Free Republic

Rep. Billy Long (R-Mo.) uses his auctioneer skills to drown out a protester at Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey's House hearing.

Accounts for Jones and Infowars were also banned from Twitter-owned Periscope. Twitter has permanently banned the accounts of right-wing conspiracy theorist and radio host Alex Jones and InfoWars for violating the company's abusive behavior policies, the company said Thursday. The ban appears to be related to a heated exchange between Jones and a CNN reporter Wednesday, which Jones live-streamed on the Twitter-owned video service Periscope. Jones ranted at the reporter, as well as Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, following back-to-back congressional hearings where Dorsey addressed online election interference, as well as accusations of political bias and conservative censorship on the platform....

Twitter announced Thursday that it has permanently suspended conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and his website InfoWars from its platform, citing abusive behavior. The company had previously issued a seven-day suspension for Jones last month. The announcement came a day after Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey testified on Capitol Hill, with Jones making an appearance at the hearing.

Jerome Corsi, a conspiracy theorist with links to both ex-Trump aide Roger Stone and Infowars host Alex Jones, has been subpoenaed to testify before a federal grand jury in Washington, D.C., Friday as part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe, his attorney says. Corsi, who has written such books as "Where’s the Birth Certificate?" and "Killing the Deep State: The Fight to Save President Trump" will fully comply with the Mueller team’s subpoena, according to attorney David Gray. The subpoena was first reported by the New York Times. Gray told NBC News he expects his client will be questioned about...

Republican Sen. Marco Rubio pointedly warned InfoWars host Alex Jones “I'll take care of you myself,” during a stunning clash Wednesday ahead of a Capitol Hill hearing on social media. The warning came after the right-wing conspiracy theorist interrupted an interview, heckling the Florida senator and patting him on the back. Rubio had been talking to reporters in the hall about his concerns that China and other governments could demand social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter crack down on dissidents ahead of the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing. (snip) “The Democrats are doing what you say China does,” Jones yelled...

FULL TITLE: BREAKING: INFOWARS Founder ALEX JONES Crashes Senate Hearing on Online Censorship of Conservatives (VIDEO) On Wednesday Alex Jones crashed the Senate Intelligence hearing on foreign influence on US social media platforms. The US House is holding a hearing later today on tech giant censorship of conservative voices. In August Facebook, Apple, Google-YouTube and Spotify colluded to eliminate Alex Jones and Infowars from their platforms. Alex Jones is with Jack Posobiec outside the Senate hearing. Tech giants Google and Twitter will testify today before Congress. This morning the US Senate is holding a hearing. Alex Jones is going off...

Much of the empire built by Alex Jones, the Infowars founder and social media shock jock, vanished this summer when Facebook suspended Mr. Jones for 30 days and took down four of his pages for repeatedly violating its rules against bullying and hate speech. YouTube, Apple and other companies also took action against Mr. Jones. But a private Infowars Facebook group with more than 110,000 members, which had survived the crackdown, remained a hive of activity. In Mr. Jones’s absence, the group continued to fill with news stories, Infowars videos and rants about social media censorship. Users also posted the...

FULL TITLE: TIMELINE: Virginia Democrat Mark Warner Surprise Force Behind Masters of the Universe Crackdown on Speech Twitter this week suspended InfoWars host Alex Jones for seven days for what it said were violations of its policies, following Facebook, YouTube, Apple, and Spotify’s simultaneous banning last week. It is not clear what prompted those platforms to suddenly take collective action, but it came about one week after Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, led a charge threatening new regulation of social media companies who cannot stop bad actors from using their platforms. Two weeks...

Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones found an unlikely ally in liberal comedian Bill Maher on Friday. Maher defended Jones on his show, HBO’s “Real Time,” after Jones and his company, InfoWars, were essentially purged from social media. The bans came after CNN pressed social media companies to investigate whether Jones’ content violated their terms of service. What did Maher say? During a panel discussion, Maher defended Jones’ right to speak freely without recourse. Maher explained the protection of free speech is a fundamental value of liberalism. “If you’re a liberal, you’re supposed to be for free speech. That’s free speech for...

Sometimes I think all the hand-wringing about some sort of online "war on conservatives" is silly. Sure, dude, maybe nobody is paying attention to your brilliant tweets because you've been shadowbanned. Perhaps Twitter's "Trust & Safety Council" really is keeping you from reaching the audience you deserve. Or maybe you're just boring and kind of dumb? I tend to be skeptical of these complaints, but it's possible that there really is an ongoing conspiracy to silence half the country. I have to admit, it would explain why I keep getting suspended from Twitter for no good reason. Maybe Twitter really...

