Apple Removes Infowars from Podcast Directory

https://www.wsj.com/articles/apple-removes-infowars-from-podcast-directory-1533538681

by uptown • 8 years ago

223 226 8 years ago

wsj.com

tazjin• 8 years ago

With Apple, Facebook and Spotify doing this (and lots of reporting about it) I'd say ... cue the Streisand effect.

Sometimes it's better to just not do anything, but I guess that doesn't get you PR points.

dublinben• 8 years ago

I think the Streisand Effect is overstated. Apple has nearly two thirds of the podcast market.[0] Together with the other platforms that have removed these podcasts, upwards of three quarters of podcast listeners will no longer be able to easily access or discover this content. Starving this show of its largest audiences is more likely to cripple it, not galvanize it.

[0] https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-market-share-of-podcast-ap...

vanderZwan• 8 years ago

Eh, no. The Streisand effect applies to getting attention to something that wouldn't have otherwise, and gaining momentum because of it.

This is about providing a platform to someone who willfully spreads lies.

There has been research into the effects of Reddit clamping down on hate speech a few years ago. Guess what: not giving assholes a platform actually works. It's still a cesspool but less so than it used to be.

furyg3• 8 years ago

Got a link, I'd (genuinely) like to see this research!

tonysdg2• 8 years ago

Could you link if you have it? I'm genuinely curious.

I'm also suspicious -- what stops the aforementioned individuals from finding another website/forum? I seem to remember hearing that after Reddit closed down several of the more unsavory/flat-out-awful subreddits, a large contingent of those users moved to another site (can't remember which though).

FWIW, I support clamping down on hate speech, but only if it's accompanied by some form of education (otherwise, you're just hiding the problem).

foolrush4• 8 years ago

The inevitable discussion about the need for hate speech laws in the USA is lurking. Sadly, the USA had a chance at them a while back, but I believe it was Justice Scalia who struck it down?

staunch2• 8 years ago

Guess what: not giving assholes a platform actually works.

In other words, these platforms are powerful enough to silence people. Today, it's people you agree with silencing. Tomorrow, it may be people you disagree with silencing. It's not a good thing that massively powerful private companies are deciding what speech should be allowed and what should not. The law doesn't require it, but as users, we should demand that these major platforms are open to everyone, not just the ones that the majority currently approves of.

TooBrokeToBeg2• 8 years ago

The Streisand effect applies to getting attention to something that wouldn't have otherwise, and gaining momentum because of it. This is about providing a platform to someone who willfully spreads lies.

Those aren't orthogonal. They seem to both be true in this case (what "it is about" is subjective).

mgbmtl2• 8 years ago

I've seen Infowars regularly mocked in mainstream comedy TV shows. Shining light on Infowars misinformation / ill intent is probably a good thing.

Adding barriers to passive consumption, by vulnerable (misinformed) people, is probably also a good thing. It's not being censored/outlawed, just made slightly less convenient to access. Fake news are a threat to democracy.

jessriedel15• 8 years ago

"It's not outlawed, just inconvenient to access" is more than enough influence to dramatically (~90%) shape what information is consumed with no natural truth-seeking mechanism beyond your trust in the people imposing the inconvenience. There's a reason it's illegal for the government to do this, and we should demand that neutral platform organizations like Apple, Facebook, or a university don't do it either (which is not the same thing as saying that they should be forced by law to do it).

creaghpatr2• 8 years ago

It's gonna be awkward when comedy TV shows mock content that you can no longer access on facebook. Will comedy shows be reprimanded by fb in the future for posting show clips that contain cuts of Infowars saying crazy stuff?

adrianN• 8 years ago

Censoring "fake" news is not the way to a healthy democracy. Educating people on how to use different sources and do their own critical thinking is what we need.

bluthru• 8 years ago

passive consumption

It doesn't just show up in your podcast feed.

jumpman500• 8 years ago

Fake news isn't a threat to democracy. People have lied about shit and given false narratives for all time. An uneducated or easily influenced population is a risk to democracy. There is no easy fix for old and uneducated people, we just need to make sure the next generation is less susceptible to bad influences.

zouhair• 8 years ago

I totally disagree. I am sure cutting these dangerous people from the mainstream website will slowly kill them.

ndespres• 8 years ago

Do you really think that this action is going to bring more attention to Infowars? I really doubt whether the Streisand Effect is a factor here. Anyone who didn't know what Infowars is already won't be interested in this news.

wycs6• 8 years ago

deleted.

pjc505• 8 years ago

Only extremists on the right will be censored.

This is obviously not true. Apple has had a ridiculous "no politics" policy on the App Store for years, censoring the anti-war left.

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/538kan/apple-just...

krk83je• 8 years ago

It’s also factually true that human violence has enabled certain bloodlines the opportunity to advance, while hindering others.

I’m leery of people who cite one scientific data point alone. It smells like an appeal to authority. And you’re throwing up a strawman with your rhetoric about blocking a communist podcast.

Alex Jones himself has said in court it’s an act and he’s just an entertainer. Sometimes the act gets old and shows get canceled. Is that censorship?

In this case the show isn’t even canceled. Just removed from one of dozens of podcast directories. It’s still findable at the source. Your complaint is really about the creation of a slight inconvenience. There’s no real censorship here.

mikestew• 8 years ago

Lots of people don’t know where Barbara Streisand lives (despite the Streisand effect, I don’t). It would have to be a pretty deep cave you live in to not have heard of Alex Jones, especially if you stand any chance of enjoying his show.

garg• 8 years ago

I don't think the Streisand effect applies in this case. The site has repeatedly broken the terms of usage of all of these platforms. The ban should therefore appear reasonable to people.

