“War Room” is hosted by Podbean, which did not return a request for comment. Its terms of service prohibit “content that is illegal or promotes illegal activity, self-harm, violence, or illegal drugs, or content depicting graphic sex, gore, or is otherwise considered obscene, objectionable, or in poor taste.”Īudio files themselves are supported by a much more fragmented network of hosting services - which costs money, unlike simply being catalogued by a portal like Apple’s. Contrast this to their app store guidelines, which are very clear.”Īpple declined to comment on how it evaluates whether to de-list a podcast. “For example when they banned Alex Jones, they just stopped listing him, but what guidelines they used were a bit unclear. “However, in the case of podcasts, Apple usually explains that they are just cataloging the show and not actually distributing it,” Squire said. That is why most of them ban such activities in their own terms of service,” said Megan Squire, a computer science professor at Elon University who has studied the right-wing podcasting ecosystem. “Online platforms know that rhetoric promoting violence and disinformation absolutely matters. Despite canceling Bannon’s YouTube channel, Google Podcasts still indexes “War Room.” (Apple accounts for more than half of the number of podcast streams, with Spotify a distant second.) Part of that has to do with the industry’s structure: The main podcast portals merely index the shows, like Google indexes websites. While social media companies have become more willing over the past few months to censor accounts that engage in hate speech, podcasts are still largely unmoderated.

Everything that the Judeo-Christian West represents is at stake.

“One side’s going to win and one side’s going to lose. 3, after interviewing the right-wing Archbishop Carlo Maria Viga nò, whom Pope Francis fired as the Vatican’s ambassador to the United States after he sided with anti-gay culture warriors. “It’s the children of light and the children of darkness,” he said on Jan. Using a mix of football, military and religious analogies, Bannon speaks often in apocalyptic terms about the risk of losing. 3, Bannon has spent several hours a day exploring the minutiae of baselessly disputed elections in several states, giving ample airtime to Trump defenders like Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell and presidential adviser Peter Navarro. The fact that such beliefs were the battle cry of a violent mob that threatened congressional leaders has brought podcasting platforms face to face with a difficult question: What are their responsibilities when it comes to stifling what otherwise could be seen as protected speech? Several podcasts that spread baseless claims of election fraud, including shows by former Trump strategist Sebastian Gorka and Judicial Watch’s Tom Fitton, continue to be broadly available on major platforms. As of last week, he claimed total downloads of 29 million.īannon did not respond to a request for comment. Although the app doesn’t show the number of times the show has been streamed, Bannon gives updates every few days on its popularity.

Anthony Fauci and FBI Director Christopher Wray should be beheaded, continues to reach an enormous audience via Apple’s podcast app, which is installed by default on every iPhone.

But Bannon, who himself was banned from YouTube and Twitter after saying in November that Dr.

Warroom twitter