134 Citizens
The Atlantic, invoked Michiko Kakutani’s The Death of Truth to discuss the upside-down world of “post-truth” that the world appeared to
have fallen into after Trump’s election, of which Jones was a symptom.
30
Both writers – and many more – noted that by Saturday, 4 August, some
posts had been removed from social media sites because of accusations
of hate speech. At that moment, it appeared that the event would be a
slow-burning story over the Summer.
On Sunday evening, everything changed. Apparently following a
meeting between CEO Tim Cook and the vice president of software and
services, Eddy Cue, the decision was made to begin removing Infowars
posts from the Apple podcasts service.
31
At 3 a.m. Pacific Time, Mark
Zuckerberg and his team made the decision to begin removing pages
from Facebook. By midday GMT, news organisations around the world
were reporting on the decision by Apple, Facebook, YouTube, and Spotify to effectively remove Infowars from their services, with Facebook
issuing a statement that the pages had been 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”.
32
The speed with
which the ban took place and its extent astonished many commentators,
with social media observers generally (and wrongly) attributing it to an
assault on the First Amendment and failing to realise that while even
hate speech is protected from being abridged by the government, private
companies are not necessarily bound by its regulation.
33
Within days,
the majority of platforms had followed suit – with the notable exception
of Twitter, which attracted considerable attention for its attention not
to ban both Jones and Infowars as they had with other figures such as
Milo Yiannopoulis and Paul Golding. Jack Dorsey issued a statement
noting that Jones had not violated Twitter’s terms of service, and it later
transpired that the same conditions applied at Apple, where hate speech
was prohibited in the terms of service for podcasts but not for apps,
leading the Infowars app to trend in the news charts in the days following the ban.
34
In many respects, Infowars was simply one of the most visible of a
number of American organisations or outlets that tested the limits of
free speech. In terms of hate speech, however, a much more important
test had come in the preceding five years when terrorist groups, notably
Al Qaeda and Islamic State, had spent a great deal of time weaponising
social media in their pursuit of “electronic Jihad”.
35
While Al Qaeda
had led the way, ISIS had extended cyberterrorist activities in order to
attract recruits, publicise propaganda, and even wage war in places
such as Syria.
36
It was precisely this effectiveness, however, that had
led to a range of practices being implemented by social media networks
from 2016 onwards, following the United Nations Security Council’s request that the Counter-Terrorism Committee propose an “international
The Atlantic, invoked Michiko Kakutani’s The Death of Truth to discuss the upside-down world of “post-truth” that the world appeared to
have fallen into after Trump’s election, of which Jones was a symptom.
30
Both writers – and many more – noted that by Saturday, 4 August, some
posts had been removed from social media sites because of accusations
of hate speech. At that moment, it appeared that the event would be a
slow-burning story over the Summer.
On Sunday evening, everything changed. Apparently following a
meeting between CEO Tim Cook and the vice president of software and
services, Eddy Cue, the decision was made to begin removing Infowars
posts from the Apple podcasts service.
31
At 3 a.m. Pacific Time, Mark
Zuckerberg and his team made the decision to begin removing pages
from Facebook. By midday GMT, news organisations around the world
were reporting on the decision by Apple, Facebook, YouTube, and Spotify to effectively remove Infowars from their services, with Facebook
issuing a statement that the pages had been 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”.
32
The speed with
which the ban took place and its extent astonished many commentators,
with social media observers generally (and wrongly) attributing it to an
assault on the First Amendment and failing to realise that while even
hate speech is protected from being abridged by the government, private
companies are not necessarily bound by its regulation.
33
Within days,
the majority of platforms had followed suit – with the notable exception
of Twitter, which attracted considerable attention for its attention not
to ban both Jones and Infowars as they had with other figures such as
Milo Yiannopoulis and Paul Golding. Jack Dorsey issued a statement
noting that Jones had not violated Twitter’s terms of service, and it later
transpired that the same conditions applied at Apple, where hate speech
was prohibited in the terms of service for podcasts but not for apps,
leading the Infowars app to trend in the news charts in the days following the ban.
34
In many respects, Infowars was simply one of the most visible of a
number of American organisations or outlets that tested the limits of
free speech. In terms of hate speech, however, a much more important
test had come in the preceding five years when terrorist groups, notably
Al Qaeda and Islamic State, had spent a great deal of time weaponising
social media in their pursuit of “electronic Jihad”.
35
While Al Qaeda
had led the way, ISIS had extended cyberterrorist activities in order to
attract recruits, publicise propaganda, and even wage war in places
such as Syria.
36
It was precisely this effectiveness, however, that had
led to a range of practices being implemented by social media networks
from 2016 onwards, following the United Nations Security Council’s request that the Counter-Terrorism Committee propose an “international