The Streisand effect applies when the attempt is to hide or censor information for no reason other than hiding information.

creaghpatr2• 8 years ago

I'm most worried about Spotify, who already plays kingmaker for upcoming artists. They could use Twitter-like 'shadowban' techniques take punitive measures against 'bad' music artists. Because isn't there a lot of music that plausibly contains 'hate speech' or 'incitements of violence'?

Not saying they will, because they haven't indicated that yet, but they are working with the extremist SPLC to craft a policy around 'hate' content and 'hateful' content (the latter to presumably include content that isn't hate content but could be misconstrued as hate content, perhaps?).

https://newsroom.spotify.com/2018-05-10/spotify-announces-ne...

pjc505• 8 years ago

extremist SPLC

No.

maze-le• 8 years ago

Already happening:

http://www.metalsucks.net/2017/09/14/infant-annihilator-bann...

That was the moment when I cancelled my spotify account.

Oh and to be sure, they don't need to "working with the extremist SPLC" to do that. This ban has more to do with some sort of pseudo moral outrage, wich the right is quite capable of on their own.

untog• 8 years ago

Nah, the Streisand effect only applies when increased attention on a subject would result in a negative result. "Barbera Streisand wants photos of her beachfront mansion removed because she thinks it's an invasion of her privacy" reflects badly on Barbera Stresiand. "Apple is removing Infowars because it traffics in outright lies" reflects badly on Infowars.

satsuma3• 8 years ago

arguably having infowars be high up on the "most downloaded" podcast list would be worse. especially if they categorize themselves as news or politics instead of entertainment.

olivermarks• 8 years ago

important and accurate subhead:

'Move thrusts tech giant into the debate over censoring content on internet platforms'

sp3322• 8 years ago

Apple has been censoring podcasts all along. This debate might be about technicalities in the Terms of Service but it's not about censorship.

theseatoms• 8 years ago

I used to think the name "Infowars" was melodramatic, but I guess not.

nailer5• 8 years ago

FB has also removed Infowars' page.

https://www.facebook.com/InfoWars-80256732576/

FB doesn't cite a specific post (eg, the implication that some of the school shooting victims were part of a hoax), which is a pity.I dislike Infowars, but I like a consistently applied ToS:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dj6T8ppXoAIqbXB.jpg

'Glorifying violence' is vague - should all police/military/veterans/people who celebrate July 4 be banned from Facebook? How is 'glorifying violence' treated the same as 'graphic violence'? One is praising violent action, the other is depicting it. They are clearly not the same thing.

sp3322• 8 years ago

They removed four pages https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/08/enforcing-our-community... and they mention that the posts were made in the last week, so that probably narrows it down?

philjackson• 8 years ago

What if we find out the government were making the frogs gay?

iamdave8• 8 years ago

As an Austinite (well now Iowan) who grew up with plenty of Alex Jones on the airwaves, it's stuff like this I'll actually-in a morbid kind of way-really miss. I suppose you have to be exposed to it long enough to grow numb to it but Alex Jones became a source of entertainment as I grew older just to see what wackiness he'd come up with next. Gay frogs still manages to put a grin on my face even on my most stressful days.

It was almost a contest between he and the considerably less inflammatory but still uniquely weird John Aielli.

This isn't, nor should be read as a defense of Alex Jones by any sane person-but an acknowledgement of the absurd. I mean come on. Gay frogs? You gotta admit--it's chuckleworthy.

ModernMech• 8 years ago

I suppose you have to be exposed to it long enough to grow numb to it

That's why most of us consider Alex Jones to be a joke, but the reason Apple and Spotify are making this move is because many people, exposed long enough to Alex Jones, start to believe what Alex Jones has to say.

satsuma3• 8 years ago

if he was playing a character, and had disclaimers as such at the beginning, middle, and ending of his podcast, i'd love alex jones. kind of a "what would he say next?" sort of thing, mixed with plenty of onion-esque satire.

the problem is he's not. he holds these beliefs, and with his platform, he's leading other people to hold them as well. some are fairly benign, like gay frogs. others are downright sick, like calling the sandy hook kids crisis actors.

what i'm getting at is someone needs to mirror him, with disclaimers that everything that comes out of the host's mouth is ludicrous, asinine, and should never be considered rational thought. like the jackass intros, "you, and all your stupid little friends, should never try this at home."

pjc505• 8 years ago

Serious question: how do you make sure that none of this stuff you're listening to leaks into your perception of the real world? Are you sure you're just regarding it as some weird dystopian fiction, like Scarfolk or the SCP foundation, and not letting it affect your real politics?

neurobashing• 8 years ago

I agree; I "got into" Alex Jones because it was genuinely funny to see this narrative of a reality that exists only in video games and conspiracy fiction. It was so nakedly transparent as a kind of LARP and entertainment to front a largely boring reactionary conservatism (edit: and sell powders).

That all changed when either he "lost the plot" and began to believe it all, or the constant need to stay ahead of the news cycle (everything's a false flag, everyone in Hollywood or DC is a homosexual/pedophile/drug user, etc), combined with increasing mainstream coverage, make it genuinely harmful.

That the mask only drops in response to lawsuits is the tell, I think, and that's why I'm not really concerned about this having hugely unintended consequences and chilling effects. If his lawyers are to be believed (yeah, I know, don't @ me) then he's a grifter and actor but his storyline is harmful. No one has to carry his content; he can create his own media network and distribute it there.

gonzo• 8 years ago

“Keep Austin Weird” (but not that weird)

erdewit• 8 years ago

I believe the gay frogs thing is based on the effects of atrazine in the water:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100301151927.h...

