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Alex Jones of Infowars, conducts a news conference outside a Senate (Select) Intelligence Committee hearing in Dirksen Building where Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook COO, and Jack Dorsey, Twitter CEO, were testifying on the influence of foreign operations on social media on September 5, 2018.
Twitter has permanently banned the accounts of right-wing conspiracy theorist and radio host Alex Jones and InfoWars, the company said Thursday.
The accounts violated the company’s abusive behavior policies, Twitter said in a series of tweets. The ban comes weeks after Jones was banned or suspended by other major tech companies like Apple, Facebook and YouTube. Twitter had initially declined to take disciplinary action against Jones, saying the accounts had not violated community guidelines, but later suspended him for a period of seven days.
“We took this action based on new reports of Tweets and videos posted yesterday that violate our abusive behavior policy, in addition to the accounts’ past violations,” the company said. “We wanted to be open about this action given the broad interest in this case.”
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Accounts for Jones and Infowars were also banned from Twitter-owned Periscope. Jones will not be able to recreate his presence on the sites under another account.
Jones appeared at congressional hearings Wednesday where Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey addressed online election meddling, as well as accusations of political bias and conservative censorship on the platform. At the hearings, Jones ranted at a CNN reporter and streamed the exchange on Periscope.
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