The social media platform X will reinstate the account of the US conspiracy theorist Alex Jones after a poll of the site’s users backed his return, its owner, Elon Musk, has said.
“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 2m votes were cast by the time the poll closed, with about 70% voting in favour of Jones’s return.
Reuters could not immediately verify whether the account was restored early on Sunday.
Since Musk’s takeover of X, it has reinstated previously suspended accounts, including that of the former US president Donald Trump.
The platform formerly known as Twitter banned Jones and his website Infowars in 2018, saying that the accounts had violated its behaviour policies.
The ban came weeks after Apple, Alphabet’s YouTube, and Facebook took down podcasts and channels from Jones, citing community standards.
Jones, who has promoted conspiracy theories about the Sandy Hook school shooting, was ordered last year to pay nearly $1.5bn 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.
Emily Foster is a globe-trotting journalist based in the UK. Her articles offer readers a global perspective on international events, exploring complex geopolitical issues and providing a nuanced view of the world’s most pressing challenges.