Alex3917• 8 years ago

I mean that’s more or less accurate, is it not? Frog populations have been way down due to government policies on water quality and invasive species.

Uberphallus• 8 years ago

Infowars: "Californian tech communist gay froggers thwart free speech with help of nazi BDSM aliens"

DownGoat• 8 years ago

I'd download that.

thosakwe• 8 years ago

Only took them long enough.

onewhonknocks• 8 years ago

It's their store. Surely it's entirely their prerogative to decide which products they choose to sell or not sell.

e1ven• 8 years ago

Just to be clear - It looks like iTunes does allow you to subscribe by entering the RSS url directly.

They are removing the podcast from their directory of podcasts, not blocking the ability to subscribe.

rbanffy8• 8 years ago

There may be a market for an anti-malware that targets content like Inforwars and classifies it as malware.

I'd love to see that.

DanAndersen2• 8 years ago

Be careful what you wish for.

megaman22• 8 years ago

Alex Jones is a fruitcake, but I don't like this as a general trend. Effectively, once things aren't available on the main marketplace, they don't exist anymore for most people. RSS is still kind of a thing for podcasts, but everything wants to use either iTunes or Soundcloud etc. iTunes is so bad on Windows that I want to rip my hair out...

Shivetya• 8 years ago

First off, I have never listened to or read any of Infowars material, my knowledge is from what is reported. When the censoring is not meted out equally is when I get worried. I noticed in more than one article that they labeled specific groups you cannot say anything derogatory about but left it open that other groups may not be protected.

There should be no group selection, it should be all or nothing. We also need to be damn careful of the recent attempt to brand speech some groups do not agree with as "weaponizing speech" which seems to be a new means to get the government to step in. With hate speech the government is still very limited on First Amendment grounds however by branding some speech as "weaponized" it implies violence and that does not have the same protection.

Frankly I don't mind the haters being out there, at least then I know who they are. Let them post, let them march, because in public venues we can at least assess when they are truly dangerous or not.

tl;dr censoring is fine when applied equally, be wary of anyone trying to change how speech is labeled as a means to get the government to do their censoring for them

paulgb2• 8 years ago

I agree with the comments that it's their store and they can do what they want with it, and Jones actively uses his platform to bully individuals so I'm not disappointed to see it diminished.

That said, the trend of centralization of Podcasts worries me a bit. Podcasts were one of the few real success stories of an open syndication format that allowed an ecosystem of podcast apps to flourish. I've noticed a trend where podcasts make it hard to find the RSS URL or even make it hidden and require you subscribe on the major platforms. Let's not turn podcasting into the same walled garden we have for every other aspect of syndicated content!

jessriedel15• 8 years ago

The fact that private stores can do what they want does not mean that they should do what they want or that consumers shouldn't demand otherwise. More generally, not all bad behavior is or should be illegal. The fact that the first amendment only legally applies to the government does not mean that free speech as a concept doesn't have moral force on other organizations.

For instance, we expect universities to act as neutral debate platforms for all sorts of views that are not endorsed by the university administration. When they fail to do this, they are not legally penalized (modulo constraints from accepting government funding), but we (should) lower their public esteem. Newspapers and online media companies like Apple and Facebook could and should be held to a similar standard by the public, although in practice they are unfortunately given more latitude.

pjc505• 8 years ago

""Debate"" needs to have a minimum legitimacy requirement to be taken seriously. You can't just make up a string of provably false stuff and use it as a pretext for harassment, Sandy Hook passim.

joe_the_user5• 8 years ago

More generally, not all bad behavior is or should be illegal.

Not all bad behaviors are illegal but calling for active, illegal harassment of an individual, which other people carry out, is, in fact, illegal and given this is often Jones' modus operandi, his activities are illegal and his overall strategy has involved staying one step ahead of lawsuits.

bunderbunder• 8 years ago

we expect universities to act as neutral debate platforms for all sorts of views that are not endorsed by the university administration

Public universities. I wouldn't dream of asking the same thing of Liberty University. The difference being, the one is a branch of government, and the other is not.

Free speech is narrowly intended to be something that limits the government's ability to impose restrictions on non-government entities for good reason. Asking private organizations (e.g., Liberty University) to follow the same limitations would undercut free speech by preventing ones with a particular point of view (e.g., a conservative Christian one) from actually being able to express that point of view.

Now, if we all wanted to agree that Facebook needs to be granted common carrier status for publicly arguing with your family about politics, that would be different.

baldfat• 8 years ago

Freedom of Speech != Speech without Consequences.

I can say what I want at work but I can get fired for that speech. Same thing you can loss your advertisers and your platforms for the same speech.

I grew up in the last house in Bethel, CT before Newtown (Sand Hook), heck my mom went to elementary school in Sandy Hook. Friends of mine had children in the school. People don't know how crazy it was the first 6 months there.

The tension was HUGE that first two weeks with Westboro Church trying to get there to protest (I knew that the people in CT would do everything to keep them away). Then the conspiracy crazies got involved and it just was a mess.

Still today I still get people who ask if it really happened. Those poor parents are hounded still. Think the Flat Earthers going after astronauts and multiply it by 10.

Jones is absolutely responsibly for his speech. Sure he can say it but platforms don't have to allow it. Terrorist, Nazis and Infowars should break every platform's policies.

