Infowars and Alex Jones banned from Facebook, iTunes and Spotify

Conspiracy website Infowars.com, hosted by Alex Jones, has had its official Facebook pages removed as well as links to its podcasts on Apple-owned iTunes.

The site has also had its podcasts removed from music/audio streaming app Spotify.

Facebook announced on Monday that four pages belonging to Alex Jones and Infowars had been permanently removed for “repeated violations of community standards”. The pages were the Alex Jones Channel Page, the Alex Jones Page, the Infowars Page and the Infowars Nightly News Page which had millions of followers between them.

Facebook said in a written statement on their website –

As a result of reports we received, last week, we removed four videos on four Facebook Pages for violating our hate speech and bullying policies. These pages were the Alex Jones Channel Page, the Alex Jones Page, the InfoWars Page and the Infowars Nightly News Page. In addition, one of the admins of these Pages – Alex Jones – was placed in a 30-day block for his role in posting violating content to these Pages.
Since then, 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.

Alex Jones and Infowars are perhaps most known for their propagation and promotion of both mainstream and fringe conspiracy theories, ranging from the prolific 9/11 “truther” conspiracies to more controversial theories such as the claim that the Sandy Hook school massacre in 2012 had been staged and that families and victims were “crisis actors”.

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However Facebook went on to claim that the removal of the four pages was not in relation to the conspiracies or fake news the site is most known for promoting.

Alex Jones is currently facing lawsuits for information he has broadcast on his website and social media channels. One lawsuit is from a family of one of the Sandy Hook victims who claim they have been continually harassed in part due to Alex Jones promoting conspiracies related to the Sandy Hook shooting, and another lawsuit from a man Infowars incorrectly identified as the Parkland school suspect.

Infowar’s Paul Watson claimed that Infowars had been censored by the social media giant.

Those who had their pages removed from Facebook have the opportunity to appeal the decision, but it’s not clear whether Infowars will go down that avenue.