The Silencing of Alex Jones
On August 6, 2018 Apple, Facebook, and YouTube suspended Alex Jones' material. I find it hard to believe that this was not a coordinated event.
The story was reported in the British Leftist publication, The Guardian.
Jones has been a major force on the far Right. His Alexa ranking on the evening of his cancelation shows just how influential he was. Alexa ranks the traffic of millions of websites. The lower the number, the more traffic the site has. His site had a lot of traffic.
This page will serve as a marker. We will see how far down his site falls with this overnight removal by the three major social media outlets. If his fans are hard core, they will still come to his site on a daily basis. He should be able to find another host for his videos. But Google will be guiding people to dead YouTube links from now on.
This is not a constitutional issue. These are privately owned firms. They have legal control over who has access to their platforms. But the legality of their actions raises the question of the degree of control they intend to exercise in the future.
Is this a full-scale attack on the Right? We do not know yet. I tend to doubt it. All three platforms have positioned themselves as defenders of open discussion. If they go after other American conservatives, libertarians, and non-establishment outlets, this will raise the issue of hypocrisy. That would be bad for business. But they have now shown that anyone who crosses a non-defined line can have his operation decimated overnight.
There are conspiracy theorists with anti-establishment views whose sites will stay up. I think the Corbett Report will continue. His style is more stiletto than bludgeon. His targets bleed to death. Style matters to liberals.
The three platforms' myth of neutrality is now revealed for what it always was: a myth. There are limits to their toleration. They have sent a signal. Any outspoken Right-winger who relies exclusively on any of these platforms had better have a fallback position.
Had he been convicted in a court of law of slander, I could understand this silencing. No platform wants to expose itself to class action lawsuits. But Jones has committed no crime. He has merely committed offenses against the aesthetics and ideology of the liberals who operate these platforms. They don't like his style. I don't either, but his style should not be an issue of the legitimacy of his access to people who do like it.
Jones was taken down by digital hitmen, not gunmen. He will still be around to expose more chicanery in high places. But his income will fall. His audience will shrink. His bullhorn will not have the volume that it had on August 6, 2018.
Liberals talk a good line, but they deceive only themselves. When push comes to shove, they are willing to end debate the old-fashioned way: by cutting off power to the other guy's bullhorn.