SonicSoul2• 8 years ago

the consensus thus far has been any speech leading to harm/death is not allowed/legal (i.e. screaming FIRE in a theater). This is no different, we can sit here all day and try to assess who should be in charge but there is clear evidence InfoWars is leading to armed morons showing up in pizza places and/or harassing parents of school shooting victims. If this case was more nuanced i.e. suppressing political ideology i could see your point, but this is a pretty clear cut case of hate speech leading to real consequences

drivingmenuts2• 8 years ago

More generally, not all bad behavior is or should be illegal.

Apple hasn't said (that I know of) that Infowars speech is illegal. Merely that they want no part of it.

The fact that the first amendment only legally applies to the government does not mean that free speech as a concept doesn't have moral force on other organizations.

Morals differ between organizations and individuals (just ask any church, the supposed arbiters of morals). Morals are relative to groups and individuals because they are created without/despite the input of other groups and individuals. If there were an absolute moral authority (which would obviate the need for other sets of morals) then perhaps this might be different.

All of this to say: good riddance to bad rubbish. His followers may feel differently, but to Hell with them, too.

stuckinarut2• 8 years ago

or that consumers shouldn't demand otherwise

as a customer of Apple I'm delighted by this move.

ihuman• 8 years ago

The iTunes podcast directory still uses the original RSS feeds. You can use this bookmarklet to get the RSS feed from your browser https://github.com/djm/uncover-itunes-rss-bookmarklet

paulgb2• 8 years ago

Thanks for sharing this! I was able to subscribe to a podcast with an otherwise-hidden RSS feed.

KGy• 8 years ago

You can get them from https://podtail.com too.

ocdtrekkie3• 8 years ago

My main peeve with this is Google Podcasts which still doesn't allow you to subscribe to an RSS podcast. It solely allows you to listen to podcasts which Google is granted permission to upload to their own servers. As a podcast owner, I'm not comfortable agreeing to Google's terms, and have opted not to participate. To which I sometimes get complaints.

I don't understand why Google refuses to accept standard podcasting convention and let users consume my RSS feed direct and download my show from the servers I've provided.

For iTunes, as a counter example, de-listing InfoWars will hurt their discoverability obviously, but their listeners can easily subscribe themselves manually in the iTunes client.

rainbowmverse2• 8 years ago

That's weird considering you submit the podcast as an RSS feed. I didn't know they uploaded the audio to their own servers.

davvolun• 8 years ago

After Google Listen (and a long line of similar shutdowns -- Google Reader, Google Wave, GChat/Voice/Hangouts/Allo), why would you use Google Podcasts anyway?

I'm not affiliated in any way, but Pocket Casts has been running for years and is an excellent option on both iOS and Android. I know there are some other good options on Android as well, if Pockets Casts isn't your thing for some reason.

SonicSoul2• 8 years ago

Whenever i try sharing an episode with someone I end up searching that podcasts website for archive with unique episode urls. This is not optimal because it makes users load it up in a browser instead of player, but seems the only reliable way to share an episode. Otherwise the "share" link is app specific (i.e. itunes) or just takes a user to the podcast instead of individual episode. Seems like a lack of open standard to offer deep linking using "default" podcast player. also fuck InfoWars

rbanffy8• 8 years ago

RSS is still open. You can still host your RSS and your media. What Apple did is to make it harder to find. And that's it.

Bromskloss• 8 years ago

Jones actively uses his platform to bully individuals

Do you have an example of what you mean?

travmatt2• 8 years ago

Like the pizzagate conspiracy, or the targeting of sandy hook parents?

jhayward5• 8 years ago

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/31/us/politics/alex-jones-de...

[2] https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/23/us/alex-jones-sandy-hook-suit...

andrewclunn• 8 years ago

Read through the dead comments here on this topic. Now tell me censorship isn't political.

S-E-P• 8 years ago

Won't change anything. Do you really think that InfoWars listeners really use Apple as their only point of exposure.

Also a little hypocritical of Apple, they have some very inflammatory/deceptive podcasts run by some pretty nasty people, but because they aren't InfoWars it's ok.

Apple is not virtuous, nor will they ever be, regardless of what they want you to think.

xoa2• 8 years ago

Reposting this here since just after I posted in the Ars version of this that got marked as a dupe:

I consider myself an extremely strong First Amendment advocate and "free speech absolutist" when it comes to government force, and I am also uncomfortable about where the line should be for "private entities" that manage to achieve quasi-governmental levels of power, though I do not think that any level of non-violent restriction is directly comparable to censorship via the government's monopoly on physical force.

That said, a major question for me that has been growing bigger and bigger in my mind over the last decade is what exactly should be Free Speech's answer to denial of cognition attacks (and I want to be extra clear that it is a question, I have not been able to come to at all a satisfactory universal answer myself yet). Likely everyone on HN will be familiar with the concept of resource exhaustion attacks in the context of computers and networks. DOS mitigation has regrettably become a near requirement for any significant public facing Internet service. But fundamentally resource exhaustion attacks apply equally well to humans. In the idealized world of discussion and debate and philosophy abstract models of conduct are often used, but at the end of the day "implementation" still comes down to individual humans, each of whom only has so much mental capacity and so much time. And many arguments involving reality can easily be asymmetric too: it takes very little time and energy to make an assertion but a great deal to disprove it. Reality is under no obligation to be simple and elegant to human preferences.

