Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey explained the reasoning his company hasn’t removed InfoWars host Alex Jones, despite the conspiracy theorist being blacklisted by just about every other tech company.
“We didn’t suspend Alex Jones or InfoWars yesterday,” the CEO tweeted on Tuesday afternoon. “We know that’s hard for many but the reason is simple: he hasn’t violated our rules. We’ll enforce if he does. And we’ll continue to promote a healthy conversational environment by ensuring tweets aren’t artificially amplified.”
Dorsey also said that while “Accounts like Jones’ can often sensationalize issues and spread unsubstantiated rumors,” it’s up to journalists to “document, validate, and refute such information directly so people can form their own opinions. This is what serves the public conversation best.”
After Youtube, Spotify, Apple and Pinterest each removed videos and channels from “InfoWars” host and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, Twitter remains the only major social media platform to continue hosting Jones’ content. MailChimp, an email marketing service, became the latest to boot the “InfoWars” host on Tuesday.
Pressure has been building for Twitter to follow suit and ban Jones from it’s platform. In subsequent tweets, Dorsey assured that “we’re going to hold Jones to the same standard we hold to every account, not taking one-off actions to make us feel good in the short term, and adding fuel to new conspiracy theories.”
This is not the first time Twitter has been criticized for how it polices content and behavior on its platform. The company has often been rebuked for allowing white supremacists and other perpetrators of hate speech to maintain a presence on the platform — and verifying them as legitimate accounts. But the platform has also caught backlash for its policing, namely, when it temporarily blocked actress Rose McGowan, an accuser and vocal critic of Harvey Weinstein, after she included a phone number in her tweets.
Read Dorsey’s full thread below:
We didn’t suspend Alex Jones or Infowars yesterday. We know that’s hard for many but the reason is simple: he hasn’t violated our rules. We’ll enforce if he does. And we’ll continue to promote a healthy conversational environment by ensuring tweets aren’t artificially amplified.
— jack (@jack) August 8, 2018
Truth is we’ve been terrible at explaining our decisions in the past. We’re fixing that. We’re going to hold Jones to the same standard we hold to every account, not taking one-off actions to make us feel good in the short term, and adding fuel to new conspiracy theories.
— jack (@jack) August 8, 2018
If we succumb and simply react to outside pressure, rather than straightforward principles we enforce (and evolve) impartially regardless of political viewpoints, we become a service that’s constructed by our personal views that can swing in any direction. That’s not us.
— jack (@jack) August 8, 2018
Accounts like Jones' can often sensationalize issues and spread unsubstantiated rumors, so it’s critical journalists document, validate, and refute such information directly so people can form their own opinions. This is what serves the public conversation best.
— jack (@jack) August 8, 2018
Many more details here: https://t.co/58dc4fwjQz
— jack (@jack) August 8, 2018