Following Right Wing Watch’s reporting on Spotify’s hosting of Infowars content in its podcast stream, Apple today removed all Infowars content from iTunes in what The Washington Post called “one of the most aggressive moves by technology companies and streaming services against the conspiracy theorist and owner of the right-wing media platform Infowars.”
Hours later, Spotify today told the Post: “Due to repeated violations of Spotify’s prohibited content policies The Alex Jones Show has lost access to the Spotify platform.” (Spotify never responded to RWW’s request for comment.)
Initially, Spotify, after RWW’s Jared Holt last week broke the story of Infowars content running on Spotify in violation of Spotify’s own rules, only removed selected episodes.
Facebook today also deleted four pages by Infowars proprietor Alex Jones, saying they violated community standards, and YouTube shut down The Alex Jones Channel. The video-hosting company, which is part of Google, told the Washington Post:
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.
On July 30, RWW’s Holt reported that Spotify was hosting Infowars content in violation of its own terms of service, which forbids hate speech and bullying.
Holt’s report inspired the anti-hate advocacy group Sleeping Giants to launch a boycott against Spotify in order to pressure the streaming service to drop Infowars from its podcast platform.
Holy shit. Really, @Spotify?
Alex Jones has been responsible for harassing parents of Sandy Hook children, Vegas shooting victims and threatening to kill the Special Counsel. And you’re now hosting his podcasts?? https://t.co/dAIYiNKdXP
— Sleeping Giants (@slpng_giants) July 30, 2018
Predictably, Jones painted himself as a victim of censorship with an epic display of histrionics, on which Holt reported here.
