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The internet’s slow turn against Alex Jones and InfoWars
Tech companies are finally starting to take action on Alex Jones, the man who called the Sandy Hook school shooting a hoax and said the Democrats were planning a second civil war, for spreading his hateful conspiracy nonsense on the internet. It all began a couple of weeks ago when YouTube removed multiple videos from his channel for hate speech, a move that was followed by Facebook blocking him from posting on his personal page for 30 days. Since then, Spotify has taken down multiple episodes of Alex Jones' podcast, citing violations of its rules against hate speech, while Stitcher and Apple have gone as far as completely removing InfoWars shows. And now Facebook and YouTube have outright banned him and his InfoWars pages. Although things seem to have come to a head just recently, the battle between the InfoWars creator and tech firms has actually been brewing for months. Here's a timeline of the most important events leading up to today, when it seems that tech companies have decided that enough is enough.
Twitter: InfoWars isn't currently violating our policies
After YouTube pulled several of Alex Jones' videos two weeks ago for violating its hate speech policies, more and more services similarly removed content uploaded by him and his InfoWars network, culminating today in bans on Facebook and Apple's audio platforms. But amid the top media providers and social networks, one was notably silent: Twitter. As of today, the company's official position remains that Jones, InfoWars and associated accounts are not currently violating its rules, a Twitter spokesperson told Engadget.
YouTube removes Alex Jones’ official channel for violating guidelines
YouTube is the latest service to remove Alex Jones' content, which follows Facebook, Apple and Spotify yanking InfoWars pages and podcasts over the last day or so. Engadget has confirmed that YouTube has taken down the verified Alex Jones Channel (which had more than 2.4 million subscribers) for violating community guidelines, and has contacted YouTube for additional details.
Facebook bans Alex Jones and InfoWars pages
Facebook has removed four pages from conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, saying that the channels "repeatedly" violated its hate speech and bullying policies. Last week, Facebook removed four videos from the channels and suspended the controversial radio personality for 30 days. However, today it wrote that since the earlier action didn't seem to deter Jones, it was taking stronger measures.
Apple removes InfoWars podcasts from its platforms
Apple is the latest company to crack down on Alex Jones' controversial news site InfoWars. On Sunday, the tech giant removed five of the six podcasts streamable on its iTunes and Podcast apps, revealing to Buzzfeed that it "does not tolerate hate speech" on its platform.
Stitcher removes Alex Jones’ podcast from its platform
While Facebook, YouTube and Spotify have taken down a handful of videos and podcast episodes from Alex Jones' pages, Stitcher has now gone a step further, removing his entire podcast from its platform. Last night on Twitter, the company said that it had reviewed Jones' podcasts and "found he has, on multiple occasions, harassed or allowed harassment of private individuals and organizations." Stitcher also noted that Jones' targeted harassment -- which has been directed towards parents of Sandy Hook victims and students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, among others -- has led his listeners "to engage in similar harassment and other damaging activity." Because of these actions, it said it would remove Jones' podcasts from the Stitcher platform.
Spotify has taken down multiple episodes of Alex Jones’ podcast
Spotify has taken down a number of episodes of Alex Jones' podcast for violating its hate speech policy. First noted by New York Times reporter Ben Sisario, the move follows similar actions taken by Facebook and YouTube. "We take reports of hate content seriously and review any podcast episode or song that is flagged by our community," a spokesperson told Engadget. "Spotify can confirm it has removed specific episodes of 'The Alex Jones Show' podcast for violating our hate content policy."
Facebook blocks Infowars’ Alex Jones from posting for 30 days
Days after YouTube took down multiple videos from conspiracy theorist Alex Jones' video channel, Facebook has suspended his account on the platform for 30 days. The InfoWars founder had violated the social network's Community Standards, according to Mashable. If he or his fellow admins keep breaking the rules, Jones' personal page could be permanently banned.
YouTube removes multiple Alex Jones videos for hate speech
YouTube has taken down four videos from Alex Jones' channel, The Verge reports, and has issued the channel a strike. When a channel is found to be in violation of YouTube's community guidelines, the violating content is removed and the channel is given a strike. If a channel gets three strikes within three months, it's terminated by YouTube. The Verge's sources say that of the four videos removed by YouTube, two featured hate speech against Muslims, one included hate speech against transgender people and another titled "How to prevent liberalism" featured Jones mocking a child who had been pushed down by an adult man.
