CNNTech: Tim Cook told Eddy Cue to jettison Alex Jones

Only after Apple made its move, did Facebook’s Zuckerberg, YouTube’s Wojcicki and Spotify’s Ek follow suit.

From Dylan Byers:

• Amid mounting public pressure to address Jones’ hate speech, Apple’s Tim Cook and Eddy Cue met over the weekend and decided to pull five of Jones’ podcasts from their platform, sources familiar with the matter told me.
• Cook and Cue decided to let Jones’ InfoWars app remain available in the app store because they felt it did not run afoul of their policy.
• Hours after Apple announced its move, Mark Zuckerberg and his team at Facebook made the decision to pull four of Jones’ pages from their platform.
• Zuckerberg only moved to remove these pages after learning about Apple’s decision, Facebook sources said. That is why the pages were removed at 3 a.m. Pacific Time.
• YouTube’s Susan Wojcicki and Spotify’s Daniel Ek similarly moved to ban some of Jones’ content only after learning about Apple’s decision.

My take: Better late than never, but there must be a better way. David French suggests that social media sites simply prohibit libel and slander, terms that have legal meanings and are less arbitrary and subject to abuse.

See also:

• Who voted for Apple to deal with Alex Jones?
• My brush with Alex Jones

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