Social media and tech giants Apple, Facebook and YouTube removed Alex Jones and his InfoWars show from their platforms, citing violations of their codes of conduct relating to hate speech.
Apple deleted all episodes for five of InfoWars’ six podcasts, including the popular Alex Jones Show podcast, which was hosted by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, BuzzFeed News reported Sunday.
Apple did not respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment. But the company told BuzzFeed News that it had told Jones of its decision to remove the podcasts, citing its hate speech guidelines, over the weekend.
“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,” a company spokesperson said. “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.”
On Monday, Facebook made a similar move by taking down four InfoWars pages after originally removing only certain videos it said violated its hate speech and bullying policies. Jones was previously suspended from the social media platform for 30 days.
“While much of the discussion around InfoWars has been related to false news, which is a serious issue that we are working to address by demoting links marked wrong by fact checkers and suggesting additional content, none of the violations that spurred today’s removals were related to this,” Facebook said in a statement Monday.
By midday Monday, YouTube had removed Jones’ channel from the platform.
“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,” YouTube said in a statement to CNBC.
Spotify also confirmed to BuzzFeed News that it has removed all episodes of The Alex Jones show after removing certain episodes last week.
“They’re invading the First Amendment,” Jones said in a video response.
