Conservative podcaster Alex Jones has been banned from several social media sites including Facebook, YouTube, Apple, Google, and Spotify. The sites are claiming that Jones infringed on their hate speech policy. The sites have not commented on what posts led to the banning.
After being banned, Jones Tweeted:
“We’ve been banned completely on Facebook, Apple, & Spotify. What conservative news outlet will be next? The one platform that they CAN’T ban and will ALWAYS have our live streams is infowars.com/show”
Facebook issued the following statement:
“We believe in giving people a voice, but we also want everyone using Facebook to feel safe. It’s why we have community standards and remove anything that violates them, including hate speech that attacks or dehumanizes others. Earlier today, we removed four pages belonging to Alex Jones for repeatedly posting content over the past several days that breaks those community standards.”
Jones’ shows “Alex Jones Show” and “War Room” on Apple iTunes were taken down.
“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.”
Twitter has decided not to ban Jones.
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey issued the following statement:
“We didn’t suspend Alex Jones or Infowars yesterday. We know that’s hard for many but the reason is simple: he hasn’t violated our rules. We’ll enforce if he does. And we’ll continue to promote a healthy conversational environment by ensuring tweets aren’t artificially amplified. Truth is we’ve been terrible at explaining our decisions in the past. We’re fixing that. We’re going to hold Jones to the same standard we hold to every account, not taking one-off actions to make us feel good in the short term, and adding fuel to new conspiracy theories.”
The Stitcher Radio company is the last podcast site to still air Jones’ podcast shows. Jones’ future is uncertain.
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