Roku removes Infowars channel following social media outcry

NBC News Clone summarizes the latest on: Roku Removes Infowars Channel Following Social Media Outcry N959321 - Technology and Innovation | NBC News Clone. This article is rewritten and presented in a simplified tone for a better reader experience.

Roku’s decision comes about six months after most major platforms, like Facebook, Spotify, and Youtube, removed Alex Jones’ right-wing conspiracy channel.
\"Infowars\" host Alex Jones
"Infowars" host Alex Jones arrives at the Travis County Courthouse in Austin, Texas, on April 17, 2017.Tamir Kalifa / Austin American-Statesman via AP file

Roku announced on Tuesday that it would remove Alex Jones’ Infowars from its platform just a day after adding the channel to its service.

The company said on Twitter that it had "heard from concerned parties and have determined that the channel should be removed from our channel."

"Deletion from the channel store and platform has begun and will be completed shortly," the company wrote.

The move came after the addition of an Infowars channel sparked outrage on social media and among organizations that oppose Jones.

Roku’s decision comes about six months after most major tech platforms, including Facebook, Spotify, and YouTube, removed Jones’ right-wing conspiracy channel.

A spokesperson from Roku told NBC News that while Infowars had been on the site for a few years, it required a subscription and authentication, and was "not used much." On Monday, the company had posted a new version of the channel that was more easily accessible. Both versions have now been removed.

The decision to remove Infowars comes as a quick reversal for the Roku, which told Digiday on Tuesday: “While the vast majority of all streaming on our platform is mainstream entertainment, voices on all sides of an issue or cause are free to operate a channel. We do not curate or censor based on viewpoint.”

Outrage that Roku was carrying Infowars began after Twitter user @DanielMadison78 tweeted at the company asking why they were carrying the far-right conspiracy channel. In a now-deleted tweet, Roku’s support account replied to the question by linking to Infowars.

This exchange was quickly picked up by Sleeping Giants, a Twitter account with more than 200,000 followers that describes itself as a “campaign to make bigotry and sexism less profitable.”

Sleeping Giants has worked to have Infowars removed from other platforms, and routinely calls on advertisers to boycott the Fox News shows of Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham.

Jones has not directly addressed his removal from Roku. On Tuesday he posted a screenshot of a tweet on Instagram that read “Strike me down now and I only become more powerful #AlexJones.”

Jones was most recently in the news when it was announced last week that he had to turn over financial and marketing documents to the families of Sandy Hook shooting victims in their ongoing lawsuit against Infowars. Jones has previously claimed that the Sandy Hook massacre that left 28 dead was “completely fake.”

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