Apple, Facebook, YouTube and Spotify have responded to the growing backlash against Alex Jones, the right-wing conspiracy theorist behind InfoWars, by removing his podcasts and pages from their platforms.

The moves by the tech companies, announced within hours of one another, sparked cries of another conspiracy, or, as an InfoWars editor put it, “coordinated big tech censorship.”

But Facebook and YouTube — which have long struggled with how to police content and are now dealing with issues surrounding fake news and disinformation on their platforms — attributed their moves to Jones’ and InfoWars’ violations of their standards, including those against hate speech.

Facebook’s move follows its recent controversial stance that it would not ban InfoWars because of fake news, saying it didn’t want to violate the site’s right to free speech. In its blog post Monday, Facebook emphasized that its removal of the Jones and InfoWars pages was because of violations of its community standards, and not related to false news. The social networking giant is under pressure from conservatives who say it is biased against them.

Apple’s removal of five of six InfoWars podcasts was first reported by BuzzFeed Sunday night. Monday morning, Facebook announced that it, too, had unpublished four pages related to Jones and InfoWars. A Spotify spokesman confirmed Monday that “The Alex Jones Show has lost access to the Spotify platform.” Also Monday, YouTube took down Jones’ channels.

Jones is perhaps most famous for spreading the conspiracy theory that the 2012 mass school shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, was a hoax. He is facing defamation lawsuits by parents of the children who were killed in that shooting and has said that he now believes the shooting happened. More recent theories presented by Jones and Infowars include a supposed upcoming civil war started by liberals, and accusing special counsel Robert Mueller of being involved in a child sex ring.

Facebook, YouTube and Spotify had removed selected videos and podcast episodes from InfoWars last week.

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In a blog post Monday, Facebook said it has unpublished the Alex Jones Channel Page, the Alex Jones Page, the InfoWars Page and the Infowars Nightly News Page for “repeated violations of Community Standards and accumulating too many strikes.” It took further action beyond last week’s removal of videos from each of the four pages after more reports about the content on those pages, the company said.

“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.

At Facebook, unpublishing is the first step toward removing a page; it gives pages’ creators a chance to appeal while the page is unavailable on the platform.

On July 24, YouTube had issued a “strike” against Jones over four videos that violated its policies related to child endangerment and hate speech. Because of that strike, YouTube also suspended Jones’ live-streaming privileges for 90 days. But he is said to have violated the terms of the suspension by continuing to promote live streaming on other channels.

“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,” a YouTube spokesperson said Monday.

Apple told BuzzFeed: “Apple does not tolerate hate speech, and we have clear guidelines that creators and developers must follow to ensure we provide a safe environment for all of our users.”

The company — whose decision seems to have been a response to a public campaign by activist group Sleeping Giants that started last week — did not respond to a request for comment Monday about why one InfoWars podcast, “RealNews with David Knight,” remains on iTunes. In addition, InfoWars’ news app remains available in Apple’s App Store.

The decisions by the four companies could put a big dent in the reach of Jones and InfoWars. As of the first quarter of 2018, 54 percent of the U.S. podcast audience of more than 23 million adults used Apple’s iOS, according to a report by Nielsen. Facebook has more than 2 billion users, 240 million of them in the United States. Spotify has 180 million users worldwide. The Alex Jones channel on YouTube had more than 2.4 million subscribers.

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Infowars, Alex Jones sued again, this time for falsely identifying man as Parkland shooter Jones tweeted Monday: “We’ve been banned completely on Facebook, Apple, & Spotify. What conservative news outlet will be next?”

Jones urged his followers to retweet the link to InfoWars’ own site, saying they’d be helping InfoWars fight censorship.

On Twitter, Jones still has 826,000 followers and is verified with a blue checkmark. He also took to Periscope, the live-streaming site owned by Twitter, to rail against the moves by the other tech companies.

“InfoWars and associated accounts are not currently in violation of the Twitter/Periscope Rules,” a Twitter spokeswoman said Monday. “It’s important to note that content posted by InfoWars to other sites is not always posted to Twitter. Twitter’s open and real-time nature is a powerful antidote to the spreading of all types of false or misleading information.”