Your edit doesn't go far enough. He encouraged hate against the parents of the children killed at the Sandyhook mass shooting. Yes, Jones has a right to be a crackpot, but it ends when it infringes on the rights of the people Jones' audience harassing.
You may be applying an uneven standard by wanting to ban the speech that turns your stomach, but not the speech that turns the Corporate Overlord's stomachs. You could argue that hacking videos encourage computer crime - the counterargument would be that there are plenty of reasons to talk about something other than to actually encourage people to do it. In fact, Alex Jones' defense in one court case he was in was that he was a satirist.
At the very least, these decisions should be made in court, where the judges are elected and the proceedings are public. Of course that can't happen because the courts have already decided in favor of the speech-miscreants. What Alex Jones was doing is absolutely permitted in our society; and I think there's some wisdom in the reasoning behind why that is.
There's nothing less popular than relativism in the midst of a moral outrage, but you have to bear in mind that some of your favorite things were probably at one time (and could easily become again) moral outrages. Alex Jones could just as easily have been caught "encouraging homosexuality in our children," "fomenting hate against church officials," "advocating against job creation," or anything else that the ruling party was against. You'd just have to change the names, places, and times.
He wanted the parents to research it for themselves, which usually means "Google around until you see some more conspiracy websites with the same story thereby becoming even more convinced." It's not entirely clear to me that he advocated for anything bad, although I will admit I don't watch his show. I do know that some of what people are repeating is not exactly true.
The US is one of the few countries that believes in a radical, unlimited right to free speech. Most other countries, it is not tolerated, and this has not lead to a slippery slope.
Claiming that the families of shooting victims are actually "crisis actors" would not be tolerated under British forms of slander/libel law; Nazi apologism/fetishism or rallying is not tolerated under German laws. These societies aren't just fine, they are actually the better for it.
If you feel that Germany or the UK are dystopias where ideological dissent is brutally suppressed, well, that's just your opinion, man.
If there was a horrible fact right under the surface, discussion of which was being successfully suppressed by German/UK speech laws, you would not hear about it.
Yeah, like when that German youtuber called out the total mishandling of several important issues by a major political party, and was slandered by some newspapers and stalked by journalists hanging out on his street. Said video is a fully sourced, well researched thing that calls out the insanity around the environment and other things. For example, the fussing about with coal, to save the measly 20k jobs that are in that sector, while just recently 80k jobs were lost due to cuts for spending on renewables. Or Ramstein airbase being used for US drones, and how that just gets shrugged off. Not even a shred of "tinfoil" (the slur that made blind obedience hip), all just very, very appalling facts.
He also got a lot of support, it's not like all media and all politicians attacked him. But those attacks also happened, including a person who dreamed herself future chancellor (at least as far as young people are concerned, she can completely forget that now) musing about whether it should even be "allowed", to just point out the list of hardcore failings before an election: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wX3Mz8pdFCs
Yes, we are better for Neonazis not being allowed to run around with swastikas, and I agree that many Americans don't quite get that, but there's plenty of dystopian-in-spe bullshit to be found, and that's not even getting started on the UK. At any rate, the laws that forbid displaying swastikas to glorify Nazism etc. weren't just decided nilly-willy, because "obviously" that had to be done. They took that decision seriously and discussed it in-depth, so exactly the opposite for these rationalizations for censorship by self-styled SV shepherds.
I’ve thought seriously about it; the biggest thing holding me back being the lack of a job waiting for me there. Perhaps I could pick my German back up.
Why do you think that’s relevant? In your mind, you can’t comment on something unless you’re personally involved in it? It is plainly evident that Europeans enjoy a high degree of freedom and a broad and open discourse despite the lack of an unlimited freedom of speech - and in fact often a broader discourse than occurs in the US.
Slippery slopes are not in fact an automatic thing, outside external pressure. We can in fact just ban the libel and stop there. Even the US already does that, to some degree. We can just ban Naziism, tolerating it is not a self-evident moral necessity, but rather one that we as a society have decided to value. Other societies do not.
