Alex Jones is back on X five years after then-Twitter made the decision to permanently ban him and his show, Infowars, for violating the site’s policy on “abusive behavior.” Elon Musk — who last year said he wouldn’t unban Jones because of the conspiracy theorist’s insistence on calling the Sandy Hook massacre a hoax — created a poll on X over the weekend asking users to vote on whether Jones should be reinstated.
The poll closed with a majority vote for “Yes.” As of Sunday, Jones’ personal account was once again active, and already retweeting Andrew Tate.
Reinstate Alex Jones on this platform?
Vox Populi, Vox Dei.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 9, 2023
Jones is well known for pushing disturbing conspiracy theories, which in some cases have led to real world harm. He was sued by the families of Sandy Hook victims, who won close to $1.5 billion in legal judgments after testifying in court that they’d been harassed and sent death threats by his followers. But after Jones appeared on Tucker Carlson’s show on X last week, the conversation about his ban was reignited.
Responding to one user after the poll closed, Musk wrote, “I vehemently disagree with what he said about Sandy Hook, but are we a platform that believes in freedom of speech or are we not? That is what it comes down to in the end. If the people vote him back on, this will be bad for X financially, but principles matter more than money.” The decision comes at a time when X is rapidly losing advertisers because of hate speech on the platform, some of which Musk himself has elevated. Walmart, Apple, IBM and Disney, among others, have recently pulled their ads from X.
