Media
Infowars' Alex Jones Booted Off Facebook, Apple, YouTube, Spotify
The racist, anti-LGBTQ "entertainer" -- and his dangerous conspiracy theories -- just got less accessible.Â
August 06 2018 10:00 AM EST
August 06 2018 10:03 AM EST
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The racist, anti-LGBTQ "entertainer" -- and his dangerous conspiracy theories -- just got less accessible.Â
After Apple removed five of Alex Jones's podcasts and his Infowars website from their platform, other online outlets have rushed to drop the commentator for promoting violence and hate speech.
As of today, Facebook, Spotify, and YouTube have pulled Jones's work -- known for promoting such falsehoods that Hillary Clinton headed up a pedophile ring and that the 2012 mass school shooting in Newtown, Conn., never happened. Facebook unpublished four of Jones's pages for "repeated violations of community standards," while YouTube terminated his account after he appeared in videos during a time when he was temporarily banned from the video platform. Spotify yanked The Alex Jones Show in its entirety for "hate content."
(RELATED: Alex Jones Has a Warped Obsession With Lesbians)
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"More content from the same pages has been reported to us -- upon review, we have taken it down for glorifying violence, which violates our graphic violence policy, and using dehumanising language to describe people who are transgender, Muslims and immigrants, which violates our hate speech policies," a Facebook spokesperson told The Guardian.
The social network removed pages entitled Alex Jones Channel, Alex Jones, Infowars, and Infowars Nightly News. Facebook had already imposed a 30-ban on Jones personally for his role in posting egregious content on those platforms. Although Jones had spread conspiracy theories for years, it was only after Apple pulled the podcasts from iTunes and other apps that Facebook took action.
YouTube said this about deleting Jones's account: "When users violate these policies repeatedly, like our policies against hate speech and harassment, or our terms prohibiting circumvention of our enforcement measures, we terminate their accounts." However, the specific rationale for the commentator's ban was that he appeared on livestreams on other channels when he was banned for three months, rather than his hateful statements, reports The Guardian.
Spotify, which had previously deleted specific episodes of The Alex Jones Show, pulled the entire show this Monday. Three other Infowars podcasts remain live on the service.
"We take reports of hate content seriously and review any podcast episode or song that is flagged by our community," a Spotify spokesperson told The Guardian. "Due to repeated violations of Spotify's prohibited content policies, The Alex Jones Show has lost access to the Spotify platform."
The only social network that Alex Jones still has access to is Twitter, which has banned conservative commentator Milo Yiannopoulos.