On September 6, 2018, Twitter permanently suspended the right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and his site “InfoWars” from posting on their Twitter and Periscope, citing that they took this action based on tweets and videos posted by InfoWars that violated their abusive behavior policy, “in addition to the accounts’ past violations.” On October 22, 2018, Twitter banned more InfoWars-related accounts after finding that some were still active on Twitter.
InfoWars, known for their extremely partisan reporting and repeated accusations of spreading false information, had already been banned by YouTube, Apple, Facebook and Spotify prior to their Twitter banning, which drove the pressure for Twitter to enforce a ban as well.
But social networking sites don’t necessarily have to condone harmful or hateful speech on their sites.
The nail in the coffin for InfoWars on Twitter was a Periscope livestream in which InfoWars owner Alex Jones insulted CNN reporter Oliver Darcy, calling him a “rat,” a “sociopath,” a “possum that crawled out of the rear end of a dead cow” and “the Hitler Youth.”
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey quickly cleared up any notions that Jones’ and InfoWars’ banning had any political reasoning behind it, stating on Twitter:
This statement alludes to one of the most important components of the American Constitution: the First Amendment. This leads to the question: is the banning or censorship of certain people and groups on social networking sites an infringement on their First Amendment rights?
Apparently not. The First Amendment was drafted and passed regarding government restriction of the press. Still, should sites like Twitter and Facebook, as media for public discourse, feel a responsibility to ensure freedom of expression for their users?
Ethically, they should. No matter what, social networking sites should always remain nonpartisan. Regardless of how much someone disagrees or agrees with an opinion, it shouldn’t be censored.
In light of these facts, was the banning of Alex Jones and his site InfoWars on virtually every major online platform justified?
But social networking sites don’t necessarily have to condone harmful or hateful speech on their sites. With this being said, if a statement is racist, sexist, transphobic, homophobic, threatening or outright false, social networking sites have the right to censor it– it’s constitutional.
For example, on October 25, 2018, Milo Yiannopoulos said on Instagram, in response to the threatening packages being sent to Democratic politicians and other public figures, “disgusting and sad (that they didn’t go off, and the daily beast didn’t get one).” This statement was one Facebook could rightfully censor. In that post, Yiannopoulos was directly advocating violence, which would violate almost every social media platform’s guidelines.
In light of these facts, was the banning of Alex Jones and his site InfoWars on virtually every major online platform justified? Considering the fact that Jones has made several outright homophobic statements, such as “the reason there are so many gay people now is because it’s a chemical warfare operation,” the banning of Jones is justified. No social networking site has to condone that speech.
Photo by Alexa Jaspan
