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Alex Jones, a prominent conservative conspiracist throughout the web, has had his Facebook page struck down, along with his YouTube account, and also his accounts at Spotify and Apple have been banned from sharing/selling content. Many of these sites are citing breaches of their Terms of Service (ToS), which many people within the community call it a farce and see that Jones' is being unjustly censored. Others believe, Jones being kicked off is justified to how he carries himself and how he fabricates lies about famous people and politicians with so called "evidence" for their 'crimes'. They claim he slanders and smears people's name for his own personal benefit, in order to sell merchandise to grow his business based off fear mongering. It should be noted that Alex Jones still has his Infowars app available on the Android App Store, and his Google+ page is still active (for now), and that this was not a total ban from Google products, but from YouTube itself and possibly for audio content (podcasts). People have their own viewpoints in regards to Alex Jones, but some others that are affected by these mass suspensions are very much so undeserving of this punishment.
Other than the major backlash against Alex Jones on other sites, Twitter hasn't made any major particular moves other than "shadowbanning certain people". However, there seems to be a purge with lots of people being suspended in a short amount of time, which those affected are more often than not conservative, or libertarian leaning individuals. Twitter has suspended prominent libertarian speakers such as the Director of the Ron Paul Institute, Daniel McAdams. Many in the libertarian community are scratching their heads as to what McAdams could have done on Twitter, which would constitute a ban.
Overall, this entire situation goes on a case by case basis, and we all must accept and acknowledge that these social media sites have every right to regulate the news feed so that it may allow for family friendly content to be promoted within the algorithm as they see fit. Yet, we must also know that we are free to criticize these corporations for their actions, and very much so seek alternatives. Whether you view their bans or suspensions as justified or not, there are underlying questions that people may need to ponder on in the future: Should we allow powerful technocrats the power to regulate our newsfeed and control what we see on their platforms? We all make a choice with each packet we download, and our bandwidth IS our voting power in the online world. Perhaps, we should be throwing our support and time behind corporations that actually respect freedom of speech and whom are not going to silence people for their political beliefs.
