Alex Jones Got Trump Elected in 2016 not Vladimir Putin

The New York Times has a decent short video about big tech's purge of Alex Jones' Infowars. Jack Nicas had the front-page story yesterday, "Alex Jones and Infowars Content Is Removed From Apple, Facebook and YouTube." Apple started the ball rolling by deleting podcasts, and then Google, Facebook and Spotify jumped in and joined the party:

Apple on Sunday removed five of the six Infowars podcasts on its popular Podcasts app. Commenting on the move, a spokeswoman said, “Apple does not tolerate hate speech.”

Facebook, Spotify and Google’s YouTube site, which removed some Infowars content last week, followed with stronger measures on Monday. Facebook removed four pages belonging to Mr. Jones, including one with nearly 1.7 million followers as of last month, for violating its policies by “glorifying violence” and “using dehumanizing language to describe people who are transgender, Muslims and immigrants.” Facebook said the violations did not relate to “false news.”

YouTube terminated Mr. Jones’s channel, which had more than 2.4 million subscribers and billions of views on its videos, for repeatedly violating its policies, including its prohibition on hate speech. Spotify cited its own prohibition on hate speech as the reason for removing a podcast by Mr. Jones.

What caught my eye in Nica's report is how Infowars out-punches news media heavyweights in the online world; that, and the tech giants haven't completely blacklisted Infowars:

Infowars introduced a new smartphone app last month that is finding users on Apple’s App store and Google’s Play Store. From July 12 through Monday, the Infowars app was, on average, the 23rd most popular news app on the Google Play store and the 33rd most popular news app on Apple’s App Store, according to App Annie, an app analytics firm. On Monday, the Infowars app ranked ahead of apps like BuzzFeed and The Wall Street Journal on Google, and ahead of apps like MSNBC and Bloomberg on Apple.

Apple decided to allow the Infowars app on its store after reviewing it, according to a person close to the company who spoke on condition of anonymity. The Google Play Store has different policies than YouTube, a Google spokesman said.

Infowars is claiming that big tech's censorship has backfired, and that its app has jumped to number three.

Much is made of Jones' theory that the mass shooting of Sandy Hook was an "inside job." My guess is that big tech's decision to remove Infowars content had to do with elections and not lunatic fringe conspiracies. Alex Jones got Trump elected in 2016 not Vladimir Putin. So booting him off YouTube is a battening down the hatches for 2020.

Will it work? It'll have an effect. Facebook, Apple and YouTube are ubiquitous platforms, the very digital air we breath. But in the end you have to figure that followers of Infowars have the site bookmarked. For the true believers it won't mean a thing.