Half a decade after he was kicked off Twitter by the platform’s safety team, professional conspiracy theorist Alex Jones has been welcomed back to the site, which is now called X.
You can thank Elon Musk for that.
This weekend, Musk passed around a poll on X to see if users wanted Jones back on the platform. Nearly two million votes were cast—out of which some 70 percent voted for Jones to return. Musk had previously stated that he would never let Jones back on X, claiming that his promulgation of Sandy Hook conspiracy theories should disbar him from a place on the platform. However, in the lead up to a Tucker Carlson interview with Jones that was streamed to X last week, Musk backtracked. “In general, since this platform aspires to be the global town square, permanent bans should be extremely rare,” he said, while announcing the poll to reinstate Jones.
On Saturday, after the votes came in, Musk posted on X: “The people have spoken and so it shall be.”
Jones, who has long been the purveyor of a broad array of conspiracy theories via his popular show InfoWars, kicked off his return to the platform by streaming a nearly three hour interview. At various points, that interview involved Musk, as well as a cadre of other rightwing figures, including influencer (and accused criminal) Andrew Tate, and GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, Forbes reports.
Jones was originally banned from Twitter in September of 2018, amidst a wave of other deplatforming efforts aimed at the rightwing media star. The Twitter safety team specifically accused Jones of “abusive behavior,” citing an altercation with CNN reporter, Oliver Darcy, during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, which Jones live streamed to Twitter. His cancellation from the platform followed weeks of calls to suspend his account. During the same time period, Jones was also banned from a number of other sites, including Facebook, YouTube, Spotify, Vimeo, and LinkedIn.