Alex Jones

[Brisketexan 105,077]

9 minutes ago, Mole said:

Maybe this where the disconnect is. I tend to see information and ideas as something more than a commodity. We have a much greater responsibility to get this right than we do getting the right desk lamps in Target. There might be a line where removing someone from every major social media platform would be a public good long-term, but it makes me very uncomfortable. This probably isn't the start of a dystopian hellscape, but those movies tend to start with similar moves. 

I'd bet that this will be a positive financially for Alex Jones - I'd bet his believers are now fully committed true believers - but I think we should look at this beyond Alex Jones. He already has his platform. If I put a giant chalkboard in my front yard and invited everyone to write whatever they want on it, I'd still have the right to erase whatever I want since it's my chalkboard. If over time, my chalkboard became the primary/only source of local information in my little town, my right to erase would become pretty powerful. If I then banned someone and told them they are free to buy their own chalkboard, I'd have that right, but I would have essentially silenced them. I don't see that as a positive even if no one's rights were violated. 

And if this is the beginning of the end of reptilian shape-shifter conspiracy videos, the world just got a little darker.

In the public space, we have time, place, and manner restrictions.  You can't stand up in your local city council meeting and yell at the mayor and call him a cocksucker during your three minutes of public comment time.  And, you can't have more than three minutes, even if you behave.

Private discourse is not different.  I may invite a group of you to sit around my table and have a conversation about the issues of the day. But if one of you sits on the end, yells at the top of your lungs about how person X is a shapeshifter who smells of sulphur and is a crisis actor and everything everyone believes is all bullshit fed to them by the secret cabal of Somoan tech experts who filter all of our media content, I'm going to tell you to tone it the fuck down or hit the fucking road.

You don't get to fucking intentionally lie, over and over, and over.  You don't get to fucking defame.  And I'll be goddamned if I'm going to give you the platform to do it.  In your chalkboard example, the person who is abusing the system is the person writing their bullshit rants on the chalkboard, NOT the person who says "cut it the fuck out."

[Brisketexan 105,077]

9 minutes ago, Chooky said:

Where can I go to revel in my hard-earned freedom to say disparaging things about Eskimos?  

I suspect that you could disparage the Inuit to your heart's content in Alabama -- nobody there would even have a clue what you were talking about.

[Chooky 13,307]

8 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

I suspect that you could disparage the Inuit to your heart's content in Alabama -- nobody there would even have a clue what you were talking about.

Cool.  Who provides the donuts?

[Biff Tannen 45,665]

Did someone up thread compare Alex Jones to Colbert and Kimmel?

[Brisketexan 105,077]

19 minutes ago, SpiralOut said:

These policies have been in place for years, they just happen to be kicking in now in the Age of Trump. 

Oh, and I meant to comment on this (the timing issue as well), but the edit function is too quick on the draw these days.

This is much like the defense fired employees assert -- "you've had an unexcused absence from work policy for years....my file reflects that I missed at least 5 days each of the last 4 years, and there's nothing negative in my review about it....but this past year, when I skipped 10 days [including the day that I was really needed on the floor], you fire me, citing the 'unexcused absence' policy!  Suspicious that you'd just be citing it now!"

No, what happens is, in order to NOT seem to be like -- well, exactly what they're accusing of -- platforms and employers cut shitty posters and shitty employees TOO MUCH slack.  Then, when they finally say "okay, this has gotten fucking ridiculous, you're gone," the bad actor bitches about it, and cites the inconsistent timing, saying "you didn't have a problem with it before!"  It's logically fallacious.  Bullshit dissemination of outright fucking lies, demonization, defamation, and hate speech has reached epidemic levels.  Consumers are tired of it, and platforms are tired of it.  So they've had enough, and are telling the bad actors to GTFO.  Better late than never.

[jimmyjazz 45,891]

Can I please get some names of these libtard versions of Alex Jones?  

[Bama Chick 28,596]

I suspect that you could disparage the Inuit to your heart's content in Alabama -- nobody there would even have a clue what you were talking about.

Sigh........I know what eskimos are damnit!!!

[NameAlreadyInUse 5,111]

14 minutes ago, SpiralOut said:

The olds vote Republican.  The olds are the only people who still listen to regular radio.  I could flip your argument around by mentioning how leftist politics has FLOURISHED on late-night TV with the likes of Colbert, Kimmel, etc. 

Also, isn't it odd how all of these corporations considered people like Jones A-OK while Trump was just a goofball on TV and Obama was in office?  They had no problem profiting off them then.  It's only with the rise of Trump and the increasing popularity of idiots like Jones that now something needs to be done.  Funny how that works.

