All but exiled from social media over his violent threats and harassment of journalists, Alex Jones’s Infowars iOS app became his last prominent platform1 after Twitter finally gave him the boot. Apple promptly banned it hours later, citing a rule against “content that is offensive, insensitive, upsetting, intended to disgust, or in exceptionally poor taste.”
The App Store has been a valuable platform for Infowars. The site relaunched its app on July 9, and, according to the analytics company Apptopia, it was downloaded about 93,000 times in its first month. Though it cautioned that the app is still too new to the App Store for it to provide definitive daily average user analytics, Apptopia told BuzzFeed News that Infowars has logged more than 600,000 hours spent in-app as of August. After Jones’ ban from Facebook, YouTube, and Apple’s podcast platform, the app surged to the third spot in Apple’s App Store.
1. It’s still on the Google Play store. No-one seems to care? Is it just a toxic waste site these days?