“Most of U.S. conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’s podcasts from his right-wing media platform Infowars have been removed from Apple’s iTunes and podcast apps, the media news website BuzzFeed quoted a company spokesman as saying on Sunday,” Rich McKay reports for Reuters. “The move by Apple is the most sweeping of a recent crackdown on Jones’s programs by Facebook and other online sites that have suspended or removed some of his conspiracy-driven content.”
“Apple told Buzzfeed that it had removed the entire library for five of Jones’s six Infowars podcasts including the shows ‘War Room’ and the daily ‘The Alex Jones Show,'” McKay reports. “Only one program provided by Infowars, ‘RealNews with David Knight’ remained on Apple’s platforms on Sunday, according to media accounts.”
“In other recent actions against Jones, Facebook suspended the radio and Internet host’s personal profile for 30 days in late July from Facebook’s site for what the company said was bullying and hate speech,” McKay reports. “Also, Spotify, a music and podcast streaming company, said on Monday that it had now removed all of Jones’s Infowars programs from its platform. Last week it removed just some specific programs.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Of course, the inherent danger of censorhsip is that you make the censored more alluring by elevating the musings run-of-the-mill crackpots into ideas too “dangerous” to hear.
MacDailyNews Note: In a statement Sunday evening to BuzzFeed News, an Apple spokesperson said:
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. 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.
Note also that Infowars.com’s The Alex Jones Show and other podcasts are readily availble elsewhere via Stitcher and other outlets.
Unlike Apple, it seems, we trust the intelligence of our readers to be able to listen to what they want and decide for themselves who to ignore and who to follow.
I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. — Evelyn Beatrice Hall