But it's all position-neutral policies, right?  These policies have been in place for years, they just happen to be kicking in now in the Age of Trump.  You gonna try and sell me some ocean front property in Arizona for your next trick, Brisket? 

Personally, I'm all for people, ya know, acting like adults.  If someone says some stupid, awful shit you either ridicule them or ignore it.  Silencing them just gives them credibility while also setting you up to be silenced in the future. 

Jones is a Weekly World News type.  He found his niche and has figured out how to make a living at it.  The problem with that niche is you have to get ever more outrageous as you go.  If you don't, people get bored and quit reading you.  Weekly World News finally reached the edge of outrageousness and couldn't keep up with the changing way that people consume media and went out of business.  Jones learned the lesson and has to continue to get further and further out there to keep his audience.  At some point a ways back he crossed the line, and they finally realized they need to actually enforce the lines in their TOS if they want to stay in business.  

[NameAlreadyInUse 5,111]

54 minutes ago, Mole said:

Maybe this where the disconnect is. I tend to see information and ideas as something more than a commodity. We have a much greater responsibility to get this right than we do getting the right desk lamps in Target. There might be a line where removing someone from every major social media platform would be a public good long-term, but it makes me very uncomfortable. This probably isn't the start of a dystopian hellscape, but those movies tend to start with similar moves. 

I'd bet that this will be a positive financially for Alex Jones - I'd bet his believers are now fully committed true believers - but I think we should look at this beyond Alex Jones. He already has his platform. If I put a giant chalkboard in my front yard and invited everyone to write whatever they want on it, I'd still have the right to erase whatever I want since it's my chalkboard. If over time, my chalkboard became the primary/only source of local information in my little town, my right to erase would become pretty powerful. If I then banned someone and told them they are free to buy their own chalkboard, I'd have that right, but I would have essentially silenced them. I don't see that as a positive even if no one's rights were violated. 

And if this is the beginning of the end of reptilian shape-shifter conspiracy videos, the world just got a little darker.

You didn't silence them, you simply gave them the power to create their own platform instead of using yours.  Katy did the same thing at Hornfans, and bleep blam bloop here we are at Surly.

[Hugo Stiglitz 23,367]

11 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

Can I please get some names of these libtard versions of Alex Jones?  

The best example is Louise Mench/Patribiotics and she’s not really a great liberal.  She was FOR Brexit. 

She also pushes some stuff that later turns out to be true but make no mistake, she’s fucking crazy.

She spreads falsehoods and character assassinates big voices in the resistance.  

She also has a loyal cult-like following.

[Kyrie Eleison 9,312]

from the video above..."It's kind of disconcerting to realize that the best candidate for the most powerful position in the world is a lizard."

that has to be the greatest crazy thing ever uttered in the history of crazy...

[SpiralOut 1,813]

21 minutes ago, NameAlreadyInUse said:

Jones is a Weekly World News type.  He found his niche and has figured out how to make a living at it.  The problem with that niche is you have to get ever more outrageous as you go.  If you don't, people get bored and quit reading you.  Weekly World News finally reached the edge of outrageousness and couldn't keep up with the changing way that people consume media and went out of business.  Jones learned the lesson and has to continue to get further and further out there to keep his audience.  At some point a ways back he crossed the line, and they finally realized they need to actually enforce the lines in their TOS if they want to stay in business.  

THIS is how you go after Alex Jones.  Not with huge, influential corporations playing politics on who and who doesn't fall under their "position-neutral" rules of conduct.  But with regular, everyday people who have been harmed by Jones taking him to court and kicking his ass.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/07/business/media/alex-jones-free-speech-not-protected.html

[Brisketexan 105,077]

19 minutes ago, Kyrie Eleison said:

from the video above..."It's kind of disconcerting to realize that the best candidate for the most powerful position in the world is a lizard."

that has to be the greatest crazy thing ever uttered in the history of crazy...

Typed like a man who's never read an affidavit written by a dog.  So, I'ma calling you a liar.

[Mole 4,330]

58 minutes ago, Kyrie Eleison said:

from the video above..."It's kind of disconcerting to realize that the best candidate for the most powerful position in the world is a lizard."

that has to be the greatest crazy thing ever uttered in the history of crazy...

It might be crazy, but it's hard to argue with.

[maninblack 7,974]

What would be nice is for those same companies to kick a few of the leftist hate mongers off as well.  Don't turn Alex fucking Jones of all people into a martyr for the nutjobs on the right.  All of them getting rid of him in a day while terrorists still have Twitter accounts, people preaching hate against whitey on their YT channels stay up, etc. is just asking for trouble.
Prove that this really is a move to limit shitty people and not just politically motivated.  Otherwise, you've just given crazy-town someone they can rally around while making it look like you're just using your rules/policies as a political tool.