To be just as crass and dismissive as you were to me - your unlimited right to say anything you want has already been breached even in the US. I assume you are moving to Somalia to pursue your maximal freedom in a Libertarian paradise?
> In your mind, you can’t comment on something unless you’re personally involved in it?
Well, as a German, it's just another instance of Americans who don't know 5% of what is going on here, using simplifications so gross they might as well be completely fabricated memes, to sidestep actually making a solid argument. I'm fine with it, I'm not going to fight that particular windmill. But it's really astonishing how a few scraps here and there tend to make Americans experts on Germany in their mind, as a general observation. It's flattering, like being pestered by someone you aren't interested in is still flattering.
> one that we as a society have decided to value
Individuals decide things, "we as a society" is BS, it doesn't exist, though it rings familiar. Nazis "as a society" decided Jews and others don't "have value". You need to be more precise than that.
> Well, as a German, it's just another instance of Americans who don't know 5% of what is going on here
Go on then, what exactly "is happening in Germany"?
I suppose this is where you reference the "immigrant hordes" and so on, and the need to "keep Germany for Germans"?
I am broadly familiar with German domestic politics. After all, they are EU politics, which are world politics. Germany is easily within the top 10 most influential countries on the world stage.
> Individuals decide things, "we as a society" is BS, it doesn't exist, though it rings familiar. Nazis "as a society" decided Jews and others don't "have value". You need to be more precise than that.
Oh, "we as individuals need to decide" on whether or not libel or aggression "have value" as constitutionally protected speech? Based on your argument upthread, I suppose you think it should be put up to a vote then?
Again: we can constitutionally decide that people shouldn't vote on whether "jews have value" but also constitutionally decide that Naziism has no value. Even America has decided, in principle, that certain kinds of speech are not protected.
You present a false dilemma here. Why do you think that is not a consistent argument?
> Germany is easily within the top 10 most influential countries on the world stage.
But that doesn't mean, say, banning swastikas was a decision that came easy or without deep deliberation and discussion. It also doesn't mean we're not riddled with people seeking to control language in all sorts of ways, or that just censoring stuff we "don't consider valuable" is automatically a good idea.
> Oh, "we as individuals need to decide" on whether or not libel or aggression "have value" as constitutionally protected speech?
No, I simply said the way you phrased it, it's an euphemism at best. Individuals make decisions. If you want to be able to say "we as a society" as a shorthand, meaning the people you agree with, minus the people you think you can simply declare unpersons, then you need to be actually able to point to a process where said society had that serious discussion.
> Based on your argument upthread, I suppose you think it should be put up to a vote then?
Why are you shifting the burden to me? You talk about "we as society", so what do you think how would that go? Just doing it? I mentioned it wasn't done nilly-willy in Germany for the swastika etc., you could look into that for a start.
> Even America has decided, in principle, that certain kinds of speech are not protected.
You initially said this:
> The US is one of the few countries that believes in a radical, unlimited right to free speech. Most other countries, it is not tolerated, and this has not lead to a slippery slope.
How you just shift from Alex Jones to Nazis is also noted, but not accepted. To just say "certain kinds of speech" is not good enough, and if you start like that, you can just expand nilly willy. I even already said Germany is better for having banned Nazis -- but the way it's going in America, where people who act like Nazis, want to see people lose their jobs at a drop of a hat for example, I wouldn't buy "let's ban certain kinds of speech" combined with the double think of "oh, it's just a private platform, we're not banning anything". If you want to talk Nazis and don't even see how that shit has red flags plastered all over it, I just don't know how to help sorry.
If you want to make something illegal, lobby to make it illegal. It's not as if in Germany you can do the things you cited in real life, just not on the internet. That's the elephant on the couch in all this. It's just technocrats using somewhat agreeable examples to get their foot in the door to circumvent all that pesky supreme court stuff, and that's closer to the Nazis than Alex Jones will ever be, as foul as he is.
So what do you want? Do you want video hosting to be open to all, regardless of how distasteful, or do you want someone else deciding which videos are acceptable and which are not?
He didn't say: Mr and Mrs So and So need to be attacked.
