Twitter, joining a list of Silicon Valley stalwarts, has permanently suspended digital conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and his Infowars website, the company announced on Thursday, for violating its policies against “abusive behavior.”
“We took this action based on new reports of Tweets and videos posted yesterday that violate our abusive behavior policy, in addition to the accounts’ past violations,” the company tweeted.
“As we continue to increase transparency around our Rules and enforcement actions, we wanted to be open about this action given the broad interest in this case,” Twitter added. “We do not typically comment on enforcement actions we take against individual accounts, for their privacy.”
Jones and InfoWars are also permanently suspended from Periscope, Twitter’s live streaming platform, the company said. Despite Twitter saying it will “take action” against Jones if he attempts to circumvent its ban, he was back live streaming on Periscope on Thursday afternoon.
“I was taken down not because we lie but because we tell the truth,” Jones said while streaming on “War Room,” an InfoWars show. The “War Room” Twitter account has about 26,000 followers.
https://twitter.com/TwitterSafety/status/1037804427992686593
A video of Jones badgering CNN’s Oliver Darcy on Wednesday was the final straw, according to The Daily Beast. “Those are the eyes of a rat,” Jones said to Darcy, after accusing Darcy and CNN of working to silence his voice on major platforms. Jones — on hand in Washington, D.C. for Twitter chief Jack Dorsey’s testimony to Congress — also went viral for blasting Sen. Marco Rubio as a “frat boy” and a “snake” on Wednesday.
Jones’ Twitter dismissal wipes away about 1.5 million followers. The online shock jock — well known for peddling conspiracy theories, including saying the Sandy Hook school shooting was a “hoax” — has already seen his traffic massively reduced in the last month. Following his removal from several tech giants, including Facebook and Google-owned YouTube, in August, Infowars received about 715,000 daily visitors, about half as much traffic as it averaged the month prior.