It's politically motivated though. Twitter is perfectly fine with folks working to normalize pedophilia so the notion that this is altruistic is the height of naivete. You know that but the usual cast of government bootlickers are here for the circle jerk.

[Brisketexan 105,077]

35 minutes ago, maninblack said:

It's politically motivated though. Twitter is perfectly fine with folks working to normalize pedophilia so the notion that this is altruistic is the height of naivete. You know that but the usual cast of government bootlickers are here for the circle jerk.

Quote

Twitter has now blocked more than 1 million terrorism accounts from its service.

The social network on Thursday published a blog post detailing the highlights from its 12th biannual Twitter Transparency Report, where it reveals information about accounts it’s removed, inquiries from governments, and data requests. In that post, Twitter revealed that it removed nearly 275,000 terrorist accounts between July 1, 2017 and December 31, 2017. While that was down 8.4% compared to the prior period, the company revealed that it has now banned more than 1.2 million terrorist accounts from its service since August 2015.

Yeah.  Twitter lets everyone else get away with shit, and only bans Alex Jones and crew.

Jesus, do some of you even read what you write before you click submit.

[safe sex 11,698]

38 minutes ago, maninblack said:

It's politically motivated though. Twitter is perfectly fine with folks working to normalize pedophilia 

Explain

[maninblack 7,974]

Yeah.  Twitter lets everyone else get away with shit, and only bans Alex Jones and crew.
Jesus, do some of you even read what you write before you click submit.

I didn't mention terrorism. Did you read before clicking submit

[Brisketexan 105,077]

11 minutes ago, maninblack said:

I didn't mention terrorism. Did you read before clicking submit

No, you vaguely alluded to pedophilia -- and I have no idea what you're talking about. But I do know that Twitter etc have deleted literally millions of accounts for a variety of reasons that have nothing to do with persecuting poor nutbar conservatives like Alex Jones: harassment of specific individuals, terrorism/inciting violence, copyright violations, etc. --- all of those have been a basis for shutting down accounts.  Alex and his alt-right crowd aren't special snowflakes.  They're assholes who repeatedly behaved poorly and finally got called on the carpet for it.  Cry me a fucking river.  If you see some accounts promoting pedophilia that you think need to be shut down, I encourage you to report them.

[bad_teammate 13,192]

feelin' cute

might delete later

 

 

[atomheartbevo 89,629]

4 hours ago, SpiralOut said:

Also, isn't it odd how all of these corporations considered people like Jones A-OK while Trump was just a goofball on TV and Obama was in office?  They had no problem profiting off them then.  It's only with the rise of Trump and the increasing popularity of idiots like Jones that now something needs to be done.  Funny how that works.

But it's all position-neutral policies, right?  These policies have been in place for years, they just happen to be kicking in now in the Age of Trump. 

It's being lost in the shuffle to the casual followers of this stuff, but some major things did happen in the Alex Jones saga recently (not talking about his divorce) that put a lot of companies on the "okay, this is truly fucked up".  

Namely, last Wednesday here in Austin, a couple of the defamation lawsuits against Jones/InfoWars started playing out in court.  These are the lawsuits from parents of Sandy Hook victims, and the parents were called liars by Jones/InfoWars, and were extensively harassed by InfoWars followers (stalking the parents every time they moved, posting their info online, etc.).  

On top of that, there's a lawsuit from a guy falsely identified as the Parkland shooter.

Quote

On Wednesday in an Austin courtroom, the struggle of the Sandy Hook families to hold to account Alex Jones, a powerful leader of this online community, will reach a crossroads. Lawyers for Noah Pozner’s parents will seek to convince a Texas judge that they — and by extension the families of eight other victims in the 2012 shooting that killed 20 first graders and six adults — have a valid defamation claim against Mr. Jones, whose Austin-based Infowars media operation spread false claims that the shooting was an elaborate hoax.

..........

The Pozner hearing is a bellwether in three cases, including another in Texas and one in Connecticut, filed by relatives of nine Sandy Hook victims. It comes as the social media platforms Mr. Jones relies upon to spread incendiary claims initiate efforts to curb him.

The day after the Pozner case, in the same courthouse, is a hearing in a separate defamation case against Mr. Jones brought by Marcel Fontaine, who was falsely identified on Infowars’ website as the gunman in the Parkland, Fla., school shooting in February. Mr. Fontaine, who lives in Massachusetts, has never visited Florida. The Pozner family and Mr. Fontaine are being represented by Mark Bankston of Farrar & Ball, a law firm based in Houston.

