Roku Pulled Its InfoWars Channel, But Only After Users Revolted

The service learned the same lesson as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and others

Roku is in hot water after initially defending its decision to offer users InfoWars, a channel hosted by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. But the service soon learned what other players in the industry—including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Spotify and Apple—learned months ago. After a swift backlash over giving Jones’ rhetoric a platform, the company announced Tuesday night that it would remove the far-right channel.

In a statement to Digiday, which first reported the news on Tuesday, Roku initially defended itself, claiming that “voices on all sides of an issue or cause are free to operate a channel” and that it was not being paid to promote or distribute InfoWars.

“We

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