Conservative members of the media are worried that big social media platforms could move to ban other commentators, after they shut down conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, whose “InfoWars” website and radio show reach millions of fans.
Apple, Facebook, YouTube, Spotify, and Pinterest announced Monday they would no longer allow Jones to distribute his content on their platforms, citing violations against “hate speech” policies, or, in the case of Facebook, violations against “community standards.”
The crackdown on Jones, who is widely known for promoting conspiracy theories about the government and the news media, comes as social media companies are facing pressure to address the proliferation of false or deceitful content. But some denounced the decisions to ban Jones, even while criticizing his work, and wondered whether other publications would face similar fates.
“One doesn’t even have to look to Big Tech to see the almost infinite malleability of the ‘hate speech’ label,” said conservative anti-Trump writer David French in a Tuesday column for the New York Times. “In the name of stopping hate speech, university mobs have turned their ire not just against alt-right figures like Milo Yiannopoulos and Richard Spencer, but also against the most mainstream of conservative voices, like Ben Shapiro and Heather MacDonald.”
He said that instead of using “hate speech” or other ambiguous standards to guide their speech policies, social media companies should instead use the legal definitions of libel and slander.
LZ Granderson, an ESPN host, wrote Monday on CNN’s website that “restricting offensive or harmful language for the greater good is all fine and dandy until you become beholden to a definition of ‘greater good’ you don’t agree with. Or when you oppose a politician’s view of ‘offensive.’”
Shapiro, a prominent conservative and frequent critic of President Trump, said Monday on his DailyWire website that “Trust in social media is declining” because “they don’t tolerate voices like Jones while tolerating voices who are just as bad on the political Left – and they show no signs of limiting their censorship to Alex Jones.”
The fear that censorship on social media would grow was further exacerbated, especially among conservatives, after Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., suggested on Twitter that Jones is part of a bigger problem, and that others need to be banned.
[Also read: Alex Jones theorizes attack on the media — after which he and Trump will be blamed]
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
“Infowars is the tip of a giant iceberg of hate and lies that uses sites like Facebook and YouTube to tear our nation apart,” Murphy tweeted Monday. “These companies must do more than take down one website. The survival of our democracy depends on it.”
Sean Davis, an editor at the right-leaning Federalist website, tweeted that Murphy’s remark was best summed up as, “You better ban these websites, or else…”
