In the wake of Facebook, YouTube, iTunes, and Spotify (and possibly others) banning Alex Jones from their platforms and purging all of his content, I'm seeing a handful of people (some of whom have fairly large audiences) criticizing the social media companies for what they are calling corporate censorship. The main thrust of this argument seems to be that in allowing the social
media companies to ban Alex Jones, we have granted a handful of tech
CEOs the power to "determine what 'content' should and should not be available for public consumption", to use one person's phrasing. While a handful of companies wielding disproportionate control over the media, with little transparency or accountability, is certainly something we should worry about almost as much as government censorship, what happened to Alex Jones is not a particularly good example of it.
I want to emphasize that none of these people are defending Alex Jones. None. What they are taking issue with is the social media platforms censoring a content creator without any apparent transparency, accountability, or due process. However, that complaint is baseless, for a number of reasons.
First, the obvious point: the First Amendment only restricts what the government can do. It doesn't give citizens any protection from private businesses. Facebook and the other platforms can ban someone at any time for violating their Terms of Service. Users acknowledge that and implicitly agree when they sign up to use the site and check "okay" on the ToS button. These platforms have had the authority to ban Alex Jones the entire time he's been using their service, they just chose not to exercise it until now.
Second, the near-simultaneous decision by multiple platforms to drop Alex Jones gives the impression that the decision was sudden and arbitrary. It wasn't. Alex Jones has been a controversy magnet for years. He has repeatedly labeled survivors of the Sandy Hook school shooting, as well as relatives and friends of the victims, "crisis actors." In fact, he's dwelled on this point so much that the parents of one victim have had to move seven times, and he is currently on trial for defamation, in a lawsuit brought by families of the victims. So lest you think this came out of nowhere, it has been building for a long time.
Additionally, the social media CEOs were not acting (entirely) on their own initiative. They were responding to public pressure to remove Jones' videos, etc, from their platforms. That means it's hardly a decision made in isolation. In fact, given Jones' track record of controversy, it's a bit surprising he has lasted as long as he has.
Third, Alex Jones was an outlier. Some content providers are worried about the precedent this might set, but unless you're harassing victims of a mass shooting, it's safe to say that you won't end up on YouTube's/Spotify's/Facebook's radar. So relax, nobody is coming to boot you off their platform.
Fourth, the barriers to entry on any of these sites is nonexistent. Now, iTunes requires a little bit of technical know-how as far as recording, editing, and uploading a podcast; but that's pretty much as far as it goes. For the most part, all you have to do is know how to create an account and upload content. So the idea that we're all suddenly at the "tech overlords' mercy" is laughable. They won't even care unless your content draws a lot of complaints, and even then that's not a given. Hell, I see more people complaining about the lack of policing on social media.
Fifth, James Gunn. He's been in the news lately, so the name probably sounds familiar. The reason he's in the news is Disney fired him because of a handful of inappropriate tweets he posted a few years back. Not even close to the level of the bile Alex Jones spews, but still inappropriate. Here's why I'm bringing him up. Gunn certainly needs to be held accountable for those, but the difference between Gunn and Jones is that Gunn grew and changed, and now he contributes something meaningful to society. He eventually cleaned up his act, got better at his craft, and went on to deliver some top-notch work. (Seriously. Guardians of the Galaxy is an awesome film.) These days, Gunn is also widely respected by the actors and film crews he works with, and has a growing movement dedicated to getting him reinstated because of his artistic contributions. The point is that you contribute something to society, your fans and peers will back you up. Can anyone argue in good faith that Alex Jones has made a meaningful contribution?
Now, people should be worried when news outlets gradually morph into an increasingly-consolidated oligarch-like structure (for example, the "Big Six Media" or the current Sinclair Broadcast Group situation.) But social media is not like that. It's opened the door to a multitude of news and information outlets. Take Twitter: because of it, I've been able to follow literally dozens of news agencies from around the world: Balkan Insight, Der Spiegel, Euronews, to list a few. And thanks to iTunes, I can find a podcast covering just about any niche topic I find interesting. So good, independent sources of news are out there, and social media has helped make that possible.
So, to everyone getting worked up about Alex Jones getting sent packing: relax. It's not - repeat, not - going to usher in some new era of censorship.
Tuesday, August 7, 2018
Thursday, August 2, 2018
An Unorthodox Proposal
First off, a nod to Jonathan Swift for providing the inspiration for this post's title. Now, on with the show.
Alright, look. It's obvious that America's current system of choosing a president isn't working. 320 million people, and one of the final two candidates we could come up with - the one who went on to win* - was Donald Trump? That was the best we could do? Really, America?!?