I have seen this get put into practice with ever greater sophistication on a lot of my favorite forums. Someone arguing BS will throw out a bunch of simple stuff that takes a great deal of careful posting to show is wrong. If people volunteer their time to answer in that thread, it does no good in preventing the exact same assertions from being tossed out again (maybe remixed) in a new thread a week or month or whatever later. Eventually people just get tired or are busy. If they try to point towards a centralized source instead, that source can then be attacked and you see "argument from authority durr" and the like thrown out. It's bad faith but in a way that exploits a lot of the norms around free speech and argumentation, which classically didn't have the same scaling and automation threats. In fact, perhaps even more pernicious is when it's not bad faith but someone who has been fed a bunch of stuff they are arguing in all earnestness, yet there simply isn't time to address them individually. They must be directed to authorities and be expected to educate themselves on it.

I'm not sure what the answer is but we do clearly have a problem as some of the previous natural barriers due to cost of speech have fallen. It is common to speak of a "Marketplace of Ideas" when it comes to Free Speech, but it's important to remember that "Free Markets" are specific real tools that require regulatory support to function and have no goals of their own. Costs need to be internalized, information and processing ability needs to be symmetric, there needs to be a shared base of legal structure and norms to work on top of. Getting too far away from that results in market failure. I don't know how that might be translated to Free Speech but I do think we're seeing a "market of ideas failure" to some extent right now, and that it could easily get much worse in the near future unchecked. There is a need for better ways to improve the signal/noise cost function, and for systems to re-internalize that the point of Free Speech, of marketplaces of ideas or markets of anything at all, is to come up with good products. They're tools to serve humanity. Bad ones shouldn't be banned by force but they shouldn't be flourishing either, if they are then something isn't working.

eksemplar13• 8 years ago

I think the answer is fairly easy. If someone is an asshole online, you ban or ignore them.

Free speech is the right to speak your mind without being prosecuted by the government, it’s not the right to force your opinion on people who don’t want it.

xoa2• 8 years ago

To call that "fairly easy" seems a little overly glib maybe? I mean just look at the HN comments on this, or the comments on the WSJ article or the Ars version. Lots of people have internalized that banning people is "censorship" and nearly always wrong, and that the "right answer" to bad information is more information. Of course that framework for dealing with info attacks doesn't really address what to do when the shear amount of information is the attack.

As it stands though, within current speech norms and ideals of debate dating back to Athens at least, there are lot of people very angry about bans. And that matters to commercial entities in particular, which means banning isn't "easy" (even ignoring the lack of any time equivalency token system to deal with the economics of suspensions or bans better).

Free speech is the right to speak your mind without being prosecuted by the government, it’s not the right to force your opinion on people who don’t want it.

You don't need to tell me that, I covered in the first paragraph of my post. But it's not unreasonable to talk about wider concepts for the "marketplace of ideas" as it serves society beyond the critical foundation of the 1A. I think we may need better norms and tools to help private entities in determining where lines should be and how to go about that. And I also think it's disingenuous to not address private entities that achieve levels of societal power that approach modern government even if they don't have armies of their own, particularly when there is in fact subtle government backing down the chain somewhere (DMCA for example).

staunch2• 8 years ago

When it comes to the internet, Apple, Facebook, and Google are more powerful than the most powerful governments in the world. They should uphold the principles of free speech, despite not being required to by law.

Everything that is legal to say, which is almost everything, should have a equal access to these major platforms. Everyone else should have the basic faith in humanity that whatever problems this causes are a price worth paying of living in a free society.

I'm more concerned with the cynical fools gleefully espousing the anti-free speech perspective than I am with the relatively(!) small number of dumbos that follow people like Alex Jones.

Whatever happened to the beautiful American principle of defending the right of your fellow humans to have equal rights as yourself? Is it young people that don't know history, people becoming more cynical, or are we just hearing more from the loud fools?

My fundamental faith in humanity makes me believe we'll have a backlash from the freedom-loving majority. Most people are smart and principled and will see the error of going down this dark path. It may take a while but I'm not worried.

eksemplar13• 8 years ago

The principal of free speech isn’t the same thing as the right to an audience though. It’s the right to say what you want without being prosecuted.

Alex Jones wasn’t prosecuted and he had the right to say what he wants, he just can’t do it on Facebook. But that isn’t an infringement of his rights, it’s a simple consequence of being a total asshole.

If you always talk about how great eating feces is at every dinner party you attend, you’re not going to go to jail, but you’re probably going to find yourself without any dinner party invitations.

You could argue that Facebook and Apple are big platforms, but so what? I’m fairly sure infowars wouldn’t publish your submission if you sent an anti-trump article. Does that mean they are hindering your free speech? No.

corerius• 8 years ago

It's amusing to watch so many people, for probably the first time in their life, fight so hard for the 'rights' of a large multinational corporation.

The basic problems, of course, are the natural monopolies and near-monopolies that came from networks. Given the amount of power you'll find in those companies given the surveillance society, I wish that antitrust law would actually come into existence again.

The be fair, there's nothing new here. Whether it was the day of Hearts newspapers or the big 2 1/2 TV networks, mass media outlets have always been political tools that are argued over.

okket• 8 years ago

Previous discussion from 8 hours ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17695323 (107 comments)

duxup2• 8 years ago

There's a weird balance where just saying "hey we don't want to censor things" doesn't seem to make you seem very neutral when you're hosting something that is hateful towards others or just straight false information.

djrogers• 8 years ago

Apple doesn't host any podcasts in iTunes - it's just a directory. And you can still use iTunes or the iOS Podcasts app to subscribe to the podcast via it's RSS feed.

duxup2• 8 years ago

I guess I was thinking of "hosting" more generically. Feel free to substitute a better term, I'm operating on limited sleep ;)

curiousgal• 8 years ago

They should've made their Podcasts app actually usuable while they were at it.

