The bad news for Alex Jones, the notorious internet conspiracy theorist, keeps coming.
Late Friday, Apple removed his Infowars app from its App Store, eliminating one of the final avenues for Mr. Jones to reach a mainstream audience. An Apple spokeswoman said it was removed under company policies that prohibit apps from including content that is “offensive, insensitive, upsetting, intended to disgust or in exceptionally poor taste.” She declined to say whether any specific content in the app led to its removal.
[Read more about the reckoning, in court and public opinion, that threatens Mr. Jones’s lucrative business.]
Apple had removed Mr. Jones’s show from its podcast service on Aug. 5, leading Facebook, YouTube and other tech companies to also eliminate Mr. Jones and his Infowars site from their services. Those moves have cut off Mr. Jones from a wider audience; social media was his primary channel for finding new viewers. After those removals, downloads of the Infowars mobile app spiked, and Mr. Jones has recently been directing his followers to find his show through Infowars’ website and app.
Apple’s move does not affect iPhone users who had already downloaded the Infowars app, but it limits any more users from downloading it. The app is still available on smartphones that run Google’s Android software, which backs roughly 80 percent of the world’s smartphones.
BuzzFeed News previously reported that Apple had removed the Infowars app.
