Twitter bans Infowars host Alex Jones for 7 days

Alex
Jones.
Alex
Jones/YouTube

• Twitter has locked Alex Jones’ account for seven days
  after the Infowars host broke the company’s rules.
• The conspiracy theorist will be unable to tweet and can
  only read posts from people he follows.
• Amid significant pressure to follow Apple, Facebook,
  and YouTube in deleting Jones’ account permanently, it appears
  that Twitter is keeping a watching brief.

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Twitter has put Alex Jones in the sin bin for seven days after
the Infowars host broke the company’s rules.

Amid significant pressure to follow Apple, Facebook, and YouTube
in deleting Jones’ account permanently, it appears that Twitter
is keeping a watching brief, rather than punishing him
retrospectively.

The social network has decided to freeze his account for seven
days, meaning he will be unable to tweet and can only read posts
from people he follows.

The conspiracy theorist’s offending tweet linked to a Periscope
video in which he told viewers to get “battle rifles” ready,
said BuzzFeed reporter Ryan
Mac. 

A Twitter spokesman said: “We can confirm that the account
currently has limited functionality. We haven’t suspended the
account but are requiring Tweets which contained a broadcast in
violation of our rules are deleted.” 

You can watch Jones’ comments here:

Twitter’s ban did create some confusion when Jones’ account
starting tweeting again on Tuesday evening, but a spokesman told
Mac that these were scheduled tweets from his Tweetdeck account.

Twitter has stood by Jones amid journalists pointing out that his
previous tweets may have violated the company’s rules. This
was despite Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey saying journalists have an
important role to play in bringing wrongdoing to the firm’s
attention.

Dorsey is under significant pressure to oust Jones permanently. A
campaign, started by #grabyourwallet consumer activist Shannon
Coulter, has gone viral, encouraging Twitter users to block
every Fortune 500 company with a Twitter presence. The hope
is that this will impact Twitter’s ad revenue.

Dorsey has said, however, that the social network will not be
cowed by outside pressure. “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,”
he said.