Tech billionaire Elon Musk announced early Sunday that he would be reinstating far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’s account on X, the platform previously known as Twitter.
Musk, the owner of X, asked users in an informal poll Saturday whether he should reinstate Jones’s account on the platform. The poll showed that 70 percent of respondents were in favor of the move, which comes about five years after he was permanently banned from the platform for abusive behavior.
“The people have spoken and so it shall be,” Musk wrote on X alongside the poll results. It appears that Jones’s account is back online as of Sunday afternoon.
Years before Musk purchased the platform, Twitter, now called X, permanently banned Jones and the Infowars account from the platform in 2018 for violating its abusive behavior policy. The ban came after the platform received criticism for not taking action against Jones earlier, with many groups citing his conspiracy theories and hate speech as a reason to ban him.
One of the conspiracies promoted by Jones was that the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting, which left 20 children dead, was a so-called false flag event that was designed to shore up support for gun control. Families of the victims sued the Infowars host over the conspiracy theory, which resulted in their winning nearly $1.5 billion in judgments against him.
A judge ruled earlier this year that Jones cannot invoke bankruptcy protections to get out of paying the families of the victims.
Musk said last year that he was not interested in reinstating Jones to the platform, suggesting that the reason was because of his conspiracy theory.
“My firstborn child died in my arms. I felt his last heartbeat,” Musk said when asked if he would reinstate Jones’s account last year. “I have no mercy for anyone who would use the deaths of children for gain, politics or fame.”