The Federal Communications Commission has regulatory authority over "interstate and international communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and U.S. territories" see About the FCC
The FCC's Mission The Federal Communications Commission regulates interstate and international communications by radio, television,
wire, satellite, and cable in all 50 states, the District of Columbia
and U.S. territories. An independent U.S. government agency overseen
by Congress, the Commission is the federal agency responsible for
implementing and enforcing America’s communications law and
regulations.
though the FCC does not regulatory authority over the content media companies publish, though people evidently think or believe the FCC does
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which oversees
telecommunications like radio, TV, and the internet in the U.S.,
doesn’t regulate content on online platforms like YouTube. But that
hasn’t stopped people from sending complaints about the video site to
the federal agency
...
Gizmodo submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for all
complaints that the FCC has received about YouTube. We received 81
pages of grievances featuring everyone from PizzaGate conspiracy
theorists to anti-nudity crusaders. YouTube, which is owned by Google,
has cracked down on extremist content in recent months, doing
everything from removing ISIS propaganda videos to demonetizing
conspiracy theory channels. YouTube has even banned neo-Nazi channels
like Atomwaffen altogether.
There is no evidence to support the assertion that the FCC told YouTube, Facebook, Apple, or Spotify to ban the published content of Alex Jones.
In fact, the current Chair of the FCC has been critical of the fact that media companies have censored content, see FCC Chair Says Twitter and YouTube's Political Biases Are the Real Threat to an Open Internet
Would more Nazis and terrorists on social media make our internet more
free?
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, speaking Tuesday at a panel on the “future of
internet freedom,” asked and answered this question in staunchly
libertarian terms, calling out YouTube, Facebook and Twitter’s
purported double standards against conservatives and identifying them
as the “actual threat” to the open internet. Pai’s critics say net
neutrality repeal will lay the groundwork for ISPs to fragment and
meter out the internet, but, speaking on a panel hosted by libertarian
think tank, R Street Institute, Pai said Silicon Valley—wicked,
liberal, Silicon Valley—already does this by promoting some viewpoints
while suppressing others.
...
“I love Twitter,” said Pai. “But when it comes to a free and open
internet, Twitter is part of the problem. The company has a viewpoint
and it uses that viewpoint to discriminate.”
...
“To say the least, the company appears to have a double standard when
it comes to suspending or de-verifying conservative users accounts as
opposed to those of liberal users,” said Pai. “This conduct is many
things but it isn’t fighting for an open internet.”
Twitter’s recent verification kerfuffle, of course, began early in
November when the company verified Jason Kessler, the organizer of the
Charlottesville neo-Nazi rally. Realizing this is essentially an
endorsement—verified users are rewarded with better security features
and their tweets appear in more feeds—Twitter removed his verification
and promised a more meritocratic system of verification, ultimately
un-verifying Nazi-adjacent figures like Richard Spencer and “Baked
Alaska.”
Of interest, YouTube says it uses "machine learning" to remove content
Machines are allowing us to flag content for review at scale, helping
us remove millions of violative videos before they are ever viewed.
And our investment in machine learning to help speed up removals is
paying off across high-risk, low-volume areas (like violent extremism)
and in high-volume areas (like spam). Highlights from the report --
reflecting data from October - December 2017 -- show:
- We removed over 8 million videos from YouTube during these months.1 The majority of these 8 million videos were mostly spam or
people attempting to upload adult content - and represent a fraction
of a percent of YouTube’s total views during this time period.2
- 6.7 million were first flagged for review by machines rather than humans
- Of those 6.7 million videos, 76 percent were removed before they received a single view.
meaning humans employed by the company write the code which removes the videos.
No, the government is not responsible for banning Alex Jones. Humans at those companies are responsible for banning or censoring the content of Alex Jones, to further their own political agendas and interests. If not challenged, the trend is moving towards a greater amount of content being not published in the first instance, defaced or removed based narrow political interests of those humans who run those companies.
