Following the recent report from Twitter, The CEO of Twitter last week said they will not ban InfoWars or its founder Alex Jones because their account has not violated any of its social media platform’s rules.
But it looks like the case is different now, as Twitter just announced that they have blocked the right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones from posting to its platform for a week.
However, the past tweets on the InfoWars twitter account will remain viewable to others while his account is locked only in a “read-only” mode.
The social media is yet to confirm what prompted such action. But the New York Times reported Mr. Jones had tweeted a link to a video where he called on his followers to ready their “battle rifles”.
This action might have violated the social media rules against abusive behavior.
A message from Twitter to Alex Jones
The restriction seems to be effective against the @RealAlexJones account, which has 890,000 followers. Alex Jones has since posted a video in which he explains the move to a separate account - @InfoWars feed – with about 431,000 followers, which he described as being a “sub-account”.
Apple’s iTunes, Facebook, and YouTube have removed podcasts and other content by Alex Jones InfoWars from their services as at last week. These cause other tech companies to take similar action, including the video site (Vimeo), social networks (LinkedIn and Pinterest), the photo website (Flickr), the audio-streaming services (Spotify, Stitcher, and TuneIn), and the online marketing tool (MailChimp).
But Twitter had resisted imposing a similar ban. According to the terms of the suspension, Mr. Jones will still have access to his account and search for other people’s content. He will also be able to send direct messages. But he will not be able to tweet, like, comment or retweet others’ material.
Techcrunch also reported that he had been required to delete the link to his earlier Periscope video session, which is no longer online.
In the last messages Posted by Mr. Jones before the ban came into effect was a claim that InfoWars’ main website had been forced offline by a cyber-attack.
Although he has been restricted on most of his online activity, several outlets have not blocked his content yet. These include the social networks like Google+, Gab, and Tumblr. In addition, Google’s Play store and Apple’s iOS equivalent continue to host the InfoWars.
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