Twitter punishes Alex Jones—but he's still not banned

He's on a timeout.
By
Johnny Lieu
 on 
Twitter punishes Alex Jones—but he's still not banned
Alex Jones finally gets a timeout from Twitter. Credit: Nick Ansell/PA Images via Getty Images

Twitter has taken action against Alex Jones.

A Twitter spokesperson confirmed Jones' personal account has limited functions after he posted a tweet that violated its rules. The company, however, stopped short of suspending the account.

"We aren't suspending the account but requiring he delete a tweet which contained a broadcast in violation of our rules," the spokesperson told Mashable.

Jones can't tweet, retweet or like content, but can still browse the site. The timeout will last for 7 days.

The offending tweet, according to BuzzFeed reporter Ryan Mac, contained a Periscope video in which Jones told listeners to get their "battle rifles" ready for antifa and the mainstream media.

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After he was reportedly put on timeout, several tweets came from his personal account, but later disappeared. One of them was, ironically, about living forever.

This comes a week after Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey proclaimed Jones hadn't broken its rules, and thus wasn't banned from the network.

Dorsey responded after a wave of bans from tech companies including Apple, Facebook, YouTube, Spotify, and even Pinterest.

While Jones and InfoWars have spent years propagating conspiracies on the internet, the pendulum has swung against him now that he's facing a defamation battle over repeatedly calling the Sandy Hook school shooting a hoax.

Despite public pressure on Twitter to reconsider its stance on Jones, it appeared the conspiracy theorist was willing to appease the network by scrubbing his account of tweets that violated its ToS.

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Johnny Lieu

Mashable Australia's Web Culture Reporter.Reach out to me on Twitter at @Johnny_Lieu or via email at jlieu [at] mashable.com


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