Technology

Infowars app surges in popularity on Apple, Google Play stores

The Infowars app is rising in the Apple store’s rankings after a number of other major digital platforms cracked down on its content.

The app has surged in popularity in recent days from the 47th to the 4th most popular Apple store news app in the United States. That position places Inforwars over CNN, Fox News and The New York Times’s apps, according to app analytics site, App Annie.

In Google Play’s app store for Android, the Infowars app currently sits at the 11th spot for the most popular U.S. news app, up from its previous spot at 31st.

The app lets users access Infowars videos and articles as well as the Infowars store.

Apple and Google Play are still allowing users to download the app but a number of other platforms have booted Infowars and its founder Alex Jones, including YouTube and Facebook, citing content that violated their policies.

The crackdown has seen the app surge in popularity on platforms where its content is still accessible.

Apple has removed Alex Jones’s podcasts from iTunes and its podcast app, but has not taken action against the Infowars app.

Spotify became the first major company to boot Jones last week and was followed by Apple over Jones’s podcasts on Sunday and Facebook on Monday. A slew of smaller companies followed suit, like Pinterest and MailChimp, in kicking Jones and Infowars off their platforms. 

Facebook, in particular, had faced heavy criticism for allowing Jones to remain on the platform even after he promoted conspiracy theories that the students who survived the Parkland, Fla. shooting this year were crisis actors and that the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting in 2012 was staged.

Jones has tried to use the new bans to his advantage. He has claimed he is being censored by big tech and urged users to download his app before it’s deleted.