What Apple said about dropping Alex Jones from iTunes

Apple puts its foot down and steps in the white-hot center of Trumpist conspiracy mongering.

BuzzFeed has the scoop, (and a good Jones bio). From Apple PR:

Apple does not tolerate hate speech, and we have clear guidelines that creators and developers must follow to ensure we provide a safe environment for all of our users. Podcasts that violate these guidelines are removed from our directory making them no longer searchable or available for download or streaming. We believe in representing a wide range of views, so long as people are respectful to those with differing opinions.

My take: I first ran into Alex Jones in the scrum outside the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. He had just been knocked around by a mob of antifascists—a brawl captured on video and promoted on YouTube by Russia Today—and was being marched out of Public Square by a flying wedge of police.

Asked what happened, he said: “The communists attacked me.”

I followed InfoWars and subscribed to the Alex Jones Show podcast long enough to get a sense of him, his followers and his business model (peddling dark conspiracies and dubious nutraceuticals). I purged him my directory long ago. So has the ACLU. I don’t know what took Apple so long.

My Cleveland videos:

• Shot on iPhone: The raucous fringes of RNC 2016
• Shot on iPhone: A day of fun and flag burning
• Shot on iPhone: Circus and cavalry at the RNC