But he repeatedly painted a picture of a staged event where the participants were doing it to in order to take away your fundamental rights! They are lying to you! They want to take your freedom! I'm not willing to let that happen! People, America as we know it is about to die, and we can't let that happen! (weeps crocodile tears)
Then when it became known that many of the parents were being followed and harassed, Jones tacitly approved it by not telling the harassers to stop.
He was accusing the parents of aiding a conspiracy to stage a fake shooting. I can imagine being a parent who has just lost a child, only to be told that I was lying, and that my child either never existed or was still alive. It's a real ideological litmus test - exactly how turned can your stomach get before you call for an exception to free speech?
So he wasn't directing anybody to commit a crime? It's a deplorable scenario, but free exchange of ideas and beliefs still requires protection. The consequences of losing it are in the long-term far greater than personal grief.
He flat out lied about the Sandy Hook massacre and slandered victims of murder. He absolutely encouraged people to "take action on their own by looking into it". You can't claim satire on flat out repeated lies. Lies are not protected speech. This wasn't about the free exchange of ideas, this isn't a disagreement on policy, it was about propogating lies to people in order to make money.
Lets be clear with terms here; I wouldn't call for an exception to "free speech" even for Alex Jones. He has every right to say whatever he wants short of outright threats, etc.
But I certainly don't think anyone should be forced or required to give him a platform for which to broadcast his speech.
> But I certainly don't think anyone should be forced or required to give him a platform
This is where I think most people on both sides of the debate miss the point. Section 203 of the communications decency act provides protection from liability for platforms that host content provided by others. This is a very important law that I think most people see the value in. However it has a Good Samaritan clause which allows them to arbitrarily moderate content without losing that protection. Should these large platforms be able to exert absolute editorial control over the content they host? I think yes, they most certainly should be allowed to. But they should not be entitled to the liability protections afforded to common carriers if they choose to do so.
So basically you're suggesting that a forum about knitting couldn't restrict their content to just knitting topics without losing their copyright infringement protection?
I see the point you're trying to make but it's completely wrong. Platform like this one would be impossible without Section 203; I don't see why it's necessary to tie that together with other requirements. It's certainly not a logical follow on.
> I see the point you're trying to make but it's completely wrong.
If it is, then it’s not for the reason you provided. If I made Knitter News, and somebody posted a thread about gardening, then nobody would comment on it or up vote it. If I went into a knitting thread, and started posted gardening comments, then they would be downvoted.
It’s also not just copyright infringement protection, it protects against a broad range of liability.
The reason common carrier protections exist, is because the service providers do not control the content they disseminate, or the goods they transport, etc... Providing common carrier protections to platforms that exert editorial control over the content they publish is granting common carrier protections to service providers that are not common carriers.
Logically, this is precisely equivalent to providing common carrier protections to an ISP, but completely removing all regulations that mandate any form of net neutrality.
The law was specifically created to protect free expression online, and in the mid 90s, that’s exactly what it did. However since then, most online expression as become concentrated into a small handful of platforms, who all leverage their position (often in concert) to restrict expression to only that which they deem acceptable.
Regardless of what you think about their judgements of what is acceptable, the law is not consistent with other common carrier regulations, and it is absolutely not doing what it was originally designed to do.
> If I made Knitter News, and somebody posted a thread about gardening, then nobody would comment on it or up vote it.
What if you posted about gardening every 5 minutes, every day, from morning till night and every thread about knitting is drowned out completely. I've run a forum, this happens all the time.
> If I went into a knitting thread, and started posted gardening comments, then they would be downvoted.
OH! So now it's not enough to provide a forum, it also needs to have upvoting and downvoting?! How much other software must I develop? And censorship is ok as long as democratic? How much effort must I put into the software to ensure this?
> Providing common carrier protections to platforms that exert editorial control over the content they publish is granting common carrier protections to service providers that are not common carriers.
That's exactly the point. If they were common carriers, they wouldn't need that protection under the DMCA. I don't see how having moderation control means that they should be liable for content of their users. They are not editing the content, they are just allowing or disallowing. If you run a platform, you should under the same concepts of free speech be able to control that platform. In fact, that's really what a platform is -- it's not just a blob of disk space somewhere. Youtube is fundamentally different from Pornhub. How is that distinction possible in your mind?