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has shut down conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’s flagship radio station. The Austin American-Statesman reported Wednesday that the pirate radio station, Liberty Radio, was hit with a $15,000 fine and at least temporarily pulled from the airwaves. The newspaper reported that a lawsuit filed in federal court in Austin alleged that Liberty Radio had functioned without a license since at least 2013, and had been transmitting from a tower at an Austin apartment complex. Liberty Radio stopped airing on the radio in December, but still streams online. The FCC is charging that the station was also...

Vimeo has pulled Infowars content from its site for violating the platform’s standards. A spokesperson for the video hosting service told Business Insider on Sunday that the Infowars videos "violated our Terms of Service prohibitions on discriminatory and hateful content.” The videos had been uploaded to the site on Thursday and Friday. The Vimeo spokesperson also told Business Insider that the company had told the account owner of the videos’ removal, and also issued a refund because "we do not want to profit from content of this nature in any way." The site reported that Infowars had less than a...

So we’re now trusting the capitalist class, massive, unaccountable corporations, to decide on our behalf what we may listen to and talk about? This is the take-home message, the terrible take-home message, of the expulsion of Alex Jones’ Infowars network from Apple, Facebook and Spotify and of the wild whoops of delight that this summary banning generated among so-called liberals: that people are now okay with allowing global capitalism to govern the public sphere and to decree what is sayable and what is unsayable. Corporate censorship, liberals’ new favourite thing – how bizarre. We live in strange times. On one...

It would seem that the decision by several tech giants to remove Infowars content from their platforms, citing hate speech, may be having the opposite effect. Just days after Facebook, Apple and YouTube removed content and podcasts from conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and his brand, Infowars, from their platforms, the Infowars mobile app surged in popularity in the United States. The Infowars app is currently the fourth most popular news app in Apple’s App Store and the 11th most popular news app in Google’s Play Store. The spike comes after Apple pulled five of Jones’ podcasts from its Podcasts app....

In an article entitled Facebook Banned Infowars. Now What?, Kevin Roose reveals how, “Late on Sunday, after returning to his hotel room on a trip away from home, Mark Zuckerberg made a decision he had hoped to avoid.” The report adds that the Facebook CEO “got personally engaged” and “discussed Infowars at length with other executives,” while speculating that Jones may have wanted to get banned to get media attention. Zuckerberg initially considered whether Infowars was being brigaded by partisan mobs mass reporting of posts (this undoubtedly happened, but only after CNN had engaged in an intense lobbying campaign to...

College applicants are being rejected for merely following the Alex Jones account on Twitter, a digital privacy expert has warned. Bradley Shear, who runs the Shear on Social Media Law blog, claims one of his clients was rejected from a prestigious college after an admissions interviewer scoured the student’s social media account and found he followed Alex Jones on Twitter. While one of my legal clients (a 17 year old teen) was being interviewed by one of the most competitive colleges in the country he was asked why he was following Alex Jones on Twitter. My client, a teenager expected...

“Hate” is a dangerously elastic label. And it has long been used to demonize unpopular expression, particularly among people of color. Apple, Facebook, YouTube, Spotify and most other major internet distributors took a bold step this week when they all but banned content from Infowars, a website run by the right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. The tech companies cited their policies against hate speech for their decision, rather than the trafficking in fake news by Infowars. It’s tempting to applaud this move, but we should be wary. While Mr. Jones’s rhetoric is certainly repugnant, mounting pressure from the political left...

Alex Jones talks to Anthony Cumia about getting banned on social media, iTunes, and more.

Apple did not respond to inquiries about why the InfoWars app was featured in the news section of the App Store. It declined to comment Monday when BuzzFeed News asked the company why the InfoWars app was still allowed in the App Store after the podcast was banned. The InfoWars app was also available in Google's Play store for Android apps on Tuesday. (please see full article at link)

No, I am not going to start this post with a disclaimer about how much I personally dislike Alex Jones and Infowars. No, I don't believe everything he says, anymore than I believe CNN or any other outlet, but I enjoy hearing a wide variety of perspectives. I also believe that a lot of important political activities happen behind closed doors, and I'm curious to find out as much as I can about the most important of them, and that apparently makes me a "conspiracy theorist". Further, having watched a fair amount of Alex Jones over the years, he has...