Should Alex Jones have been removed from Apple podcasts (and Facebook and YouTube)?

Alex Jones (of Infowars) is a known conspiracy theorist and far-right commentator. His podcasts were removed from Apple yesterday, along with his Facebook and YouTube content (although I did hear that his YouTube channel was back up; I’m too lazy to check).

They claimed it was because he spouts hate speech. Now I’m not denying that Apple and these other companies were legally free to do this. I’m asking should they have done it?

Look, I hate Alex Jones. But that doesn’t mean I agree with removing all his content from social media. On one hand, digital platforms are out to make money; if Alex Jones was a major moneymaker they wouldn’t have removed his content (ironically the InfoWars app is still in the App Store and it’s now seeing record downloads. Removing him just brought him more publicity and fueled the conspiracy theories that he loves). On the other hand, social media platforms are under fire for allowing misinformation to spread and may feel it’s their duty to remove this stuff.

As I said in the thread about Sarah Jeong: it’s a mess. So what are your ideas about how to clean up this mess?