Apple has purged Infowars from its App Store, after previously banning Alex Jones and Infowars from using its platform to publish podcasts.
This comes just a day after Jones and InfoWars were Permanently blacklisted by Twitter, which justified its actions by pointing to a video of Jones confronting Oliver Darcy, the CNN reporter who ceaselessly lobbied social media to ban InfoWars — twitter called the confrontation “abuse.”
Infowars has now been banned by Apple Podcasts, the App Store, YouTube, Spotify, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and even Pinterest. Alex Jones still retains his personal page on Facebook, although it has been locked for 30 days.
Infowars’ app previously enjoyed massive popularity among App Store users. After Jones and InfoWars were banned on other platforms, the official InfoWars app broke into the top 5 free apps in the store, overtaking far-left CNN.
This latest move by Apple effectively prohibits Jones from a massive chunk of the worldwide smartphone app market. Without access to the App Store, it is in effect impossible to distribute apps to iPhones.
If Google follows suit, InfoWars apps will effectively be blacklisted on all smartphones. Apple and Google are a duopoly, accounting for 99 percent of all smartphone operating systems in America. Apple on its own accounts for more than 44 percent — that’s the size of the market Infowars has already been excluded from.
Gab.ai, the free speech oriented competitor to Twitter, has already fallen foul of the smartphone duopoly, having been excluded from both the App Store and Google Play.
Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter, Gab.ai and add him on Facebook. Email tips and suggestions to allumbokhari@protonmail.com