It is fitting to close this answer with a brief synopsis of the
Faurisson affair
The Faurisson affair was an academic controversy in the wake of a book
by French scholar Robert Faurisson, a Holocaust denier. The scandal
largely dealt with the inclusion of an essay by American linguist Noam
Chomsky, entitled "Some Elementary Comments on the Rights of Freedom
of Expression", as an introduction to Faurisson's book, without
Chomsky's knowledge or approval. Responding to a request for comment
in a climate of attacks on Faurisson, Chomsky defended Faurisson's
right to express and publish his opinions on the grounds that freedom
of speech must be extended to all viewpoints, no matter how unpopular
or fallacious.
Chomsky, in the essay Some Elementary Comments on the Rights of
Freedom of Expression
Let me add a final remark about Faurisson's alleged "anti-Semitism."
Note first that even if Faurisson were to be a rabid anti-Semite and
fanatic pro-Nazi -- such charges have been presented to me in private
correspondence that it would be improper to cite in detail here --
this would have no bearing whatsoever on the legitimacy of the defense
of his civil rights. On the contrary, it would make it all the more
imperative to defend them since, once again, it has been a truism for
years, indeed centuries, that it is precisely in the case of
horrendous ideas that the right of free expression must be most
vigorously defended; it is easy enough to defend free expression for
those who require no such defense. Putting this central issue aside,
is it true that Faurisson is an anti-Semite or a neo-Nazi? As noted
earlier, I do not know his work very well. But from what I have read
-- largely as a result of the nature of the attacks on him -- I find no evidence to support either conclusion. Nor do I find credible
evidence in the material that I have read concerning him, either in
the public record or in private correspondence. As far as I can
determine, he is a relatively apolitical liberal of some sort.
In a response to a letter circa 1989–1991, Chomsky stated:
A professor of French literature was suspended from teaching on
grounds that he could not be protected from violence, after privately
printing pamphlets questioning the existence of gas chambers. He was
then brought to trial for "falsification of History," and later
condemned for this crime, the first time that a modern Western state
openly affirmed the Stalinist-Nazi doctrine that the state will
determine historical truth and punish deviation from it. Later he was
beaten practically to death by Jewish terrorists. As of now, the
European and other intellectuals have not expressed any opposition to
these scandals; rather, they have sought to disguise their profound
commitment to Stalinist-Nazi doctrine by following the same models,
trying to divert attention with a flood of outrageous lies.12
In "His Right to Say It", published in The Nation, Chomsky stressed
the conceptual distinction between endorsing someone's view and
defending his right to say it:
Vidal-Naquet misunderstood a sentence in the petition that ran, "Since
he began making his findings public, Professor Faurisson has been
subject to...." The term "findings" is quite neutral. One can say,
without contradiction: "He made his findings public and they were
judged worthless, irrelevant, falsified...." The petition implied
nothing about quality of Faurisson's work, which was irrelevant to the
issues raised. [...]
I made it explicit that I would not discuss Faurisson's work, having
only limited familiarity with it (and, frankly, little interest in
it). Rather, I restricted myself to the civil-liberties issues and the
implications of the fact that it was even necessary to recall
Voltaire's famous words in a letter to M. le Riche: "I detest what you
write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to
continue to write." [...] Many writers find it scandalous that I
should support the right of free expression for Faurisson without
carefully analyzing his work, a strange doctrine which, if adopted,
would effectively block defense of civil rights for unpopular views.
[...]
It seems to me something of a scandal that it is even necessary to
debate these issues two centuries after Voltaire defended the right of
free expression for views he detested. It is a poor service to the
memory of the victims of the holocaust to adopt a central doctrine of
their murderers.13
Of significance is Chomsky's regret in stating that his essay his essay Some Elementary Comments on the Rights of Freedom of Expression should not be used within a publication
Chomsky granted permission for the essay to be used for any purpose.
Serge Thion and Pierre Guillaume then used it as a preface
when publishing a book by Faurisson, without Chomsky's
knowledge.9 Later Chomsky requested that the essay not be used
in this manner, since he believed the French intellectual community
was so incapable of understanding freedom of speech that it would only
confuse them further, but his request came too late for the book to be
changed.9 Chomsky subsequently said that asking for the preface
to be removed is his one regret in the matter.
