The Alternative Media Purge Continues: Alex Jones Is The First, But Not The Last (and why you should be concerned)

As much as I am not a fan of Alex Jones or much of what he stands for, I have grown concerned over the recent purge of Alex Jones from the internet as well as other conservative news sites like infowars.com.

You probably already know about Info Wars and Alex Jones being banned from; Facebook, Apple, Spotify and more notably YouTube. But it does not seem to stop there, Disqus is the latest of tech companies to censor Alex Jones and his portfolio of alternative news sites, even email mailout service MailChimp has banned Alex Jones.

We are heading down a dangerous path

The thing with companies like Facebook and Google run YouTube is they're private, they are not violating your rights because they own the platform and if they want you off, then you're gone.

There is no recourse, no framework in place to ensure that a monopoly is not abusing its position to silence alternative perspectives and viewpoints, or silencing someone for politically influenced reasons.

But at the same time, regulation is a bad idea, especially if there is government regulation with an agenda.

A platform like Facebook although a private entity controlled by investors and run by a CEO who in his early immature days of running the company had, "I am CEO... bitch" on his business cards has so much influence and reach, we have to ask ourselves if they should be held to more scrutiny in their decision-making process.

It is wildly claimed that Facebook itself played a role in Donald Trump being elected president, that Russian bot networks and trolls with their trove of fake targeted news deliberately influenced the election by engaging in widespread targeted disinformation.

When the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke revealing that upwards of 100 million Facebook users possibly had their data breached by a third-party, which was then believed to have been used for a slew of reasons (political and non-political) the pendulum swung and the government wet dream of being able to control social platforms like Facebook was realised.

This is where things get interesting. After the allegations of Facebook helping influence the 2016 presidential election and the Cambridge Analytica scandal causing Mark Zuckerberg to be grilled in a Senate enquiry, the pressure was on Facebook and other platforms to prevent outside governments and "Russian bad guys" from ever interfering in "democracy" ever again.

The sudden concern around what Info Wars and Alex Jones affiliated sites are posting as well as others like Drudge Report is not because Facebook or Google care about the content on their platform, they care about potential government regulation and interference.

When you're a private company making millions and billions, your first priority to shareholders is to keep making money and government interference is certainly a damper on profits.

Info Wars started in 1999 and since then has been doing what it always has done: promoting alternative news, conspiracy theories and yes, making some pretty xenophobic and wild claims like Hillary Clinton smelling like brimstone and tap water turning the frogs gay.

Are people truly naive to believe that after almost twenty years of existence all of a sudden what Info Wars publishes is a problem?

If you get your news from the likes of CNN and other agenda-driven news outlets, you probably think that Alex Jones peddles only racist and violence-inciting content, which is completely untrue. While some of the content on Info Wars is definitely questionable, usually it's just speculation about the "deep state" and alternative theories/wild speculation.

The reasons are non-specific

The most alarming and concerning thing about these bans is that the companies doing so are unable to provide an exact reason for the bans. What it boils down to usually is these companies citing violations of "guidelines" and "community standards" a blanket term giving them plausible deniability.

The agenda here is a policy paper was circulated a week or so before the bans started proposing to regulate social media, which Wikileaks Tweeted about here.

But the coincidences yet again stack up when Info Wars started promoting a petition garnering tens of thousands of signatures for Donald Trump to pardon Julian Assange, allegedly Julian Assange's mother was contacted by Info Wars producers and was going to come on the show.

We can only speculate whether or not these two things had any involvement in Alex Jones being banned, but it does seem likely certain people in the government would not be too happy about an Assange pardon being circulated or his mother talking about the situation to a large influential fan base.

We are heading down a dark path...

If you think this is an isolated incidence of taking down a conspiracy theory website making racist comments and peddling mass shooting false flag theories, currently sitting US Senator Chris Murphy also tweeted something concerning:

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 has essentially just confirmed what we all fear, Info Wars is the first site to crumble, but not the last. They choose the easiest and softest target they could find and peddle the Sandy Hook fiasco to justify the ban because they know it elicits an emotional response (kids were killed).

Free speech means all perspectives and opinions

You can't claim to be for free speech, first amendment rights and democracy, and then in the same breath be supportive of the removal of Alex Jones or any other right-wing conspiracist. That's not how free speech works, nor is it how a fully-functioning democracy works.

We are in a dangerous era where people are offended by the use of gender pronouns, calling someone a he or she if we are going to go down this path could technically be enough to get anyone kicked off Facebook or YouTube.

I wholeheartedly am against hate speech, inciting racism or violence, but in the case of Alex Jones, the media have distorted the facts and situation at hand, to the point where Facebook and Google opt to release vague statements lacking in actual details.

When you only surround yourself with people who share your same views and beliefs, you are living in a bubble of bias. When you refuse to acknowledge or respect someone else's view, calling them right-wing trump supporters and trying to silence them by lobbying Facebook to remove their account, is that free speech?

When you attempt to silence other peoples opinions because you disagree with them, or lobby platforms to remove accounts by participating in brigading campaigns without looking at the facts yourself, you're part of the problem and not the solution.

The lines are blurry, are these truly private companies?

The arguments against banning Alex Jones and Info Wars usually have many decrying, "these are private companies, they get to say who gets to use their services" and in a black and white world, this would be a valid argument. But we are talking about tech companies who have lobbied the US government through donations and/or benefitted from government grants, subsidies and initiatives.

What makes this whole situation with Alex Jones even crazier is that it appears to be a strong effort to the point where popular YouTube channel h3h3 productions received a strike and took down their live stream for talking about Alex Jones and showing a small brief clip of Jones.

We also know thanks to Edward Snowden leaking a trove of classified documents that the NSA has been in bed with tech companies for a very long time. Companies like Google and Facebook have been giving up your information to the government for years, compelled from the government to hand the data over or be threatened with behind-closed-doors type action.

We have to decide: are these truly private companies or are we going to call this entire situation for what it really is? state sanctioned corporate censorship.

When governments can compel "private" tech companies onto the Senate floor and make them testify over allegations and actions that have taken place, we have to ask ourselves have we crossed the line and blurred the divide between private companies and government entities?

Can a government tell a social media platform how it should run, what content it should allow and what it needs to do? If it can, I would argue these companies are no longer private and therefore users are protected under the first amendment.

A great example is banks and financial institutions. Although many banks run as private institutions, they are regulated and can only operate within the government-created framework dictating how a bank should conduct business, how money is transmitted is also covered under numerous anti-terror and money laundering laws.

This just further adds more fuel to the speculative fire that the government will want to regulate social media platforms and by extension, other tech companies with large user bases. One could argue they're already doing that quite successfully all without causing these companies to be cast under a constitutionally covered umbrella.

As much as many of you probably also disagree with Alex Jones and a lot of what he says, this situation goes well beyond being about Alex Jones or Info Wars. Whether you believe in these wild conspiracies or not, you should be concerned about the power Facebook, Google and other platforms have over our lives.

You should be especially concerned with the governments interference, influence and push for regulation of these platforms. It is clear there is a larger agenda here and it's not all about Alex Jones.

You are witnessing the erosion of freedom of speech. We all look at China and see how restricted their freedoms are online and in real life, the controlled media. This is where things are going, freedom of speech is vanishing.