Apple Just Permanently Banned Infowars' App From The App Store

[highplainsdem]

Source: BuzzFeed

A day after being banned from Twitter, Alex Jones and Infowars have been booted from yet another platform: Apple's popular App Store. As of Friday evening, searches on the App Store for Infowars return no results.

Apple confirmed the app's removal to BuzzFeed News, but declined comment, pointing to its App Store Review Guidelines. The company said Infowars would not be permitted to return to the App Store.

The first clause of those guidelines explicitly rejects content that is "defamatory, discriminatory, or mean-spirited content, including references or commentary about religion, race, sexual orientation, gender, national/ethnic origin, or other targeted groups, particularly if the app is likely to humiliate, intimidate, or place a targeted individual or group in harm’s way."

Infowars' app, which allowed users to read Infowars articles, shop, and livestream all of Jones' programming 24 hours a day, served as a window into the incendiary conspiratorial content that led to the outlet's ban from Facebook, YouTube, Spotify, and Twitter. While Apple removed Jones and Infowars from its podcast platform in early August, the company took no action against the Infowars app; nor did it explain why it was allowed to remain. It’s worth noting, however, that the Infowars app does not store content, which presumably made violations of Apple's guidlines more difficult to police.

-snip-

Read more: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/johnpaczkowski/apple-banned-alex-jones-infowars-app-store

[hlthe2b]

1. Good. This is reminiscent of SPLC's bankrupting of the KKK after multiple lawsuits.

May Alex Jones and Infowars go the same path

[efhmc]

3. SPLC Had to look it up.

Southern Poverty Law Center.

[hlthe2b]

5. Yup... our stalwart bulwark against hate groups

[BumRushDaShow]

19. THIS!

We need to go back to the strategies employed by the SPLC that essentially bankrupted hate organizations like the KKK in the '90s by requiring that they pay devastating civil penalties.

[Leghorn21]

2. Aw man, Jones is havin himself just the

shittiest

week

E V E R

[BlancheSplanchnik]

6. Rofl! 😆

good!

[SunSeeker]

4. Good. nt

[Grassy Knoll]

7. Hey Alex, Go To Death Valley Ca....

..And Fuck A Cactus...Just Pick On, Plenty To Choose From.

Good Riddance ASS HAT.

[clementine613]

34. Why...

... would you wish that on an innocent cactus?

[SCantiGOP]

8. I hope he ends up

with a 3:00 AM show on an AM radio station in rural Wyoming.

[ooky]

9. Taking out the trash.

Good on Apple.

[catbyte]

10. Dear Alex,

[IMG][/IMG]

[Princess Turandot]

11. Perhaps the video of him acting like a complete lunatic, as he stalked, interrupted...

...and incoherently shouted over a US senator and the CEO of Twitter the other day in DC, helped them realize that he and his show didn't actually merit any further 'benefit of the doubt' on their part.

[Fortinbras Armstrong]

18. He was complaining that conservativesd were being banned from social media

No, Alex, you are being banned. That's something completely different.

[maxrandb]

25. There is NO DAYLIGHT

between Alex Jones and Conservatives!

[Fortinbras Armstrong]

33. Even to many conservatives, Jones is an extremist. n/t

[demsocialist]

12. ok Celebrate

I know he is a wackjob. But that is plain censorship. As soon as we start cheering on stifling people we don't like; we leave ourselves vulnerable to the same. It is a clear violation of the first amendment. and is a dangerous precedent.

[GoneOffShore]

13. Uh, no. Possibly a violation of the spirit of the 1st, but Jones violated the TOS

of Apple.

In the same way that if you were to post right-wing talking points or racist bullshit here, you would be banned. And as we used to say here, you'd get a stone pizza.

Jones promotes hate speech and violence. Constantly shouts 'Fire' in a theater.

So, I'm celebrating.

[TomVilmer]

14. Then your are in fact celebrating...

... that ALL kinds of political platforms now are loosing money and possibilities through this active cleansing. In Denmark people were happy for the Nazis to be kicked out of a radio station. Now all the former political local radio is just pure commercial noise.

BTW - your Shouting Fire-analogy is quite interesting to read the background for. It was created to stop people resisting to go to war.

