In 2018, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and his website, Infowars, were banned by YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Apple for violating these platforms' hate speech policies. Four years later, the largest social media platforms have prevented the promotion of a documentary about him as well.

Private companies are well within their rights to make the content moderation decisions they deem appropriate. Jones' belief system, which his millions of listeners must find compelling on some level, is predicated on the idea that there's some kind of totalitarian world government lurking in the shadows, either attempting to seize control or already in control of us. It's from this logic that Jones' skepticism of major tragedies and events stems. He has suggested, for instance, that 9/11 and the Sandy Hook school shooting might have been pre-orchestrated, designed by those in charge, and he subsequently faced defamation lawsuits from the parents of some of the shooting victims. Big Tech, the media, and each presidential administration—except Trump's—are all frequent targets of Jones' unrestrained ire and boundless grievances.

But when Big Tech firms uniformly decline to platform anything Jones-related, they may be fueling the flames of his paranoia. As the old saw has it, just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they're not out to get you.

I went to the movie premiere of Alex's War last Saturday ahead of its release date, which is today, and walked away with a heightened appreciation for Jones' charisma but stronger disdain for his shoddily substantiated theories. Though he's forcefully asserted that the 2020 election was stolen from former President Donald Trump, Jones has provided meager evidence to back such claims up, and even admitted in the Q&A afterward that his stolen-election beliefs were somewhat pre-formed. But that didn't stop him from assembling with his acolytes at the Georgia Capitol where results were being certified, and at the January 6 rally in Washington which turned violent. (Jones left prior to the breach of the Capitol building.)