Should we count on Silicon Valley to protect us from the ugliest, most inflammatory speech? It’s a question worth asking, after several major tech companies, including Facebook, Apple and Spotify, recently banished online conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.
Google-owned YouTube added to his misery as well, terminating Jones’ channel, which had more than 2 million subscribers, soon after. The mass-exiling severely limits Jones’ reach and amounts to a collective muzzling of the shock jock — pushing him even further out on the periphery of the public conversation.
These companies “fulfill a roll that approximates a public square,” Geoffrey King, professor of media studies at UC Berkeley, told TheWrap.