He’s Back: Elon Musk Restores Alex Jones’ Twitter Account After Saying He Wouldn’t
Elon Musk restored Alex Jones’ account on X (formerly Twitter) — after he polled users on whether to reinstate the infamous conspiracy theorist.
Musk raised the prospect of bringing Jones’ account back on Saturday when the right-wing account @ALX demanded it after Jones was interviewed by Tucker Carlson. In response, the X owner posted an unscientific poll that concluded with approximately 70 percent of 2 million respondents supporting Jones’ restoration.
This led to Musk announcing on Sunday “The people have spoken and so it shall be.”
The people have spoken and so it shall be
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 10, 2023
The decision reverses the move by X’s former management to ban Jones back in 2018 for abusive behavior. It’s also a 180 of sorts for Musk. Despite his dubious claims of being a “free speech absolutist,” Musk refused to re-platform Jones last year because of his conspiracy theories about the Sandy Hook massacre. Jones has been ordered to pay more than $1 billion in damages for fueling the torment of the Sandy Hook families, and he spouted other conspiracies over the years that came back up again during his chat with Carlson.
The restoration of Jones’ account comes as X is dealing with an exodus of brands that decided to leave the platform in recent weeks due to concerns about hate speech, misinformation and Musk’s recent amplification of an anti-semitic trope. Musk has responded by lashing out at these brands and claiming they’re trying to tank X because they don’t like free speech.
