Infowars is an inactive American far-right, conspiracy theorist, and fake news website, which was created by Alex Jones. Founded in 1999, it operated under Free Speech Systems LLC. Talk shows and other content for the site were created primarily in studios at an undisclosed location in an industrial area in the outskirts of Austin, Texas. Reports in 2017 stated that the Infowars website received approximately 10million monthly visits, making its reach greater than some mainstream news websites such as The Economist and Newsweek at the time.
Infowars regularly published fake stories that have led to harassment of crime victims. In February 2018, Jones, the publisher, director, and owner of the site, was accused of discrimination and sexual harassment of employees. Infowars, and in particular Jones, have advocated numerous conspiracy theories, particularly around purported domestic false flag operations by the U.S. government, which they allege include the 9/11 attack and Sandy Hook shooting. At various times Infowars has issued retractions as a result of legal challenges. Jones has had contentious material removed,"YouTube removes 'hate speech' videos from InfoWars" . BBC News. and has also been suspended and banned from many platforms for violating their terms of service, including Facebook, Twitter, and Roku. It is classified as a conspiracy propagandist group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Infowars earned most of its revenue from direct sales of products pitched by Jones, which initially consisted of videos and later included survivalist products and branded merchandise, but shifted primarily to dietary supplements by the late 2010s. Jones also staged direct-donation telethons called "money bombs," although Infowars was never a nonprofit organization.
After $1.3 billion in damages were awarded to Sandy Hook families in a series of defamation lawsuits against Jones and Infowars, the organization faced bankruptcy proceedings from 2022 to 2025, but a federal bankruptcy judge ultimately ruled that only Alex Jones's ownership stake could be sold to pay the families, as its parent company was no longer in bankruptcy. The families took the case to state court, and in August 2025, a Texas judge ordered Infowars to be liquidated to pay them. The satirical news organization The Onion has been attempting to take control of Infowars since 2024 but has been blocked by the courts. On April 30, 2026, after a takeover attempt by The Onion's parent company was blocked, Jones and Ben Collins announced that Infowars would stop broadcasting by midnight because no one had paid to rent the studio and website. The website went offline that night and currently only displays the words "Off Air". The families accuse Jones of engineering the closure of the website as part of an effort to profit from Infowars content on other online platforms.
History Founding
Infowars was created in 1999 by American conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. Founded by Jones with his then-wife Kelly, it was originally a mail-order outlet for the conspiracy-oriented videos produced by the Joneses. Infowars features The Alex Jones Show on their broadcasts and was established as a public-access television program aired in Austin, Texas, in 1999.
2010s During the 2016 U.S. presidential election, the website was promoted by bots connected to the Russian government. A 2017 study by the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University found that Infowars was the 13th most shared source by supporters of Donald Trump on Twitter during the election.
In 2016, Paul Joseph Watson was hired as editor-at-large. In February 2017, political commentator Jerome Corsi was hired as Washington bureau chief, after Infowars was granted a White House day pass. In June 2018, Corsi's connection to Infowars ended; he received six months of severance payments. In May 2017, Mike Cernovich joined the Infowars team as a scheduled guest host for The Alex Jones Show, with CNN reporting the "elevation to Infowars host represents the meteoric rise in his profile". On July 6, 2017, alongside Paul Joseph Watson, Jones began hosting a contest to create the best "CNN Meme", for which the winner would receive $20,000. They were responding to CNN reporting on a Reddit user who had created a pro-Trump and anti-CNN meme.
In June 2017, it was announced that Roger Stone, a former campaign advisor for Trump, would be hosting his own Infowars show "five nights a week", with an extra studio being built to accommodate his show. In March 2018, a number of major brands in the U.S. suspended their ads from Infowarss YouTube channels, after CNN notified them that their ads were running adjacent to Infowars content. In July 2018, YouTube removed four of Infowarss uploaded videos that violated its policy against hate speech and suspended posts for 90 days. Facebook also banned Jones after it determined four videos on his pages violated its community standards in July 2018. In August 2018, YouTube, Apple, and Facebook removed content from Jones and Infowars, citing their policies against hate speech and harassment.
In an October 2018 Simmons Research survey of 38 news organizations, Infowars was ranked the second least trusted news organization by Americans, with The Daily Caller being lower-ranked. On March 12, 2020, Attorney General of New York Letitia James issued a cease and desist letter to Jones concerning Infowarss sale of unapproved products that the website falsely asserted to be government-approved treatments for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). On April 9, the FDA ordered Infowars to discontinue the sale of a number of products marketed as remedies for COVID-19 in violation of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, including toothpaste, liquids, and gels containing colloidal silver.
