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Apple Permanently Bans 'Infowars' App From the App Store

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Apple has removed the Infowars app from the App Store, just a day after controversial Infowars radio show host Alex Jones was permanently banned from Twitter.

Apple confirmed the app's permanent removal to BuzzFeed late on Friday, but instead of giving a specific reason for taking action now, Apple simply cited its own general App Store guidelines, which prohibit content that is "offensive, insensitive, upsetting, intended to disgust, or in exceptionally poor taste."

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Early last month, Apple removed the entire libraries of five Infowars podcasts from its Podcasts platform and said it had chosen to do so on the grounds that it does not tolerate hate speech.

At the time, the tech giant defended its decision not to remove the Infowars app, saying that the App Store is a place for "all points of view" as long as apps are respectful to users with differing opinions. However, Apple also noted that it continues to monitor apps for violations of its guidelines and will remove them if necessary.

Apple's initial stance struck some observers as odd, given that the Infowars mobile app allowed users to live stream the same programs that were removed from the Apple Podcasts platform. The app's continued availability also allowed it to benefit from the publicity surrounding Apple's removal of the podcasts.

However, that's no longer the case, and as of Friday evening, searching for the app within the App Store only returns apps related to Infowars, while the official app is nowhere to be seen.

Apple's removal of the Infowars app follows Twitter's decision on Thursday to permanently suspend Alex Jones and Infowars. The social media network said the suspension was based on new reports of tweets and videos posted that violate its abusive behavior policy, in addition to the accounts' previous violations.

Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.

Article Link: Apple Permanently Bans 'Infowars' App From the App Store
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2018/09/08/apple-bans-infowars-app-from-app-store/
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Reactions: BoScO999, philosoraptor1, jccrtv and 17 others
This man peddles lies about children who were murdered in mass shootings just so he can drive traffic to his nutritional supplement business. He encourages his audience to harass the grieving parents of these children. Whenever he’s hauled into court, he claims under oath that he is merely portraying a character in front of the camera for entertainment purposes. These are all facts that I wish he would be calmly confronted with whenever he stages one of his publicity-stunt ambushes. Good riddance to him.
 
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Reactions: RuralJuror, Tinmania, Bp778814 and 63 others
I think saying good riddance to him is too premature and optimistic. The major mainstream outlets may be silencing him, but as Alex Jones becomes more "extremist" and right-wing radical, the frothing Right-Wing hateful Trump Base will see him as a martyr demigod even more. They will just connect with him using underground channels.

He won't go away. With the imagery of the mainstream media trying to silence and "kill" his presence, Jones will just become even more of a Right-Wing Martyr. The 21st century version of Horst Wessel.
 
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I remember, maybe 7 years ago, being on a train heading to Belfast. Struck up a conversation with a resident from there, on his way back home. We chatted about Ireland and Northern Ireland, some of its history, and how things were. One of his points stood out particularly to me back then. He told me that a lot of conversations in Northern Ireland only happen once people glance over their shoulders to see who's around, due to how polarized the people there were. I thought it was an odd thing to occur in society, and even more odd that someone would have to be sensitive to whether they should admit they were Catholic or Protestant. Sheer pressure of society wanted to silence the other side and done so in many various ways, and it had a noticeably negative impact on interactions.

I thought it was such an odd occurrence that people would go along with silencing dissenting opinions rather than simply disagree with them. And yet, here we are now, quite a common thing at this point in the States.
 
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FrankieTDouglas said:
I thought it was such an odd occurrence that people would go along with silencing dissenting opinions rather than simply disagree with them. And yet, here we are now, quite a common thing at this point in the States.
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Conflating the notions of disagreement and falsehood is the vital point. Take climate change: there are people out there who, when non-expert climate change deniers spew out there unfounded claims, say "great that everyone can say what they think". The fact that their claims have no basis on facts doesn't matter to those people anymore; they reply with "I'm not convinced", although there's nothing to be convinced about -- that's what facts are for.
Now take A. Jones and you see the analogy. Most of what he says are falsehoods.
 
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miniyou64 said:
Truly civilized “societies” let their members decide for themselves
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And we as a society have decided that we want limits and social norms, manners, and behavioral standards.
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M2M said:
Not a fan of this guy, his platform or his believes at all but I don’t think Apple should decide what’s right or wrong.
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They are deciding not to facilitate him, as is their right. Don’t like it? Build your own platform and go to town.
 
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FrankieTDouglas said:
I thought it was such an odd occurrence that people would go along with silencing dissenting opinions rather than simply disagree with them. And yet, here we are now, quite a common thing at this point in the States.
Click to expand...

One of this guy’s myriad followers shot up a pizzeria and threatened several lives. Others have spent years attacking and harassing the Sandy Hook parents and ruining their lives. Still think it’s all fun and games, and about simple disagreement of dissenting opinions? It would do everyone a world of good if people would stop pretending like every conflict in this world is as basic as a discussion of opposing viewpoints over coffee.
 
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