The staff at Infowars is having an existential crisis ever since we helped set in motion what would eventually lead to Infowars being booted from Spotify, iTunes, Facebook, YouTube and even MailChimp. But it’s a bit ironic that the network—which has ever since has hysterically claimed that they are being “censored” as the result of a global conspiracy—enforces the same site policies on their own platform to which they were subject on others.
Ever since Infowars’ banning from major platforms, Alex Jones has been demanding that his audience to fight back, send him money, and for President Donald Trump—with whom Jones often brags about having a relationship—to come to his rescue and force companies to unsuspend his accounts. Infowars has even altered the watermark on its broadcasts to include a red banner reading “censored.”
Infowars’ banning from social media platforms is not a First Amendment issue. We live in a technocracy where most online traffic is directed to platforms owned by private companies that determine the rules for use of their platforms. Although it took years of public outcry, those platforms finally enforced their rules on Jones.
It is not without irony that we note that Infowars holds the same kind of policies as Facebook, YouTube, iTunes and Spotify. According to the Infowars site’s own terms of service, users are subject to a ban if they violate the policies laid out by Infowars. From Infowars’ own terms of service (emphasis added):
You will not post anything libelous, defamatory, harmful, threatening, harassing, abusive, invasive of another’s privacy, hateful, racially or ethnically objectionable, or otherwise illegal.
You will not make threats to other users or people not associated with the site.
If you violate these rules, your posts and/or user name will be deleted.
Remember: you are a guest here. It is not censorship if you violate the rules and your post is deleted. All civilizations have rules and if you violate them you can expect to be ostracized from the tribe.
By Infowars’ own content standards, it should ban itself.
