You know that the Internet has it in for you when even MailChimp decides to ban you.
Alex Jones, prominent American conspiracy theorist, has had a terrible week in social media. Facebook, YouTube, Apple and even Pinterest all took measures to limit the reach of his conspiracy and fake news-promoting site InfoWars. Joining the pile on, email marketing service MailChimp, which sends out more than 10 billion emails per month on behalf of its users, issued this statement:
“MailChimp doesn’t generally comment on individual users or accounts, but we’ll make an exception today. MailChimp notified InfoWars that their accounts have been terminated for violating our Terms of Service, which make it clear that we don’t allow people to use our platform to disseminate hateful content.”
For those not in the know, Jones is a radio and TV host who is the presenter of The Alex Jones Show, which runs across the US and online. He also runs the InfoWars website, which is devoted to fake news and conspiracy theories. He’s been at the core of many controversies, the latest and most notable being that the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting that happened on December 14th, 2012, never actually occurred. Instead, Jones says it was a “false flag” attack by the government and claimed that no one actually died, and that the victims were “child actors”. His proof? The Uniform Crime Reports show no murders in Newtown for that year.
In actuality, the Connecticut State Police was the lead investigator in the attack and the victims were included in Connecticut’s state records. Needless to say, Jones is being sued over the claim, and was hit with a $1mlawsuit in April of this year.
Jones was quick to hit back, calling the move “Kafkaesque”. He also took to Snapchat to direct his listeners to his website:
https://twitter.com/twitter/statuses/1026906185306390528
So far, Apple has allowed Jones to keep his InfoWars app available on its online store as it felt it did not violate any policy, but this could change by the end of the week.
The Alex Jones YouTube channel, which had two million subscribers, was removed from the platform on Monday. It had previously warned Jones with several “strikes” before delivering an outright ban. Previously, Facebook had taken down four pages belonging to Jones and InfoWars. Interestingly, they were removed for violating the site’s graphic violence policy, and for using dehumanising language, not for spreading fake news – something for which Facebook has received much criticism of late.
Hot on the heels of Facebook, Apple removed the InfoWars podcast, along with Spotify and Stitcher.
In a custody battle with his ex-wife, Jones pleaded to the court that he was playing a character during his shows and should not be judged by his words or actions. However, when these fuel nonsense such as #pizzagate – a debunked conspiracy pushed by Jones that claims Hilary Clinton ran a child sex ring from the basement of a pizza parlour in Washington D.C., leading to a man firing several shots in the restaurant with an automatic rifle – it’s easy to see why he’s now toxic to social media platforms.
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