On top of that, it came out last week that Jones was suing those parents of the dead kids for $100,000 to cover his own court costs.

I think those platforms should have started kicking him off their platform well before now, but there's a very good possibility that his shit was able to fly under the radar, given the interference from the crazy Trump/Trumpkins shit over the past two years or so, but the lawsuits starting to play out in court last week got everybody's attention.

I just don't see it as a coincidence that all of this played out just as his latest legal drama kicked into high gear.

[Lurch 5,922]

[Incredulity 11,655]

12 minutes ago, Lurch said:

 

Well, darn if he could have worked in gas lighting, fake news and Nazi we would have the whole family of polit-speak dujour in one tweet.

[Hugo Stiglitz 23,367]

 

[Brisketexan 105,077]

2 hours ago, bad_teammate said:

feelin' cute

might delete later

 

 

Oh come on!  Is nobody going to call him on the bullshit quote?  For fuck's sake, yes, Johnny said it...but it was a COVER, of HURT by NIN.  Quote the original artist, you slobbering roided-up turd gobbler.  You owe the world that much.  You've managed to insult two fucking musical artists with one tweet.  Eat a bag of polonium, you fucknugget.

[Hornius Emeritus 12,450]

I fail to see why this is an issue.  I've got almost 700,000 followers on Facebook and have somehow managed to not run afoul of their censorship.

Alex and his cohorts are free to start their own Facebook, right? 

[TornACL 7,698]

4 hours ago, maninblack said:

It's politically motivated though. Twitter is perfectly fine with folks working to normalize pedophilia so the notion that this is altruistic is the height of naivete. You know that but the usual cast of government bootlickers are here for the circle jerk.

Uh... Exsqueeze me? 

[Bullneck 19,073]

2 hours ago, bad_teammate said:

feelin' cute

might delete later

 

 

Wow, how sad.  Poor guy.  He's much worse off that the families of the Sandy Hook shooting he lies about.  

[Bullneck 19,073]

10 hours ago, SpiralOut said:

What would be nice is for those same companies to kick a few of the leftist hate mongers off as well.  Don't turn Alex fucking Jones of all people into a martyr for the nutjobs on the right.  All of them getting rid of him in a day while terrorists still have Twitter accounts, people preaching hate against whitey on their YT channels stay up, etc. is just asking for trouble.

Prove that this really is a move to limit shitty people and not just politically motivated.  Otherwise, you've just given crazy-town someone they can rally around while making it look like you're just using your rules/policies as a political tool.

This isn't about keeping score.

[Bullneck 19,073]

7 hours ago, Mole said:

Maybe this where the disconnect is. I tend to see information and ideas as something more than a commodity. We have a much greater responsibility to get this right than we do getting the right desk lamps in Target. There might be a line where removing someone from every major social media platform would be a public good long-term, but it makes me very uncomfortable. This probably isn't the start of a dystopian hellscape, but those movies tend to start with similar moves. 

I'd bet that this will be a positive financially for Alex Jones - I'd bet his believers are now fully committed true believers - but I think we should look at this beyond Alex Jones. He already has his platform. If I put a giant chalkboard in my front yard and invited everyone to write whatever they want on it, I'd still have the right to erase whatever I want since it's my chalkboard. If over time, my chalkboard became the primary/only source of local information in my little town, my right to erase would become pretty powerful. If I then banned someone and told them they are free to buy their own chalkboard, I'd have that right, but I would have essentially silenced them. I don't see that as a positive even if no one's rights were violated. 

And if this is the beginning of the end of reptilian shape-shifter conspiracy videos, the world just got a little darker.

Your post misses some basic logic.  He can say what he wants, when he wants.  The free megaphone just got taken away.  Apparently that makes you sad for some reason.  Why don't you involve yourself in something useful rather than listening to made up garbage?

[TornACL 7,698]

Back when Alex Jones was ranting about black helicopters on Austin public television, if you had told me that he'd somehow continue to grow consistently MORE insane over 25 years, I wouldn't believe it. 

[TornACL 7,698]

I am just simply amazed that we've never had an American tragedy over the past 20 years that wasn't part of a secret grand government scheme. 

We're on quite the winning streak fellas! 

[Horn Under a Bad Sign 20,392]

12 minutes ago, TornACL said:

Back when Alex Jones was ranting about black helicopters on Austin public television, if you had told me that he'd somehow continue to grow consistently MORE insane over 25 years, I wouldn't believe it. 

