Alex Jones

Alex Jones is a broadcaster who founded Infowars. He is frequently cited in arguments about platform content moderation stemming from the 2018 removals, and the defendant in the Sandy Hook defamation litigation, which ended in default judgments and a jury award of damages.

Broadcasting and Infowars

Jones broadcasts from Austin, Texas, through Infowars — a website, a daily programme, and a merchandise and supplement business operated by Free Speech Systems, LLC. His output combines news commentary with conspiracy claims about major events.

Platform Removals, August 2018

On 6 August 2018 Facebook removed four Pages — the Alex Jones Channel Page, the Alex Jones Page, the InfoWars Page and the InfoWars Nightly News Page — for repeated violations of its policies against hate speech and glorifying violence, and placed Jones himself in a 30-day block as one of the Pages’ admins. The same day, YouTube terminated the Infowars channel, which had 2.4 million subscribers, stating that it terminates accounts for repeated policy violations “or our terms prohibiting circumvention of our enforcement measures”. Apple removed the Infowars podcasts and Spotify removed Jones’s podcasts over the same period.

The sequence — four large platforms acting within roughly a day, with no coordinating body and no law requiring it — became the standard reference point in subsequent argument about how content moderation decisions are made and by whom.

Sandy Hook Litigation

Families of victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, and a first responder, sued Jones in Connecticut over statements on his programme advancing conspiracy theories about the shooting. In 2020 the Connecticut Supreme Court affirmed sanctions the trial court had imposed after Jones discussed the case on air, holding that the speech posed “an imminent and likely threat to the administration of justice.”

The defendants were subsequently defaulted as a sanction for repeated failure to comply with discovery and for violating a protective order, so the trial proceeded on damages alone. The jury awarded compensatory damages, attorney’s fees and costs, and punitive damages under the Connecticut Unfair Trade Practices Act. Free Speech Systems, LLC filed for bankruptcy in the Southern District of Texas on 29 July 2022.

Digital Political Impact

• Built a large audience in US alternative media through a website, a daily show, and syndication across the platforms that later removed him
• Became a frequently cited example in platform-governance debate after four services removed him within a day in August 2018
• Demonstrated a subscription- and merchandise-funded model independent of advertising, which survived the platform removals
• Was held civilly liable, through the Sandy Hook litigation, for defamatory claims made in broadcast conspiracy content

What Is Not Established Here

The citation audit removed several claims the previous version asserted without support: his birth year; a 1996 start on a named Austin radio station and appearances on Austin cable access; a Twitter follower count; and a characterization of Twitter’s inaction and of a statement by its then-CEO. The 2.4 million YouTube subscriber figure is retained only as what was reported at the moment of removal, attributed to that report.