Elon Musk said on Saturday that he would consider allowing the right-wing provocateur and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones to return to X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. Mr. Jones was banned from Twitter in 2018 after posting harassing messages, a month after other tech companies like Facebook and YouTube also suspended his accounts.
Mr. Jones, who was ordered last year to pay $1 billion to the families of eight victims of the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School after he spent years promoting the claim that the massacre was a hoax, said he hoped Mr. Musk would reinstate his account. In an interview with Tucker Carlson that aired on X on Thursday, Mr. Jones said that users regularly called on Mr. Musk to bring him back to the platform.
“I trend all the time, ‘Hey, if you’re such an absolutist on free speech, bring back Alex Jones,’” Mr. Jones said. “I understand that he needs to go through a process before he does that.”
On Saturday, Mr. Musk responded to a user on X who said it was time for him to bring Mr. Jones back to the platform. “Ok,” Mr. Musk wrote.
Mr. Musk then started a poll, asking his 165 million followers if he should bring back Mr. Jones’s account.
Although Mr. Musk has yet to actually follow through and reactivate Mr. Jones’s account, the move could further alienate advertisers, who have abandoned the platform in droves over concerns that Mr. Musk’s lack of content moderation allowed their brands to appear alongside offensive content. At The New York Times’s DealBook Summit in November, Mr. Musk insulted advertisers using an expletive and told them not to spend on his platform.
Since then, X has pursued small businesses and sought their advertising dollars to replace the revenue it once counted on from major brands. “If you’re a small business and have a product idea for us or a new way we can help you out more, please share,” X’s chief executive, Linda Yaccarino, posted on Friday.
Kate Conger
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