The social networks Facebook and YouTube and the media sites Apple and Spotify have banned US conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and his Infowars website because of his hate speech and glorifying violence.

"Apple does not tolerate hate speech," the company said in a statement, "We believe in representing a wide range of views, so long as people are respectful to those with differing opinions."

Apple and iTunes got the ball rolling over the weekend by deleting five podcasts related to Infowars and Jones.  The other bans then piled up in quick succession.  On Monday, Facebook announced that it had permanently removed four Alex Jones-related pages after suspending them last month.

"More content from the same pages has been reported to us - upon review, we have taken it down for glorifying violence, which violates our graphic violence policy, and using dehumanizing language to describe people who are transgender, Muslims, and immigrants, which violates our hate speech policies," Facebook said.

Shortly after, YouTube followed suit.

"All users agree to comply with our Terms of Service and Community Guidelines when they sign up to use YouTube," said a spokesperson for the video sharing platform.  "When users violate these policies repeatedly, like our policies against hate speech and harassment or our terms prohibiting circumvention of our enforcement measures, we terminate their accounts."

Despite the fact that four separate corporations acted, Jones complained about "Communist" plot, apparently unaware of the meaning of the word.

The platforms cited "hate speech" for banning Jones.  But he was also in hot water for a particularly vile campaign of denying the 2012 Sandy Hook School Massacre, claiming it never happened and that the grieving parents of murdered second graders were actually paid "crisis actors".  He's now facing at least five defamation suits, three of which have been filed by families of Sandy Hook victims.

Jones has also trafficked in the extremely preposterous "Pizzagate" conspiracy theory, which held that Hillary Clinton and other powerful figures were molesting and trafficking children out of the basement of a Washington, DC area pizza restaurant.  Not only is that completely stupid, but the restaurant doesn't even have a basement.  Nevertheless, in 2016 a man binged YouTube conspiracy videos about Pizzagate, and took it upon himself to pick up a gun and storm the restaurant to demand answers.  Edgar M. Welch was sentenced to four years in prison; a few months later, Alex Jones put out a video disavowing the Pizzagate hoax, and apologizing for spreading it.  The statement came after the restaurant owner’s attorneys had demanded a retraction.