by Matt_B wrote:The_Metatron wrote:Matt_B wrote:While pretty much anyone can run a website,
Try it.
Really. Try it.
You’ll need your server farms, your data centers, your third tier meshed connections to the internet, your software platform...
After you get all of that up and running, now you’re going to accept being told you’ll be hosting Alex now?
I doubt it.
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I've more than tried it. I've been running websites for over twenty years.
And I'm not really sure what your point is, either. Alex Jones already has a website, at http://www.infowars.com, and I'd presume that rather than make it all himself he just hires the back-end infrastructure and uses off-the-shelf software. There's nobody with a monopoly on such services either, so he could easily jump ship to someone else if his current providers wanted rid of him.
The potential problem with the social media giants is entirely down to them being effective monopolies. If you're kicked off, say, Facebook or YouTube, you can't simply go somewhere else because no other platforms offer the same thing. Also, when multiple social media platforms can get together and do it at the same time for entirely arbitrary reasons, you can't even go somewhere else and do something different; that's rather a lot of power concentrated in a few boardrooms.
While, in the case of Alex Jones, it's no great loss to humanity I'd be a little concerned that they could potentially do it to someone else rather more worthy. That's all, really.
I completely disagree that the top social media sites constitute any sort of monopoly.
There are countless sites and platforms across the web where you can share your opinion in a countless number of ways. You are literally doing that right here.
What Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter have is a very large audience. But free speech doesn't mean you are guaranteed an audience.
