Reporting by Reuters, Bloomberg, Associated Press
Elon Musk restores X account of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ after user poll
- Close to 2 million votes were cast by the time the poll closed, with about 70 per cent voting in favour of Jones’ return
- The platform formerly known as Twitter permanently banned Jones and his website Infowars in 2018, saying the accounts violated its behavior policies
“The people have spoken and so it shall be,” Musk posted in reply to a poll on Saturday on whether to reinstate the Jones account. Close to 2 million votes were cast by the time the poll closed, with about 70 per cent voting in favor of Jones’ return.
In a post following the completion of the poll, he said X would “abide by the will of the people.”
The move poses new uncertainty for advertisers, who have fled X over concerns about hate speech appearing alongside their ads.
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Musk, who has described himself as a free speech absolutist, said the move was about protecting those rights. In response to a user who posted that “permanent account bans are antithetical to free speech,” Musk wrote, “I find it hard to disagree with this point.”
Since Musk’s takeover of the platform, it has reinstated previously suspended accounts including that of former US President Donald Trump.
The platform formerly known as Twitter permanently banned Jones and his website Infowars in 2018, saying that the accounts had violated its behaviour policies.
Permanent suspension, its most severe action, removes the account from global review and prevents the person from creating new accounts.
Alex Jones, who has promoted conspiracy theories about the Sandy Hook school shooting, was ordered last year to pay nearly US$1.5 billion in damages to relatives of the victims for falsely claiming they were actors who staged the shooting as part of a government plot to seize Americans’ guns.
This month, he was given clearance by a court to sell his firearms, cars, jewellery and boats on the Infowars show to obtain the highest value for them in covering the cost of his bankruptcy.
Restoring Jones’ account comes as Musk has seen a slew of big brands, including Disney and IBM, stop advertising on X after a report by liberal advocacy group Media Matters said ads were appearing alongside pro-Nazi content and white nationalist posts.
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But he also said advertisers are engaging in “blackmail” and, using a profanity, essentially told them to go away.
“Don’t advertise,” Musk said in an onstage interview late last month at The New York Times DealBook Summit.
Reporting by Reuters, Bloomberg, Associated Press
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