Spotify deleted several episodes of Alex Jones’ radio show, “The Alex Jones Show,” on Wednesday after widespread complaints on social media.
The music streaming platform cited violations of its policy banning hate speech when explaining why the episodes were removed.
“We take reports of hate content seriously and review any podcast episode or song that is flagged by our community,” said a spokeswoman in an email to Variety. “Spotify can confirm it has removed specific episodes of ‘The Alex Jones Show’ podcast for violating our hate content policy.”
The initial backlash appears to have begun on Monday. It makes Spotify one of many sites slammed for allowing Jones on their platforms.
His rhetoric has brought dozens of complaints to Facebook and YouTube. When Jones — a right-wing conspiracy theorist and the founder of the website InfoWars — accused special counsel Robert Mueller of covering up sex crimes and threatened him with death, neither platform did anything about it. Facebook said Jones’ “comments did not violate the company’s community standards as they were not a credible statement of intent to commit violence.” The social media site did, however, suspend Jones’ personal Facebook page this week for four videos that violated its community standards. They have since been removed from the platform.
YouTube didn’t respond to the complaints but also removed four videos Jones had posted on the site.
Spotify was previously offering more than a year’s worth of Jones’ broadcasts, leading many users to say they would cancel their subscriptions. One user said she had spoken to a Spotify customer service representative and was told that if 100 users said the same thing, the company would look into it.
A New York Times report published on Tuesday seems to have invigorated the objections to Jones’ material on Spotify. The piece said he is in the process of “seeking over $100,000 in court costs from the parents of Noah Pozner,” one of the 20 children fatally shot at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012. Pozner’s family members have been living in hiding for years since Jones spread false claims that they are crisis actors.
Jones’ lawyer Marc Randazza disputed the claims made in the Times report, telling HuffPost that he’s “disappointed” in the paper and that he is “unable to find anywhere” in the motion “any support for that statement at all.” He also said that he believes that the quotes the Times attributed to Jones “appear to be fabricated.”
Despite Randazza’s assessment, the Times report has had Twitter users from actor Don Cheadle to journalist Soledad O’Brien tagging Spotify in their posts to ring the alarm.
Spotify did not immediately respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.
This story has been updated.
Clarification: The headline on this article has been amended to clarify that Spotify did not pull Jones’ entire show.