Apple, Facebook, YouTube And Spotify Ban Alex Jones

07/08/2018

Fake news and conspiracies can affect people's opinion, and they are plaguing the internet. Tech giants are doing what they can to stop them from spreading. This time, is by banning Alex Jones from their respective platforms.

Alex Jones is an American radio show host and conspiracy theorist.

Besides hosting his own show, he also runs Infowars.com and some other sites which are devoted to conspiracy theories and fake news. With his work, Jones has been in the center of many controversies, notably after his promotion of Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting conspiracy theories, and his opposition to gun control.

Among many of his claims, he has also blamed the U.S. government for the Oklahoma City bombing and for "controlling the weather". He also blamed the government for the 9/11 attacks, called Hillary Clinton a "literal demon", and saying that the filming of moon landings are fake to hide NASA's secret technology.

Until 2018, Jones that is known as one of the leading conspiracy theorists, and a far-right broadcaster, has been spreading his ideas for more than 20 years.

Alex Jones

Apple was the first that banned Alex Jones from its podcast directory.

"Apple does not tolerate hate speech, and we have clear guidelines that creators and developers must follow to ensure we provide a safe environment for all of our users," said an Apple spokesperson.

"Podcasts that violate these guidelines are removed from our directory, making them no longer searchable or available for download or streaming. We believe in representing a wide range of views, so long as people are respectful to those with differing opinions."

The move was followed by Facebook. The social giant unpublished four pages (the Alex Jones Channel Page, the Alex Jones Page, the Infowars Page and the Infowars Nightly News Page) run by Jones for "repeated violations of community standards," the company said.

The move comes after the social network imposed a 30-day ban on Jones "for his role in posting violating content to these pages."

"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," said a Facebook spokesperson.

YouTube then followed by terminating Jones' account, which had 2.4 million subscribers, for violating its community guidelines, and repeatedly appearing in videos despite being subject to a 90-day ban from the website.

"All users agree to comply with our terms of service and community guidelines when they sign up to use YouTube. 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," said YouTube in a statement.

Spotify was next that took action against Jones.

The platform removed every episode of "The Alex Jones Show" podcast, after previously removing specific episodes of the show, but left the bulk of the archive online.

"We take reports of hate content seriously and review any podcast episode or song that is flagged by our community," said a Spotify spokesperson. "Due to repeated violations of Spotify’s prohibited content policies, The Alex Jones Show has lost access to the Spotify platform."

Even YouPorn, known as one popular adult-streaming video site, has banned Jones. While his videos on the site were not porn, many people took advantages of porn websites to upload videos because of their lack of copyright policing. YouPorn said that it removed videos related to Jones, and won't allow him to host or appear on the platform again in the future.

All of these happened in less than 24 hours.

The most notable that didn't solidarity followed, is Twitter.

On the social media platform, Alex Jones has 830,000 followers; and Infowars has another 418,000. According to Twitter, Jones hasn't violated any of its rules, and the platform said that site's "open and real-time nature is a powerful antidote to the spreading of all types of false or misleading information."

But a few days later, the company suspended Jones' account following a tweet when he linked a video calling for followers to have "rifles ready" against members of the media. Then on September 7th, Twitter finally blocks Jones permanently on both its platform and Periscope.

While the ban on the many big platforms certainly limit his reach, devoted fans can still watch, read, listen and link to Jones, as his podcasts can still be downloaded via RSS feed. The Infowars.com site is also still online when the news came.