The Purge Begins: Facebook, Apple, YouTube Ban InfoWars for Unspecified 'Hate Speech'
The liberal media, the progressive left in general and even some establishment Republicans have long sought to censor and silence the voice of right-leaning radio and TV host Alex Jones and his decidedly alternative media outlet InfoWars, and they just scored a huge win in that regard.
To be sure, Jones is notorious for routinely engaging in all manner of conspiracy theories from the absurd to the evil, as is his right to do by virtue of the First Amendment’s guarantee of a free press and free speech.
But in the minds of the left, those First Amendment rights only apply to them and those who largely agree with them, and should be tossed to the wayside and trampled underfoot for those who disagree with the left’s agenda and narratives, such as Jones and others the left views as “far-right,” such as mainstream conservatives.
According to Breitbart, the left scored a huge victory in their bid to silence Jones and InfoWars as three gigantic tech corporations — Apple, Facebook and YouTube — just took major steps to censor Jones and purge his InfoWars site from their platforms.
Apple was the first to make a move as they removed “The Alex Jones Show” and five other InfoWars-related podcasts from their iTunes store, rendering them unsearchable and undownloadable from their voluminous podcast directory.
In a statement to Buzzfeed, 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,” the spokesperson added. In other words, you can have a wide range of views, so long as they conform with our own opinions.
That Buzzfeed article gloatingly reported that both Spotify and YouTube quickly followed suit, with Spotify dropping Jones’ podcasts while YouTube — which had already suspended Jones’ live-streaming privileges — took down Jones’ channel, which had more than 2.5 million subscribers, and deleted nearly all of the videos Jones had produced, which had earned over 1 billion views.
As for Facebook, Breitbart reported they just permanently deleted four separate pages utilized by Jones, including the Alex Jones Page, the Alex Jones Channel Page, the Infowars Page and the Infowars Nightly News Page.
In a blog post to the Facebook Community Standards page, Facebook cited unspecified “hate speech” and “bullying” from Jones and InfoWars as being in violation of the platform’s policies.
The post further noted that what had started with the removal of four videos that had been reported as in violation eventually led to the removal of more videos that had been reported as in violation, and ultimately the decision to permanently delete the “offending” pages for alleged repeated violations of the “graphic violence policy” and “hate speech policies.”
Unsurprisingly, some of the folks at InfoWars — such as reporter and editor-at-large Paul Joseph Watson — were absolutely incensed by the broad decision from Facebook and others to censor and silence them for supposed and unspecified violations of vague policies that are routinely violated similarly without punishment by others on a daily basis.
In a flurry of outraged tweets, Watson condemned the action as blatant “political censorship” and noted how both liberal media outlets and elected Democrat officials had been pressuring Facebook and others to do exactly what they just did. He also accurately warned that other conservative outlets — even those considered less controversial — would be next on the target list for the left.
Facebook has permanently BANNED Infowars.
For unspecified "hate speech". They didn't even tell us what the offending posts were.
This sets a chilling precedent for free speech.
To all other conservative news outlets – you are next.
The great censorship purge has truly begun. pic.twitter.com/v7Yo9hI0q3
— Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) August 6, 2018
Sadly, Watson is correct that the left won’t stop until they have censored and silenced any and all voices that dissent from their progressive ideology, and one doesn’t even have to agree with or like Watson, Jones or InfoWars to know that he is speaking the blunt truth on this matter.
This purge of Jones and InfoWars by Apple, Facebook, YouTube and others — if allowed to stand without severe pushback or consequences — sets a horrific precedent that places the free speech online of anybody to the right of the far-left at existential risk, and nobody who professes to support free speech or a free press should be OK with this.
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