Roku Drops InfoWars and Alex Jones After Social Media Pressure
Hours after saying the service doesn’t “curate or censor,” it did just that.
Photo Illustration by Lyne Lucien/The Daily Beast
Streaming platform Roku dropped its channel for Infowars late on Tuesday, in a reversal that comes hours after the streaming network had said the conspiracy theory outlet didn’t violate its content policies.
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
Digiday reported Tuesday that Roku had added a new Infowars channel. Roku said in a statement that the service doesn’t “curate or censor based on viewpoint.”
But by Tuesday evening, Roku changed its mind as subscribers threatening to cancel their service, tweeting that it had made the decision to shut down the channel after hearing “from concerned parties.”
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
Infowars didn’t respond to an immediate request for comment.
The Roku ban presents another defeat for Infowars and its publisher and star Alex Jones, who have seen their reach fall dramatically in the past year.
Infowars and Jones have already been banned from Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, and a number of smaller social media networks and platforms for promoting conspiracy theories about, among other things, the Sandy Hook school shooting and Pizzagate.
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While Infowars videos are still available on Jones’s own site and some fringe video hosting services, the right-wing outlet has struggled to regain its former viewership and influence without access to more mainstream sites.
Jones and Infowars are also facing a number of lawsuits, with plaintiffs ranging from Sandy Hook parents to the creator of the cartoon character “Pepe the Frog.”
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