• Elon Musk, has decided to bring back conspiracy theorist Alex Jones to the platform.
• Musk conducted a poll among users to determine whether to lift the ban on Jones, which pre-dated Musk’s ownership.
• Approximately 70% of the nearly two million respondents voted in favor of lifting the ban.

Elon Musk, the owner of X has decided to bring back conspiracy theorist Alex Jones to the platform. Musk conducted a poll among users to determine whether to lift the ban on Jones, which pre-dated Musk’s ownership. Approximately 70% of the nearly two million respondents voted in favor of lifting the ban. Jones is infamous for spreading false claims, including the assertion that the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting was staged.

In the past, Jones was ordered to pay $1.5 billion in damages to the victims’ families for causing harassment and death threats with his false statements. As a result of his actions, Jones was removed from major platforms like YouTube and Facebook. He was banned from Twitter in 2018 due to violations of the platform’s rules on abusive behavior.

Despite calls from some of Jones’s supporters, Musk initially resisted reinstating his account after acquiring the platform in October 2022.”

In one post, he cited the death of his 10-week old baby in 2002 as motivation for not reversing the ban, writing: “I have no mercy for anyone who would use the death of children for gain, politics or fame.”

However on Saturday Elon Musk sought the opinion of users through a vote on whether Alex Jones should be permitted to come back to the platform.  After Musk posted the poll, Jones shared a video online in which he called on his supporters to vote in favor of his ban being overturned.

Jones’s old account was reinstated hours after the poll ended. He said the move would be “bad for X financially” but “principles matter more than money”.

Musk has taken an increasingly bullish line on free speech online during his time at the top of X.

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