Twitter bans Alex Jones and Infowars for abusive behaviour

[Leosghost]

Twitter says it has permanently suspended the accounts of Alex Jones and his Infowars website.

It made the move after a number of tweets that violated Twitter's abusive behaviour policy, the company said.

[bbc.com...]

[keyplyr]

Interestingly, Twitter only suspended Jones initially for 2 weeks. Then after other tech giants took more severe steps and public outcry to do more, made the suspension permanent.

[Marshall]

Unfortunately this will be turned into some political platform while the true underlying cause will be ignored.

[tangor]

the action against jones was not for what he did on twitter, but for a conversation (polite) he had with a reporter which happened to have been filmed.

IOW, nuked for something done off twitter.

[not2easy]

Umm, Twitter does own the live streaming site Periscope which was the service used to broadcast that tender (if one sided) conversation.

[graeme_p]

@Marshall what is the true cause?

I am concerned that big tech companies are effectively deciding what it is OK to say. If someone gets blocked by Twitter, FB etc. they cannot communicate what they have to say effectively. It is not whether they should be allowed to communicate it, but who gets to decide - a bunch of big companies or the courts?

[Leosghost]

Anyone can express their views..on their own website..
Many of us do not read twitter, nor use facebook, but we still are far from being out of touch, the usage ( by posting or reading ) of a few "social media" websites owned by USA corps is not vital for anyone..
No "court" ( where and in whose jurisdiction, civil, criminal, religious ? ) should be allowed to tell any website owner ( big or small ) that they must allow someone to express their views on their site..

[Marshall]

@graeme_p Presumably for violation of their TOS. Jones did post a lot of hate speech and frequently promoted violence. Being sued by survivors of Sandy Hook probably does not help his case and may have made Twitter uneasy as theirs was one of the platforms he used to spread his Sandy Hook hoax conspiracy theory.

[keyplyr]

Apple just banned him as well: [techcrunch.com...]

[mack]

I think a lot of platforms are very keen to get Alex Jones away from their services. With all the impending legal cases centred around him, some platforms may fear they will also be taken to task for allowing him to use them to spread his views.

Mack.

[keyplyr]

Well if he tries to post in the User Agent forum... I'm on it!

[RhinoFish]

I'm very much against banning voices, but calling the shooting a conspiratorial hoax... at some point, collectively, we should find a point where it's best to shut a person up. He's good at finding those points. :-)