Twitter won’t restore Alex Jones’ account, Elon Musk says
In response to the Twitter suspension of the Infowars host, Elon Musk has promised to “fight back aggressively” but offered little more than that in terms of detail.
“They’ve gotten the word out to the public because they’re trying to fight back, but their numbers are diminishing,” Musk said. “The way it was is they tried to censor all of the accounts that were posting bad tweets about Tesla, Tesla, Tesla, even the cars, they’re gonna fight back aggressively.”
The Tesla CEO added that he “was able to do it” because he followed the account of a “young, very good lawyer” who was helping Jones with his case.
“I think Twitter’s been very fair with us,” said Musk added. “They did not take down Alex Jones’s account, if anything they took down a lot of posts that were not as good as his stuff.”
In a statement to Business Insider, a Twitter spokesperson said: “We review all reports of abusive conduct, like this case, very closely. In this particular case, we found the account to be in violation of our Rules. We’ve suspended the account and removed the tweets. We’ve also shut down @Realalexjones’s account.”
It’s not the first time the company has been involved in the Jones matter. In June of this year, Twitter was asked to remove more than 60 Alex Jones-related accounts from its platform.
Twitter’s action came after Jones — who is also a prominent birther and conspiracy theorist — began a boycott of Twitter and Facebook amid the company’s ongoing battle with Twitter.
Jones’ Infowars has been consistently popular with its followers for some time now. The account has more than 1.7 million followers and has been active on the platform for nearly two years. The Infowars network, which has more than 1.1 million total followers, has been described in the past by many as being one of the most influential in the world.
So far, however, it has had a rocky relationship with Twitter.
While the company has been a vocal supporter of Twitter’s fight against hate speech, it’s been criticized by a number of users and organizations who consider them a cesspool for fake news and other propaganda.
The Infowars network had