Facebook bans Alex Jones, as big tech turns on the conspiracy theorist

Alex Jones just lost a few big platforms for promulgating his conspiracy theories. Facebook announced today that it has taken down four pages run by InfoWars and its figurehead, Jones.

This move comes after Facebook removed four videos that the company claimed violated its Community Standards, because they were filled with hate speech and bullying comments against trans children, Muslims, and others. It’s worth noting that YouTube removed the videos days earlier for posting “violent or graphic content” that violated its policies. Facebook initially claimed that the videos were fine. The social network, however, eventually removed the videos from the Alex Jones Channel Page, the Alex Jones Page, the InfoWars Page, and the Infowars Nightly News Page. Alex Jones’s Page was also suspended for 30 days for posting the vitriolic content.

Now, Facebook has taken a further step, removing not just videos but four Pages belonging to Jones and his team, for “repeatedly posting content over the past several days that breaks those Community Standards,” according to a blog post.

In an unsurprising turn of events, InfoWars did not heed the warning and continued to post violent content; Facebook decided to act because Jones’s pages had “[accumulated] too many strikes.” According to the blog post, the Pages were removed “for glorifying violence, which violates our graphic violence policy, and using dehumanizing language to describe people who are transgender, Muslims and immigrants, which violates our hate speech policies.”

YouTube and Facebook aren’t the only companies finally taking hard-line stances on InfoWars–Apple, last night, announced its decision to pull Alex Jones’s podcasts from its app.

Since InfoWars peddles in hate-filled conspiracy theories and bald-faced lies, Facebook is also “demoting links marked wrong by fact checkers,” per its latest efforts to muffle fake news.