[Vinnie From Indy]

16. English does not appear to be your first language.

Are you Danish? Russian perhaps?

[TomVilmer]

17. Me from North Korea...

... and you are reacting really mature...

Maybe try with arguments next time?

[GoneOffShore]

24. Bugger me, don't try to compare Jones to war resistors or start quoting Niemoller

Jones indulges in hate speech and racialist dog whistles along with promoting conspiracy bullshit. Niemoller doesn't apply.

Oh, and not to pick nits but:

'Loosing' as you used it is NOT acceptable word usage. To loose an arrow or to loose the hounds means to fire an arrow or release the hounds.
Lose is a verb and means to be deprived of something: i.e. Losing money or losing one's freedom. When said aloud it rhymes with snooze. Loose is an adjective and a verb and means to release something from restraints and to set it free.
So, there you are.

[TomVilmer]

29. Thanks for your grammar lesson...

... and thanks for copying it from somewhere else. Did you also copy the rest of your message?

Grammar policing is really the most important subject in today's society - thank you for your service!

You could have looked at my example from Denmark, where that shit already did happen. A radio indulged in hate speech was closed, and replaced with laws making it easy to take away money from any political radio. The Danish Union of Local Radio argued against this, since it was easy to guess the future...

Do not come back whining, when this soon also happens to your liberal news outlets.

[GoneOffShore]

31. Ah, Tommy, you're still trying to defend Alex Jones.

Bugger off.

And if you don't think grammar and the meaning of words is important, then you are, perhaps in the wrong place.

This is an internet comments section, not your high school debate team, if you haven't noticed. I have better things to do with myself than waste time playing pointless hypothetical games with an apologist for racists.

[TomVilmer]

32. Sorry to see such low level of skills...

... good to know there are better people around, fighting to get a better president - while you are busy disrupting.

[LanternWaste]

35. Your pretense of relevance in regards to this thread is adorable.

Disrupting, indeed...

[Hav]

15. Can you elaborate...

How is this violating the first amendment? Because I don't see it.

[Boomer]

20. You could use a Civics refresher course

The First Amendment applies to government censorship. It does not give you the freedom to use business products.

Trump's attacks on the New York Times or the Washington Post are approaching a violation of the First Amendment, but Apple or Twitter or Facebook do not have those same constraints when they manage their consumer base.

[BumRushDaShow]

21. Apple is a private corporation

and if Alex Jones and his co-ilk like Jerome Corsi want to create their own companies, complete with their own "3rd party apps" that work on the various phone platforms, as well as maintain websites that make those apps available for download so they can continue to spew their hate, they are free to do so. No one in the government is hindering them from doing so. I.e., Congress has "passed no law abridging" any rights in Jones' case. This is strictly Apple's decision.

[ck4829]

22. Alex Jones should be happy this is happening to him in a way

His thing is even called InfoWars, information wars, what do you do in an information war... you make sure your voice is louder than the other guy.

It may not be the deep state, the government, the Illuminati, reptile overlords, Martian sex-colony runners, parents of school shooting victims, school shooting crisis actors, the liberals, etc. It is tech and social media.

But now Alex Jones finally has his other side in the Information Wars, he has met "the enemy", and it is not who he said it was.

Alex Jones will be back, and if he's not saying Apple, Facebook, and Twitter are "the enemy", are not the other side of his InfoWars, then what he is saying is not grounded in reality at all.

[Codeine]

26. Not how the First Amendment works, dude.

Apple is under no requirement whatsoever to be a platform for anyone. Infowars still has every right to spread its filth, but nobody is required to host or publish any of it.

Your argument is akin to stating that a publisher rejecting a manuscript is a violation of the 1A. Ludicrous on its face.

[Submariner]

28. Jones threatened to shoot Mueller

it is not censorship to take down some animal threatening murder. Get it?

[NurseJackie]

23. Does this mean the app continues to work for those who already have it?

Does this mean the app continues to work for those who already have it? Or do they have the power to disable the app entirely?

[Me.]

27. The Market Working

[Julian Englis]

30. Overdue--should never been approved.

Apple should never distributed this app. Apple knew what InfoWars was. They might as well as distributed an app for the KKK and StormFront (or whatever those Nazis called their site).