Alex Jones in a file photo from 2013Photo: Getty
With few places to turn, Alex Jones started publishing videos more frequently at Vimeo last week. But it looks like he’s not wanted there either. Vimeo deleted a number of InfoWars videos over the weekend, citing violations of its terms of service.
Alex Jones and his conspiracy theory empire InfoWars have been banned from most of the big social media platforms in recent weeks, including Apple, Facebook, YouTube, Spotify, and even Pinterest. InfoWars didn’t have much of a presence on Vimeo before last week, but after trying to post over 50 new videos on Thursday and Friday, Jones clearly thought that he might find safe haven. He was wrong.
Business Insider spoke with Vimeo about the decision to pull the videos and learned that the videos were manually removed by Vimeo’s Trust and Safety Team. Vimeo CEO Anjali Sud is expected to make a company-wide announcement about the decision around 9am ET in New York.
The videos, “violated our Terms of Service prohibitions on discriminatory and hateful content,” the spokesperson told Business Insider. The company added that they no longer wanted to profit from InfoWars content.
InfoWars content hit a tipping point a couple of weeks ago after Jones attacked families who had lost children in the Sandy Hook massacre. Jones is currently being sued for defamation by the families after saying that the 2011 shooting that killed 6 adults and 20 children was a hoax that was staged with actors. Families of the dead children have been harassed by InfoWars followers who believe that no one actually died. Apple decided to remove many of his podcasts, leading to Facebook and YouTube also banning Jones from their sites.
Twitter is one of the few high-profile social media platforms where Jones and his ilk are still welcome, despite the fact that InfoWars has been in violation of Twitter’s own rules. Twitter continues to host neo-Nazis, fascists, and Klansmen when other platforms have shown them the door.
Vimeo may not be the place for Alex Jones anymore, but aside from Twitter there’s at least one more social platform where the conspiracy theorist can still have a voice: Google Plus.
[Business Insider]