Free speech pretty much requires an audience. It’s not really free speech if the only place you can say it is, say, in front of the Jehovah’s Witness Hall. So Alex Jones can proselytize as much as he wants from his website, but as Adam noted, “to a certain generation, access to YouTube or Facebook is tantamount to how we communicate in 2018.” Video is probably Alex Jones’ most effective way to communicate. I followed him daily for about three or four months about eight years ago and while he has crazy stuff written on his website, his absolutely most batcrap crazy stuff comes from his videos. YouTube has close to a monopoly on delivery of video, except for what Vimeo and the porn sites. So getting kicked off YouTube and trying to deliver a video message is almost like requiring someone build their own sidewalk to talk to the public. The classic defense of free speech is Milton's Areopagitica, which argues that if truth and lies fight it out in public, truth will win. Sadly, Jones has shown that is not true. How people believe, for instance, that a school shooting was staged so someone could take away guns is incomprehensible. But as with a lot of Trump supporters, facts don’t matter. Truth is not winning in a public forum.
On Wed, Aug 8, 2018 at 8:19 PM Doug Eastick <east...@mcd.on.ca> wrote: > side story..... > > honest.... I stumbled across the story because I like music festivals and > EDM (electronic dance music)...... I probably saw it on reddit > /r/Coachella or something. > > There is a DJ that got tired of youtube taking down his 60 minutes videos > of his sets. youtube (or someone) claimed copyright issues. So he started > uploading them to pornhub.com. I didn't bookmark the video, and > searching for it on pornhub is not giving me the result I am seeking to > make my point, so I'll just go back to watching Big Brother now. > > > > > > On Wed, Aug 8, 2018 at 11:05 PM PGage <pga...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> On Wed, Aug 8, 2018 at 9:22 AM Adam Bowie <a...@adambowie.co.uk> wrote: >> >>> The interesting things is that these companies tend to be quite at good >>> at keeping some things off their sites - notably porn. Sure they also end >>> up banning Renaissance paintings, iconic photographs from the Vietnam war, >>> and mothers feeding their babies. But the algorithms seem reasonably good >>> at identifying bare skin. >>> >> >> So, I feel like this actually supports my side of the argument. When FB >> censors classic art, historically important photographs and images of >> breastfeeding mothers, I do feel like it is an unjustified limitation on >> free speech. If they want to ban porn fine, but put in the effort to make >> at least some distinction between that and the other important and >> non-pornographic representations of human nudity. And since these are fuzzy >> categories, be prepared to err on the side of allowing a little bit of porn >> so we don’t lose important aspects of humanity. >> >> Again, I do insist this is about free speech, though it if helps you can >> read that as “culture of free speech” or “free speech values” if it helps >> distinghiush it from the First Amendment. The US Constitution guarantees >> speech free of government interference, but it does not have a monopoly on >> the values and culture of free expression, which is a fundamental >> characteristic of the American Idea. I know that is not true of our >> European cousins (I once had a long conversation with a British colleague >> who scolded me on the American insistence on making a fetish of free >> expression, which I took as a huge compliment). >> >> I actually have not read any serious source who argues that banning Jones >> violates the First Amendment so I am not sure why we are hearing this being >> disputed so much. >> >>> -- >> Sent from Gmail Mobile >> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "TVorNotTV" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >> email to tvornottv+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. >> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. >> > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "TVorNotTV" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to tvornottv+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to tvornottv+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
