Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’s account on X, formerly Twitter, was restored by Elon Musk on Sunday, breaking his promise from a year ago to keep Jones off the platform.
Jones was previously barred from Twitter in 2018 for going against the “abusive behaviour guideline” of the platform. When Jones was being sued for defamation for spreading the erroneous information that the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was a fake, the company’s previous management decided to suspend him permanently.
The week of the Sandy Hook shooting anniversary coincides with Musk’s decision to bring Jones back to X.
Despite the fact that a gunman killed 20 students and six teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut on December 14, 2012, Jones had falsely claimed time and time again on his programme Infowars that the shooting was staged in order to impose stricter gun laws.
As on Sunday, Infowars remains banned from X.
Persuaders of Jones’ conspiracies would then physically confront and accuse mourning parents of being crisis actors whose children never lived. They would also harass and threaten bereaved family members, according to Associated Press reporting. Some of the individuals targeted were forced to relocate from their houses several times and were unable to visit their loved ones’ graves in safety.
Relatives of the Sandy Hook victims sued Jones in Texas and Connecticut, and they were successful in getting a judgement against him for about $1.5 billion. In an attempt to escape paying more than $1 billion of that judgement, Jones filed for personal bankruptcy, but was not granted it.
Since at least Thursday, when Musk announced he would consider reintroducing Jones, users of the Elon Musk-run social media network X had been expecting Jones’ reinstatement.
Permanent bans should be extremely rare because this platform aims to be the global town square, according to a post made by Musk on Thursday.
On Sunday, Musk announced the reinstatement following the release of a poll on X that received close to two million votes, with more than half of those in favour of Jones’ reinstatement.
Jones “cannot break the law,” according to Musk, but X’s community notes feature will correct him if he does transmit false information.
Source (CNBC)
