Stitcher Removes Infowars’ Alex Jones Podcast, Following Action From Spotify, YouTube & Facebook | Tech Industry

“He has, on multiple occasions, harassed or allowed harassment of private individuals and organizations.”

Stitcher has pulled all episodes of far-right political commentator and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones‘ podcast from its service, following similar moves from Spotify, Facebook and Youtube — all citing violations against their platforms’ hate content policies.

In a statement to Billboard on Thursday, Stitcher it “has reviewed Alex Jones’ podcasts and found he has, on multiple occasions, harassed or allowed harassment of private individuals and organizations, and that harassment has led listeners of the show to engage in similar harassment and other damaging activity. Therefore, we have decided to remove his podcasts from the Stitcher platform.”

The news follows action by Facebook to suspend Jones’ personal account and YouTube to take down several videos from Jones’ InfoWars channel for violating “policies against child endangerment and hate speech,” as well as a recent backlash against Spotify that eventually resulted in the service removing an unspecified number of episodes from its service, citing its hate content policy.

The Alex Jones Show is still available on Apple Podcasts and Podbean, while it appears Spreaker has removed the same episodes from its service as Spotify. (Spreaker hosts podcast streaming, as well as distribution to other platforms, including Spotify.) None of these companies responded to requests for comment at time of publishing. 

Meanwhile, on July 9, Jones launched his own free Infowars app, which he has been increasingly pushing to his followers to stream his content. According to Apptopia, Jones’ app has been downloaded about 84,000 times and has logged more than 500,000 hours spent in-app by these users in less than a month. (For reference, the popular Fortnite mobile app had 2.7 billion hours for May and June combined.) The Infowars app is currently No. 38 in Apple’s App Store news category, ahead off the MSNBC, NBC News and Pocket apps. 

Jones is currently defending himself against a defamation suit from parents of children killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, five years ago, alleging Infowars spread false claims that the shooting was an elaborate hoax.