Twitter last night suspended for seven days the political provocateur Alex Jones. The company’s CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey spent much of last week explaining why Jones had not violated the service’s rules while also engaging in discussion about problems with the rules. Then Twitter responded to a CNN investigation by admitting that some Jones tweets were in violation, and deleted them.
Now, in addition to deleting some tweets, the service is suspending Alex Jones’ account for seven days, the Wall Street Journal reports. In its statement, Twitter mentioned a Periscope video Jones posted calling for targeted harassment and inciting viewers to intimidate people. Periscope is owned by Twitter.
Twitter follows many other tech platforms in removing content from Jones and his news website InfoWars.
The conspiracy theorist also faces five lawsuits for defamation, ranging from accusing relatives of Sandy Hook shooting victims of making up the attack to accusing a man of perpetrating a shooting in Parkland, Florida. One zealous InfoWars reader who took the claims seriously is now serving parole for threatening a relative of a Sandy Hook victim.
Jones remains active on other platforms, including on Twitter via the InfoWars account, where he has posted a video response to his suspension.