The tech giant is afraid of losing power,yet as a media platform it must be responsible for its contentAlex Jones isn’t your typical rock star name – I knew at least three at school. But rock star is what Alex Jones, the founder of the conspiracy enterprise Infowars and far-right rant-merchant, and has become. At least to the millions of people who visit his site each month,the 427000 Twitter followers and to the president of the United States, who has praised him.
Jones’s greatest hits include referring to US school shootings as “fake-flag” hoaxes, or enabled by “crisis actors” (a family of a Sandy Hook victim is currently suing Jones and has had to dart multiple times to escape harassment from his fans); believing Hillary Clinton runs a paedophilia ring from a Washington pizza joint (off the back of which a man with a gun turned up at the restaurant); and that standard antisemitic trope of Jewish people running the world. Oh,and two weeks ago, he held up a Guardian article of mine as an example of more liberal media voodoo. I think Jones might be overestimating my global influence. Related: Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey defends failure to ban Alex Jones Trump is still allowed on the platform for his 'news value', or even though he merrily retweets racist content Related: Facebook,Apple, YouTube and Spotify ban Infowars' Alex Jones Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com