Posted on 08/08/2018 1:58:01 PM PDT by huldah1776
Dr. Robert Epstein, the senior research psychologist at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology and a veteran of Breitbart News’ “Masters of the Universe” town hall on Internet freedom, joined SiriusXM hosts Rebecca Mansour and Joel Pollak on Monday’s Breitbart News Tonight to discuss thesimultaneous banning of Infowars host Alex Jones…
snip
Epstein stressed that he is not a political conservative and “certainly no fan of Alex Jones,” but he saw the Jones’ banning as a disturbing threat to the free speech and vibrant democracy he loves. “I think the big issue here is not even a free speech issue. The issue is: Who should be making these decisions about what people see and don’t see? That’s the question.”
“Sometime last year, I believe it was, they for ten minutes blocked access to every single website in Japan. On January 31, 2009, Google blocked access to virtually the entire Internet all over the world for 40 minutes,” he recalled.
“The bottom line is, in some ways what’s happened to Jones is not as bad as you think. In other ways, it’s actually much worse than you think. There are some big issues here that we need to explore, and talk about, and understand,” he said.
Pollak presented the Big Tech argument that the companies acting in concert to ban Jones are “private companies” that should be allowed to “exclude whoever they want,” so the case “has no implication for freedom of speech.”
“It’s complete nonsense and it’s quite a dangerous argument,” Epstein responded. “By the way, they only make that argument when it’s convenient. There are times when they argue just the opposite, saying they’re just passive platforms and they don’t make editorial decisions.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
Consumers don’the have to use them. That said, if any of these tech giants are violating contracts, pulling a fast one on investors, et al, then there civil and/or criminal courts for that.
Easy....the GOP-e who want to spy on everyone along with the RATS who want to use them as a weapon.
Mostly McCain and Linda were pushing this under threat of flipping RAT.
Any company is free to distribute or NOT distribute whatever it wants.
The problem isn’t that Marxist tech companies are limiting what info they allow.
The problem is the sheeple willingly albeit unknowingly allow themselves to be brainwashed.......because of their dependency on something as addicting to the simple and ignorant as drugs are to folk on the street.....
Seems to me that might just sort a lot of this out...
These are near monopolies. We once had anti-trust laws to deal with such companies. Republicans as well as Democrats kept approving bigger is better and market consolidation from banks to specific technologies. It has not been a success for anyone except the globalists.
site date url registered
What did
breitbart.com 1999-03-14
infowars.com 1999-03-07
drudgereport.com 1997-02-14
do to get known before there was
twitter.com 2000-01-21
thefacebook.com 2004-01-11
?
Well, Drudge used to link here. That’s how I discovered FR.
Used to.
I found FR sometime in 1996 iirc via searching for something on altavista.com though I largely forgot about it until I rediscovered it years later and registered.
Unalienable rights....Hmmm. Ah, maybe I should see what the founding fathers had to say about it.
saying they’re just passive platforms and they don’t make editorial decisions.”
lol
freerepublic.com domain name registered 1996-09-23
I started hanging out on FR sometime in the late 90’s but didn’t create an account until early 2000s because I was super against making accounts on things at the time. I wish I had back in the 90’s so I don’t have to listen to the “Newb” moniker all day long.
They took the right, and the government did nothing. So they moved on, and are moving on, and will not stop until they put us in jail for saying what we think.
This is not hyperbole.
They’re private companies, they can do whaaaaaaateeeeeever they waaaaaaaant!!!!
/s
Used to be, I could google my FR username "Mrs. Don-o and a couple of keywords, and it would instantly and flawlessly ring up 20 or 20 or more FR Pages where I had written something about a particular topic.
The pages listed by google would be on-the-nose relevant and would go from today back to 2004, or even before that because I used to post on my husband's account, "don-o". Now when I google "Mrs. Don-o" and keywords, the first dozen results might not be from Free Republic at all, but the search would be glomming onto near-matches like "Mrs. Don O'Connor" or "DON occurrence" or even total non-matches.
All too often, there will be no FR matches for the first couple of pages, although they show up way down the queue --- or even no FR matches at all. Supposedly.
It's annoying, and I think it shows them screwing with the algorithm to miss most of the Free Republic matches they used to get.
“On January 31, 2009, Google blocked access to virtually the entire Internet all over the world for 40 minutes,” he recalled. “
Bullshit.
Google is not capable of doing that.
That statement alone says this guy doesn’t know what he is talking about, or is deliberately lying.
I have mixed emotions about this situation. Yes, they are private companies, and in that regard they normally ought to be able to do business with anyone they wish.
However, the services they offer provide communications channels that have become standard throughout our society for most people in some way, and supporting business activity. If you own a toll road, you cannot tell a specific person or company they cannot use the road unless they pose a clear physical danger to other people. This is also similar to country clubs refusing membership to women or minorities. It is my understanding that those exclusions are no longer tolerated. Here, they are refusing service to ideologies.
To me, this is a lot bigger than a free association issue.
Any combination in restraint of trade is illegal.
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