Elon Musk has reinstated the account of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones on X, a move that could force more advertisers to flee the platform amid fear of the spread of antisemitism and hateful content. Jones was suspended from Twitter in 2018 for violating the company\u2019s \u201cabusive behaviour policy.\u201d Last week, Musk said he would consider reinstating Jones. \u201cSince this platform aspires to be the global town square, permanent bans should be extremely rare,\u201d Musk posted.<\/p>\n
Musk confirmed the reinstatement on Sunday after launching a poll on X that garnered nearly 2 million votes, with nearly 70 per cent favouring reinstating Jones. \u201cThe people have spoken and so it shall be,\u201d Musk posted in reply, adding that Jones \u201ccannot break the law\u201d. Jones returned to X by reposting a message by controversial influencer Andrew Tate. Tate\u2019s message praised both Jones and X owner Elon Musk, claiming: \u201cWe\u2019re back.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jones had falsely claimed that the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting in the US was staged. He was ordered to pay $1.5 billion in damages to family members of the victims, after courts found he had caused them to be subjected to harassment and death threats with his false claims, reports the BBC. Twenty children between six and seven years old, along with six school staff members, were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton, Connecticut, on December 14, 2012. It remains one of the deadliest school shootings in US history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Elon Musk has reinstated the account of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones on X, a move that could force more advertisers\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":16621,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[4777,4062,4773,505,4774,157,4778,4776,204,4779,4775],"class_list":["post-16618","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-2012-sandy-hook-school-shooting","tag-ad-revenue","tag-alex-jones","tag-anti-semitism","tag-conspiracy-theories","tag-elon-musk","tag-hateful-content","tag-reinstating","tag-social-media","tag-toxicity","tag-x-account"],"reading_time":"2 min read","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16618","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16618"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16618\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}