Apple's Attempt to Ban Alex Jones Backfired in an Unexpected Way
Alex Jones tweeted "When they try to ban you, but you keep on winning" above a celebratory glass of champagne.
The drive to keep Alex Jones off the major online platforms may have had some unintended consequences—at least temporarily.
Jones, a noted conspiracy theorist, has seen his professional pages and podcast unpublished and/or removed from Facebook, YouTube, Spotify, and Apple. The four companies stated that Jones' disparaging comments about Muslims, immigrants, members of the LGBT community, and several other groups of people violate the hate speech clauses in their respective terms-of-service agreements. But Jones' Infowars app remained available for download via Apple.
A day after the move, people downloaded the remaining Infowars iPhone app enough times that it became the fourth most popular news app on the store, beating out the Google News and CNN apps, reports CNBC.
As CNBC notes, the Infowars app violates the same guidelines that prompted Apple to remove its podcast counterpart, so it seems unlikely that it will remain available from Apple for long. But for now, the push against him may have gotten more people interested in hearing what he has to say.
Jones reacted to the news by tweeting a picture of himself holding a glass of champagne next to his app. A caption said, "When they try to ban you, but you keep on winning."
