Beginning on Monday, totally rational and not at all insane person Alex Jones is going to have to shout a bit louder to make his conspiracy theories heard. Apple confirmed in the early hours of the morning that it has removed five different podcasts recorded and distributed by Alex Jones and his website InfoWars. The move comes shortly after both Google and Facebook had taken action against InfoWars, however Apple’s decision to completely ban multiple podcasts from the conspiracy theorist is far more serious than the slaps on the wrist InfoWars received from the two aforementioned companies. Google deleted four InfoWars videos from YouTube and barred Jones from live streaming his broadcasts for 90 days, and Facebook merely deleted a few videos from its platform.
Founded in 1999 and often described as “actually only a tiny bit worse than Fox News,” InfoWars has over the years gained a large following among far right conservatives. Jones is known for his aggressive rants, during which he screams and turns red as he squawks and screeches about how conservatives are being oppressed. InfoWars also regularly invents or disseminates preposterous conspiracy theories that don’t even pretend to be rooted in reality. Unfortunately, much of his audience has been known to take everything he says at face value, which is dangerous to say the least.
As for today’s news from Apple, the company has removed five of InfoWars’ six podcasts from its directories. The only show that remains is “Real News With David Knight,” which, as you might imagine, is not a podcast about real news.
Apple has confirmed the move and said that it took action against Alex Jones and InfoWars due to the use of hate speech, which is a violation of its terms. “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. 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,” an Apple spokesperson said in a statement to TechCrunch.
In response to Apple’s decision, Jones probably issued an angry statement of some sort, but we have no interest in visiting his website to find out what it was.
UPDATE: Facebook has announced that it has removed four InfoWars pages from its site.
UPDATE 2: Now YouTube has banned Alex Jones as well, stating that his account has been “terminated for violating YouTube’s community guidelines.”
