Twitter Drops The Ban Hammer On Infowars And Alex Jones

Twitter Drops The Ban Hammer On Infowars And Alex Jones

A little over a month ago, you may have noticed that various social media outlets began issuing bans or suspensions on Infowars and Alex Jones. Apple, Facebook and YouTube effectively banned both. Twitter, however, initially just suspended the accounts citing a standard rule violation. Since then though, the social media platform hasn’t seemed to know what to do.

Well, after 4 weeks of apparent hand-wringing, in a report via The Verge, Twitter has now confirmed that Infowars and Alex Jones are now banned from the platform.

What Is Infowars? Who Is Alex Jones?

If you’re not aware of who these people are. Infowars is a ‘news network’ and Alex Jones is one of its best-known commentators. The platform generally tends to adhere to hard-right/conspiracy theories. The quality of the content varies I suppose depending on your political (and sanity) persuasion.

What Does The Future Hold For Them?

As much as I don’t agree with a lot of what Infowars or Alex Jones had to say, I think the reasons for their ‘bans’ through all platforms affected aren’t particularly good. I won’t go into the details here, but pretty much all of the social media sites who have issued the ban are keen to point out that this is due to violation of terms. Many, myself included, however, feel that this is more than this. This is an exercise in controlling the speech and, to a degree, expresses something of a political agenda.

Social media platforms, however, are being careful to not make that distinction though. Why? Well, if they have a ‘motivation’ of sorts, they become publishers and publishers can be subject to libel. You see the interesting conundrum here!

Either way, both Infowars and Alex Jones will continue to exist. It seems though that they might have to look into self-publication as social media clearly doesn’t want either of them!

What do you think? – Let us know in the comments!