> The law was specifically created to protect free expression online, and in the mid 90s, that’s exactly what it did.
Free expression online in any form would be impossible without it, even now.
> However since then, most online expression as become concentrated into a small handful of platforms, who all leverage their position (often in concert) to restrict expression to only that which they deem acceptable.
And yet there is literally nothing stopping you from posting a video to your own website that you pay for and distributing it to as many people as you want.
To say that the moment I put a blog online with comments that suddenly I have to host, with my own money, any comment that gets posted there is ludicrous. On the face it's completely illogical and completely against the very idea of free expression.
The most interesting thing here is really that there is no commercial transaction going on here. Common carriers charge for their services. YouTube doesn't charge you to host your video under the condition that they can remove anything they want. That's the terms. So now you're suggesting that they have to host everything for free? What if that isn't even economically possible?
According to your analogy, YouTube is no different from a news paper. All they do is collect content and publish it. The content can be user generated, it can written by people who don’t work for the news paper, it can be written by journalists from other papers. All they’re doing is decided what is and is not published, right? When I read it for free on their website, there is also no transaction taking place.
So if I start a news paper, and begin to publish completely false and libellous information about people, I should be entitled to a common carrier immunity? All I did was decide what was published.
> Free expression online in any form would be impossible without it, even now.
Free expression would be protected by removing the Good Samaritan clause, it’s not a necessary element of the law.
> To say that the moment I put a blog online with comments that suddenly I have to host, with my own money, any comment that gets posted there is ludicrous.
That’s not what I’m saying at all. If you wanted to moderate them you could create a moderation queue. But otherwise what you are trying to do is act as a publisher, but you simply don’t want the liability associated with it.
> And yet there is literally nothing stopping you from posting a video to your own website
There’s nothing stopping me from making my own ISP and running it however I like. Yet we still cherish regulated net neutrality principles as being an essential element of a free internet.
You haven’t really made an effort to refute my underlying claims here, which are:
Section 203 protections are not consistent with any other form of common carrier protections.
The law is currently having the opposite of its intended effect at the time of legislation. It has simply allowed a very small number of companies to exert editorial control over most of the worlds internet traffic, without having to accept any of the liability that should have come attached to that.
> According to your analogy, YouTube is no different from a news paper. All they do is collect content and publish it.
The alternative is that all websites do, in fact, become exactly like newspapers. Every bit of content would have to be submitted behind the scenes to editors who, in turn, would decide exactly what to publish, ensure nothing is libelous or copyrighted elsewhere, and edit the content appropriately.
Obviously, the Internet already existed as a place where content was posted immediately, openly, and moderated. So in order to continue to enjoy doing exactly what we were already doing here, then such an exception has to be made. That's it. It's not rocket science. It's not about free speech or freedom of expression. It's just about making the Internet possible.
> The law is currently having the opposite of its intended effect at the time of legislation. It has simply allowed a very small number of companies to exert editorial control over most of the worlds internet traffic, without having to accept any of the liability that should have come attached to that.
The point of the law is to not require editorial control. Some editorial control is always necessary. It would be impossible to run any website on the Internet without some editorial control just as it would be almost as impossible to run anything other than a newspaper on the Internet if editorial control was mandatory.
The fact that we are here having this conversion is proof that the law is having the exact intended effect it was supposed to have. You are the one trying to give it far more meaning and scope. And the more you expand the scope the more it goes into ridiculous territory that you have no good answer for.
You’re still just describing the status quo, without acknowledging any of the issues I’ve articulated.
This whole argument seems to run up against some of the values that HN would appear to hold most dearly.
HN discussions around net neutrality would suggest that this community thinks it’s one of the most important tools for protecting a free internet. However this argument is arbitrarily applied only to specific companies. I could go and create my own website, with my own ad network, and have my own YouTube. I could also go and create my own ISP that discriminates against content in a way that satisfies me. This argument is somehow absurd when it comes to packets, but completely rock solid when it comes to the content they transmit?
This community also derides walled gardens when it comes to publishing software, but walled gardens are somehow perfectly acceptable when it comes to speech?
