Washington: Twitter on Thursday said it had permanently banned Alex Jones, the far-right conspiracy theorist best known for calling the 9/11 attacks an inside job and describing the Sandy Hook school massacre as a hoax.
The social network had been under pressure to remove Jones following similar moves by fellow tech giants Facebook, YouTube, Spotify and Apple in August.
In a series of tweets from its @TwitterSafety account, it said: “Today, we permanently suspended @realalexjones and @infowars from Twitter and Periscope.
“We took this action based on new reports of Tweets and videos posted yesterday that violate our abusive behaviour policy, in addition to the accounts’ past violations.” Infowars is the website run by Jones.
The ban came after Jones travelled to Washington to attend congressional hearings involving Twitter’s chief executive officer Jack Dorsey and Facebook’s chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg.
He later posted videos showing himself verbally confronting a CNN reporter as well as Republican Senator Marco Rubio in a hallway.
Reacting to his removal on Infowars, Jones said: “I was taken down not because we lie but because we tell the truth,” adding that the incident involving the journalist, Oliver Darcy, may have been the cause of the ban. Jones harangued Darcy for 10 minutes during the confrontation.
