In an opinion article published in the Sept. 18 issue of The Johnsonian, there was an article critiquing various social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Spotify for banning several alt-right influencers including Alex Jones and Milo Yinnapolous from their sites.
The author of the article claims that under the Constitution, Americans have a right to freedom of speech, but today’s society is not allowing that to happen. Upon initially reading the article, I disagreed with a lot of what the author said, but partially understood his point of view. He mentioned some good points about how social media has become a primary outlet for many Americans gathering their news and therefore censoring certain users hinders people from seeing issues from multiple points of view. However, upon a second reading, it came to light that there were a lot of factual and logical errors throughout. Both myself and the law disagrees that these social media platforms are out of line for banning certain people for the things they post.
First and foremost, the Constitution is a federal legal document. This means that Americans are able to say what they want free from government consequences. This means that citizens can say what they want without consequences of the law. It does not mean that citizens are free from the social consequences of what they say. Just because we have free speech does not mean that you can say whatever you want without getting fired from your job or banned from social media. Social media sites are not a public platform, they are private companies.
When you make a social media account, you agree to the platform’s terms and conditions. Many people don’t read them before they register for an account, however, the agreement includes a set of community standards that you agree to abide by. In signing up for this private platform, you are giving those platforms the right to censor you if you violate their terms as per the contract you made with them.
Jones is the creator of an alt-right conspiracy theorist website called InfoWars. According to Facebook, they banned Jones for violating their bullying and harassment policy on The Alex Jones Channel page, the Alex Jones page, the InfoWars page and the InfoWars Nightly News page. At first, the pages were still up and Jones was banned, however, after further investigation the pages have been taken down “for glorifying violence, which violates our graphic violence policy, and using dehumanizing language to describe people who are transgender, Muslims and immigrants, which violates our hate speech policies.”
Additionally, InfoWars was taken down after being reporting for posting fake news, which is in direct contradiction with what the author of the other article wrote when he said that censoring these people is blocking social media users from receiving news.
Many of the people banned from social media claim they no longer have a platform, however, there are plenty of other ways to have your voice heard that is not reliant on social media. Jones’ InfoWars website is still up and running, Yiannopolus still often makes headlines and is involved in alt-right activism. Their “careers” are hardly over.
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. have no obligation to be a pillar of first amendment rights. They are private companies with private interests, and those interests include not having people on their websites promoting hate or violence. They are well within their bounds to ban people who are not only offending, but harming people who are not like them. These social media outlets recognize the power of words, and they do not and should not take hate speech lightly.
Photo: Olivia Esselman/ The Johnsonian
