Facebook confirmed last night that Alex Jones, the main man behind conspiracy-theorist outlet Infowars, had been suspended from the platform for 30 days. The ban concerns a handful of videos in which Jones was found to have violated Facebook’s “Community Standards” guidelines. According to CNET, the ban only affects Jones’s personal account, meaning that the main Infowars page remains online, and can be run by other users who have been granted admin privileges (on the flip side, suspending the personal account prevents Jones from posting to any page on which he is an admin).
Earlier this week, YouTube removed four Infowars videos from the service due to “violent or graphic content.” They also restricted Jones from livestreaming on the platform for 90 days. Neither this incident nor the Facebook punishment is related to a segment earlier this week in which Jones accused Special Counsel Robert Mueller of being a pedophile and mimed shooting him; Facebook has defended its decision to leave that video up.
Earlier this month, CNN asked Facebook point-blank why Infowars, which consistently posts content that includes false information and veiled threats of violence, has been allowed to remain on the platform. “I guess just for being false that doesn’t violate the community standards,” John Hegeman, the head of the News Feed product, said at the time.