Claims of sexual harassment and antisemitism In 2017, Haaretz reported that Infowars had accused Israel of involvement in the 9/11 attacks, accused the Rothschilds of promoting "endless war, debt slavery and a Luciferian agenda", and claimed that U.S. healthcare was under the control of a "Jewish mafia". In February 2018, Jones was accused by two former employees of antisemitism, anti-black racism, and sexual harassment of both male and female staff members. He denied the allegations. Two former employees filed complaints against Jones with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
Removals from other websites
On July 27, 2018, Facebook suspended Alex Jones's official page for thirty days, claiming Jones had participated in hate speech against Robert Mueller. This was swiftly followed by action from other bodies—on August 6, Facebook, Apple, YouTube and Spotify all removed content by Alex Jones and Infowars from their platforms for violating their policies. YouTube removed channels associated with Infowars, including The Alex Jones Channel, which had gained 2.4 million subscriptions prior to its removal. On Facebook, four pages associated with Infowars and Alex Jones were removed due to repeated violations of the website's policies. Apple removed all podcasts associated with Jones from its iTunes platform and its podcast app. On August 13, Vimeo removed all Jones's videos because they "violated our terms of service prohibitions on discriminatory and hateful content". By February 2019, a total of 89 pages associated with Infowars or Alex Jones had been removed from Facebook due to its recidivism policy, which is designed to prevent circumventing a ban.Darcy, Oliver (February 5, 2019) "Facebook removes 22 more pages connected to conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and InfoWars" CNN Business In May 2019, President Trump tweeted or retweeted defenses of people associated with Infowars, including editor Paul Joseph Watson and host Alex Jones, after the Facebook ban. Jones's accounts have also been removed from Pinterest, Mailchimp, LinkedIn, and Instagram. The Wikipedia community deprecated and blacklisted Infowars as a source by consensus in 2018, determining that it was a "conspiracy theorist and fake news website" and that it had a "snowball's chance in hell" of being used as a source.
Beginning in September 2018, Jones and Infowars were both suspended from Twitter and Periscope, a Twitter subsidiary. This followed Jones tweeting a Periscope video calling on others "to get their battle rifles ready against antifa, the mainstream media, and Chicom operatives". In the video he also stated, "Now is time to act on the enemy before they do a false flag." Twitter cited this as the reason to suspend his account for a week on August 14. On September 6, Twitter banned Infowars and Alex Jones for repeated violations of the site's terms and conditions. Twitter cited abusive behavior, namely a video that "shows Jones shouting at and berating CNN journalist Oliver Darcy for some 10 minutes during congressional hearings about social media." On April 16, 2020, Twitter suspended the account of Infowars personality Owen Shroyer for promoting a Texas rally against the stay-at-home order during the COVID-19 pandemic. Jones's ban from the platform was overturned by Elon Musk in December 2023, after the latter's acquisition of Twitter.
On September 7, 2018, the Infowars app was removed from the Apple App Store. On September 20, 2018, PayPal informed Infowars they would cease processing payments in ten days because "promotion of hate and discrimination runs counter to our core value of inclusion." On May 2, 2019, Facebook and Instagram banned Jones and Infowars as part of a larger ban of far-right extremists. The ban covered videos, audio clips, and articles from Infowars, but excluded criticism of Infowars. Facebook indicated it would take down groups that violated the ban. The Infowars app was pulled from Google Play on March 27, 2020, for violating its policies on spreading "misleading or harmful disinformation", after Jones opposed efforts to contain COVID-19 and said "natural antivirals" could treat the disease. In March 2023, the Southern Poverty Law Center reported on Jones's leaked texts from his Sandy Hook defamation trial. The texts revealed that Jones and his collaborators had been trying to evade social media bans of Infowars content by setting up alternate websites such as National File to disguise its origin.
Bankruptcy and proposed acquisition In April 2022, it became known the company behind Infowars had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, as had Infowars Health (or IWHealth), against further civil litigation lawsuits. The court filings estimated Infowars assets at between $0–$50,000, but its liabilities (including from the damages awarded against Jones in defamation suits) was estimated as being between $1 million to $10 million. On June 23, 2024, Jones's court-appointed bankruptcy trustee Christopher Murray filed an "emergency" motion in a Houston court indicating his intention to shut down Infowars. According to the motion, Murray made plans to "conduct an orderly wind-down" of the operations of Free Speech Systems, Infowarss parent company, and also "liquidate its inventory", but he did not announce a timetable; on his radio show, Jones had said that he expects Infowars to operate for a few more months, or to be sold to another party that may retain him as an employee. Murray also asked the bankruptcy court to put a hold on the Sandy Hook families' attempts to collect their settlements from Jones, saying that their efforts would interfere with the liquidation; much of its proceeds would ultimately go to the families, Murray said. On September 24, bankruptcy judge Christopher Lopez approved the liquidation of Infowarss and Free Speech Systems's assets. Auctions would be held on November 13 and December 10; no limits were to be imposed on who may bid for the company's intellectual property and other assets.