Twitter defends decision not to ban controversial conspiracy theorist

SAN FRANCISCO: Twitter chief Jack Dorsey has defended his company’s decision to allow far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones to use the platform to spread his message, saying he has not broken user rules.

Apple, Facebook, Spotify and YouTube have all banned Jones, who runs the website Infowars.

“We’re going to hold Jones to the same standard we hold to every account, not taking one-off actions to make us feel good in the short term and adding fuel to new con- spiracy theories,” Dorsey said in a tweet on Tuesday.

“We know that’s hard for many, but the reason is simple: he hasn’t violated our rules. We’ll enforce if he does.”

In a series of tweets on the subject, Dorsey said Twitter reasoned that it was the job of journalists to shine the light of truth on unsubstantiated rumors or sensationalised issues.

“If we succumb and simply react to outside pressure rather than straightforward principles, we enforce (and evolve) impartially regardless of political viewpoints, we become a service that’s constructed by our personal views that can swing in any direction,” he tweeted. “That’s not us.”

Jones has described Monday’s retaliation from an array of Internet giants as a “coordinated communist-style crackdown”, but it followed months of criticism demanding that social media services do more to combat disinformation and hate discourse.

His site Infowars has accused vic- tims of the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting of being “actors” in a plot to discredit the gun lobby.

Facebook said Jones had violated its hate speech policies, adding that the pages were taken down for “glorifying violence, which violates our graphic violence policy, and using dehumanising language to describe people who are transgender, Muslims and immigrants, which violates our hate speech policies”.

Gunman Adam Lanza killed 26 people, including 20 children at the Connecticut school.

Jones has repeatedly claimed that the massacre was a hoax and that the parents of the murdered first graders were actors, an accusation that has sparked death threats against some of the bereaved mothers and fathers.

Among the conspiracy theories Jones has peddled are charges that the US government was behind numerous terrorist attacks, including the Sept 11, 2001, strikes on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.