Alex Jones' defamation trials show the limits of deplatforming for a select few

He has wrought a tremendous amount of damage; and it is way past time, he be indicted and charged for his immoral behaviors.
Rich

PO1 William "Chip" Nagel
..."Power and lies
A bigger question for researcher Shannon McGregor at the University of North Carolina's Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life is what conspiracy entrepreneurs hope to achieve with their reach.

"Why are these people doing this in the first place? What are they getting out of it? And in a lot of cases in this country in particular, in this moment, it's about hanging on to power," says McGregor. Fringe communities always exist in democracies, she says, but what should be concerning is their proximity to power.

She rejects a "both sides" framing of the issue, identifying it as primarily a right-wing phenomenon that dates back decades. "Since like the Nixon era, at least, this right-wing, ultraconservative media ecosystem has been aligned with political power, makes it much more unlikely that it will actually go away," says McGregor.

Deplatforming and punitive defamation lawsuits, she argues, are less of a solution than "harm reduction." When one individual conspiracist or conspiracy site loses its audience, replacements quickly emerge. None of this means, McGregor and other experts agree, that efforts to contain the spread of extremist or anti-democratic narratives should be abandoned altogether.

"I think overall, [social media company] representatives would prefer if the conversation became, 'Oh, well, deplatforming doesn't work, right? ... So, you know, this isn't our responsibility anymore,'" says Tromble.

Squire says there's no doubt that anything that makes it harder for toxic conspiracists to operate smoothly or spread their message is worth doing. It makes the platform they're removed from safer and bolsters the social norm that there are consequences for harassment and hate speech."