Twitter permanently bans honest talking Alex Jones

[Anthea]

Twitter suspends Alex Jones for one week

Twitter is blocking the right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones from posting to its platform for a week

The InfoWars broadcaster's past tweets will, however, remain viewable to others while his account is locked in a "read-only" mode.

The social network has not confirmed what prompted the action.

But the New York Times reported Mr Jones had tweeted a link to a video in which he called on his followers to ready their "battle rifles".

The BBC understands that Twitter judged this to be a violation of its rules against abusive behaviour.

The restriction appears to only be effective against the @RealAlexJones account, which has 890,000 followers.

Mr Jones has since posted a video in which he discusses the move to a separate @Infowars feed - with about 431,000 followers - which he described as being a "sub-account".

Conspiracy theories

Mr Jones has previously been widely criticised for repeating claims that the 9/11 attacks in New York were staged by the US government.

He has also claimed that many of children killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre were actors. The parents of two children shot in that attack are suing him for defamation, saying he had made "false, cruel, and dangerous assertions".

Apple's iTunes, Facebook and YouTube removed podcasts and other content by Mr Jones and InfoWars from their services last week.

Other tech firms have since taken similar action, including:

the video site Vimeo
the social networks LinkedIn and Pinterest
the photo site Flickr
the audio-streaming services Spotify, Stitcher and TuneIn
the online marketing tool MailChimp

However, Twitter had resisted imposing a similar ban.

It said Mr Jones' accounts had not breached its rules, although CNN later highlighted past tweets that appeared to contradict this.

The social network did, however, promise to take action if there were ever any fresh infractions.

Techcrunch has reported that, according to the terms of the suspension, Mr Jones will still be able to use his account to view and search for other people's content, but he will not be able to tweet, like, comment or retweet material.

In addition, it said, he has been required to delete the link to his earlier Periscope video session, which itself is no longer online.

Among the last messages Mr Jones posted before the ban came into effect was a claim that InfoWars' main website had been forced offline by a cyber-attack.

Although he now faces many restrictions to his online activity, there are several outlets that have not blocked his content.

They include the social networks Google+, Gab and Tumblr. In addition, Google's Play store and Apple's iOS equivalent continue to host the InfoWars app.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-45193902

[Anthea]

Twitter permanently bans conspiracy theorist Alex Jones

One month after it distinguished itself from the rest of the tech industry by declining to bar the rightwing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones from its platform, Twitter fell in line Thursday, permanently banning the accounts of both Jones and his website Infowars

“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. “We will continue to evaluate reports we receive regarding other accounts potentially associated with @realalexjones or @infowars and will take action if content that violates our rules is reported or if other accounts are utilized in an attempt to circumvent their ban.”

Today, we permanently suspended @realalexjones and @infowars from Twitter and Periscope. 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. https://t.co/gckzUAV8GL

The company does not usually comment on individual accounts, but said it “wanted to be open about this action given the broad interest in this case”. The two accounts had about 1.3 million followers combined.
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The decision comes just 24 hours after both Jones and Twitter’s chief executive, Jack Dorsey, spent the day on Capitol Hill, where Dorsey testified before committees of the House and Senate and Jones roamed the hallways, accosting politicians and reporters.

Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Spotify and Apple Podcasts all allowed Jones to use their platforms to build his following until this summer, when a reporter from CNN, Oliver Darcy, publicly asked Facebook to explain how it could claim to combat hate speech and misinformation while continuing to amplify Jones.
'Don't touch me': Marco Rubio and Alex Jones clash – video

Facebook prevaricated until early August, when a decision by Apple to remove Infowars from its podcasting app precipitated a storm of bans from social media platforms. Twitter was the sole high-profile holdout.

“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,” Dorsey tweeted at the time.

On 15 August, Jones’s account was temporarily suspended for abusive tweets.

Twitter did not explain exactly how Jones had violated its rules this time, but during his trip to the Capitol, Jones got into an altercation with the Florida senator Marco Rubio and used Twitter’s video app Periscope to broadcast himself yelling at Darcy for about 10 minutes.

An analysis by the New York Times this week found that Jones’ audience has decreased significantly in the wake of his bans from Facebook and YouTube. The figures suggest that together the two social media platforms were responsible for doubling Jones’ audience.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ ... alex-jones

ALEX JONES TELLS THE TRUTH

We should ask ourselves WHY he is now being silenced