Twitter suspends Alex Jones' account for week after tweet company says incites violence
NEW YORK -- Twitter says it is suspending the account of far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones for one week after he violated the company's rules against inciting violence. The New York Times reports that Jones tweeted a link to a video calling for supporters to get their "battle rifles" ready against media and others.
Jones won't be able to tweet or retweet from his personal account for seven days, though he will be able to browse Twitter.
The Twitter account for his "Infowars" show was not affected.
Facebook, Apple, YouTube and Spotify have taken down material published by Jones, reflecting more aggressive enforcement of hate speech policies after online backlash.
But Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey defended his company's decision last week not to ban Jones, saying Jones hadn't broken any rules.
And the Times says Twitter's weeklong suspension of Jones' Twitter account "stops short of a full ban of Mr. Jones from Twitter and leaves many questions unanswered about what actually gets people booted off the service. The company's policy calls for the short-term suspension of an account after repeated violations, but Twitter declined to clarify how many offenses would terminate Mr. Jones's account permanently."
