Alex Jones: Conspiracy theorist returns to X after Elon Musk poll

Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones has had his account on X – formerly Twitter – reinstated by Elon Musk.

Musk asked users to vote in a poll whether or not to lift a Jones ban pre-dating his ownership of the platform, signalling he would honour the result.

Around 70% of roughly two million respondents voted to lift the ban.

Jones is most notorious for falsely claiming the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting, in which 20 children and six adults died, was “staged”.

He was ordered to pay $1.5bn (£1.32bn) in damages to family members of the victims, after courts found he had caused them to be subjected to harassment and death threats with his false claims.

Jones, who founded the conspiracy theory website Infowars, was removed from other major platforms, including YouTube and Facebook.

He was banned from Twitter in 2018 for breaching the site’s rules on abusive behaviour.

After buying the platform in October 2022, tech billionaire Musk rejected calls from some of Jones’s supporters to reinstate his account.

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.”

But on Saturday Musk asked users to vote on whether or not Jones should be allowed to return – a repeat of the move which saw former US President Donald Trump’s account reinstated a month after Musk took over the firm.

After Musk posted the poll, Jones shared a video online in which he called on his supporters to vote in favour of his ban being overturned.

Jones’s old account was reinstated hours after the poll ended.

Responding to one user on Saturday, Musk said he “vehemently” disagreed with Jones’s statements about Sandy Hook, adding: “but are we a platform that believes in freedom of speech or are we not?”

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.

Last month he accused major advertisers of trying to “blackmail” him when they boycotted X over concerns about antisemitic content shared on the site – including a post by Musk himself, which he later apologised for.