Free Speech is a Human Right: Both the Left and the Right Agree and Denounce the Digital Purge Taking Place!

[genuinlysensitive]

Recently a man named Alex Jones was deplatformed from iTunes, Youtube, Facebook, Spotify, whithin 12 hours! LinkedIn, MailChimp (e-mail service), Disqus, Twitter and several others followed suit. When I say deplatformed, I don't just mean banned from now on. ALL CONTENT HAS BEEN ERASED! This is the digital equivalent of book burning! Just FYI LinkedIn doesn't allow content uploads, so how he can be banned for "hatespeech"?

The reason this is so important is because Alex Jones is a test case. It's not about whether you support what he says, what Trump says, what conservatives say, its about weather or not Free Speech, a human right, can be taken away. After they ban Alex Jones, they will come for others, until they come for you. If Liberals thought they were safe, they are wrong, even Liberal pages are being banned:

Facebook has just deleted the page of @telesurenglish. A network source tells me FB justified eliminating the page on the vague basis of "violation of terms." The NATO-backed @DFRLab is currently assisting FB's purge. This is deeply disturbing. pic.twitter.com/MQe3Brdn15

— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) August 13, 2018

I know, I know all the Censorship Proponents are going to say this, I can hear you through the screen:

Buh-buh-buh-buht Facebook, Apple, Google, Twitter, et al, are Private companies! They are above the law and can do whatever they want!

Google, Facebook, Apple, Twitter, henceforth referred to as big tech, are not only anti-competitive monopolies/oligopolies, they are State actors, which means that through direct and indirect relationships with the government they are required by law to enforce the constitution, especially THE FIRST AMENDMENT, you know free speech:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_actor

Google was founded with a partnership of the government:

http://www.crypto-radar.com/googles-true-origin-partly-lies-in-cia-and-nsa-research-grants-for-mass-surveillance/

And partnered with the NSA:

https://www.salon.com/2014/11/16/googles_secret_nsa_alliance_the_terrifying_deals_between_silicon_valley_and_the_security_state/

Facebook is deeply in bed with them:

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/10/facebook-personal-data-online-privacy-social-norm/

Not to mention you have Sitting US Congressmen and Senators, ordering or lobbying for big tech to censor their political rivals take Congressman Quigley:

The article in question is this, the title is a quote from Imam Tawhidi interviewed by the journalist, he provides tweets from Imam Tawhidi, nothing about it is fake news, yet the congressman still insists on outsourcing censorship to Twitter Google and Facebook, all present at this hearing:

https://www.infowars.com/imam-i-warned-de-blasio-about-nyc-terror-he-was-too-busy-bashing-trump/

Senator Chris Murphy (CT) also publically called for big tech to not only ban Alex Jones, but go further and ban others, as he thinks Alex Jones is "the tip of a giant iceberg..." that must all be taken down for "the survival of our democracy"

Infowars is the tip of a giant iceberg of hate and lies that uses sites like Facebook and YouTube to tear our nation apart. These companies must do more than take down one website. The survival of our democracy depends on it.

— Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) August 6, 2018

Notice how I actually provide a link to what he said instead of removing all his content and claiming he was "hateful"?

Senate Democrats, led by Mark Warner are openly circulating plans to take over and DIRECTLY censor the internet:

https://reason.com/blog/2018/07/31/democrats-tech-policy-plans-leaked

Outsourcing censorship is also highly illegal for all parties involved.

People are finally waking up to big tech, censorship, and their likely crimes.

https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/08/07/zero-transparency-6-questions-that-tech-giants-refuse-to-answer-about-the-infowars-ban/

Matt Taibbi, a Liberal who has nothing good to say about Alex Jones, President Trump, or most conservatives in general has pointed out how dangerous this is:

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/facebook-censor-alex-jones-705766/

"But this week’s revelation is worse. When Facebook works with the government and wannabe star-chamber organizations like the Atlantic Council to delete sites on national security grounds, using secret methodology, it opens the door to nightmare possibilities that you’d find in dystopian novels.

The sheer market power of these companies over information flow has always been the real threat. This is why breaking them up should have long ago become an urgent national priority."

