy away from aggressive tactics - will have that AHA! moment and start agitating for liberal viewpoints to be silenced on YouTube and Twitter and the like.
And if we've learned anything at this point, it's that they'll be successful, because both sides and hey, we're even handed, y'know?
So yeah - go ahead and celebrate your victory over Alex Fucking Jones (I've never watched a single AJ YouTube video, so it never had any impact on me), but it's very much a be careful what you wish for kind of thing, and I think this is something we might very well regret...
Private corporations have no obligation to foster the lies of an Alex Jones. This isn't a free speech issue- it's not like the WSJ runs Noam Chomsky editorials.
Absolutely true.
I'm certainly not making a first amendment argument.
In fact, I'm making the opposite of that.
Just look at the media landscape and tell my which tribe is better at playing the rules to disadvantage the other tribe. You start getting private corporations to silence certain speech, and it won't be long before they're shrieking mobs get all sorts of GOOD speech blocked.
It's better just not to start the fight at all. Nothing good can come of it...
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