Canadian Politics Today

As I recall they mostly dismiss the alt-right as racists, and bemoan how the term has been stretched to encompass too many people - that there are few who are actually alt-right, and stretching it makes it seem like they are some kind of big, powerful force when they're simply not. They also talk about the outrage industry of the internet and mobs that get organized against every little thing.

I'll reserve comment until I watch it.

I agree that there are more important things to worry about than lunatics like Jones, but some free speech advocates are of the opinion that all speech is protected (aside from lawsuits for slander/libel) or none is.

Why "aside from"?  If you're willing to concede exceptions in some circumstances (slander, libel, inciting violence, shouting fire in a theatre...) then clearly the principle is not absolute and at this point it becomes a question of where to draw the lines.

And again, their desire to discuss the deplatforming of Alex Jones without actually discussing the reasons he was deplatformed is a big fail. Alex Jones regularly commits slander and arguably incites violence as well. If those are exceptions to free speech that free speech advocates agree on, then they ought to agree that he stepped over the line.

And the idea that private businesses like Facebook and Youtube and Twitter don't have any business establishing terms of use for their services strikes me as something that merits a lot of discussion, they just accept it as a given that these are utilities like water or electricity. They're not. They have shareholders, they generate revenue, and maintaining the support of large numbers of users is important to their bottom line.  In the case of Twitter, one of the draws of Twitter is supposed to be the opportunity to interact directly with famous people.  Famous people are now starting to leave Twitter because of ongoing harrassment from alt-right goons.  As famous people leave, and as these harrassment campaigns themselves put a black eye on Twitter's public image, it's conceivable that Twitter usership will decline if this is allowed to go on unchecked. Is Twitter supposed to just it back and do nothing?


 -k