infowars
Latest
Alex Jones ordered to pay $965 million after misinformation campaign targeting Sandy Hook families
A jury awarded $965 million to 15 victims of Alex Jones' conspiracy theories about the 2012 mass shooting. at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
Recommended Reading: Imogen Heap's far-reaching influence on music
Recommended Reading highlights the week's best writing on technology and more.
Google pulls Infowars from the Play Store over coronavirus misinformation
In 2018, several internet services decided to pull channels from Alex Jones and his Infowars setup, including YouTube and Apple's App Store, but until now the company's app remained available via the Google Play Store. While conspiracy theories and lawsuits from parents who said he'd lied about them and their children weren't enough to earn Jones the boot, Wired reports that the final straw came after Jones published a video disputing quarantine and social distancing efforts meant to slow the spread of COVID-19. Google and other companies have banded together to combat misinformation about the coronavirus pandemic, and in a statement a spokesperson said "Now more than ever, combating misinformation on the Play Store is a top priority for the team." The only question left is why they waited so long to do something that seemed inevitable from the start.
Trump’s ‘Social Media Summit’ was a celebration of conspiracy theorists
President Donald Trump kicked off his Thursday morning by doing what he does best: tweeting. Amid a sea of missives, which ranged from attacks on the "Fake News Media" to the Mueller Report, he said it would be "a big and exciting day at the White House for Social Media." It was all a lead-up to his administration's first "Social Media Summit," an event that was announced back in June and took place yesterday. Despite being billed as a summit about social media, though, the Trump administration didn't invite anyone from the two biggest players in the space: Facebook and Twitter. Instead, it brought together people who are under the impression that these tech giants are censoring conservative voices on the internet.
InfoWars can't use Pepe the Frog after lawsuit settlement
The creator of Pepe the Frog has made it known, several times over, that he didn't want his creation to become a symbol for the far right. That may be easier now, as the website InfoWars has settled a lawsuit related to its use of the character, which includes a pledge never to use it again. The Daily Beast reports that Pepe creator, Matt Furie, sued the conspiracy page after it sold an unauthorized poster featuring Pepe.
Facebook and Instagram ban Alex Jones and other far-right extremists
Facebook is continuing with its stricter responses to hate and violence. Both Facebook and Instagram have banned several predominantly far-right personalities and groups, including Infowars, its creator Alex Jones, Louis Farrakhan, Laura Loomer, Paul Nehlen, Paul Joseph Watson and Milo Yiannopoulos. Infowars was particularly hard-hit on top of earlier crackdowns. The two social networks will remove any content shared from Infowars, with repeat offenders facing their own bans.
YouTube bans secondary Alex Jones channel hosting NZ conspiracy videos
YouTube has terminated a channel Alex Jones was reportedly using to skirt his ban from the platform. On a video posted on Resistance News, which was a secondary Infowars channel according to Media Matters, Jones described last week's New Zealand mosque shootings as a "false flag" operation and attacked Muslims.
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.
Dear tech: Stop doing business with Nazis
Kicking Nazis off tech companies' services is so easy, and such a simple thing to do. It is such a basic act of human decency, a trivial task that would stop PayPal, Stripe, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, GoDaddy and many more from being unquestionably complicit in the deadly rise of American Naziism. Stakes climb as we approach next week's elections. And yet.
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.
Banning Alex Jones proves Twitter can’t be impartial
All efforts to save @RealAlexJones and @InfoWars from themselves have failed, and you can blame Jack Dorsey for that. Whether or not he intervened in applying a seven-day suspension for rulebreaking tweets (the company denies it) he's successfully undermined the values Twitter claims to hold high. A month ago, when YouTube and Facebook took action against the accounts, Dorsey said: "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." So how'd that work out? Twitter claims justification for the ban comes from tweets and videos posted yesterday targeting CNN reporter Oliver Darcy. Unfortunately, we won't ignore the fact that this action occurred within 24 hours of its CEO being personally exposed to Jones' outrage. If Twitter wants to show, as Jack told Congress yesterday, that "Impartiality is our guiding principle" then it's difficult to imagine a more spectacular example of failure.
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."
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.
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.
