Showing posts with label InfoWars. Show all posts
Showing posts with label InfoWars. Show all posts

Sunday, February 20, 2022

How They Did It: Sandy Hook Families Savor Long-Awaited Legal Wins; The New York Times, February 20, 2022

, The New York Times; How They Did It: Sandy Hook Families Savor Long-Awaited Legal Wins

After early defeats in Congress, relatives of those lost in the 2012 shooting fought on, besting a renowned gun maker and an infamous conspiracy theorist.

"Mr. Pozner, the father of Noah Pozner, the youngest Sandy Hook victim, is a technology consultant who understood the online conspiracy world, and how social media algorithms hasten the spread of harmful content. He has devoted his life since the shooting to battling conspiracy theorists and the social platforms that enable them. His nonprofit, the HONR Network, has succeeded in getting hundreds of thousands of pieces of harmful content removed from Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and other platforms, and persuaded hosting companies to take down entire websites devoted to denying the shooting. Mr. Pozner’s efforts have made him a target. He has moved nearly a dozen times after hoaxers, his moniker for the Sandy Hook deniers, posted his address online. In 2017 a Florida woman, Lucy Richards, was jailed for threatening Mr. Pozner’s life.

Mr. Jones has repeatedly maligned Mr. Pozner and Noah’s mother, Veronique De La Rosa, on Infowars. For years Mr. Jones falsely claimed an interview Ms. De La Rosa gave to CNN’s Anderson Cooper in Newtown shortly after Noah’s death was faked before a studio “green screen.” Mr. Pozner had Mr. Jones’s shows making false claims about Noah and his family removed from YouTube. In a fury, Mr. Jones showed millions of viewers addresses and phone numbers linked to Mr. Pozner.

Last week, Wisconsin’s Supreme Court affirmed Mr. Pozner’s 2019 victory in a separate defamation lawsuit against James Fetzer, another conspiracy theorist who edited a 400-page book titled “Nobody Died at Sandy Hook.” The Wisconsin court dismissed Mr. Fetzer’s appeal on Wednesday."

Wednesday, August 8, 2018

What Does It Mean to Ban Alex Jones?; The Atlantic, August 7, 2018

Alexis C. Madrigal, The Atlantic; What Does It Mean to Ban Alex Jones?

"In banning the Infowars page, Facebook took the next logical step in restricting access to Infowars content, but it still hasn’t outright banned the domain, and it has not disclosed how the News Feed algorithm is dealing with URLs from Infowars.com.  

All of which is to say: There are many kinds of bans, and they each represent a different tool technology companies can use to police speech. Platforms can weaken the distribution of content they don’t like. They can ban the discovery of content they don’t like, as Apple has with Jones’s podcasts. Platforms can decline to host content they don’t like, as YouTube and Facebook have with InfoWars videos and pages, respectively. Or platforms can ban the presence of content they don’t like, regardless of where it is hosted or discovered."

Twitter will not ban InfoWars conspiracy theorist Alex Jones; BBC, August 8, 2018

BBC; Twitter will not ban InfoWars conspiracy theorist Alex Jones

"In a series of tweets on Tuesday, Twitter CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey explained the platform's decision, confirming it would not be following in the footsteps of others like Apple and Spotify and removing Mr Jones' and InfoWars' content...

Mr Dorsey said the accounts had not violated the platform's rules, but vowed to suspend them if they ever did so.

In his explanation, Mr Dorsey said it would be wrong to "succumb and simply react to outside pressure" instead of sticking to the company's codified principles.

He also implied one-off actions risked fuelling new conspiracy theories in the long-run, and said it was critical for journalists to "document, validate and refute" unsubstantiated rumours like the ones spread by Mr Jones "so people can form their own opinions"."