
Apple Just Permanently Banned Infowars' App from the App Store - MBCook
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/johnpaczkowski/apple-banned-alex-jones-infowars-app-store
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walrus01
Good. Nobody owes Alex Jones his own free publishing platform. Nothing is
stopping him from using money to hire "professionals" to set up a colo/hosting
environment and do everything on httpd he fully controls. There already is an
Infowars website, and as far as I know, its upstream ISP are still happy to
take his money. It will have a lot less visitors, though.

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artilect
This is a joke. They will go after his payment processors, then his DDOS
protection, then his domain name, then his infrastructure, and everything else
they have been using. Before you know it, you will be telling us to build our
own fiber optic networks.

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dwyer
Who are "they"? The "chicom globalists"?

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walrus01
Probably the same people who fluoridate our water to make the frogs gay. /s

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ams6110
I'm not a fan of Alex Jones, I barely know who he is, but all this banning
seems a bit risky to me. Hosting companies have generally had "Safe Harbor"
protection against liability for content that third parties post on their
platforms. However if they actively start policing and censoring content,
they're more involved, and might now be more liable in other claims of
offensive or defamatory content.

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astura
This isn't about legal liability (which is what safe harbor refers to) it's
about Apple's ToS.

TFA says app store guidelines say apps that are "defamatory, discriminatory,
or mean-spirited content, including references or commentary about religion,
race, sexual orientation, gender, national/ethnic origin, or other targeted
groups, particularly if the app is likely to humiliate, intimidate, or place a
targeted individual or group in harm’s way" are rejected.

"Holding contributors to a standard" is not legally risky just like HN
removing comments that are against the rules is not legally risky.

Apple seems to have made it clear they don't want to be a dumpster.

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threatofrain
I imagine that Apple is ultimately doing this for the same reason all
businesses do it. There's no reason for a business to unnecessarily restrict
its customer base. Apple would like to sell its iPhone to people whether or
not they support abortion.

Unfortunately I feel that big corp understands the value of secularism better
than the rest of America, perhaps because they are constrained by the
imperative to be more effective than their competitors, including with their
workforce and customers.

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MBCook
Makes sense, but I wonder why now. Twitter’s ban?

It was VERY odd that they removed his podcasts but left the apps up. The App
Store has much stricter rules than the podcast directory.

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Operyl
I feel like we could just be overthinking it. They probably waited to capture
enough evidence to come back with if this blows back on them.

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MBCook
My understanding was the same content that got him removed from the podcast
directory what’s available in the app, so I wouldn’t think it would be a hard
case to make.

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Operyl
Different teams, different requirements perhaps.

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xolorg
You can't call this website "hacker" news anymore. Hacker culture is supposed
to be about openness and anti-censorship no matter who the individual. In
celebrating or justifying the censorship of infowars this community has shown
it's true colors.

I'm quite frankly ashamed to see what HN has become.

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xolorg
And for those saying it's not censorship it's a private platform. At what
stage does it become censorship? * When they ban his web hosting account *
When his DNS registrar bans him? * When his payment processor drops him? *
When his broadband providers bans him?

