First Amendment Experts Warn Facebook Banning InfoWars Could Set Completely Reasonable Precedent For Free Speech ⇥ theonion.com
Acknowledging the widespread repercussions from the act of corporate censorship, first amendment experts warned Monday that Facebook’s decision to ban InfoWars could set a completely reasonable precedent for free speech. “If we allow giant media platforms to single out individual users for harassing the families of murdered kindergarteners, it could lead to a nightmare scenario of measured and well-thought-out public discourse,” said Georgetown law professor Charles F. Abernathy, cautioning that it was sometimes very easy for private organizations to draw a line between constitutionally protected free speech and the slanderous ravings of a bloated lunatic hawking snake oil supplements. […]
There’s no reason any platform should feel compelled to carry this unique brand of paranoia-based propaganda.
Update: Steve Kovach, CNBC:
Apple was the first major tech company to make a move against Alex Jones of Infowars on Sunday night by removing his podcast from iTunes.
But the Infowars iPhone app, which hosts some of the same content and themes found on the podcast, still lives on in the company’s App Store. In fact, the app had skyrocketed from below the top 10 to become the fourth most popular app in the news category — beating out the CNN and Fox News apps — by Tuesday morning. The boost was likely caused by increased downloads given the news Monday that Infowars was banned from several tech platforms.
It’s genuinely remarkable and alarming that such a garbage source is the fourth most popular free news app on the App Store right now, even in Canada.
But why is it still there? Apple clearly doesn’t want to index Jones’ hours of supplement sales radio interspersed with paranoia-driven intimidation and outrageous commentary, so why would it host an app that provides the same? The same is true of Google — the app is still available in the Google Play store, despite Jones being banned from YouTube.