It’s been open season on Alex Jones and InfoWars this week (see Facebook Removes Infowars’ Page for ‘Violating Community Standards’ and Democrat Senator: Banning InfoWars was Just the Beginning). The latest to ban Jones is MailChimp. Which… seriously, who the deuce uses MailChimp anymore? One site that didn’t ban Jones is *squints at notes* Twitter?
Here, let Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey explain:
Truth is we’ve been terrible at explaining our decisions in the past. We’re fixing that. We’re going to hold Jones to the same standard we hold to every account, not taking one-off actions to make us feel good in the short term, and adding fuel to new conspiracy theories.
— jack (@jack) August 8, 2018
Accounts like Jones' can often sensationalize issues and spread unsubstantiated rumors, so it’s critical journalists document, validate, and refute such information directly so people can form their own opinions. This is what serves the public conversation best.
— jack (@jack) August 8, 2018
While we can appreciate Jack not wanting to become a service “that’s constructed by our personal views that can swing in any direction,” Twitter already is. Most social media platforms drop the hammer fist on those individuals who stray from approved political opinions. For example, Candace Owens was temporarily suspended on Twitter for tweeting the same racist tweets as the New York Times’ Sarah Jeong. Only Owens replaced the word “white” with “black.” Owens got suspended. While the same people who supported Jeong’s tweets celebrated.
“But Brodigan! This isn’t censorship. These private companies are just refusing service because of their deeply held beliefs and free speech doesn’t derpity derpy derp derp!”
When a leftist US Senator says what happened to InfoWars “is the tip of a giant iceberg,” it most definitely becomes a free speech issue.
What we need now, and maybe Jack Dorsey suspects it, is a serious course correction.
