Twitter Joins Other Tech Titans In Banning Alex Jones
After a brief suspension from Twitter, notorious conspiracy theorist Alex Jones has been permanently banned from the social media platform, Gizmodo reported.
Twitter banned both Jones’ account and that of his website Infowars, citing abusive behavior. His Twitter page had nearly 900,000 followers, and Infowars had 430,000.
Today, we permanently suspended @realalexjones and @infowars from Twitter and Periscope. 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. https://t.co/gckzUAV8GL
— Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) September 6, 2018
The catalyst for the permanent suspension was an altercation between Jones and CNN reporter Oliver Darcy at Wednesday’s Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, which was live-streamed on Twitter. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg were both testifying to Congress about online propaganda and voter manipulation. Jones said he attended to “face my accusers,” according to Gizmodo.
Facebook recently suspended Jones’ personal account for what it said was bullying and hate speech, and it removed four of his pages. Apple took down the entire library for five of his six podcasts. Some of his podcasts also were removed by Spotify.
Jones is known for claiming that the September 11 terror attacks on New York and Washington were staged by the government, as well as for his insistence that the 2012 Sandy Hook elementary school massacre was the work of left-wing activists working to promote gun control.
Alyssa Fisher is a news writer at the Forward. Email her at fisher@forward.com, or follow her on Twitter at @alyssalfisher
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