Who gets to decide who is a Frederick Douglass and who is an Alex Jones? What makes you feel so confident that you will be on the right side of history when the modern Frederick Douglass is deplatformed?
When that modern Frederick Douglass is deplatformed, we can talk, instead of this hysterical “when the world ends where will you be?!” shit. If you have something more than slippery slopes to offer, and comparing Alex Jones to Frederick Douglass, I’m all ears, otherwise, have a good day.
I don't know if any modern Frederick Douglass' are being deplatformed. It's nice to imagine that if I lived in 1863 that I would recognize that Douglass was on the right side of history, but statistically that is unlikely. I highly doubt you would recognize a Frederick Douglass either, if I could manage to point one out. That is why everyone must be allowed to speak.
If I find someone that I think is an Alex Jones, a Nazi, etc. it's easy enough to block them. What I don't do though is tell you that you're not allowed to listen to them either. That's where sensibility turns to authoritarianism. Freedom of speech is not just the right to speak, but also the right to hear.
What I don't do though is tell you that you're not allowed to listen to them either.
No one has said that about Jones, not Apple, or Youtube, and certainly not PayPal. They chose not to publish him or process his payments, and that’s all. In the same way that a book publisher doesn’t owe anyone a book, a radio station isn’t obligated to allow everyone who wants to be a DJ on the air, and TV stations don’t owe anyone a talk show. Yet when it’s the internet people pretend that a company choosing who they do business with is something new, is censorship, etc.
It isn’t, no amount of hand waving and slippery sloping makes it that, and everyone should be sick of these canards being used almost exclusively in regards to conspiracy theorists and far right nutjobs.
For better or worse the public square now exists on FB, Youtube, and Twitter. I haven't suggested that the government should come in and force any of those companies to do business with anyone. I'm more closely suggesting that these companies are doing the modern equivalent to book burning and no one seems concerned about that.
This isn't just far right nutjobs. Youtube decided to delete every single pro-Syrian channel recently which happened to coincide with the battle for Idlib. Apparently Youtube decided anyone opposing the war of aggression being conducted by the US is "Alex Jones" territory. Alex Jones just happened to be pretty famous. Lots of smaller people are being deplatformed, it just doesn't make the news.
