YouTube and Pinterest joined Apple, Facebook and Spotify on Monday, removing the channel for Alex Jones’ InfoWars. YouTube also removed Jones’ personal YouTube channel.
“This account has been terminated for violating YouTube’s Community Guidelines,” reads a message displayed on the former InfoWars YouTube channel landing page. The move comes after the removal on July 26 of four Alex Jones videos from the video platform.
“All users agree to comply with our Terms of Service and Community Guidelines when they sign up to use YouTube. 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,” Google, parent company of YouTube said in a statement provided to TheWrap.
After YouTube did such, Pinterest also removed Jones’ InfoWars account from its site. “Consistent with our existing policies, we take action against accounts that repeatedly save content that could lead to harm,” a Pinterest spokesman said in a statement provided to TheWrap. “People come to Pinterest to discover ideas for their lives, and we continue to enforce our principles to maintain a safe, useful and inspiring experience for our users.”
Alex Jones’s YouTube channel had 2.4 million followers.
In an earlier statement to TheWrap, the InfoWars chief accused China and George Soros of being behind the effort to silence him.
“China pulls the strings of big tech now. Choose a side. Soros is proud of you,” Jones said via text, which also included a Chinese flag emoji.
On Monday, Facebook — which had already slapped a 30-day suspension on Alex Jones’ personal Facebook page — removed a number of official InfoWars related pages, including “The Infowars Nightly News” “The Alex Jones Page” “Infowars Page” and the “Alex Jones Channel Page.”
Facebook later clarified that its decision to get rid of Jones’ content was related only to specific violations of community standards and not to his long history of propagating false information on the platform.
Apple removed five of six InfoWars podcasts, including its signature “Alex Jones Show.”
“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,” a company spokesperson told BuzzFeed. “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.”
Spotify has completely removed the “Alex Jones Show” from its platform. “We take reports of hate content seriously and review any podcast episode or song that is flagged by our community. Due to repeated violations of Spotify’s prohibited content policies, The Alex Jones Show has lost access to the Spotify platform,” a Spotify spokesperson told TheWrap on Monday morning.
Twitter, however, has no plans to remove Jones from its platform. A person with direct knowledge of how Twitter is handling the situation said InfoWars is not currently in violation of the company’s policies.
The Pinterest story was first reported by Mashable.
Juliette Verlaque contributed to this story.