ianwalter• 8 years ago

It's crazy to me that they banned pornographic apps from the app store but still let this hot garbage be listed on their platform for so long.

pentae• 8 years ago

They go further than that. We had an app for models and fans to interact which showcased Instagram models and celebrities with profiles built using the Instagram API for verification. Apple told us we had to tone it down and censor a lot of the sexier photos like bikini and so on that was found on their Instagram profiles. We explained they were simply using the same photos found on their Instagram and if they had a problem with their images they should report them to Instagram. They basically told us no, we would have to manually censor the profiles instead. They found another reason to remove us from the store in the end flushing years of work down the toilet for us. They are completely arbitrary in how they censor the stores, there's no equitable standard. Basically, if you're Instagram or Twitter you can push the limits, but smaller businesses like ours get thrown out.

qrbLPHiKpiux• 8 years ago

I may disagree with what you say but I'll defend with you the right to say it.

Apple's wrong here.

rounce• 8 years ago

Only problem with that is when the other uses the rights you have afforded them to either infringe or incite infringement upon your freedoms.

wu-ikkyu• 8 years ago

What do you mean?

eksemplar13• 8 years ago

So Apple isn’t allowed the freedom to do as they want?

On a smaller scale, you couldn’t get your content posted on infowars if they didn’t like it. Does that mean infowars is stepping on your rights?

No, because freedom of speech isn’t the same thing as the right of being heard. You can say what you want, but I don’t have to listen to you.

3945493• 8 years ago

So Apple isn’t allowed the freedom to do as they want?

Giving for-profit corporations "freedoms" like they were people was a mistake. Once an organization grows to a certain size, it has more in common with a government than a person. When that happens, their "freedoms" should be appropriately circumscribed.

InTheArena• 8 years ago

I'm not familiar with Infowars, or the podcast. That said, I think we have to be very very cautious about allowing corporations, especially corporations as powerful as Twitter, Facebook, Google and Apple, to act as gatekeepers on speech. It's hard to get the balance right on speech issues, and that's when the determination is being governed by a democratic government. Apple, Facebook, Google and Twitter are in no way beholden to a representative electorate, and just because this particular instance makes sense, this is a massive shift of power from government to private corporation.

History has shown that this power has and will be abused. Even if it is not here, it will be in the future.

resters10• 8 years ago

Anyone of average intelligence who spends 30-60 seconds listening to Alex Jones will quickly realize that Jones suffers from some kind of mental illness or personality disorder, and that there is nothing of interest or value to learn from his rants.

Those who ignore the obvious signs and still choose to listen to it do so for their own, identity-driven or emotional reasons. This is the same process that causes humans to rally behind demagogues of all kinds.

When uncensored, Jones' folly is obvious and can be easily evaluated and dismissed. But when it's censored, those inclined toward conspiracy theories will assume that Jones is speaking some kind of truth to power, etc.

So Apple's move strengthens Jones in all the worst ways and does a great disservice to American civil society. The only way to prevent dark ages beliefs is to shine light on them.

eksemplar13• 8 years ago

Maybe, or maybe he’s just making a lot of money selling hatred.

Eric_WVGG2• 8 years ago

The only way to prevent dark ages beliefs is to shine light on them.

This is the sort of principled belief I used to hold that I’m no longer sure holds up to scrutiny.

There's always been a fringe that was willing to believe anything. But how do you call something like Infowars “fringe” when it’s on the same “network” as NPR and CNN podcasts? Placement like that legitimizes Infowars. That “light shining” on Infowars was a spotlight.

You’re probably right that this will galvanize the true believers, but what was going to turn their beliefs around? The flipside is that this move may cauterize a growing infection.

resters10• 8 years ago

... but what was going to turn their beliefs around?

Educating people about morally correct beliefs is a separate undertaking that is typically what members of the clergy undertake with worshipers. I don't think there is any need for such a role in secular society. If you disagree, don't just downvote this, explain what level of moral education and policing is appropriate in a free society.

...this move may cauterize a growing infection.

I understand the point you are making, but I would like to add that I think it's a bit dangerous to use nazi-style rhetoric like "infection" or "infestation" to describe people we oppose politically.

mcphage4• 8 years ago

Anyone of average intelligence who spends 30-60 seconds listening to Alex Jones will quickly realize that Jones suffers from some kind of mental illness or personality disorder, and that there is nothing of interest or value to learn from his rants.

If that were the case, he wouldn't have the popularity that he has, he would be just another rando ranting on a street corner. But that's not the case—the fact is, there are many people who spend time listening to him, who think that there is something of value to learn from his rants. So just shining a light on him isn't sufficient.

Sometimes, when you have an injury, you can just ignore it and let your body heal itself. And sometimes, when you have an injury, you need to be more proactive about recovery.

rbanffy8• 8 years ago

About half the population has a below-average IQ. If we use it as a proxy for "intelligence", that leaves Jones with roughly a 100 million potential adult listeners, only in the US. That's enough to make him wildly popular.

resters10• 8 years ago

Simply censoring the content isn't healing anything, it's akin to putting masking tape over the injury to hide what is going on.

Note: I think it is dangerous to use nazi-style analogies for content we do not agree with. Calling it an infection, infestation, etc., does not help with the rational process of discussing the issue of content which some people find objectionable, it merely politicizes it and dehumanizes those who like the content.

amerkhalid2• 8 years ago

No, you don’t always need to shine light on all nastiness on the web to fight it. Do you remember YouTube’s comment section or any other forum without decent moderators?

I remember YouTube comments being highly nasty. Many people had installed browser plugins solely to hide YouTube comments. Google finally started to remove nasty comments. And now I rarely ever see horrible comments. In fact, you can actually get useful info from some comments and threads.