Noam Chomsky another Liberal:

https://www.infowars.com/free-speech-icon-noam-chomsky-says-big-tech-was-wrong-to-ban-infowars/

Politico also pointed out that big tech has become an outsource for censorship, not just here in the US but in the EU as well:

https://www.politico.eu/article/google-facebook-twitter-censorship-europe-commission-hate-speech-propaganda-terrorist/

"In outsourcing the monitoring of speech to tech companies, politicians are doing both Big Tech and their citizens a disservice."

Also what Pewdiepie had to say was interesting:

Finally a list of alleged crimes of big tech:

1. As state actors they are violating THE FIRST AMENDMENT, not just free speech, but by shutting down news organizations, deleting articles and videos freedom of the press.

2. False advertising: they have frequently advertised as utilities and "public forums" where free speech is protected. Now they are banning and shadow banning (not allowing content to reach users).

3. Fraud: Deceptive practices to deny people the right to speak, advertise, participate in the marketplace of ideas, as well goods and services.

4. Racketeering: Big Tech is SO BIG they can through collusion and fear force other companies to do their bidding, in fact Facebook just comes out and says if you don't play ball "I’ll be holding your hands with your dying ­business like in a hospice."

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/aug/13/facebook-news-media-campbell-brown-hospice

5. Election Interference: Big tech has banned or shadowbanned exclusively Republicans, in some cases even their campaign ads:

https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/43paqq/twitter-is-shadow-banning-prominent-republicans-like-the-rnc-chair-and-trump-jrs-spokesman?utm_campaign=sharebutton

https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/08/17/elizabeth-heng-big-tech-can-swing-elections-as-they-censor-conservative-voices/

https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/08/16/midterm-meddling-twitter-follows-facebook-blacklists-gop-candidates-family-story/

An official FEC complaint has already been filed:

https://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/07/27/matt-gaetz-files-fec-complaint-against-twitter-over-shadowban/

6. Breach of Contract

7. Anti-competitive Anti-Trust Statutes:

Google controls 93% of all search results:

Google and Facebook have a huge duopoly on online advertising accounting for over 90%

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/12/technology/google-facebook-dominance-hurts-ad-tech-firms-speeding-consolidation.html

Google and Apple have also been known to kick out apps who aren't in the big tech club:

https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/17/alt-social-network-gab-booted-from-google-play-store-for-hate-speech/

Final thought, In the Purge video Paul Joseph Watson points out that if you support this naked censorship you are not a Liberal you are an Authoritarian. As a registered Democrat and Liberal you know what? He's 100% right!

[Phoenix98]

Your a tad late on that I've known about it for a while as I was a subscriber of his before he got taken down.

One thing to mention though is that youtube and facebook actually violated their own terms of service by taking down alex jones without any proof of hate speech and no legitimate hate speech was ever actually stated by alex or anyone on infowars.

[Jonny317]

You can hear hate speech on any of his videos.

[genuinlysensitive]

Hate Speech = Censorship. It is an arbitrary term used by governments or in this case government actors to ban speech they don't like.

[WhitePanther88]

After their failure to control and influence the 2016 the MSM is looking to get rid of free speech in time for 2020.

[TuMeManques]

I'm for freedom of speech including hate speech. And yes I think it's a right as per the constitution.

[alice55]

Free speech is a right unless the person say things the Left doesn't agree with.

[alice55]

Thanks for the MHO :)

[OlderAndWiser]

1. The near monopolies of Google and the internet social media are dangerous.

2. The only human rights that are guaranteed to us are those that are recognized and protected by law.

3. Any discussion of "free speech" should begin with a definition of free speech because everyone says that they support free speech but they have widely disparate ideas of what constitutes "free speech."

4. Speech is never absolutely free. You have no right to stand up in a crowded theatre and scream "fire." You have no right to make false statements of fact about me without suffering the possibility of a slander or libel claim.

5. Free speech rights only protect you from government regulation of your speech. A private individual is not required to listen to whatever you want to say or to provide you a venue for addressing others.

6, Facebook has its power because we - the people - have made it so popular.

7. I absolutely detest the liberal hypocrisy of Facebook, Google, etc.

8. If our right to "free speech" depends upon the acceptability of its content, then we have no right to "free speech" at all.

