Deplatforming Works - Motherboard
▻https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/bjbp9d/do-social-media-bans-work
The dust is still settling after Alex Jones’s InfoWars was more-or-less simultaneously banned by YouTube, Spotify, Apple, and Facebook. The move has spawned thousands of takes about whether deplatforming Jones was the right move or a slippery slope toward more censorship. But just as important to consider: Will it work?
This is called “deplatforming” or “no platform,”—social media companies (sans Twitter, which says he hasn’t broken its rules) have decided to stop being complicit in spreading Jones’s conspiracy theories and hate. And we’ve seen no indication Jones will stop. But will his business remain viable and will his influence wane?
“The good that comes with deplatforming is, their main goal was to redpill or get people within mainstream communities more in line with their beliefs, so we need to get them off those platforms,” Robyn Caplan, a PhD student at Rutgers University and Data and Society affiliate, told me on the phone. “But now we’ve put them down into their holes where they were before, and they could strengthen their beliefs and become more extreme.”
The question is whether it’s more harmful to society to have many millions of people exposed to kinda hateful content or to have a much smaller number of ultra-radicalized true believers.
Donovan believes that, ultimately, it’s important to deplatform people when their rhetoric is resulting in negative, real-world consequences: “The way Jones activates his audiences has implications for people who have already been victimized,” she said. “We have always had groups of white supremacists, misogynists, and violent insurrectionists joining message boards. But social media has made these tools much more powerful. So yes, we must take away the kinds of coordinative power they’re able to gain on platforms.”