Source: AFP
Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of X, brought far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones back to the social media platform on Sunday, a year after vowing never to let him back.
Jones, who claimed the December 2012 Newtown, Connecticut school shooting that killed 20 children and six teachers was a hoax, was banned from the platform — then still known as Twitter — in 2018 for violating its “abusive policy behavior”.
They also sued families of victims of the Sandy Hook school shooting and were ordered by a judge in the case to pay more than a billion dollars in restitution last year.
Musk had vowed never to let the Infowars host return to the social media platform, which he bought last year for $44 billion.
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But after a poll Musk ran on X asking if Jones should be reinstated, to which about two million users responded, he reversed that decision.
“I strongly disagree with what he said about Sandy Hook, but are we a platform that believes in free speech or not?” the SpaceX founder told X.
But Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action, a group that pushes for stricter gun laws, said “defamation is not free speech.”
Musk’s decision comes the same week Sandy Hook families mark the 11th anniversary of the Dec. 14 shooting, which Jones claimed was staged to allow the government to crack down on gun rights.
Jones’ followers have harassed the bereaved families for years, accusing the parents of the murdered children of being “crisis actors” whose children never existed.
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![](https://images.yen.com.gh/images/7a90eeee7d6b6f67.jpg?impolicy=cropped-image&imwidth=256)
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It also came a week after Musk responded to advertisers who pulled X over far-right posts and hate speech, including an apparent endorsement by Musk himself of an anti-Semitic tweet.
Asked if he would respond to the advertising exodus, Musk told reporter Andrew Ross Sorkin in an interview that advertisers could “go it alone.”
Jones, who has a million followers on X, returned to the site with his first post, retweeting Andrew Tate, the controversial former kickboxer facing rape and human trafficking charges in Romania, where he hailed a “triumphant return”. of Jones.
US media reported that as of Sunday, Jones’ controversial Infowars show account was still banned.
Source: AFP