And this is not a free speech issue but a hate issue. Almost all platform forbid hate and violent content. I don’t understand why so many people are equating this with freedom of speech instead of TOS violation.

resters10• 8 years ago

What if someone argued that killing food animals is murder and must be due to hate, and wanted a youtube channel about grilling meats to be taken down due to a TOS violation.

The problem with the whole idea of hate speech (which I think is a foolish idea) is that it classifies certain ideas as abhorrent. Ideas cannot be abhorrent, only actions can be.

If ideas were abhorrent, than we would all be guilty just for considering them, even if we decide for now to reject them. Not sure why you would assume that anyone holds non-provisional, permanent beliefs. That's just not how human consciousness works.

Actions can be harassing, inappropriate, etc. But someone simply publishing a private channel that others can encounter only through voluntary choices is not harassing.

Content platforms have the perverse incentive of appealing to society's moral leaders (these days usually politicians). We should resist the idea of legitimizing platform level censorship of content, and instead insist upon the higher standard of enforcing conduct guidelines. If a user harasses other users, that's a problem. If a user self-publishes opinions that are simply expressed as opinions, we should not view that as a problem unless the world we idealize is one in which views not held by moral leaders are always considered abhorrent.

jhayward5• 8 years ago

This comment makes several errors, the most severe of which is the category error of thinking Alex Jones, et. al. are about discussion and dialogue. He is not. He and his ilk are about weaponizing the norms of society to destroy society. They are at war, not having a discussion.

It is a fatal error to misunderstand this as a norms vs views issue. It is not. It is war.

resters10• 8 years ago

It is war.

This brings to mind the war on drugs, war on terror, etc. Typically war is used when we are meant to take sides in support of drastic action without too much thought getting in the way.

He and his ilk are about weaponizing the norms of society to destroy society.

I'm honestly not sure from this comment if you are deliberately trolling/baiting or if you just feel a tremendous amount of righteous indignation and emotion about Alex Jones.

In my view, if we start to assume that all content on the internet has somehow been vetted by responsible elders who know what's best for us, we lose the (essential) ability to filter out the garbage for ourselves.

In today's world, people seem to flock toward authority figures of all kinds and wish to wield authority against others (by suppressing their speech, etc.). So your comment strikes me as an appeal to authoritarianism and a call to authoritarian action to crack down on morally objectionable content.

Some people think that a picture of two men holding hands is morally objectionable content, and they seek authority to make their view dominate the public discourse. How is your goal different from theirs other than in the small detail of which content is objectionable?

fareesh2• 8 years ago

The bigger story is that Facebook removed several Infowars pages. That's a big hit in terms of their ability to grow through shares/likes and reach a wider audience. I don't know if the Podcast directory is a big source of newcomers, is it?

r3bl• 8 years ago

I do agree that the Facebook news is bigger than both Apple and Spotify combined. And InfoWars seems to agree as well, as they've published a video complaining about Facebook's decisions almost immediately.

However, I don't think that's the biggest damage they could face from a single provider. I'd say that YouTube could absolutely break the entire thing down to pieces.

There are dozens of YouTube videos on their channel with millions of views, often multiple hours long. Hosting multiple hour long video files in a way that millions of people can stream them reliably, that's going to take some effort (and a non-negligible amount of resources).

Since YouTube offers them both discoverability and unlimited video bandwidth, if YouTube made a similar decision to Facebook, they would most probably be destroyed in an instant.

fareesh2• 8 years ago

YouTube has now banned them as well so they will probably move to dTube / HookTube or one of the blockchain / p2p alternatives. Ironically a big channel like Infowars moving to these alternatives might start the ball rolling in making those platforms more popular.

I occasionally listen to Alex Jones for background noise and entertainment value. There is something amusing in his voice, delivery and absurdity - perhaps I am a little privileged to be able to feel that way because he is nowhere close to home for me, as I live in India.

enterx2• 8 years ago

so wrong.

Freedom of speech is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or a community to articulate their opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation, censorship, or sanction. - Wikipedia

eksemplar13• 8 years ago

None of those things happened to Alex Jones.

Freedom of speech isn’t the right to be heard, mind you. If you came by my house wanting to sell Jesus and I shut the door on you, you’d still have free speech.

enterx2• 8 years ago

True, he was using a private media outlet.

They do have a legal right to discriminate which they used against him.

But still that does not change the fact that the media outlets are the ones that choose who has a right to speak and discriminate.

eksemplar13• 8 years ago

If you send Alex Jones a submission on how great Hillary Clinton is, do you think it’ll get posted on infowars? No Does that mean Alex Jones is limiting your free speech’s by denying you access to his platform?

You can argue that Facebook, Apple and twitter are bigger platforms, but the principal is really the same.

Free speech is the right to say what you want, the way you want it, without being procecuted by the government or murdered by a violent mob.

Free speech is not the right to be heard.

I see the problem of the idea of huge media platforms banning content, but only as an idea. Alex Jones is a hate mongering asshole, that while entertaining, is also dangerous. When infowars ran a piece on the Sandy Hook tradegy, labeling it as a false flag and the victims as actors, some of those parents who lost their children received death threats. Some of those parents are still in hiding today, thanks to infowars and their insane audience.

I don’t think the free world, or free speech, suffered anything from this asshole being banned from iTunes.

nailer5• 8 years ago

I don't think Infowars has ever advertised itself an a non-political way for people to connect with each other.

sctb• 8 years ago

All: there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of intellectual gratification happening in these threads, but please try at least to avoid things like gratuitous inflammation, generic politics, and all such low-information flameage. Those things do actual damage to the community, and for what?

