Facebook and YouTube completely remove Alex Jones channels

Alex Jones has been removed from Facebook, but still has an opportunity to appeal to restore his pages on the social network, and his channel is down on YouTube. On Monday, Facebook said it "unpublished" pages affiliated with Jones, which means there's nothing to see on his pages except a takedown notice. Also, YouTube has a similar notice saying, "This account has been terminated." That follows Apple's move over the weekend to remove a number of his podcasts from the Apple Store. "All four Pages have been unpublished for repeated violations of Community Standards and accumulating too many strikes," Facebook said in a blog post on Monday. "While much of the discussion around InfoWars has been related to false news, which is a serious issue that we are working to address by demoting links marked wrong by fact checkers and suggesting additional content, none of the violations that spurred today's removals were related to this." Spreading inaccurate information, as Jones does with his conspiracy theories, is not enough to merit a ban from Facebook. Instead, it restricts how many people wind up seeing such misinformation, sometimes cutting views by up to 80 percent, Facebook's blog post said. Facebook did not say what videos got Jones in trouble. Last week, Facebook said it removed four videos from Jones' pages, and punished him personally, preventing him from acting as a moderator on his pages. However, he was still able to livestream his show, because his associates could still manage the pages. Since then, Facebook said it received more reports of troublesome videos from the pages. "We have taken it down for glorifying violence, which violates our graphic violence policy, and using dehumanizing language to describe people who are transgender, Muslims and immigrants, which violates our hate speech policies," Facebook said. Last month, YouTube prevented him from live streaming his "InfoWars" show after determining videos crossed the line of hate speech against Muslims and transgender people. One video appeared to make light of a viral video that showed a child being slammed to the ground, and even though it wasn't Jones' video he was dinged for its depiction of child endangerment. Even though Jones was blocked from livestreaming "InfoWars" to YouTube, he circumvented the ban by running the show through other channels on the platform. Now, his entire channel with almost 2.5 million subscribers is gone, and he can't post any videos, live or otherwise. "All users agree to comply with our Terms of Service and Community Guidelines when they sign up to use YouTube," a YouTube spokeswoman said in an email statement. "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." An account belonging to Ron Gibson, whose channel is affiliated with Jones and helped livestream "InfoWars" during the ban, has also been removed by YouTube. Facebook and YouTube are trying to set boundaries on their platforms without overstepping into the stifling of political discourse. It's a line not always clear and one that puts them in a very tight spot. Both companies have already been pressured by Republicans to testify in Congress, who claim the platforms are biased against conservative voices. At the same time, the platforms are dealing with attacks from foreign adversaries that are trying to disrupt the midterm elections in the U.S. by amplifying disinformation and division. Facebook declined to comment for this story. In its blog post it said that pages that are unpublished are still able to go through an appeal process to fight the termination of their content. Jones did not return a request for comment. The bombastic broadcaster has not appeared chastened in his most recent livestreams. Last week, Jones defended his content choices and said that Facebook and YouTube were trying to "kill speech in this country." "This is mass insanity," Jones said of his supposed persecution.

Facebook and YouTube completely remove Alex Jones channels

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