The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has come to the defense of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, calling his collective ban from social media “worrisome.”
Several weeks ago, Big Tech giants colluded with each other to ban Alex Jones and his site Infowars from several platforms for vague reasons like “hate speech.” Conservative commentators pointed out that such a loosely-defined term could result in other outlets being banned for speaking on topics that some would find offensive.
Ben Wizner, director of ACLU’s Speech, Privacy and Technology Project, said the ban on Alex Jones could set a dangerous precedent. Though he agrees that Big Tech giants are private companies and can ban whomever they wish, he believes it could be “misused and abused.”
“If [Attorney General] Jeff Sessions, for example, were deciding what’s hate speech, he would be less likely to think KKK and more likely to think [Black Lives Matter],” Wizner told HuffPo on Monday. “It turns out to be an extremely subjective term.”
“I have some of the same concerns about platforms making those decisions,” he added. “Governments at least purport to be acting solely in the public interest, but platforms are making these decisions based on what’s in their financial interest. So their interest might be in avoiding controversy, but do we want the most important speech platforms in the world to avoid controversy?”
Wizner said that an outright ban on someone for something like hate speech is “worrisome.” He would prefer platforms remove individual posts that violate their terms of service or deprioritize them as opposed to banning the person.
“From a free expression standpoint, you would say if these platforms want to minimize the impact of the offending speech, it’s preferable to do so in a way that falls short of complete censorship,” Wizner said.- READ MORE
[divider][/divider]HBO talk-show host Bill Maher hammered former Michigan Democratic Governor Jennifer Granholm after she cheered a recent decision by tech companies to ban Alex Jones and Infowars from their platforms.
This clip from Bill Maher is excellent pic.twitter.com/AYzGbfQZdt
— Ben McDonald (@Bmac0507) August 18, 2018
Granholm — a far-left CNN commentator and advisor to Media Matters — yelled “thank God!” after Maher brought up how social media companies had kicked Jones off their platforms (after receiving pressure from CNN to do so).
Maher, who noted that Jones had told “crazy lies” about him, responded to Granholm’s smirk — and cheers from the audience — by saying, “well, if you’re a liberal, you’re supposed to be for free speech.”- READ MORE
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