Apple has chosen to conceal accesses to Infowars by removing links to it from Apple’s podcast facility because Apple thinks Infowars is too far right for Apple’s taste and because the site pushes bad speech.
This is rank censorship.
Eliminating easy access to Infowars podcasts marks a rare, prominent foray for Apple into an issue confronting many major internet companies: how to remove hateful or conspiratorial messages from their platforms without infringing on free speech.
This is an impossible task to achieve legitimately. Our 1st Amendment is explicitly intended to protect unpopular or disgusting or hateful speech as well as “approved” speech. The Amendment recognizes the ability of individual American citizens to think for themselves and to evaluate for themselves what speech they choose to hear, free from Government “advice.”
It’s true enough that the Amendment enjoins Government and not private enterprise. However, the principle the Amendment protects is a universal one; it applies to all of us, individuals and enterprises alike.
Apple’s MFWIC, Tim Cook, clearly thinks he’s above all of this. His attaboy for resisting the FBI’s demand that Apple destroy individuals’ ability to encrypt effectively their private communications has been used up.