Trigger Warning

Big Tech should not have the sole authority to ban people

“When you tear out a man's tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you're only telling the world that you fear what he might say.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Clash of Kings

People who live in civilized society need the ability to debate uncomfortable ideas. Alex Jones is someone that we can all agree is a controversial figure. Whether you are a fan of his conspiracy theories or not, he was, and still is, a major figure online. When all the major social media companies banded together to effectively ban Alex Jones from the internet, a dangerous precedent was set. Huge corporations came together and decided that this person, did not deserve a voice. I’m well aware of the counter-arguments, “He was spreading misinformation”, “He said Sandy Hook was a false flag”, “These are private companies who can decide who they want or don’t want on their platform”, “He was friends with Trump”…and so on. As uncomfortable as it is to accept, Alex Jones deserves a voice. If his voice is infringed on, then what will stop anyone else’s voice from being infringed on? There was not a public process that prompted his banning. We all woke up one day to learn that he was banned. No debate or anything. Not only that, but his ideas should be debated in the court of public opinion. Maybe he weaponized his audience by feeding them biased information, or maybe he was a truth-teller who terrified the establishment. Depending on your political alignment, you believe opposite things about him. Large corporations that control a significant portion of the web cannot be allowed to arbitrarily ban people without a process that involves the public.

Judge Mighty Mightor…. is not convinced by my argument

A lot of us live in ideological bubbles. The simple fact that I defended Alex Jones against censorship made someone throw their laptop against the wall. To be clear, I’m not defending Alex Jones because I support his brand. The fact that he was fined $900 million for his statements about Sandy Hook proves my point. If someone is making an obviously false statement, then allow it to be debated in court. Ideologically, if large corporations that control the majority of the web on ramps can ban anyone without any sort of transparency or due process, then what’s stopping them from banning you? All ideas are controversial. When Galileo said that the Earth revolved around the Sun, that was controversial. Turns out he was right. The point is that ideas need to be publicly debated. The recent trend of large corporations dictating what discussions are allowed to happen is dangerous. “It’s their platform, they can do whatever they want,” but does that make it right? During the Covid pandemic, it was demonstrated over and over again that debate was needed, to figure out the correct course of action to take in an unprecedented time. First, we weren’t supposed to wear a mask to save them for the medical professionals, but then we were all forced to wear a mask. A lot of Covid misinformation was propagated, but guess what? Some of that stuff was right. Many times, the CDC had to backtrack and reverse policies that they previously deemed incorrect.

Galileo and the Pope Fell Out

Am I suggesting that misinformation should run amok? That the institutions should be powerless to determine what is misinformation and what isn’t. Yea, kind of. Given that’s not a popular position for most people, allow me to suggest a compromise. Take questionable content and maximize debate. Allow a thread of replies for and against the case to be suggested, then allow debate to be maximized. Create a new kind of interface that allows proponents for and against the subject to debate each other and quantify it with some kind of decentralized point system. Then score the content creator account. This sounds a lot like a social credit system, except it’s not controlled by any one entity, but a decentralized user base. Ideas are important. Corporations and governments have selfish motives for wanting to censor or proliferate information. The government or any corporation cannot be allowed to ban thought leaders, no matter how dangerous. The solution to bad ideas is debate.

such elegance… LOL

Ideas are important. Corporations and governments have selfish motives for wanting to censor or proliferate information. Bad Ideas are equally important because it allows us to determine what a Good Idea is. Why am I defending the indefensible? Am I a conspiracy theorist who thinks that the globalist … something, something, something? No, I’m not. Am I a Kanye West fan who falls for his PR campaigns? No. Do I subscribe to Hustlers University and think Andrew Tate is the second coming of masculinity? Again…no. It doesn’t matter if I agree with these people. It should not be the role of the corporation to arbitrarily ban people off the internet. PayPal shouldn’t be so bold as to want to fine people $2,500 for making statements they don’t agree with. First of all, it’s not their money. Second of all, who defines hate speech? The Citizens United ruling says that Corporations are people too, if we speak negatively against a corporation… Is that hate speech? We have to take a serious step back and realize that our kindness and goodwill can be weaponized to clobber dissenting voices. Are we so naive to think that trusting corporations to dictate the winners and losers won’t backfire? The power of censorship must be decentralized because a corporation will never call itself out for wrongdoing, but they won’t hesitate to crush your voice. If you don’t agree, debate me in the comments.

Light your Tiki torches

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