Facebook can’t decide when a page should be banned
Another day, another congressional hearing on how tech companies are conducting themselves. This time it was Facebook, Twitter and YouTube that testified before the House Judiciary Committee today, in a hearing titled "Examining the Content Filtering Practices of Social Media Giants." While much of the three-hour session was information we've heard before, like what they're all doing to fight fake news and propaganda-driven bots, there was an interesting discussion about Facebook's policies (or lack thereof). In particular, the company's president for global policy management, Monika Bickert, couldn't give members of the committee a firm answer on what exactly it takes to ban offensive pages from Facebook.
Amazon Prime Video is offering dubious conspiracy videos
It won't surprise you to hear that streaming services are full of documentary-style videos with dodgy claims about aliens or the paranormal. Amazon Prime Video, however, is coming under fire for offering considerably worse. The Telegraph has noticed that the service includes numerous conspiracy videos from widely discredited sources like Alex Jones and David Icke. Amazon isn't going out of its way to promote the junk theories (which include the New World Order and reptilian aliens). As a subscription service, though, it's paying the authors for their work -- unlike YouTube, it can't just pull ads.
YouTube mistakenly pulls video exposing Alex Jones' conspiracy theories
YouTube has been trying to reduce instances of mistaken video takedowns, but it's evident there's still some work to do. The company temporarily pulled a video from watchdog group Media Matters that exposed Alex Jones' conspiracy theories surrounding his (since-retracted) claims the Sandy Hook mass shooting was fake. While YouTube didn't outline what Media Matters had done wrong, the boilerplate message said the clip had been flagged for review and warned against using YouTube for "threats, harassment, bullying, or intimidation." The company also applied a first strike against Media Matters.
Pepe The Frog’s creator sues Infowars for copyright infringement
Despite artist Matt Furie's attempts to reclaim his Pepe The Frog character from neo-Nazis, his cartoon is still being used by the far-right. He created Pepe in the early 2000s and has described the character as a "peaceful frog-dude" whose true nature "celebrates peace, togetherness and fun." But in 2015, the far-right began to appropriate Pepe, using him as a representation of hate, white supremacy and anti-Semitism and the character became tied to racists and conspiracy theorists like Richard Spencer and Mike Cernovich. Furie has tried to reclaim Pepe through a #SavePepe campaign and by issuing cease-and-desist notices to those using its image and companies like Amazon, Google and Reddit whose sites hosted infringing content. He even tried to kill off the character last year. Now, he's going after Infowars.
Advertisers pull out of InfoWars' YouTube channels
Brands are once again beating a hasty retreat after learning that they were running ads on objectionable YouTube channels. Several big brands (including Acer, Alibaba, Fox, Nike and Paramount) have suspended ads from InfoWars' channels after CNN demonstrated that their commercials were streaming on the conspiracy-peddling network's videos. The companies said they were not only unaware of the placement, but in numerous cases had set up exclusion filters to avoid displaying ads against content like this. Some also said they explicitly blacklisted InfoWars channels, but didn't realize how many channels the company actually had.
YouTube finally notices Infowars is peddling dangerous conspiracies
Earlier this week, YouTube took down a video from one of Infowars' channels. It was one of many videos out there claiming that students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School are not in fact students and school shooting survivors, but are instead paid "crisis actors." The video, which was titled "David Hogg Can't Remember His lines In TV Interview," was removed by YouTube from the Alex Jones Channel on Wednesday and the platform said it violated its policies against harassment. CNN now reports that this qualifies as one strike against the Infowars channel and if it gets two more within a three-month period, the channel will be terminated.
Hoaxy visualizes how fake news spreads across social media
We're at the point where the proliferation of fake news online has had extreme offline consequences. While Google has poured funds into battling misinformation and Facebook has asked its users to rate headlines for truthfulness, Indiana University is going about things a different way. Hoaxy, a project from IU's Center for Complex Networks and System Research, is a search engine that tracks the spread of fake news stories, visually.
