Out with Infowars
‘Hate speech’ purged
Facebook, YouTube and Spotify on Monday joined Apple in purging content from conspiracy theorist Alex Jones — condemning the Infowars creator’s ravings as hate speech.
Facebook said in a statement that it had “unpublished” the Alex Jones Channel Page, the Alex Jones Page, the Infowars Page and the Infowars Nightly News Page, which together had millions of followers.
“We believe in representing a wide range of views, so long as people are respectful to those with differing opinions,” the Facebook statement said.
Jones has pushed a number of outrageous theories, including that 9/11 was an inside job and that the Sandy Hook school massacre and Oklahoma City bombings were government hoaxes.
His fringe theories also included the “Pizzagate” allegations that Hillary Clinton was among the leaders of a pedophile ring that was based in a Washington, DC, pizzeria.
Jones — who is being sued by families of children killed at Sandy Hook after contending the relatives were paid actors — ran a story claiming Web sites’ moves were in response to his support of President Trump.
“Infowars is widely credited with having played a key role in electing Donald Trump,” his site said. “By banning Infowars, big tech is engaging in election meddling just three months before crucial mid-terms.”
Facebook had previously removed four of Jones’ videos, saying they violated its hate-speech and bullying policies.
The company said Monday that more content from the pages had since been reported and it had decided to remove them for “repeated violations of community standards and accumulating too many strikes.”
“Upon review, we have taken it down for glorifying violence . . . and using dehumanizing language to describe people who are transgender, Muslims and immigrants, which violates our hate speech policies,” Facebook said.
Google also banned Jones from YouTube for hate speech.
“When users violate . . . our policies against hate speech and harassment . . . we terminate their accounts,” the company said in a statement.
Spotify removed every episode of Jones’ podcast “The Alex Jones Show” from its platform.
“Due to repeated violations of Spotify’s prohibited content policies, ‘ The Alex Jones Show’ has lost access to the Spotify platform,” the company said.
On Sunday, Apple removed five Infowars podcasts from iTunes and its podcast app, branding them “hate speech.”