21• 8 years ago

The one platform that they CAN'T ban and will ALWAYS have our live streams is http://infowars.com/show

Challenge accepted. Where are they hosted? The videos stream from Akamai CDN. CNN can now press Akamai to remove Infowars.

Do they use CloudFlare? CloudFlare is know to censor far-right sites (but not jihadi sites).

CM30• 8 years ago

This is basically the issue with the internet as it stands now. There is no space outside of the control of a company that might wish to protect their reputation at your expense, meaning that anything unpopular enough can be de facto banned by no one ever hosting it. It's like if the streets and town square didn't exist, and shopping malls owned every 'public' area.

amerkhalid2• 8 years ago

I see a lot of comments regarding freedom of speech. But this has nothing to do with freedom of speech. It has everything to do with hate. I would not eat at a restaurant that has hate propaganda on their walls. This is same thing.

He is free to publish his podcast on the internet, no one is stopping. If US government bans him, then we are in a big trouble.

mancerayder• 8 years ago

Am I disturbed at the idea of a centralized publishing / distribution platform censoring videos/recordings that it characterized in a certain way?

I'm actually far more concerned that not a lot of people are challenging the question of whether those characterizations can one day become (if they are not already becoming) arbitrary, self-serving, overly broad, or even simply 'by popular demand' removing items based on an increasingly politicized/bifurcated population.

I would argue that choosing winners and losers in the realm of ideas -- which is different than, say, graphic videos, where the criteria are easier to craft ["no nudity" or "no violence" examples of criteria with fewer edge cases] -- goes against core concepts of Western ideals of liberty and the marketplace of ideas. For if there's an objective reality out there, and each of us can seek it out for his/her self, there's no need for an overarching authority to remove "conspiracy theories" to protect our simple minds from accidentally becoming infected with false ideas.

I never enjoyed the screaming histrionics of Jones, nor his absurd obsessions, but I'm increasingly concerned that this Postmodern society is more concerned with what it views as Correct and Incorrect Ideas in such realms as comedy and discourse (the overly used "political correctness" that we often argue over so much) than letting individuals think things out for themselves.

I have a cultural foot in the door in both Europe and the U.S., and one point of contention I'll forever have with the European leg of the value system is the absurd notion that laws or norms should protect people from being offended and root out "false ideas." Not because I want people to be offended or because I think false ideas are good; instead, I simply don't trust anyone -- not a European judge nor some Apple bureaucrats -- to have better judgment than the rest of the population in this matters.

Applauding Jones getting wiped clean from these channels of distribution is short-term: one day there might be something less vile, less clear-cut, an edge-case, that gets removed and you'll have to shout to get it back. Be careful.

claytongulick2• 8 years ago

Honestly curious - I wonder how many people on here that are arguing in favor of limiting access to Infowars have actually spent time watching/listening to it? Or have they formed opinions based on 'what they are told' it is, or blog headlines etc... I see a lot of that these days. A headline comes along and describes something, and a whole bunch of people accept it as literal truth, without bothering to spend time really learning about an opposing viewpoint.

A great example of this is Jordan Peterson - he's sort of an interesting guy who got caught up in limelight for various political reasons, but the bulk of his lectures are truly interesting to me, looking at Christianity from an evolutionary psychology perspective, etc... but to read the headlines, you'd think he was out there whipping up Nazi sentiment and trying to crush democracy. I see a lot of people cherry picking small sentences taken out of context, and repeating them to mischaracterize an "opponent". See the painfully uneducated criticisms of his discussion about 'enforced monogamy'.

I freely admit I haven't seen a lot of Alex Jones' stuff. I've watched it a bit, out of curiosity. What I saw was colorful and impassioned. I saw a dude getting riled up and speaking more from emotion than critical analysis. That's not my favorite thing, so I haven't spent more time watching it.

I just wonder if he's being given the 'Jordan Peterson' treatment because his views are unpopular, and sometimes disagreeable? I saw at least one comment on here accusing him of inciting violence directly. That's the sort of thing I'm talking about. I wonder if that person actually watched/listened to him incite violence? Or if they were just repeating something they heard somewhere else. Several other comments followed that argued that he'd never done that. Hmm.

Like I said, I don't have a valid opinion on Inforwars itself, because I haven't really spent much time watching it. I wonder if our discussions about a topic like Infowars would be more positive and constructive if more people were able to withhold judgement until they'd actually researched the topic directly.

Or maybe they have? Maybe the dislike is valid from people who have spent time looking into it? It just seems questionable when there is disagreement about basic statements like "he incites violence".

nailer5• 8 years ago

Jordan Peterson cites research that people don't agree with. Because they don't want to take him to task over research, they often create strawmem.

Jones makes things up (and has admitted he's acting in court). Some of the things he makes up - like the parents of the dead lids being actors, or a pizza shop being a storefront for pedophiles - mean that people who believe him might be tempted to expose the secret actors, or punish the seemingly-immune pedophiles (who obviously are just people running a pizza shop). This is a serious danger.

jgrowl• 8 years ago

Regardless of your views of specific individuals, I hope the big corps enjoy their censorship abilities now because it won't be very long before they lose their positions of power. Decentralization is coming...

se30b• 8 years ago

Alex Jones got banned for telling the truth. Crazy people are allowed everywhere, because their arguments can easily be refuted. Jones was shut down because he is speaking uncomfortable truths that cannot be easily waived away.

Apple Removes Infowars from Podcast Directory

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