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Re: Today Infowars, Tomorrow Booktalk?

Posted: Mon Aug 20, 2018 1:29 pm
by geo
KindaSkolarly wrote:If you don’t know what a False Flag event is, you should familiarize yourself:
A Brief History of False Flag Terror
http://mikesheedy.com/wp-content/upload ... Terror.mp4 (Video)
http://mikesheedy.com/wp-content/upload ... Terror.pdf (Transcript)
Not surprisingly, Alex Jones thinks the Boston bombings were a "false flag" event.

Re: Today Infowars, Tomorrow Booktalk?

Posted: Mon Aug 20, 2018 3:08 pm
by Under_Taker
geo wrote:
KindaSkolarly wrote:If you don’t know what a False Flag event is, you should familiarize yourself:
A Brief History of False Flag Terror
http://mikesheedy.com/wp-content/upload ... Terror.mp4 (Video)
http://mikesheedy.com/wp-content/upload ... Terror.pdf (Transcript)
Not surprisingly, Alex Jones thinks the Boston bombings were a "false flag" event.
I wonder if he even knows what an actual false flag was used for?

Re: Today Infowars, Tomorrow Booktalk?

Posted: Tue Aug 21, 2018 5:22 am
by Belaqua
ant wrote: Has Facebook ever mistakenly censored any liberal news sources?
I honestly don't know what "Liberal" means any more.

The left-wing people I know were concerned about the Alex Jones ban -- not because they like him, of course, but because of the precedent.

Probably the most concerning action for us anti-Imperialists was when Facebook banned Telesur twice, without coherent explanations. They are about the only non-US-approved source for news about Latin America that we have. (Not that I can personally vouch for their accuracy. But we know we can't trust State Department announcements.)

There was another case in which a man was banned for posting photos of pro-Nazi graffiti. But he isn't a Nazi; he documents American sponsorship for neo-Nazis in the Ukraine. That may have been a misunderstanding, but it also may have been an effort at continuing to downplay US support for Nazis. He had his page re-instated, but only after appeals.

Other lefties on Twitter have been banned by Twitter for saying critical things about John McCain. They could have been more polite, but it wasn't actually threats of violence. The most prominent has been re-instated, but it is unknown if other less famous people are affected.

I've read accounts that a think tank called The Atlantic Council is working with Facebook on deciding who to ban. This council is officially non-partisan, but it is funded by a worrying assortment of arms dealers and intelligence types. That's what the lefties are saying on line, anyway. I have no personal knowledge, so you shouldn't trust me very far.

Re: Today Infowars, Tomorrow Booktalk?

Posted: Tue Aug 21, 2018 9:19 am
by DWill
Giving anybody in the world the opportunity to publish and be read by perhaps millions of people is the unique gift the internet has bestowed. Now we know the Trojan Horse quality of that gift. Without gatekeepers to inspect the products before publication and have right of rejection, all the owners of Facebook or Twitter can do, if they are suddenly concerned about the social harm of their contributors, is to ban them from submitting/publishing in the first place. This is a more drastic move than receiving a submission and deciding not to use it, as under the old system. Under the old system, Alex Jones could try again and again. Maybe he'd succeed eventually, maybe not. There would have been no question of censorship, though. With Facebook, censorship does arise, because it's presumed that anything Jones says is bad, even though it's not the type of censorship the Constitution forbids.













giving anybody oin th

Re: Today Infowars, Tomorrow Booktalk?

Posted: Wed Aug 22, 2018 2:38 am
by Harry Marks
geo wrote: From my limited exposure to Alex Jones, I'd say his rants are a sort of a performance. His anger and paranoia clearly resonate with a certain audience.
It appears this is the main thing to get about Alex Jones: it's an act.

In the latest Paul Krugman column, he makes the point that Alex Jones (like much of the Fox News crowd) makes money off of dietary supplements he sells. He has found a formula that appeals to angry, aging couch potatos and has no reason to put truth-telling ahead of that.

And of course the defining characteristic of paranoia is that it "recruits" information to confirm its central fear. We have some pretty clear illustrations on this forum.

Re: Today Infowars, Tomorrow Booktalk?

Posted: Wed Aug 22, 2018 3:05 am
by Harry Marks
DWill wrote:Giving anybody in the world the opportunity to publish and be read by perhaps millions of people is the unique gift the internet has bestowed. Now we know the Trojan Horse quality of that gift. Without gatekeepers to inspect the products before publication and have right of rejection, all the owners of Facebook or Twitter can do, if they are suddenly concerned about the social harm of their contributors, is to ban them from submitting/publishing in the first place.
That's a really powerful insight. I was on the inside of the journalism profession as a university student, and while we did a weak job of it, we did exercise a gate-keeping capacity. We called it "professionalism."

