Elon Musk restores X account of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ after user poll
- Close to 2 million votes were cast by the time the poll closed, with about 70 per cent voting in favour of Jones’ return
- The platform formerly known as Twitter permanently banned Jones and his website Infowars in 2018, saying the accounts violated its behaviour policies
Social media platform X reinstated the account of US conspiracy theorist Alex Jones after a poll of the site’s users backed his return, X owner Elon Musk said on Sunday.
“The people have spoken and so it shall be,” Musk posted in reply to a poll on Saturday on whether to reinstate the Jones account. Close to 2 million votes were cast by the time the poll closed, with about 70 per cent voting in favour of Jones’ return.
In a post following the completion of the poll, he said X would “abide by the will of the people.”
The move poses new uncertainty for advertisers, who have fled X over concerns about hate speech appearing alongside their ads.
Musk, who has described himself as a free speech absolutist, said the move was about protecting those rights. In response to a user who posted that “permanent account bans are antithetical to free speech,” Musk wrote, “I find it hard to disagree with this point.”