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Facebook bans 22 more pages linked to Alex Jones
Facebook on Tuesday began enforcing the new rules of its recently updated recidivism policy, which is why 22 pages linked to right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and his website InfoWars are no longer there.
InfoWars has a platform again, thanks to a new Roku channel (updated)
Last year, amid heated criticism over the conspiracy theories it spread about events like the Parkland, Florida and Sandy Hook school shootings, InfoWars -- along with owner Alex Jones -- started to its see reach diminished as one by one, platforms began to remove its content from their services. But now, months after many outlets banned InfoWars and Jones, Roku has given them their own channel. Digiday reported the move today, one that has already sparked backlash across social media.
Twitter bans 18 more InfoWars-related accounts
Twitter banned 18 more Twitter accounts related to Alex Jones and his InfoWars media outlet on Monday. The accounts were sharing content from the organization, and Twitter told CNN it permanently suspended them following a number of "violations and warnings" after seemingly helping Jones and InfoWars skirt their ban from the platform. The newly banned accounts included ones for the InfoWars store and Real News show.
Tim Cook calls removing Alex Jones simply 'curation'
In an interview with Vice News Tonight on HBO Apple CEO Tim Cook publicly explained some of the reasoning behind removing Alex Jones and InfoWars from the company's podcast app and App Store. According to Cook, the move wasn't politically motivated, or coordinated with any other tech companies, as he denied ever discussing the subject with them. Instead, he said: "What users want from us and what we've always provided them is a curated platform. We think that what the user wants is someone that does review these apps, someone that does review the podcasts, someone that on like Apple news, where a human is selecting the top stories. And that's what we do." He also reiterated previous comments calling for some form of regulation when it comes to privacy, saying that when the free market "doesn't produce a result that's great for society, you have to ask yourself what do we need to do?" Interviewer Elle Reeve also pushed Cook on his company's business in China, but he only offered that for user data in the country "it's encrypted like it is everywhere," and as he has before, said that Apple tries to design privacy into its products. You can watch the interview in its entirety below.
PayPal is the latest company to ban InfoWars
InfoWars has been issued another ban, this time from PayPal. The company notified InfoWars on Thursday that it would no longer process the site's store transactions, giving InfoWars 10 days to find a new processor. PayPal said the site had violated its "acceptable use policy," according to InfoWars. The payment company confirmed the move to The Verge. "Our values are the foundation for the decision we made this week," said a spokesperson. "We undertook an extensive review of the InfoWars sites, and found instances that promoted hate or discriminatory intolerance against certain communities and religions, which run counter to our core value of inclusion."
After Math: Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes
This has been quite the "disruptive" week with TechCrunch's marquee event going on at the San Francisco Moscone Center, and not just for startups. InfoWars was disinvited from yet another social media platform, Walmart is drastically expanding its self-driving Tesla truck order, and the world's largest wind farm just opened for business.
Apple yanks Alex Jones' InfoWars app
After Alex Jones and InfoWars drew bans from Facebook, YouTube and Apple Podcasts over repeated violations of their conduct policies, fans of the network downloaded its apps to continue accessing the same content. Tonight Apple confirmed to BuzzFeed News that it has permanently banned InfoWars from the iOS App Store. Apple was not specific about what caused the move, simply referring to its guidelines about objectionable content in the store. Before Twitter finally banned Jones and his site yesterday, we listed a series of posts that violated its policies and had somehow not resulted in the accounts being removed. Despite whatever reason the app had avoided removal until now despite engaging in the kind of defamatory and discriminatory language explicitly banned, Jones' move to confront reporters and even Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey around the Senate building on Wednesday while livestreaming and posting appears to have been the beginning of the end. As of this writing, the InfoWars app is still available on Android via Google Play.
The US government comes for Google, Facebook, and Twitter
Facebook, Twitter, and Google were threatened by lawmakers from three distinct quarters on Wednesday. A leaked email from the largest US telecom lobbying group tells us where this is headed. One threat came during testimony from Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg and Twitter's Jack Dorsey to Congress when Senator Mark Warner told the pair of executives that "Congress is going to have to take action here. The era of the Wild West in social media is coming to an end."
Twitter bans Alex Jones and InfoWars permanently
Alex Jones can add Twitter to the ever-growing list of social media sites that he's no longer welcome on. The micro-blogging platform announced on Thursday afternoon that Jones and his InfoWars channel have been "permanently suspended" due to "new reports of Tweets and videos posted yesterday that violate our abusive behavior policy."
Facebook is building a 'war room' for the midterm elections
In a bid to protect its millions of users from further instances of foreign interference, Facebook is building a physical "war room" ahead of the upcoming US midterm elections. In an interview with NBC News, Facebook's head of civic engagement, Samidh Chakrabarti, said the company is "laser focused on getting it right" this time, after more than 126 million Americans were exposed to meddlesome posts from Russia-linked accounts during the 2016 presidential election.
Tumblr revamps its rules to clamp down on hate and violence
If Alex Jones thought he could catch a break after steering his followers to Tumblr... well, he might not want to get too comfortable. Tumblr (owned by our parent brand Oath) is revamping its Community Guidelines with stricter policies, most notably against hate speech and violence. It's starting by dropping "gray area" statements from its anti-hate policy that implied users should only report hate speech when it's "especially heinous." It wants users to bring up any instance where Tumblr users promote hate or violence, whether it targets race, religion, gender identity or other factors.
Jack Dorsey explains why Twitter is reluctant to fight fake news
Twitter chief Jack Dorsey's media tour has swung past CNN, and he's using this latest opportunity to defend more of the social network's controversial decisions over subjects like fake news. In an interview with Reliable Sources host Brian Stelter, Dorsey argued that his company hadn't "figured this [fake news] out" and was reluctant to outright remove false reports. It would be "dangerous" for Twitter staffers to serve as "arbiters of truth," he claimed.