 

Yup. Last time I saw Alex was when he was coked out of his mind in an alley behind 6th street in downtown Austin.  This must have been 97 or 98. My friend Shelly, who had a show on Austin Access, pointed him out to me.  I was like "oh, yeah ... that's that crazy guy who ...."  And Shelly said, "Yup. They'll give just about anybody a microphone these days."

[atomheartbevo 89,629]

15 minutes ago, TornACL said:

Back when Alex Jones was ranting about black helicopters on Austin public television, if you had told me that he'd somehow continue to grow consistently MORE insane over 25 years, I wouldn't believe it. 

If I told you back then that he’d interview a Presidential candidate who would actually win later that year, you’d be wondering how the hell Ron Paul would pull that off. 

 

[tchookem 3,900]

Alex ONLY drives angry.

Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk

[atomheartbevo 89,629]

 

[Mole 4,330]

1 hour ago, Bullneck said:

Your post misses some basic logic.  He can say what he wants, when he wants.  The free megaphone just got taken away.  Apparently that makes you sad for some reason.  Why don't you involve yourself in something useful rather than listening to made up garbage?

2

This should be the cloak room motto.

[BrickHorn 18,216]

http://mobile.twitter.com/Millie__Weaver/status/1026805202580647936

Dammit.  How do you embed tweets?

Edited August 8, 2018 by BrickHorn

[Lurch 5,922]

Don’t worry, it was posted yesterday

[Biff Tannen 45,665]

11 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

Oh come on!  Is nobody going to call him on the bullshit quote?  For fuck's sake, yes, Johnny said it...but it was a COVER, of HURT by NIN.  Quote the original artist, you slobbering roided-up turd gobbler.  You owe the world that much.  You've managed to insult two fucking musical artists with one tweet.  Eat a bag of polonium, you fucknugget.

This was my immediate thought.  That's Trent Reznor you jerk off.

[NameAlreadyInUse 5,111]

His target audience knows who Johnny Cash is but have no fucking clue who Trent Reznor is, and if he tipped them off he listened to that faggy devil music, they wouldn't listen to him anyway.  He picked the right name there for his marks.

[Lucid 3]

Holy shit there are a lot of reptilian psychic vampire pederasts ITT

Edited August 8, 2018 by Lucid
fuck you that's why

[MaybeACoordinator 8,349]

Jones could probably get right back on all those platforms if he agreed to run graphics -- that viewers could not skip -- reading "THIS IS NOT NEWS IN ANY WAY SHAPE OR FORM. MR JONES IS NOT A JOURNALIST. HE IS A PERFORMANCE ARTIST, AND THIS IS HIS CHARACTER'S VIEW OF CURRENT EVENTS, WHICH MAY OR MAY NOT BEAR ANY RESEMBLANCE TO OBJECTIVE REALITY WHATSOEVER."

"AGAIN, THIS IS NOT NEWS. IT'S WHAT WE CALL ART."

"THANKS, THE INFO WARS TEAM." 

[JimmyJames 12,271]

14 hours ago, Horn Under a Bad Sign said:

 

Yup. Last time I saw Alex was when he was coked out of his mind in an alley behind 6th street in downtown Austin.  This must have been 97 or 98. My friend Shelly, who had a show on Austin Access, pointed him out to me.  I was like "oh, yeah ... that's that crazy guy who ...."  And Shelly said, "Yup. They'll give just about anybody a microphone these days."

No way Alex does coke. There’s just no way. 

And how the fuck does he not know Trent reznor wrote hurt and thinks Johnny cash did? He’s 44 years old. It’s not like he’s 25 or 60. What kind of crap was he listening to in the early 90s? The Nelson twins? 

[Orca of Peace 109]

[shnsajax 3,591]

You mean this?

https://www.yahoo.com/news/infowars-reporter-gets-slammed-claiming-221229983.html

[Pancho 44,712]

 

[NameAlreadyInUse 5,111]

Well of course, because where they live is relevant to whether he was defaming them or not.  This is one of those times I miss they eye roll animated emoji back on hornfans.

[JimmyJames 12,271]

53 minutes ago, Pancho Negro said:

 

Sometime lawyers make really dumb arguments without thinking about the public ramifications of it. While that information is technically supposed to be in a declaration, many court decisions say it doesn’t matter, and they’re right. And that’s what the court will say in this case.

In short, lawyers can be dumbasses and tone deaf. 

[Bullneck 19,073]

1 hour ago, Pancho Negro said:

 

Grasping for straws, I see.  The end is nigh, thankfully.