Professions give people a set of standards and procedures which safeguard not only the individual professional (who might otherwise make poor choices and get herself in trouble), but also the profession itself and its sense of mission. As observed in the book "New Power", the internet works on a dynamic that is completely opposite to that. Many people spread stuff because to them it seems like something the gate-keepers would disapprove of. A feature, not a bug.

But if silencing is the only possible answer, this runs the real risk of increasing the resistance (to gate-keeping, not to the abomination) to any such self-monitoring.
DWill wrote: With Facebook, censorship does arise, because it's presumed that anything Jones says is bad, even though it's not the type of censorship the Constitution forbids.

Well, it sounds like the alternative approach is to provide a "cellular" level of nourishment to keep aging curmudgeons from feeling isolated and useless and angry. We used to call this "grandchildren." Maybe part of the answer is to help with other people's grandchildren.

Men in particular tend to get themselves socially isolated. Most women have spent their lives cultivating the skills of connection: conversation, keeping track of each other's lives, cooking, child care reciprocity. Men are often just appendages to that, if they are involved at all. And after 50 it gets harder to go on long hikes, to ramble through the wilderness or kayak along the coast, and other projects that are manly enough for the self-image thing. Working on old cars is a dying hobby, though my dad found social interaction there.

In a world where almost all work is done according to specific formulas provided by specialists in marketing, where you have to know a field pretty well to have any voice at all about how things are done in it, it's easy for aging men to feel like there are gate-keepers everywhere they turn. (Not that younger people face this any less, but they are not comparing from a past in which it was dramatically less pronounced.)

Re: Today Infowars, Tomorrow Booktalk?

Posted: Wed Aug 22, 2018 9:31 pm
by geo
DWill wrote:With Facebook, censorship does arise, because it's presumed that anything Jones says is bad, even though it's not the type of censorship the Constitution forbids.
Booktalk has banned individuals in the past because they violated the rules set by the owner of this web site. I also used to belong to an author's forum where the proprietor banned people on a fairly regular basis, sometimes for not very good reasons. I was banned too for a while and eventually let back in. His web site, his rules.

As others have said, anyone who wants to read Alex Jones stuff can just go to his web site. Here's the link: https://www.infowars.com/
Here's another: https://www.infowars.com/watch-alex-jones-show/

So if the material is freely available to all, is it really censorship?

Re: Today Infowars, Tomorrow Booktalk?

Posted: Sun Aug 26, 2018 8:48 pm
by KindaSkolarly
Yes, it's censorship. And Big Tech will pay for it. Sefan Molyneux explains in the video below:

THE SILENCING OF ALEX JONES
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBo9uRuTVYk
Newspapers can be sued for libel because they exercise editorial control over content. If something libelous makes it into print, it’s there because the paper authorized it. And the paper can be sued. Social media companies have been saying that they have no control over what people post. But now they’re banning people over political content. They’re assuming editorial control, so it follows that in the future people will be able to sue them for posts of those they allow to remain on their platforms. This will lead to lawsuits and the financial ruin of the big social media platforms.

Re: Today Infowars, Tomorrow Booktalk?

Posted: Mon Aug 27, 2018 2:09 am
by Harry Marks
KindaSkolarly wrote:Yes, it's censorship. And Big Tech will pay for it.

Newspapers can be sued for libel because they exercise editorial control over content. If something libelous makes it into print, it’s there because the paper authorized it. And the paper can be sued.
Yes, if you spread lies about someone, you should be held responsible.
KindaSkolarly wrote:Social media companies have been saying that they have no control over what people post.
This seems to be a gray area. YouTube has been held responsible for copyright violations. We would already hold social media companies responsible for incitement, at least if someone else pointed it out to them. Even Pirate Bay was eventually held responsible. I don't think the world has changed over Alex Jones.
KindaSkolarly wrote:But now they’re banning people over political content.
Libel is not "political content." I'm quite sure that Facebook will continue to allow a full range of political expression. I'm quite hopeful that they will not continue to allow irresponsible false accusations for which the target gets harassed.
KindaSkolarly wrote: This will lead to lawsuits and the financial ruin of the big social media platforms.
If Facebook will not take down libelous material, they deserve to be ruined financially. I doubt if they will be held responsible for stuff not pointed out to them, and I don't really like the surveillance implications if they try to catch every lie themselves, but the "deep pockets" principle of American law is always out there waiting for those who have managed to make it rich by ignoring responsibility.

Re: Today Infowars, Tomorrow Booktalk?

Posted: Tue Aug 28, 2018 10:33 pm
by Chris OConnor
Alex Jones is really a nut. I've watched about a dozen YouTube videos of him ranting about one thing or another and he's a really dangerous and deluded psychopath. He definitely pushes the envelope of "free speech" when he spews out conspiracy theories that his target audience is simply not mentally capable of identifying as fiction.