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WASHINGTON: Elon Musk, the billionaire proprietor of X, on Sunday (Dec 10) reinstated far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones on the social media platform, a yr after vowing by no means to let him return.<\/p>\n
Jones, who claimed {that a} Dec 2012 college taking pictures in Newtown, Connecticut that killed 20 kids and 6 educators was a hoax, was banned from the platform \u2013 then nonetheless generally known as Twitter \u2013 in 2018 for violating its “abusive behaviour coverage”.<\/p>\n
He was additionally sued by households of the victims of the Sandy Hook college taking pictures and ordered by a decide within the case to pay up greater than a billion US {dollars} in damages final yr.<\/p>\n
Musk had himself promised by no means to let the Infowars host again on the social media platform, which he purchased final yr for US$44 billion.<\/p>\n
However following a ballot Musk performed on X asking whether or not Jones needs to be reinstated, to which some two million customers responded, he flipped that call.<\/p>\n
“I vehemently disagree with what he stated about Sandy Hook, however are we a platform that believes in freedom of speech or are we not?” the SpaceX founder stated on X.<\/p>\n
However Shannon Watts, founding father of the group Mothers Demand Motion group which pushes for tighter gun legal guidelines, stated that “defamation is just not free speech”.<\/p>\n
Musk’s choice comes the identical week that the Sandy Hook households commemorate the eleventh anniversary of the Dec 14 taking pictures, which Jones alleged was staged to permit the federal government to crack down on gun rights.<\/p>\n
Jones’ followers harassed the bereaved households for years, accusing dad and mom of murdered kids of being “disaster actors” whose kids had by no means existed.<\/p>\n
It additionally got here every week after Musk had responded to advertisers pulling out of X due to far-right posts and hate speech, together with an obvious endorsement by Musk himself of an anti-Semitic tweet.<\/p>\n
Requested whether or not he would reply to the promoting exodus, Musk stated in an interview with journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin that the advertisers might “go f*** your self”.<\/p>\n
Jones, who has 1,000,000 followers on X, returned to the positioning along with his first publish re-tweeting Andrew Tate, the controversial former kickboxer dealing with rape and human trafficking fees in Romania, wherein he hailed Jones’ “triumphant return”.<\/p>\n
US media reported that as of Sunday, the account of Jones’ controversial present Infowars was nonetheless banned.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n