The social reach of Infowars host Alex Jones has been significantly reduced after tech giants cracked down on his repeated promotion of violence and hate speech.
The conspiracy theorist – who regularly targets LGBTQ people and ethnic minorities as part of his red-faced rants – has had all episodes for five of his six Infowars podcasts removed by Apple from their platform.
His regular releases War Room and the Alex Jones Show have been completely removed from Apple’s iTunes directory in what has been described as one of the largest enforcement actions to curb conspiratorial news by a tech company.
“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 said of Alex Jones’ ban.
“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 have also removed all episodes of the Alex Jones Show from its platform, after removing selected episodes last week.
After Apple announced its sweeping ban of Alex Jones’ content on their platform, Facebook followed suit and removed four of his pages.
The Alex Jones Channel Page, the Alex Jones Page, the Infowars Page, and the Infowars Nightly News Page have all been banned from Facebook.
It came after Facebook imposed a 30-day ban on Alex Jones personally.
“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,” a spokesperson for Facebook said.
Alex Jones first founded Infowars back in 1999, but it was ahead of the 2016 US Presidential Election that the platform became more widely known.
The host is known for his angry rants and ludicrous conspiracy theories, which range from 9/11 being staged by the government, to promoting the theory that the Sandy Hook massacre was faked by left-wing authorities to promote gun control.
The shooting – which occurred in December 2012 – resulted in 26 children and adults being killed at the elementary school.
Jones is currently being sued by two Sandy Hook parents in Texas for at least $1 million (£770,000), claiming that they have received harassment as a result of his shows.
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