Silicon Valley strikes back against Infowars: all the news about Alex Jones’ platform battles – The Verge

Tim Cook says Apple didn’t coordinate Alex Jones ban with other tech companies

2018-10-02T20:35:32-04:00

Apple CEO Tim Cook revealed a bit more of the behind-the-scenes decision-making that resulted in conspiracy theorist and alt-right figure Alex Jones' widespread tech platform ban last month in an interview on HBO's Vice News Tonight this evening. Notably, Cook said that the decision to remove podcasts operated by Jones and his Infowars network from the official Podcasts iOS app, and later to remove the main Infowars app from the App Store, was not part of a coordinated attempt by multiple Silicon Valley companies to de-platform Jones and deny him a voice.

"We don't take a political stand. We're not leaning one way or the other. You can tel …

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PayPal bans Infowars for promoting hate

2018-09-21T13:16:29-04:00

PayPal will no longer do business with Infowars, according to a post on the conspiracy theory site this morning. PayPal broke the news in an email to Infowars yesterday, saying the company had conducted a comprehensive review of the Infowars site and found that it "promoted hate and discriminatory intolerance against certain communities and religions," a violation of PayPal's acceptable use policy. Infowars had used PayPal to process transactions for its on-site store; the site will have ten days to find new payment processors.

The move comes after a string of bans, which have effectively barred Infowars from distributing content on the int …

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Twitter permanently suspends Infowars and Alex Jones

2018-09-06T16:55:54-04:00

Twitter just permanently suspended Infowars and Alex Jones, a full month after companies like Apple, Facebook, and YouTube removed the conspiracy theorist and his blog from their platforms. Twitter said that the Infowars creator had violated its "abusive behavior" rules.

Twitter at last deemed Jones went too far after he tweeted a video of himself confronting a CNN reporter, calling him an equivalent of "the Hitler Youth" and using other disturbing imagery to disparage him.

Twitter was slow to act and users began protesting

Over the past month, Twitter has hesitated with what to do about Jones. In contrast, on August 6th, Apple banned Jones …

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Twitter’s fear of making hard decisions is killing it

2018-08-17T06:00:02-04:00

Why does Twitter move so slowly?

It's a question that has been on my mind since Monday, as we watched the company belatedly tiptoe into enforcement of its guidelines against inciting violence. It came up again Thursday, as we saw the company move - a staggering six years after first promising to do so - to significantly restrict the capabilities of third-party apps.

Nothing defines Twitter so thoroughly as its bias toward inaction. In February, Bloomberg's Selina Wang diagnosed the problem in an article titled "Why Twitter can't pull the trigger on new products." Largely, Wang's reporting laid the blame at the feet of CEO Jack Dorsey:

Dor …

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Twitter users are protesting Alex Jones with a viral block list

2018-08-16T06:00:01-04:00

Last week, we talked about why Facebook banned Alex Jones - and Twitter didn't. Facebook saw that Jones, who had already violated any number of the platform's rules, had no intention of reforming himself. Twitter said first that Jones had not broken any rules; and then - after a CNN's Oliver Darcy showed the company a series of offending tweets - that he had, but not enough to get banned.

Late on Tuesday, Twitter took another half-step toward banning Jones - suspending him for a week, after posted a video on Twitter in which he encouraged his followers to get their "battle rifles" in anticipation of all-out war with his enemies.

In the min …

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Twitter finally draws a line on extremism

2018-08-14T06:00:02-04:00

On Friday, I wrote about Twitter's seeming paralysis when it came to enforcing its platform rules. What, exactly, was going on over there? Late Friday evening, we got an answer of sorts. The company invited Cecilia Kang and Kate Conger of The New York Times to sit in on a meeting in which CEO Jack Dorsey and 18 of his colleagues debated safety policies. The meeting was rather… inconclusive, they report:

For about an hour, the group tried to get a handle on what constituted dehumanizing speech. At one point, Mr. Dorsey wondered if there was a technology solution. There was no agreement on an answer.

Elsewhere in the piece, executives sound …

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Why Facebook banned Alex Jones — and Twitter didn’t

2018-08-11T06:00:02-04:00

On one hand, we spent maybe too much time this week on the question of whether one person should lose access to his social media accounts. On the other hand, it's a question that illuminates some of the central tensions that led me to start this newsletter. How can social media be used to do harm? Can tech companies effectively rein in their worst users? Also, what the hell is Twitter's deal?

Will Oremus tries to answer the latter question with some reporting on what people inside Twitter are saying about Alex Jones. He offers a handful of theories on the company's paralyzed, contradictory stances on Infowars. First, there's Twitter's bias …

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Twitter’s case for keeping Alex Jones is falling apart

2018-08-10T06:00:03-04:00

On Tuesday, weighing in on the public pressure to ban Alex Jones and Infowars from Twitter, CEO Jack Dorsey called on journalists for help. "Accounts like Jones' can often sensationalize issues and spread unsubstantiated rumors," Dorsey tweeted, "so it's critical journalists document, validate, and refute such information directly so people can form their own opinions. This is what serves the public conversation best."

Journalists complained loudly about being asked to perform unpaid content moderation on Twitter's behalf. But in the spirit of serving the public conversation, CNN's Oliver Darcy decided to document some of those unsubstantia …

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Twitter won’t punish Alex Jones for his past Twitter behavior

2018-08-09T06:00:01-04:00

Last night, amid growing pressure to address Alex Jones' presence on Twitter, CEO Jack Dorsey tried to explain the company's position. In a series of five tweets, he made the following case:

Jones hasn't violated Twitter's rules.
Twitter won't ban someone just because other platforms did.
Journalists should "document, validate, and refute" the "unsubstantiated rumors" that "accounts like Jones'" spread.

He then linked to a somewhat confounding new blog post, "The Twitter Rules: A Living Document," that does little more than say that the Twitter rules are a living document. It was confounding in that no one had accused the Twitter rules of bein …

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Apple crushed Alex Jones — then tossed him a lifeline

2018-08-08T06:00:03-04:00

Alex Jones' fate was decided over the weekend, when Apple CEO Tim Cook and his vice president of software and services, Eddy Cue, met to talk about it. So says Dylan Byers in his daily newsletter, Pacific, which lays out the first reported account of how most of the major tech platforms came to ban the Infowars host on a single day. Byers continues:

Hours after Apple announced its move, Mark Zuckerberg and his team at Facebook made the decision to pull four of Jones' pages from their platform. Zuckerberg only moved to remove these pages after learning about Apple's decision, Facebook sources said. That is why the pages were removed at 3 a.m …

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