Spotify, Apple, Facebook and now YouTube have
permanently banned Alex Jones from posting
his Info Wars content on their platforms.
Yesterday YouTube became the latest.
They banned his channel that had 2.4 million
subscribers taking away a large chunk of Alex
Jones' revenue for his Info Wars project.
Here's the thing, right now there seems to
be some division, even amongst the left as
to whether or not this was a good thing or
this was a bad thing.
On one side you have people saying, "Hell
yeah, they should ban him.
His hate filled, slander filled, propaganda
conspiracy theories have no place on these
platforms."
The other folks, who agree that Alex Jones
is a horrible person spreading lies and conspiracy
theories, however they say these companies
should not have the right to censor free speech
because if they go after Alex Jones, it's
going to be only a matter of time before they
start coming after other people, and it's
going to hurt the progressive media content
creators who use these platforms.
So they're mad.
They say we shouldn't let the tech billionaires
be the deciding factor here.
Here's the thing, this isn't a First Amendment
issues, it's not a free speech issue because
it's not the government censoring somebody's
speech, so you need to drop that argument
immediately.
But more importantly, these companies weren't
trying to do the right thing by firing Alex
Jones, they don't just hate Alex Jones and
that's why they got rid of him.
No, no, no, no.
What they're doing right now is trying to
avoid the lawsuits that are trying to sink
Alex Jones.
At least five different defamation suits are
currently active against Alex Jones.
At least five that we know of.
And so what happens is that the families who
are suing Alex Jones for defamation, the individuals,
the victims of some of the worst atrocities
we've seen here on American soil, they're
all going after Jones because of the horrible
lies he's spread about them, and the resulting
attacks that these families have gotten verbally,
and in a few cases physically because of the
hatred that Jones has spread.
That does not deserve a voice in this country.
That kind of speech is actually not protected
but again, these tech giants, these social
media platforms, whatever, they didn't get
rid of Jones because of that.
They got rid of Jones because they're afraid
that they're next in line to be sued and yeah,
that would be a pretty difficult lawsuit to
prove, but it is winnable, but these companies
have the money, right?
They can afford it.
It's not like they're going to get hit for
billions or probably even millions, but they're
taking this preemptive step to get rid of
Alex Jones so that they can avoid any negative
publicity that would result from a side lawsuit
against them for hosting Jones' defamatory
content, which again, they absolutely could
be sued for it, it'd be difficult, but it
is winnable.
So they're trying to jump out ahead of that.
This isn't about censoring free speech.
It's not about doing the right thing, and
it's not about hatred for Alex Jones.
It's about these corporations trying to stave
off potential lawsuits so that they don't
lose any money.
They're not doing the right thing, they're
not doing the wrong thing.
They're doing what's in their best financial
interest.
They didn't suddenly grow a conscience.
They didn't suddenly grow a heart, and they
didn't suddenly start hating the First Amendment.
They just realized that the thing that they've
loved more than anything in the world is money
and they don't want to do anything to risk
losing some of that money so they boot Alex
Jones, they get some good publicity for doing
the right thing while few people truly know
why they did it.
But I promise you, that they did it because
they're afraid that after those defamation
suits take out Alex Jones, that these families
are going to come to the people who hosted
his content and helped spread his crazy conspiracy
theories.
That's why they did this.