9. Censorship of content starts us down a slippery slope. Dictators such as Hitler did not begin with rounding up the Jews. They started with controlling behavior and speech under the pretext of "public safety."

10. The best answer to hate speech is speech expressing countervailing views.

[genuinlysensitive]

1. Yes

2. The first amendment

3. The first amendment (excluding DIRECT calls to violence)

4. Shenk V US which that phrase originated from has been overturned for decades, yes you can. As for libel/Slander they are civil matters, NOT criminal statures, and be careful if you falsely accuse someone of either you might be counter sued.

5. As stated repeatedly these monopolies are acting for government they are therefore government actors and required to enforce the Constitution.

6. It was given through false advertising as and "unbiased" "open" platform, with government help (NSA CIA etc), and has repeatedly violated anti-trust statures, as have the rest of big tech.

7. Agreed

8. Agreed

9. 100% agreed. Imagine if Hitler outsourced his censorship to "private companies" that were really taking orders from him? Brown Shirts Inc?

10. Agreed.

[goaded]

Buh-buh-buh-buht Facebook, Apple, Google, Twitter, et al, are Private companies, and Republicans (and ridiculously the law as written by some clerk) even say they are people!

You don't get it both ways.

I think there should be 2 things required of "social networks":
1. A right of appeal (e. g. pointing out that people have received incitement to violence is not the same as incitement to violence - occupy London)
2, A requirement that the companies should transmit court-ordered retractions in a timely manner to everyone who received an offending posting with a high priority (i. e. no blocking of reality) - do you really think they don't keep track of every interaction?

Write what you like, but expect to have to defend it in court and have effective counter-measures to fake news and defamation/slander.

[genuinlysensitive]

1. Fake news is not illegal, otherwise everyone at CNN would be serving life.

2. Libel and Slander are civil matters, not criminal statutes, as well online publishers are immune to lawsuits for libel and slander.

[goaded]

Assuming your numbers match mine, #1 wasn't fake news, some people really received the flyer inciting violence that they were complaining about. Reporting that it was happening was removed for supposedly inciting violence.

2. The law can be changed. The threat of a law change should be enough to get online publishers to try to make retractions be as "loud" (widely disseminated) as the original statements. I mean, in a way, people re-tweeting a slander are publishing the slander, too, but you can't sue all of them, can you?

(I see you're right about the immunity, it's the Internet Defamation Law: Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.)

[jellyroo]

Alex Jones is a joke. Why anyone would e so threatened by his "influence" is beyond me.

[genuinlysensitive]

Yet they are, and are using him as a test case for censoring.

[RetroAlpha]

Well Trump said he didn't like Fake News. No better place to start than with a wildly popular purveyor of fake news and debunked conspiracies.

The largely Republican Congress railed Mark Z. because FB DIDN'T censor fake news. They reached out and searched for stories that were debunkable and found people like Alex Jones. The right wing guy got caught with his ass out. No big deal. Eventually they'll find a lying leftie.

[Jonny317]

Like you said, they are not government organizations. Just because a lot of you are on facebook doesn't mean it belongs to the people. Anyway, facebook is more useful as a tool for rigging elections than communicating truth.

[genuinlysensitive]

As I said they are not government organizations but state actors, as well as self proclaimed "utilities" and "public forums".

[SketchForger]

... It's not really our right to say whatever we want as long as the platform permits it.

Companies are allowed to censored, but the government isn't.

[genuinlysensitive]

These companies are censoring FOR THE GOVERNMENT, here in the US and around the world. This makes them GOVERNMENT ACTORS, and as in US case law makes them responsible for the Constitution. I covered this in the mytake if you had actually taken the trouble to read it.

[SketchForger]

Username checks out.

[Juxtapose]

We're gonna have to make use of alt-tech, such a bitchut to get around this.

[Kiran04]

Only the left doesn't agree, hence why Hollywood celebs and other leftist media figures are 100% behind the purging of Alex Jones and others similar to him.

[Evan94]

Alex jones can suck it

[genuinlysensitive]

Ok, does he deserve to be censored?

[Evan94]

He sure does