Think of it like this: The internet is like
speaker's corner in Hyde park. You are able to mount your soapbox and scream opinions using every bit and byte of your digital lungs.
Facebook is also in Hyde Park, but they have constructed their own soapbox. If you want to get on that soapbox, you have to play by their rules. If Facebook has rules they will be damned. They will also be damned if they don't.
The ethos of the internet has always been freedom of expression, and the internet is like the wild west, in the sense that there are very few sheriffs. Facebook is a community within the internet. but people have seen the results of a deliberate attack against truth under the banner of Freedom of Expression. In a perfect world the rules would not be needed, but noise of deliberately orchestrated polarizing messages has really poisoned political dialog in the United States. Belatedly, Facebook is recognizing how they were deliberately targeted as cheap, effective propaganda platform meant to confuse and polarize.
Hemingway said “The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof, shit-detector.” But in the Internet age that burden increasingly falls to the reader. Before the internet, the sheer cost of publication and/or the limited number of broadcast TV stations served as choke points for information. Print media and broadcast television were information and fact gatekeepers, and that was both good and bad. While it severely limited the range of viewpoints, it also had a lot more self-policing of journalistic standards. We are living in a political environment that is more polarized, suspicious and angry because of the lack of self-policing, and the subsequent rise of the post-fact nihilism internet.
Who is Alex Jones? He is a caricature of Alex Jones. He feels a bit like a character in a
Cohen Brothers Movie, untethered in time, attacking the demons in unbelievers with a Pentecostal fervor. In a post-fact world, style becomes substance, and the fervor with which you profess your beliefs translates into believability.
And Alex Jones has not been kicked off the internet. He's been kicked off Facebook. Having to type in another web address in order to hear the ramblings of a lunatic does not deny Jones the right to espouse his opinions.