Twitter gives InfoWars the same one-week ban it gave Alex Jones
While companies like Apple, Facebook, Spotify and even Pinterest have taken down InfoWars content from their platforms, there has been one very public holdout -- Twitter. But BuzzFeed News reports today that the company is now limiting the InfoWars account, preventing it from posting tweets for one week. The move follows similar measures taken against Alex Jones just yesterday.
Alex Jones gets a week suspension from Twitter
More than a week after other services pulled the plug on Alex Jones and InfoWars, CNN reports that Twitter has given the personality a one-week suspension. The move came after a Periscope video session where Jones told viewers "now is time to act on the enemy" ahead of a "false flag" attack. His ability to tweet and retweet is gone for now, although the @RealAlexJones account is still visible and he can read things on the site. After Facebook, YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Vimeo dumped InfoWars content people have pushed for Twitter to do the same, however it has declined despite being notified of tweets that broke its rules. One site where Alex Jones remains fully active is Tumblr (which, like Engadget, is a part of Verizon-owned Oath) where InfoWars continues to post basic links to content that lives elsewhere. Still, the availability of its app via the Google Play and Apple iTunes stores means that followers can still receive the content if that's what they're interested in. That reality hasn't stopped the host from continuing to complain of censorship, a battle that seems likely to go on indefinitely. Meanwhile the @InfoWars account is unaffected.
Vimeo is the latest platform to remove InfoWars's Alex Jones
Vimeo has joined services like Facebook, YouTube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts and removed InfoWars's Alex Jones from its platform. According to Business Insider, new videos uploaded Thursday and Friday violated the site's Terms of Service for "discriminatory and hateful content." A spokesperson said, ""we do not want to profit from content of this nature in any way" and issued a refund to Jones.
Twitter admits Infowars tweets broke rules, but the account stays up
After a CNN inquiry found ten tweets from Alex Jones' accounts that it felt should've qualified as breaking Twitter's rules, the service admitted late Friday that it agreed on seven of them. The tweets have been deleted, and CNN reports that on his Infowars show, Jones directed his staff to remove them to "take the super high road." (Meanwhile, these greatest hits are all still live.) All of this comes days after Twitter declined to follow the actions taken by Apple Podcasts, Facebook, YouTube and others to ban the channel, claiming it hadn't violated their rules. Now, even though it admits that is not the case, Twitter said that it would've asked for the offending tweets to be deleted, and that has already happened. Apparently only two of them were recent enough to be considered for it to cite them in punitive action, while the other five occurred before the new rules implemented in December 2017. There are several theories about why Twitter continues to leave Jones' accounts up, but for now that's where they'll stay. In the meantime, the service decided to delete accounts for Gavin McInnes and the Proud Boys group, and a spokesperson told Engadget that occurred because they violated its policy against violent extremist groups.
Anonymous deals with its QAnon branding problem
When you're a notorious hacking entity like Anonymous, and a pro-Trump conspiracy cult (QAnon) steals your branding (while claiming you're the impostor), the obvious thing to do is declare cyberwar. That's exactly what Anonymous did this past week in a press announcement, followed by a social media and press offensive. So far Anonymous has managed to take over QAnon's hashtags (while adding #OpQAnon and others) and dox a couple hundred members of Trump's pedophilia-obsessed, "deep state" doomsday cult. QAnon's mouthpieces responded exactly as we'd expect, with taunts and tweets saying: "These people are STUPID!! They have no brains and no skills. Typical 'empty threat' terrorists! But DO NOT click their links!! Virus city baby!!"
Twitter doesn’t have the spine to ban Alex Jones
It seems like every major tech company has had enough of Alex Jones, the conspiracy theorist and propagandist behind the controversial far-right site InfoWars. Well, almost everyone. The obvious holdout: Twitter. On Monday, Twitter said InfoWars and its associated accounts, including Jones', were not currently violating its rules. And last night its CEO and co-founder, Jack Dorsey, tried to explain the decision. He said Twitter is going to "hold Jones to the same standard we hold to every account," but that it isn't "taking one-off actions to make us feel good in the short term, and adding fuel to new conspiracy theories."
Twitter's CEO tries to explain not suspending Alex Jones
Over the last few days, platforms like Apple Podcasts, Facebook, YouTube and Spotify decided they'd had enough of Alex Jones and InfoWars and pulled his access. Twitter was not among them, saying that InfoWars is not "currently violating our policies." Tonight its CEO Jack Dorsey tweeted a thread trying to clarify things, as he occasionally has when explaining changes in its policy or stating once again why some bad actor will be allowed to remain on the platform. The Twitter Safety account also provided information on the company's policy, explaining that while "We prohibit targeted behavior that harasses, threatens, or uses fear to silence others and take action when they violate our policies...If individuals are not targeted (e.g. @ mention, tagged in a photo, etc.), we allow a wide range of content as long as it doesn't cross the line into threatening violence." This may explain why Jones' exhortations about parents of children killed in school shootings aren't enough to get him banned, simply because he did not @ mention them.
InfoWars fans flock to apps following recent bans
While a number of tech companies have purged their sites of Alex Jones podcasts and accounts over the last couple of days, not all InfoWars-related content has been taken down. And what's still available continues to attract interest. CNBC reports today that the InfoWars app, which is still available through the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store, is being downloaded quite a bit, taking the fourth spot in Apple's chart of top free news-related apps. As of writing, the app was number 12 in Google's chart of top free news and magazine apps.