You'll notice I didn't mention Hillary Clinton in the above paragraph. That was intentional. I didn't want to lump her in with Trump. Sure, Hillary Clinton had a fair amount of political baggage. Some of it was deserved and of her own doing, but the overwhelming majority of it turned out to be baseless accusations peddled by the right-wing smear machine. But she was also the most qualified candidate, by far, and she was certainly miles ahead of the walking, breathing dumpster fire currently occupying the White House.
Whoops, I got distracted and went off on a tangent there.
Back to my main point, which is that the current process for electing a president is in desperate need of reform. I don't want to get too into the weeds talking about how the institutional mechanisms in place need to be modified, although I will say that the Electoral College needs to be revamped, the Voting Rights Act needs to be restored, and alternative ideas like ranked-choice voting and holding primaries on weekends (when more people can participate) need to be at least looked at.
No, the change I propose is more tonal than structural. Here's my idea. Instead of the current handful of campaign debates, which are nearly worthless spectacles, we have each party's candidate (it would have to be after the primaries, because in the past couple presidential elections there would be too many candidates for this to work) undergo some kind of exam by a select panel of experts in various relevant areas.
For example, say we want to evaluate a candidate's knowledge on foreign policy. We gather a team of experts in all the areas foreign policy could be expected to cover: economics & trade, science, military strategy, and so on. Then these experts ask the candidates a bunch of questions, to gauge their knowledge. Now, the questions could take any kind of format - I'm not too choosy. It could be an in-person panel, like a job interview; or it could be like a college-level exam.
The point - and this is the important part - is that the results of the Q & A are made public, to see just how much a certain candidate knows (or doesn't know.) If it's a panel interview, record it and play it on all the news networks later. If it's a written test, publish it in a special insert in every major newspaper, and post it online. Also, just like any other test (which is essentially what this is), the candidate's performance is scored. 1 - 100, just like most tests. Any candidate who scores too low is disqualified from running.
And that's it. We wouldn't change anything else about how votes are cast or counted, we'd just replace debates with a process that (hopefully) prevented the country from electing a complete idiot.
I don't expect this to be adopted, of course. It's pretty much got a snowball's chance in hell. But I don't think anyone will dispute that elections have become way too much like a popularity contest - a certain level of that is always expected, but it's getting ridiculous.
Anyway, I was just throwing this idea out there.
* Russia helped Trump win
Alright, look. It's obvious that America's current system of choosing a president isn't working. 320 million people, and one of the final two candidates we could come up with - the one who went on to win* - was Donald Trump? That was the best we could do? Really, America?!?
You'll notice I didn't mention Hillary Clinton in the above paragraph. That was intentional. I didn't want to lump her in with Trump. Sure, Hillary Clinton had a fair amount of political baggage. Some of it was deserved and of her own doing, but the overwhelming majority of it turned out to be baseless accusations peddled by the right-wing smear machine. But she was also the most qualified candidate, by far, and she was certainly miles ahead of the walking, breathing dumpster fire currently occupying the White House.
Whoops, I got distracted and went off on a tangent there.
Back to my main point, which is that the current process for electing a president is in desperate need of reform. I don't want to get too into the weeds talking about how the institutional mechanisms in place need to be modified, although I will say that the Electoral College needs to be revamped, the Voting Rights Act needs to be restored, and alternative ideas like ranked-choice voting and holding primaries on weekends (when more people can participate) need to be at least looked at.
No, the change I propose is more tonal than structural. Here's my idea. Instead of the current handful of campaign debates, which are nearly worthless spectacles, we have each party's candidate (it would have to be after the primaries, because in the past couple presidential elections there would be too many candidates for this to work) undergo some kind of exam by a select panel of experts in various relevant areas.
For example, say we want to evaluate a candidate's knowledge on foreign policy. We gather a team of experts in all the areas foreign policy could be expected to cover: economics & trade, science, military strategy, and so on. Then these experts ask the candidates a bunch of questions, to gauge their knowledge. Now, the questions could take any kind of format - I'm not too choosy. It could be an in-person panel, like a job interview; or it could be like a college-level exam.
The point - and this is the important part - is that the results of the Q & A are made public, to see just how much a certain candidate knows (or doesn't know.) If it's a panel interview, record it and play it on all the news networks later. If it's a written test, publish it in a special insert in every major newspaper, and post it online. Also, just like any other test (which is essentially what this is), the candidate's performance is scored. 1 - 100, just like most tests. Any candidate who scores too low is disqualified from running.
And that's it. We wouldn't change anything else about how votes are cast or counted, we'd just replace debates with a process that (hopefully) prevented the country from electing a complete idiot.
I don't expect this to be adopted, of course. It's pretty much got a snowball's chance in hell. But I don't think anyone will dispute that elections have become way too much like a popularity contest - a certain level of that is always expected, but it's getting ridiculous.
Anyway, I was just throwing this idea out there.
* Russia helped Trump win
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