Just in case you missed it. In the last 24 hours Facebook, Apple, Spotify and Youtube banned Infowars. Suddenly, overnight all five major “platforms” noticed hate-speech they need to censor from the group which was influential in helping Donald Trump get elected. Mid-terms are coming. Coincidence?
This is a free speech line in the sand:
You don’t have to like or agree with Infowars — if they can be banned, anyone could be next:
[Breitbart] The UK Independence Party (UKIP) has urged citizens to defend free speech in the West after big tech firms allegedly coordinated to remove right wing voices, including InfoWars and Tommy Robinson, from social media.
On Monday, Apple, Facebook, Pinterest, Spotify, and Google-owned YouTube permanently removed content from InfoWars and its owner Alex Jones, saying he and the website violated their policies against hate speech and harassment.
Proponents of the ban say Mr Jones is a conspiracy theorist who deserves to be silenced, while critics have claimed the purge is an attempt to interfere in the U.S. midterm elections and described it as a form of “political censorship”.
The monopolistic giants say they are just “enforcing the rules” but so far they’re not quoting any specific content that “broke the rules“, nor can they define “hate-speech” or name the person who made the decision. Maybe “hate-speech” rules are different for the right and left side of politics? Facebook banned Infowars but allows Antifa and Louis Farrakhan to keep posting. Selective enforcement anyone? What looks political, smells political and quacks…
Infowars started in 1999. The Alex Jones Channel on youtube had amassed 2.4 million subscriptions. It’s all gone. So are the podcasts.
The editor Paul Joseph-Watson is responding defiantly on twitter.
The worldwide populist surge cannot be muted. It cannot be unpublished. It cannot be de-listed. It cannot be deleted
.
Twitter hasn’t banned them, though some are calling for that too.
Infowars has replied with a free Infowars App which is currently more popular than CNN:
InfoWars is currently the fourth most popular free app on the Apple App Store, beating CNN, the New York Times, Google News, HuffPost, and dozens of other mainstream news outlets.
InfoWars is called far-right, conspiracy theorist, and the usual insults which are never applied to people who chant conspiracies that fossil fuel controls public opinion, Congress, and the media, or who reckon that the UN should control the weather. It’s not a site I visit much, but in the spirit of free speech we fight back by sharing all the links they want banned. Let the Streisand effect punish the authoritarians who can’t win debates so they try to silence opponents.
Just in: Where will it stop? Twitter has now suspended a Ron Paul Institute executive account and other Libertarians like @ThomasEWoods, and @scotthortonshow.
‘Truth is treason in empire of lies’: Ron Paul on Big Tech censorship
Breitbart are all over this new mass censorship move. Presumably they are next on the list. After them, climate deniers…
That free-thinkers who dare disagree,
With what Leftists dictate,
Will be censored for hate,
And to speak out no longer be free.