YouTube announced on Monday that Alex Jones’s Infowars channel is banned, adding that the decision came after the channel violated the site’s policies and attempted to sidestep enforcement measures.
Several other major U.S. technology companies have also done the same.
According to The Hill, Alex Jones’s channel violated the platform’s policies against child endangerment and hate speech, and the permanent ban is for trying to circumvent YouTube’s punishment.
Jones’s channel for the initial strike for violating its policies received a 90-day ban on live streaming on the platform. Later he tried to skirt this by promoting his live streams on other sites, on YouTube, prompting the site to permanently ban him, the source said.
“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,” a YouTube spokesperson said when asked for comment.
Meanwhile, Jones on Saturday stated that he was expecting for his page to be deleted because Spotify, Apple, and Facebook have also done the same.
The Hill wrote that Facebook had faced criticism and scrutiny for allowing Jones to remain on the site, despite his promotion of conspiracy theories that the Sandy Hook Elementary school shooting was staged and that survivors of the Parkland, Florida school shooting were “crisis actors.”
Spotify banned Jones last week, and Apple did the same on Sunday. Facebook banned Jones although Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg appeared to defend Jones and other conspiracy theorists that are active on the social media platform.
“I’m Jewish, and there’s a set of people who deny that the Holocaust happened,” Zuckerberg said in an interview with Recode. “I find that deeply offensive. But at the end of the day, I don’t believe that our platform should take that down because I think there are things that different people get wrong.”
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