Roku Ditches Alex Jones and InfoWars Following Intense Backlash
Alex Jones’s return to the internet was short-lived.
On Tuesday, Digiday reported that Jones’s show, InfoWars, was available on the streaming service Roku. The company initially defended the decision to carry the show, explaining that “voices on all sides of an issue or cause are free to operate a channel. We do not curate or censor based on viewpoint.”
Roku added that it didn’t have any financial ties with Jones or InfoWars, nor any commercial or advertising relationship. It further noted that “to our knowledge” Infowars had not violated Roku’s content policies, but that “if we determine a channel violates these policies, it will be removed.”
Within hours, however, the streaming service faced intense backlash across social media and appeared to reverse its decision. “After the InfoWars channel became available,” the company wrote on its Twitter page, “we heard from concerned parties and have determined that the channel should be removed from our platform. Deletion from the channel store and platform has begun and will be completed shortly.”
After the InfoWars channel became available, we heard from concerned parties and have determined that the channel should be removed from our platform. Deletion from the channel store and platform has begun and will be completed shortly.
— Roku (@Roku) January 16, 2019
Jones was suspended or banned from a number of platforms and social media channels last year after he was found to be in violation of policies regarding hate speech. Apple was the first to remove his podcasts for the eponymous app, and was later followed by Facebook, Twitter, Spotify, YouTube, LinkedIn, among others.