It seems indisputable to me that section 203 grants common carrier protections to organisations that are not common carriers. The outcome is that freedom of expression is restricted. This should be seen as a problem, regardless of whether you personally agree with how those restrictions are applied.
The problem I have with your argument is that your proposed solution is worse. And just because one holds a value most dearly doesn't mean that I'm willing to trample on the freedom of others to get it.
Take your example: the community derides walled gardens. I personally dislike walled gardens and I move away from iPhones mainly because of that. There are plenty of ways that I feel that they're bad. But at the very same time, I believe that Apple is entirely within their rights to have a walled garden. The freedom to create software you want to create should be held dear by anyone on HN. Why should that be different for Apple.
I support the right of free expression; that government cannot restrict free expression and you can't be imprisoned or harassed for your speech. But at the same time I support freedom from speech as well. Just because you have freedom of speech does mean that I'm required to hear it. My freedom of expression also means I don't have support your expression. That's my right.
I also support net neutrality and common carrier requirements for phone companies and monopoly shipping companies, etc. But I also acknowledge that there is difference between being a communications carrier and a publisher. In fact, to be a publisher you need to have a carrier so they're already not the same thing.
Requiring publishers to maintain the speech of others without restriction is an impossibility. Is YouTube really going to be required to host every piece of video published to it forever? Is Hacker News? How would any of this work. They are fundamentally different and what you are proposing just doesn't work. But even more so, if I'm the owner of the website you'd be restricting my right to free expression with this scheme. I think that is equally as important.
Is there really a problem here? Maybe. Is forcing everyone to host everything the solution? God no. As long as we are free to choose what services we can connect to then we have the freedom to choose something other than buying an iPhone, going on Facebook, using YouTube, turning on Fox News, or reading the New York Times. We don't have to host our content, for free, on YouTube so they can monetize it. Having our freedom and eating our free cake too isn't going to work.
Except this isn’t an accurate representation of what the alternative actually is, and it avoids acknowledging what the problems actually are.
> Is YouTube really going to be required to host every piece of video published to it forever?
This is a pretty blatant reductio ad absurdum. If YouTube want to clear out some of their content, they don’t have to exert editorial control to do so. Deleting every video that is more than 5 years old isn’t exerting editorial control. Deleting every video that isn’t earning $x/month arguably isn’t either. Deleting videos based on their content is.
If they decide what videos they want to host based on their content, they’re not a common carrier. They’re a publisher that is deciding what content they want to publish. Expecting them to take responsibility for that isn’t trampling their freedom.
The problem is that this situation has allowed a very small group to control most of the speech that takes place on the internet. They decide what content is published, and what content is not, and section 203 allows them to avoid all responsibility for publishing that content.
The Good Samaritan clause grants them with absolute editorial control over the content they host, and the rest of 203 ensures they don’t have to accept any responsibility for their editorial decisions. It is having your cake and eating it too, and the problems it creates are clear as day.
What about spam? What about nudity? What about content designed to be denial of service? What about content that just isn't related to the purpose of the site?
> They’re a publisher that is deciding what content they want to publish. Expecting them to take responsibility for that isn’t trampling their freedom.
I think I've already clearly expressed why this isn't viable.
> The problem is that this situation has allowed a very small group to control most of the speech that takes place on the internet.
Your logic is that this exception has allowed for this but there is no logical connection here. If all publishers need to vet all user submitted content that doesn't preclude the possibility of there becoming a single large video site or large content site. What it does do is make small sites, like Hacker News, practically impossible.
I'm glad you brought up the platform distinction because I've also been thinking about that one.
I could deny Alex Jones a soapbox in my yard, because it has little value and there are plenty of others. If there are only two soap boxes in the world and I coordinate with the owner of the other box to silence somebody, then I have become functionally indistinguishable from the government for the purpose of free speech, thereby taking on the same duty they have to not shut it down.
Not even the government has to provide you with a soap box -- so being functionally indistinguishable from the government makes no difference.
If you cannot find a platform, can't buy one, can't build one because nobody will work with you then tough shit.
