Alex Jones, Beck, and Oreilly were untouched during the Obama years..

[Joeyzagz]

Now suddenly they are being silenced. Why?

[TheBigLug]

Now suddenly they are being silenced. Why?

it's not a sudden thing though.

This has been building up over a while, trying to label people and silence people for having opinions that go against the grain.

if you want to say it has to do with who is president, you could say that Trump being in power has meant these people feel justified in their views and were speaking louder than ever, thus bringing more opposition and attention to themselves. That would be a more accurate assessment of why it's happened, not because of anything Obama did or didn't do.

[The Big Dunn]

Now suddenly they are being silenced. Why?

They are making the Republican party look like the Nazi Party or the Animal Butt F-ckers Party while energizing liberals/minorities to get out and vote while turning off moderate Republicans and independents.

My guess is the sane, rational, business minded Republicans see them as a threat so they want them shut down for the above and because they think doing so extends an olive branch to those on the other side.

[1bad65]

Now suddenly they are being silenced. Why?

Because Team D was winning elections.

So in their eyes guys like these didn't much matter.

Now that Team D is losing elections, it's high time to start silencing as many people as possible who are anti Team D.

[Beercules]

Honestly, I love my crazy conspiracy shows but I couldn't stand his voice so whatever.


Media has been being censored for decades though.

[Laddie_Loc]

[millcitymauler]

Because Team D was winning elections.

So in their eyes guys like these didn't much matter.

Now that Team D is losing elections, it's high time to start silencing as many people as possible who are anti Team D.

EXACTLY right my friend. One thing about the Dems - they'll always overreach, and they will always tell you who they're afraid of.

[PACnPBFsuck]

This guy has no real threat to the presidency

[Pessimistic]

Actually, I think it has more to do with net neutrality being repealed. If recall correctly, AJ was against it back in 2015. I think the premise with net neutrality repeal was the tech giants could privatize everything on their platform. Right wing idea but it backfired because all the tech giants are left leaning. No net neutrality, can't complain to a court if it's been repealed. Correct me if I'm wrong.

[////]

Actually, I think it has more to do with net neutrality being repealed. If recall correctly, AJ was against it back in 2015. I think the premise with net neutrality repeal was the tech giants could privatize everything on their platform. Right wing idea but it backfired because all the tech giants are left leaning. No net neutrality, can't complain to a court if it's been repealed. Correct me if I'm wrong.

This has nothing to do with net neutrality. That's for internet service providers, not social media moderation.

I think it boils down to extremely out-of-touch social media giants turning random avatars of the "internet rebel right" into sacrificial lambs.

For a long time US elections were controlled in the sense that all media coverage flowed through a handful of television and newspaper companies and your relationship with those companies determined whether you were deemed "electable". In that environment we would have probably seen a Jeb Bush nomination, who would have been dangled around as a threat to keep Hillary in line. That was just how political strategy worked for generations. You courted the TV & newspaper execs and they decided the winner via coordinated portrayal.

Companies like CNN are in the midst of a transitional identity crisis and have resorted to outrageous viral/clickbait/tabloid reporting to break into the online environment where the only advantage they have is name recognition, not control of accessibility.

At the same time, 3/4ths of their viewership is now foreign and they've developed close relationships with social media companies & search engines to deliver "modified" content to users in different regions. Alternate information channels make this infinitely more difficult (imagine you're wildly exaggerating police brutality in the US to a primarily foreign audience for viral traffic and an alt-news source starts parading it around to your US audience, necessitating retractions, etc.)

Did Alex Jones, a guy who was not that long ago seen as a far-left loon (his 9/11 inside job days) & spends half of his time ranting about aliens and vampires get Trump elected? Of course not. However, if you needed a guy to single out and punish as a human avatar of alternative media while simultaneously characterizing them as "kooky", Alex Jones would definitely be on your short list. So these social media giants, all of which are in close partnerships with the corporate news giants, conspired to a "show of force" against a strategic target.

It's not a very good long-term strategy though. The new right is a secular movement born online and data oriented. We happened because TV/newspapers went away and people tuned out of lame "op-eds" and punditry altogether, not replaced them with new ones.

Instead tuned into compiled reports & graphs depicting the direction of the Western world that never would have been broadcast on CNN in 1994. Censoring comic relief figures like Alex Jones isn't going to do anything other than make people curious about the motives of these media conglomerates. His current saga is helping is out a lot.