Page 40 - March 2019 - v1_june_july_2009.qxd

40 Alex Jones Was Wrong

Alex Jones Said Bans

Would Strengthen Him.

He Was Wrong.

By Jack Nicas - Sept. 4, 2018

SAN FRANCISCO — After Silicon Valley
internet giants mostly barred Alex Jones from
their services last month, traffic to his Infowars
website and app soared on the blaze of publicity
— and the notorious conspiracy theorist
declared victory.
“The more I’m persecuted, the stronger I
get,” Mr. Jones said on his live internet
broadcast three days later. “It backfired.”
Yet a review of traffic on Infowars
several weeks after the bans shows that the tech
companies drastically reduced Mr. Jones’s reach
by cutting off his primary distribution channels:
YouTube and Facebook.
In the three weeks before the Aug. 6 its website or app, Mr. Jones’s ability to reach YouTube erased Mr. Jones’s channel for
bans, Infowars had a daily average of nearly 1.4 new viewers is severely limited because they flouting a penalty for a previous punishment for
million visits to its website and views of videos will no longer come across his videos while hate speech. YouTube also quietly deleted more
posted by its main YouTube and Facebook scrolling through Facebook or YouTube, said than a dozen other channels associated with
pages, according to a New York Times analysis Monica Stephens, a geography professor at the Infowars for trying to circumvent its rules.
of data from the web data firms Tubular Labs University at Buffalo who has studied the spread Since then, Mr. Jones has made the
and SimilarWeb. In the three weeks afterward, of misinformation online. companies a central theme of his near-daily
its audience fell by roughly half, to about “This increases the likelihood Infowars show. In recent shows broadcast on his website,
715,000 site visits and video views, according to is preaching to a filter bubble versus reaching he has falsely accused YouTube and Facebook
the analysis. new audiences,” she said. of being controlled by the Chinese government
The analysis did not include traffic to the Another right-wing provocateur might and assisting in an elaborate global conspiracy
two-month-old Infowars app or views of videos present a cautionary tale for Mr. Jones: Milo to control the world’s population.
that Mr. Jones posted on Twitter, where his Yiannopoulos, the former Breitbart editor. Mr. “It is a panopticonic, total internet-of-
accounts remain active. He also still shares posts Yiannopoulos gained notoriety during the 2016 things-integration, global-social-score, complete
inside private Facebook groups, and his presidential race for his abusive language, and command-and-control system,” Mr. Jones said
followers repost his content from their social- Twitter barred him that year for harassing the three days after the ban. “It is the virtual-reality,
media accounts. But data suggest that those comedian Leslie Jones. He also lost his job at A.I. weapon system now attacking the United
sources of traffic are smaller than Mr. Jones’s Breitbart after making glib remarks about States with traitors inside the major security
main Facebook and YouTube pages. pedophilia, and his public profile gradually agencies blocking Trump’s resistance of the
That Facebook and Google, which owns faded. program.”
YouTube, muffled one of the internet’s loudest Last month, Mr. Yiannopoulos lashed He added, “I have been chosen for
voices so quickly illustrates the tremendous out at critics on Facebook, saying, “I have lost destruction because I brought you this
influence a few internet companies have over everything standing up for the truth in America, information.”
public discourse and the spread of information. spent all my savings, destroyed all my Mr. Jones also directly appealed to Mr.
The fate of Infowars is likely to be a friendships, and ruined my whole life.” Trump, asking him to intervene. (Mr. Trump
point of debate in congressional hearings on In an email, he wrote, “Social justice warriors appeared on Mr. Jones’s show during the 2016
Wednesday with tech executives including machinate to get speakers canceled, and social presidential campaign, telling him: “Your
Twitter’s chief executive, Jack Dorsey, and networks purge conservatives, for the same reputation is amazing. I will not let you down.”)
Facebook’s chief operating officer, Sheryl reason: no-platforming works.” Eleven days after Mr. Jones began
Sandberg. Part of the focus will be on claims by Neither Mr. Jones nor Infowars calling on Mr. Trump to weigh in, the president
President Trump and other critics that Silicon responded to requests for comment. tweeted: “Social Media is totally discriminating
Valley is silencing conservative voices. Mr. Jones has long relied on Silicon against Republican/Conservative voices.
The case of Mr. Jones and Infowars is Valley to distribute his message. His YouTube Speaking loudly and clearly for the Trump
tricky for many politicians and figures on the channel amassed 2.4 million subscribers and Administration, we won’t let that happen.”
right. While many dislike the idea of tech more than 1.6 billion views of nearly 36,000 Mr. Trump has since accelerated his
companies censoring political speech, and videos it had posted since 2008, according to criticism of Silicon Valley and how it surfaces
Infowars leans far right, Mr. Jones regularly Social Blade, which tracks social media data. information, alleging that Google doctored
spreads lies, conspiracy theories and His success was due partly to YouTube’s video- search results for his name. Google has denied
inflammatory attacks against political enemies. recommendation algorithm, which, in an effort the claim.
(On Thursday, a Texas judge denied his motion to drive clicks, pushed many users to Mr. Jones’s For a brief period after the bans, Mr.
to dismiss a defamation lawsuit by parents of clips. Jones enjoyed a bump in publicity. Traffic to
children killed six years ago in the Sandy Hook The main Facebook pages for Mr. Jones Infowars.com soared 67 percent to about
school shooting, which he has falsely called a and Infowars, meanwhile, had drawn 668 777,000 visits a day in the two weeks after the
hoax.) million views of their videos over the past three ban, compared with the previous two weeks,
Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, years, according to Tubular Labs. SimilarWeb said. Downloads of the Infowars
tweeted in August, “Am no fan of Jones — But on Aug. 6, Facebook deleted four app surged sixfold to 25,500 downloads a day
among other things he has a habit of repeatedly pages run by Mr. Jones or Infowars for breaking over the same period, according to Apptopia,
slandering my Dad by falsely and absurdly its rules, including by “glorifying violence” and which tracks app data.
accusing him of killing JFK — but who the hell “using dehumanizing language to describe
made Facebook the arbiter of political speech?” people who are transgender, Muslims and (Continued on Page 46)
Now that access to Infowars is mainly through immigrants.”