In an interview with The New Yorker published on Monday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that he only decided to ban Jones from the site when he discovered that Apple had dropped five of six podcasts published by Jones’ Infowars network in August.
In July, complaints that concerned Jones and his Infowars pages began to escalate following his labelling of the Sally Hook elementary school shooting as a hoax. Indeed, Facebook users accused Jones of recurrently violating Facebook’s policies on harassment and fake news. Users deemed Facebook’s removal of four of Jones’ videos, and its banning him for one-month, unacceptable punishment for his breeches of its policies.
A week after Facebook’s reaction, Apple announced that they did not accept hate speech on their podcasts and that they had decided to delete five of Jones’ infowars podcasts.
Zuckerberg relayed how this move from Apple prompted Facebook to act in The New Yorker:
“When they moved, it was, like, O.K., we shouldn’t just be sitting on this content and these enforcement decisions. We should move on what we know violates the policy. We need to make a decision now.”
Shortly after this, Facebook announced its ban on Jones.
Since Apple took action against Jones, YouTube, Spotify and, most recently, Twitter, have also banned him from their platforms.
