Facebook, Apple and Spotify remove pages and podcasts from Alex Jones for hate speech violations
Facebook and Apple remove pages and podcasts from Alex
Jones for hate speech violations
Apple confirmed on Monday that it had removed five out of
six podcasts, which includes Jones' infamous The Alex Jones Show.
Facebook has also removed four pages that belong to
Jones.
Both companies said Jones violated hate speech policies
on their respective platforms.
Ryan Browne August
6, 2018 CNBC.com
Apple and Facebook clamped down on content by Alex Jones
Monday, with the former pulling five of his podcasts and the latter removing
four pages controlled by him.
Apple confirmed on Monday that it had removed five out of
six podcasts, which includes Jones' infamous "The Alex Jones Show" as
well as a number of other InfoWars audio streams. The news was originally
reported by BuzzFeed News.
Jones, a controversial conspiracy theorist who has
claimed that the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting was a hoax, has been hit with
other content bans from the likes of Google's YouTube and Spotify.
Apple's move seems slightly more dramatic — the company
has taken down entire libraries of InfoWars podcasts, rather than a select few
episodes.
"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 in a
statement on Monday.
"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."
Facebook ban
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.
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 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.
As private companies, there is nothing in law to bar them
from removing user-generated videos and audio as they see fit. But a number of
mostly conservative commentators have framed the issue as a matter of freedom
of speech.
On Friday, Apple officially became the first
publicly-listed U.S. company to reach a market capitalization of $1 trillion.
Spotify
Spotify last week pulled several of Jones' podcasts,
citing the violation of its policies on hateful content. On Monday, however,
the streaming service completely removed "The Alex Jones Show" from
the platform, a spokesperson for the company told CNBC Monday.
Spotify continued to review the podcast over the weekend
and arrived at the conclusion that enough of it went against its code on
hateful content to warrant a complete deletion of the show.
Spotify's policies mean that more than one contravention
can result in a podcast creator being barred from the platform altogether. The
company had been confronted with the threat of some users leaving the platform
for not being tough enough on the right-wing online personality.
YouTube
A YouTube spokesperson declined to comment whether or not
the company would also take down the Alex Jones YouTube page. The page was
still live Monday morning. Jones publishes many of the same videos that
violated Facebook's policies to YouTube. YouTube has taken action against Jones
in the past, including removing some of his videos.
Tech's politics problem
The problem of online political content as a whole has
proven to be a contentious one for digital companies.
Two weeks ago, Facebook faced the biggest one-day market
rout in history, shedding more than $100 billion from its market value in the
space of just one trading day.
That followed concerns that the company's data scandal,
in which the data of 87 million users were shared improperly with political
consultancy Cambridge Analytica, had affected second-quarter revenues.
Issues around data privacy and fake news have become
almost intertwined as politicians and regulators examine how to deal with
claims that digital platforms were used as a tool to influence major elections
including the 2016 U.S. presidential election and the U.K. Brexit referendum.
Therefore, tech firms have been at the center of the
debacle, with analysts questioning whether they could be the target of
increased regulation. In May, the European Union put in place its huge data law
shake-up, dubbed GDPR (the General Data Protection Regulation, requiring
companies to obtain explicit consent from customers as to how their data is
used, or else face a fine of either 20 million euros ($23 million) or 4 percent
of their global annual revenues.
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