Convicted conspiracy theorist Alex Jones was banned from X, formerly Twitter, for years. Owner Musk has now had the account activated again – and justifies this with a survey among his followers.
Tech billionaire Elon Musk has unblocked the account of US conspiracy theorist Alex Jones on the online platform X, formerly Twitter, which has been blocked since 2018. Musk had previously asked his followers whether Jones should be given access to the platform again – and according to the results published by Musk, the majority were in favor. “The people have spoken, and so it shall be,” Musk wrote on X.
Jones, the founder of the right-wing website “Infowars”, was recently sentenced to pay billions in damages in several cases because of his false allegations about a massacre at an elementary school. Jones had claimed for years that the Sandy Hook school shooting in Texas in December 2012 was staged. A young man shot 20 school children and six teachers.
Numerous blocked accounts have been unlocked again
Since Musk took over the online service, numerous accounts that were once blocked for hate speech or spreading potentially dangerous falsehoods have been reactivated.
Musk also had ex-President Donald Trump’s account, which was blocked after the storming of the Capitol in 2021, reactivated after a close poll of users last year. However, with one exception, Trump has not used the account again, but instead posts on his own platform “Truth Social”.
Musk has also come under pressure on X because of his own controversial political statements. Critics accuse him of supporting right-wing populist or even right-wing extremist positions. Numerous major advertising customers have now turned their backs on X.
