What YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and other Silicon Valley Giants don’t understand about censorship
Owen Tendrich | Contributing Writer
If you told me last year that Infowars would fall victim to exilement on the most popular social media platforms, I would be far from surprised.
That’s why, when I sat down to put my thoughts into an article, I thought long and hard about what I wanted this piece to be. I would like to preface my writing by stating that I in no way endorse Alex Jones, Infowars, or anyone associated with Infowars.
One can vehemently disagree with an outlet and the content it puts out while at the same time shed light on the social media industry’s blatantly irresponsible behavior when it comes to the policing of content.
On August 6th, Apple, Facebook, Spotify and Youtube all removed Infowars and its related content from their respective platforms within hours of each other. Apple struck first, delisting the outlet’s podcasts, followed by a deletion of the Infowars page on Facebook and finally the deletion of its Youtube page.
A CNN report released on August 9th cited 20 tweets from Infowars’ account that senior media reporter Oliver Darcy found to be in violation of Twitter’s content policy. All 20 tweets were removed following the publishing of that article. Facebook released a statement defending its decision: “Upon review, we have taken it [Infowars] down for glorifying violence … and using dehumanizing language to describe people who are transgender, Muslims, and immigrants, which violates our hate speech policies.”
Most casual followers of politics are familiar in one way or another with the fringe outlet Infowars, lead by its notoriously exuberant pundit Alex Jones. Jones has claimed, among other things, that the government is purposely polluting water with hormones to spread homosexuality throughout the population and is, as he put so bluntly, “turning the freaking frogs gay.” He also received attention when he and others within his network claimed that the school shooting in Parkland, Florida that claimed the lives of 17 high school students was a “false flag” attack.
Thus, it would be a logical conclusion to someone unphased by the recent controversies surrounding social media networks and their clear bias against conservative thought that an egregious personality such as Jones and a tinfoil-donning, Trump-supporting outlet such as Infowars could conceivably violate the exceedingly vague “policies” platforms use to monitor content. Without context, the decision made by these faceless social media “administrators” seems quite grounded.
But, like all things, reality does eventually come crashing into the fold. All of these punishments were handed down within hours of each other. The idea that each of these social media companies independently arrived at the same conclusion at the same time is laughable at best.
Why? Not one of the punishments handed down by any of the companies was in response to a specific piece of content. Facebook, Spotify, Youtube, and Twitter all, like lemmings, followed Apple off a cliff and geronimo’d into the depths of censorship for no stated reason. The most pathetic part is that there were no shortage of reasons! Plenty of content put out by Infowars across all platforms could be considered to be racist, sexist, dehumanizing, etc.
Instead, the companies botched it and showed their true motive. They found it less important to justify a platform-wide ban of an outlet than to get out and ahead of media pressure and outrage for not following Apple’s example.
The “#verifiedhate” began trending after news of Jones’ and Infowars’ bans surfaced. The trend started on the anonymous bulletboard 4chan as well as Gab, a right-wing microblogging platform comparable to Twitter. To show the hypocrisy of social media giants when it comes to the ban hammer, about 200 tweets from verified Twitter accounts were anonymously compiled and published by different internet users. “Someone should shoot Trump a couple of times preferably a white person,” one Tweet reads. “If you’re a white women and are currently pregnant with a white baby boy…do us all a favor and take a trip to planned parenthood,” another reads.
What’s more? The ban of Infowars serves only to embolden its supporters. Who could’ve possibly imagined that seeking to silence an outlet whose mantra is “There’s a war on for your mind!” might bring it more publicity, not less? The outlet is using the banishment as fodder. “Subscribe to the banned show,” the homepage of http://www.infowars.com proudly advertises. Infowars’ app, “Infowars official” was ranked third among trending apps in the Google Play store as of August 9th. The app was also ranked third in top free apps in Apple’s App store. Confusingly, Google (the parent company of YouTube) and Apple have both released statements saying that the Infowars App doesn’t violate their respective app store’s content policies.
In spite of all this, we see widespread support for Infowars’ banishment. Even the Weekly Standard, a traditionally conservative publication, published articles wholeheartedly supporting the ban. Senior writer Jonathan Vast in an article aptly titled “The Case for Banning Alex Jones,” writes that “Conservatives who worry about the slippery slope ought to wait until we get to a part that’s actually slippery.” This sentiment is intellectually irresponsible.
There are roughly two billion active Facebook and YouTube users on this planet. Social media has become the preeminent method for meaningful socio-political discourse. The internet, by its very nature, offers limitless potential for communities to seamlessly communicate. And yet, these privately owned, for-profit communication monopolies aren’t taking the responsibility of protecting free speech seriously.
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