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Alex Jones — he of the rants and profuse sweating and unhinged hysteria — has been a controversial figure for years. Of late, Google and Facebook have come under increasing pressure to explain how his behavior, which includes racists monologues and his now-infamous claims that mass shootings are faked, isn’t a violation of their terms of service. Now YouTube, it appears, is listening, as it’s pinged Jones for violating the company’s standards.
The Verge reports that Jones has been issued a “strike” by YouTube. Under YouTube policies, if you get three strikes within a three-month period, your channel is removed. Although individual videos are usually counted as a strike, this strike comes from a bundle of four videos — which were classified as hate speech against Muslims and transgender people — plus child endangerment, for a video of a child being shoved by a grown man (which Jones posted as a comedy bit). Channel owners are allowed to bundle videos as a good-faith opportunity to clean up their channels in order to prevent other potential violations.
InfoWars has yet to publicly comment on this story, and it’s worth noting that Jones has collected strikes before. This also arrives amid controversy about Jones appearing to threaten to assassinate Robert Mueller while accusing the special counsel of overseeing the rape of children on Facebook, a behavior that the platform refused to sanction Jones for.
Over the years, Jones has insisted he’s an entertainer, at least when it’s legally convenient, but clearly, he’s trying to shift people’s ideologies and using toxic speech to do so. Hopefully, other platforms will follow YouTube’s lead and call him out on his actions.
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