PayPal announced Friday that it would not longer work with Alex Jones’ InfoWars, which it said had been found to be in violation of PayPal’s “core values.”
“Our values are the foundation for the decision. We undertook an extensive review of the Infowars sites, and found instances that promoted hate or discriminatory intolerance against certain communities and religions, which run counter to our core value of inclusion,” a spokesperson for the company told TheWrap in a statement.
InfoWars, the flagship site of web conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, had used PayPal to process transactions for its online store and will now have 10 days to find a replacement.
Jones did not immediately respond to request for comment.
On Twitter, longtime critics of Jones, including “Sleeping Giants” and RightWingWatch, declared victory and claimed responsibility for the decision by PayPal.
https://twitter.com/jaredlholt/status/1043187569788440576
CONFIRMED: @PayPal has dropped Infowars. https://t.co/edOUGEObAr
— Sleeping Giants (@slpng_giants) September 21, 2018
PayPal is the latest company to sever ties with Jones, whose increasingly toxic brand had been banished from YouTube, Apple, Spotify, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest.
In the past Jones, has promoted the infamous PizzaGate conspiracy, 9/11 trutherism — and notoriously challenged the authenticity of the 2012 school massacre in Newtown, Conn., that claimed 26 lives.
He is facing currently facing an existential threat to his business from a series of defamation lawsuits brought by the families of victims of the Newtown massacre.
Jones has in the past questioned whether the massacre took place and his followers have harassed grieving families for years. Experts have speculated that the goal of such legal maneuvering might be to take him off the air for good following the same playbook as Peter Thiel’s years long legal effort against Gawker.com.