After several months of public pressure, Twitter on Thursday permanently banned conservative American conspiracy theorist and provocateur Alex Jones and his Infowars website from its platform.
“We took this action based on new reports of tweets and videos posted yesterday that violate our abusive behavior policy, in addition to the accounts’ past violations,” the social media platform said in a series of tweets. “We will continue to evaluate reports we receive regarding other accounts potentially associated with @realalexjones or @infowars and will take action if content that violates our rules is reported or if other accounts are utilized in an attempt to circumvent their ban.”
Both accounts now show the “account suspended” message. According to BBC, Jones had about 8,50,000 followers on Twitter, with whom he shared and promoted conspiracy theories against liberals, Muslims and migrants. In July, he had claimed Democrats were planning to launch a civil war on the United States’ Independence Day of July 4.
In 2017, Infowars and Jones had claimed that Muslims in England were demanding that the Queen convert to Islam based on a CNN clip from 2009. The radical preacher featured in that clip was already serving a prison term by then for supporting the Islamic State group.
Jones has in the past alleged “transgenderism” is a CIA “plan to depopulate humanity” and that the “normalisation of mental illness” is an “evil paedophile plot to sexualise and destroy children”. In 2013, he had described former US President Barack Obama as the “global head of al-Qaeda”.
Jones’ latest transgression, however, was an Infowars video of him verbally attacking CNN reporter Oliver Darcy, according to The Daily Beast. Jones told Darcy, among other things, “Those are the eyes of a rat.”
Several other media platforms, such as YouTube, Facebook, Apple and Spotify, removed content from Jones and Infowars in August.
Facebook suspended Jones for 30 days in early August, while YouTube terminated his account for violating the company’s guidelines. Twitter had also suspended Jones for a week in August after he posted a video encouraging his followers to ready their weapons against the media.
Twitter had come under severe criticism in August for not taking action against Jones and Infowars. Twitter’s Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey said they did not suspend Jones because he had not violated the platform’s rules. But he had promised to monitor Jones and Infowars and take action if they violate the guidelines.
On Thursday, Twitter admitted that it does not typically comment on enforcement actions it takes against individual accounts, for their privacy. However, it added: “As we continue to increase transparency around our rules and enforcement actions, we wanted to be open about this action given the broad interest in this case.”
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