All but one of the major content platforms have banned the American conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, as the companies raced to act in the wake of Apple’s decision to remove five podcasts by Jones and his Infowars website.
Facebook unpublished four pages run by Jones for “repeated violations of community standards”, the company said on Monday. YouTube terminated Jones’s account over him repeatedly appearing in videos despite being subject to a 90-day ban from the website, and Spotify removed the entirety of one of Jones’s podcasts for “hate content”.
Facebook’s removal of the pages – the Alex Jones Channel Page, the Alex Jones Page, the Infowars Page and the Infowars Nightly News Page – comes after the social network imposed a 30-day ban on Jones personally “for his role in posting violating content to these pages”.
Following that suspension, a Facebook spokesperson said: “More content from the same pages has been reported to us – upon review, we have taken it down for glorifying violence, which violates our graphic violence policy, and using dehumanising language to describe people who are transgender, Muslims and immigrants, which violates our hate speech policies.”
The spokesperson noted that, despite the focus on Jones’s role in spreading conspiracy theories around events such as the 9/11 attacks and Sandy Hook school shooting, “none of the violations that spurred today’s removals were related to this”.
A few hours after Facebook announced its ban, YouTube also terminated Jones’s account on its platform. The company issued a statement that didn’t refer to Jones by name, saying only that: “All users agree to comply with our terms of service and community guidelines when they sign up to use YouTube. 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.”
The Guardian understands that the specific rationale for Jones’s ban was his habit of appearing in livestreams hosted on other channels on the site, despite being subject to a 90-day ban.
Facebook’s and YouTube’s enforcement action against Jones came hours after Apple removed Jones from its podcast directory. The timing of Facebook’s announcement was unusual, with the company confirming the ban at 3am local time.
Jones, who is being sued by the parents of children murdered in the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting for claiming the attack was a hoax, is the host of the daily Alex Jones Show podcast, and his platform Infowars produces another five podcasts.
All of those shows were removed from Apple Podcasts save for one, Real News with David Knight, which at present is still on the platform.
Apple does not host podcasts, nor does it have any financial relationship with those it catalogues on its directory. Instead, Apple Podcasts is simply a list of links to podcasts hosted on independent servers around the world. But the service is still the most important single platform in the podcasting industry, driving a substantial amount of traffic to the podcasts it features on its homepage or in its charts.
Publishing platforms have faced strong pressure to take action against Jones and Infowars over the past few months, but Apple was the first major company to sanction the broadcaster in its entirety, narrowly beating Facebook to the punch.
“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,” an Apple spokesperson told BuzzFeed News, which first reported the removal. “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.”
Spotify also took action against Jones on Monday, removing every episode of his podcast The Alex Jones Show from its platform. The music streaming service had previously removed specific episodes of the show, but left the bulk of the archive up, before tightening its enforcement. Spotify has still left three other Infowars podcasts live on the service, however.
“We take reports of hate content seriously and review any podcast episode or song that is flagged by our community,” a Spotify spokesperson told the Guardian. “Due to repeated violations of Spotify’s prohibited content policies, The Alex Jones Show has lost access to the Spotify platform.”
Facebook suspended Jones’s personal profile from the site for 30 days in late July for what the company said was bullying and hate speech. But he continued to regularly appear on Facebook after the suspension, appearing in livestreams hosted by other accounts and even making first-person posts to his personal page by publishing them using the accounts of other administrators in Infowars.
The lone major social network to still allow Jones unfettered access is Twitter, where the broadcaster has a “verified” account. As the count of companies acting against Jones and Infowars grew, some Twitter users began campaigning for that site to follow suit, tweeting to Jack Dorsey, the co-founder and chief executive. Following the bans, Jones immediately turned to Twitter’s live-streaming platform Periscope to hit back at the tech platforms. “Everyone must turn to Infowars as a standard to be saved,” Jones said. “Tell folks, ‘Hey, it’s the most censored thing in the world for a reason. Jones is dialled in, Jones knows what’s going on.’”
Since founding Infowars in 1999, Jones has built a vast audience. Among the theories he has promoted is that the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington were staged by the government.
He has also promoted a theory that the Sandy Hook massacre was faked by left-wing forces to promote gun control. The shooting killed 26 children and adults at the elementary school in Connecticut.
Jones is being sued in Texas by two Sandy Hook parents, who are seeking at least $1m (£770,000), claiming they have been subjected to harassment driven by his shows.
Neither Jones nor a representative for Infowars was available for comment early on Monday.
YouTube, Facebook and Apple have taken steps to remove content associated with InfoWars and its founder Alex Jones.
Each social media platform said Monday that it had removed content from Jones or InfoWars because it had violated their policies. The companies' moves shut down key distribution channels that had given the controversial media figure easy access to millions of internet users.
The most dramatic action came last, from YouTube, which is owned by Google (GOOGL). It removed many top channels associated with InfoWars, including The Alex Jones Channel, which had 2.4 million subscribers and videos that were viewed over 1.5 billion times.
"When users violate ... policies repeatedly, like our policies against hate speech and harassment or our terms prohibiting circumvention of our enforcement measures, we terminate their accounts," said a spokesperson for YouTube.
Some channels for some of InfoWars' top personalities were still on the platform, however.
InfoWars is notorious for spreading demonstrably false information and conspiracy theories on a host of issues. It has suggested that the Sandy Hook massacre was a hoax, and that the September 11 terrorist attacks were an inside job orchestrated by the US government.
InfoWars did not respond to a request for comment.
But in a message posted Monday on Twitter, Jones encouraged users to access live streams directly from the InfoWars website. He described it as "the one platform that they CAN'T ban."
