X boss Elon Musk restores account of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones
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Elon Musk has restored the X account of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones following a poll on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter that came out in favour of the Infowars host who called the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting a hoax.
It poses new uncertainty for advertisers, who have fled X over concerns about hate speech appearing alongside their ads.
Mr Musk posted a poll on Saturday asking if Jones should be reinstated, with the results showing 70% of those responding in favour. Early on Sunday, Mr Musk tweeted: “The people have spoken and so it shall be.”
A few hours later, Jones’ posts were visible again — the last one from 2018 when the company permanently banned him and his Infowars show for abusive behaviour.
Mr 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”, Mr Musk wrote: “I find it hard to disagree with this point.”
The billionaire Tesla CEO also tweeted it is likely that Community Notes — X’s crowd-sourced fact-checking service — “will respond rapidly to any AJ post that needs correction”.
