Roku announced on Tuesday that it would remove Alex Jones’Infowars from its platform just a day after adding the channel to its service.
The company said on Twitter that it had “heard from concerned parties and have determined that the channel should be removed from our channel.”
“Deletion from the channel store and platform has begun and will be completed shortly,” the company wrote.
The move came after the addition of an Infowars channel sparked outrage on social media and among organizations that oppose Jones.
Roku’s decision comes about six months after most major tech platforms, including Facebook, Spotify, and YouTube, removed Jones’ right-wing conspiracy channel.
After the InfoWars channel became available, we heard from concerned parties and have determined that the channel should be removed from our platform. Deletion from the channel store and platform has begun and will be completed shortly.— Roku (@Roku) January 16, 2019
A spokesperson from Roku told NBC News that while Infowars had been on the site for a few years, it required a subscription and authentication, and was “not used much.” On Monday, the company had posted a new version of the channel that was more easily accessible. Both versions have now been removed.
The decision to remove Infowars comes as a quick reversal for the Roku, which told Digiday on Tuesday: “While the vast majority of all streaming on our platform is mainstream entertainment, voices on all sides of an issue or cause are free to operate a channel. We do not curate or censor based on viewpoint.”
Outrage that Roku was carrying Infowars began after Twitter user @DanielMadison78 tweeted at the company asking why they were carrying the far-right conspiracy channel. In a now-deleted tweet, Roku’s support account replied to the question by linking to Infowars.