Earlier on Monday, Facebook removed four pages associated with InfoWars and Jones for repeated violations of its policies.
The social media platform said in a statement that it had "unpublished" the Alex Jones Channel Page, the Alex Jones Page, the InfoWars Page and the Infowars Nightly News Page.
Facebook (FB) removed four videos from the pages last week after determining that they violated its hate speech and bullying policies. It also suspended the personal profile of Jones.
The company said that more content from the pages had since been reported, and it had decided to remove them for "repeated violations of community standards and accumulating too many strikes."
"Upon review, we have taken it down for glorifying violence ... and using dehumanizing language to describe people who are transgender, Muslims and immigrants, which violates our hate speech policies," said Facebook.
Related: Facebook suspends personal profile of InfoWars founder Alex Jones
The pages displayed the following message when accessed Monday: "Sorry, this content isn't available right now."
Facebook said the page administrators would be able to appeal its decision. In the absence of an appeal, or it the appeal fails, the pages will be permanently deleted.
The moves by Facebook, YouTube, and Apple left Twitter as the only major tech platform not to take some action against InfoWars and Jones over the past day.
A Twitter spokesperson told CNN that neither InfoWars nor any of its associated accounts are currently in violation of Twitter rules.
For weeks, Facebook has suffered a public relations crisis over how it handles misinformation and false news on its platforms. The company said the removal of the four pages on Monday was unrelated.
"While much of the discussion around InfoWars has been related to false news ... none of the violations that spurred today's removals were related to this," it said in a statement.
Related: Facebook and Instagram now reveal how much time you spend in each app
BuzzFeed News reported on Sunday that Apple (AAPL) had removed five podcasts associated with InfoWars from iTunes and its podcast app.
"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," it said in a statement provided to BuzzFeed News.
"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."
Apple confirmed the accuracy of its statement to CNN.
— Paul P. Murphy and Oliver Darcy contributed reporting.
Alex Jones will no longer have a home on YouTube.
The company announced Monday that it has removed Jones — a prominent far-right personality who runs the InfoWars channel, which is known for pushing inflammatory content and conspiracy theories — from its platform.
A YouTube spokesperson issued the following statement concerning Jones’ removal:
All users agree to comply with our Terms of Service and Community Guidelines when they sign up to use YouTube. 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.
YouTube’s decision to terminate Jones’ account comes after he tried to circumvent a 90-day livestreaming ban by promoting a different livestream on other channels. After giving Jones a warning, the company learned of the violation, and saw fit to terminate the channel.
Jones called the move an act of censorship on Twitter, and will respond to YouTube’s decision via a livestream on Periscope.
YouTube’s decision to shut down InfoWars’ channel follows the decision by a number of major tech platforms to begin removing Jones’ content. In the past few days, Apple, Spotify and Facebook have each removed InfoWars from their platforms. All three companies cited the hateful content found in Jones’ InfoWars videos and on his podcast, saying that it violates the platforms’ respective community guidelines. For Facebook, the decision comes in the wake of repeated online protests over allowing Jones to publish hateful content.
Just a few weeks ago, Jones “issued a prolonged rant against special counsel Robert Mueller, accusing him of raping children and overseeing their rape, and then pantomiming shooting the former FBI director,” according to BuzzFeed News. A Facebook representative later told BuzzFeed News, “Jones’ comments do not violate the company’s community standards as they are not a credible statement of intent to commit violence.”
Facebook cited new information in its decision to remove Jones’ pages.
“More content from the same pages has been reported to us — upon review, we have taken it down for glorifying violence, which violates our graphic violence policy, and using dehumanizing language to describe people who are transgender, Muslims and immigrants, which violates our hate speech policies,” a spokesperson told The Guardian.
Apple issued a similar statement to BuzzFeed News this weekend.
“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,” a spokesperson for Apple told BuzzFeed News.
Later on Monday morning, Facebook announced it was removing four of Jones' pages for persistently uploading content in breach of the social network's content guidelines.
The company said it made the decision after receiving additional complaints about inappropriate content on Jones' pages. The pages were removed "for glorifying violence, which violates our graphic violence policy, and using dehumanizing language to describe people who are transgender, Muslims and immigrants, which violates our hate speech policies." The decision was made independently of any other companies removing content from their sites, a Facebook spokesperson said.
In July, Facebook removed four of Jones' videos and hit his own personal profile with a 30-day ban over what the firm deemed as a violation of its policies on bullying and hate speech. The company said at the time the official InfoWars page, among others where Jones was an administrator, were getting close to the threshold of being banned from the site due to repeated violations.
The company explained on Monday that when it deletes content, the removal counts as a strike — essentially a warning — against the person that uploaded it. In the case of pages, Facebook said it holds both a page and an administrator who posts content in violation of its rules accountable.
But it also said that the reason for removing Jones' pages was in no way related to concerns over fake news.
"All four pages have been unpublished for repeated violations of Community Standards and accumulating too many strikes," the company said in a blog post.
"While much of the discussion around Infowars has been related to false news, which is a serious issue that we are working to address by demoting links marked wrong by fact checkers and suggesting additional content, none of the violations that spurred today's removals were related to this."
Facebook in particular has faced calls to remove Jones from the platform altogether. Last month, the company was asked by a CNN journalist why it had not banned InfoWars completely, given its aim to crack down on fake news. Facebook — along with CEO Mark Zuckerberg — defended the decision not to remove InfoWars.
Tech giants have faced calls from both sides of the political spectrum to be more transparent about the way they approach content flagging and banning. On the left, there are critics who say these firms are not doing enough to take down harmful and offensive content, while on the right there are some who think internet firms are routinely censoring conservative posts.
