InfoWars, long-battled by YouTube, returned on Wednesday just to be taken down again the next day, a spokesperson for the video platform confirmed on Thursday to The Hill.
InfoWar program War Room restored its YouTube channel on 28 August – after being summarily deleted from YouTube a year ago. Prior to being dumped a second time, the channel uploaded 13 videos covering various political and social topics.
In the first video uploaded to the channel, host Owen Shroyer welcomed viewers by saying, “YouTube CEO says ‘Alex Jones’ and ‘Infowars Ban Is Over'”, as reported by Vice.
Shroyer may have been referring to an open letter published by YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, in which she restated the platform’s commitment to “openness and responsibility” during a quarterly message to the YouTube creators.
“Without an open system, diverse and authentic voices have trouble breaking through,” Wojcicki wrote in a letter. “I believe preserving an open platform is more important than ever. A commitment to openness is not easy. It sometimes means leaving up content that is outside the mainstream, controversial or even offensive.”
“As more issues come into view, a rising chorus of policymakers, press and pundits are questioning whether an open platform is valuable [...] or even viable. Despite these concerns, I believe preserving an open platform is more important than ever," cited by Cnet.com.
InfoWars bills itself as a news platform. Owned by an American, TV host Alex Jones, it was deleted from the YouTube platform a year ago, for breaching “community guidelines”. Various websites including Facebook, Spotify and Twitter also deleted InfoWars and any associated streaming channels. In 2018, Wikipedia branded InfoWars and Breitbart as a “conspiracy theorist and fake news website” detailing that the two groups should not be used as factual sources.
The InfoWars website was founded in 1999, acting as open source media, while reportedly enjoying approximately 10 million monthly visits from an international audience.
