(Note from Erin: This is scary. Regardless of how you feel about Alex Jones this is breaking news happening. Social media giants Facebook and YouTube have put an end to Alex Jones right to free speech and removed all his content.)
Facebook and YouTube, as well as Apple (Sunday) and Spotify (Saturday), have all removed Alex Jones and Infowars pages and content, explaining that the channels repeatedly violated each site’s policies against hate speech and bullying.
In total, four of Alex’s Facebook pages were removed altogether: the Alex Jones Channel Page, the Alex Jones Page, the Infowars Page, and the Infowars Nightly News Page and visiting any of these pages now shows the message: “Sorry, this content isn’t available right now.”
“Facebook explained its decision to remove the pages in a blog post titled “Enforcing Our Community Standards.” The post makes clear that the pages were unpublished not because they shared fake news (an activity that Facebook executives have repeatedly defended), but because they violated the company’s community standards, particularly its rules against hate speech and bullying.”1
For their part, Apple removed five of Infowars’ six podcasts from the iTunes and Podcasts app saying “Apple does not tolerate hate speech.”
And YouTube said the pages violated their policies against child endangerment and hate speech, “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.” 2 Just this weekend, Jones said that he fully expected the platform would delete his page.
Agree with him or hate him, do you believe this is an assault on free speech?