We talk about how developers shouldn't work on projects that are morally questionable but here you are suggesting that they must because a platform must be provided. That sounds so much worse to me. How would that even work?
Well, the Soviet Constitution promised every comrade a printing press...
To speak to your market freedom point, imagine a community of racist business owners who all refused to sell to an outsider. If every business owner was equally racist, the outsider would be forced to leave, even if there was no law stating that they couldn't live in the neighborhood. Markets have an answer to this - any defector will make more money. However sometimes everybody stays racist and no defector emerges. The community is acting like a de-facto evil government even though there is no legal system supporting it nor any democracy legitimizing it.
I'm really not sure what to do when that happens. I'm as against forcing business to do business as you are.
As a society , we deem specific groups as protected classes and I don't think it's good to mix concepts about protected classes with just being an asshole.
We make specific laws to protect people from racial or religious discrimination. We don't, however, make the same considerations if you're just an asshole.
Would your argument have the same effect if there was a community of fed up business owners who all refused to sell to a big jerk?
There is an ongoing lawsuit against Jones. The lawsuits contain unproven claims of harassment.
There is no direct inciting, and the indirect inciting claims are half-baked. There is a class action lawsuit office looking for a pay day, so they benefit by keeping Jones in the news.
All people factually saying that Alex Jones incited harassment against the parents, are parroting a non-concluded court case PR campaign ("OJ did it!"), and much like these behemoth companies, are playing judge, jury, and executioner. They most likely haven't seen a clip of Alex Jones inciting, or when they have, it is taken grossly out of context.
Remember, when CNN was targeting Jones for weeks, going through his hours of video, and noting anything they found controversial. "Alex Jones is transphobic, which is against Youtube TOS, but Youtube does nothing". Alex Jones was talking about "public library drag queen reading hour". He said these drag queens looked demonic and that it is not normal to normalize this for little kids. Now, just recently, someone ("a Trump supporter") showed up with a gun to these reading hours. Two possible conclusions: "Alex Jones is a transphobe and incited his followers to violently get rid of them". "Alex Jones practices unpopular, but legal, free speech, and they try to punish him for what any of his million followers might do that is against the law". I am leaning heavily towards the latter and it is a downright shame that the first conclusion is drawn by many, without doing any deeper research.
Imagine what you could do if you knew that many people would go for the first conclusion, regardless of the facts?
Dang, wasn't aware - that's discouraging. However I was not suggesting Vimeo is 'clean' - don't know enough about the ethics/track record of any of those services enough to imply that Vimeo is anything except another option for hosting videos.
>And there is no "who draws the line‽" argument here
That's exactly the argument, not everybody thinks Alex Jones went too far. In fact, I bet a lot of people who listen to Alex Jones would find something you supported to be miles beyond what is ever OK. That's part and parcel of living in a diverse, cosmopolitan society. Sometimes, other people's opinions are miles beyond OK, but that's still okay. ;)
You seem to be willfully ignoring the demonstrable harm he causes. You're promoting a false balance. You're saying "Alex Jones robbed a bank, other people eat their coworkers' lunch, so who are we to judge?"
If demonstrable harm is your standard, please just announce you don't believe in free speech and move along. Everybody advocating for the wrong stance on politics creates demonstrable harm.
Free speech means he can say (edit) legally protegted speech* on his own platform.
No company is obligated to provide that platform for him. When judging a company for what content they decide they don't want to host, spinning "vimeo banned Alex Jones" as negative is ridiculous.
Edited: he can't actually say whatever he wants even on his own platform. There's actually a lawsuit against him right now. Too many internet folk don't actually know what "free speech" means and I should not validate such ignorance.
Actually, free speech is an ethical concept, not a legal concept. The first amendment is a legal concept. Free speech means means enabling the free exchange of ideas. Free speeches as a concept applies to private platforms and organizations too, it just isn't mandated by law.
The courts can draw this line & determine these distinctions, and they are doing just this right now. Jones is currently being sued by some Sandy Hook parents. It turns out we don't need to rely on Youtube of Vimeo to be the ultimate arbiters of this issue, and the system may just be working in this case.
