Why I Don't Care about Alex Jones Getting Dropped from Facebook, iTunes, and YouTube

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.