Radio and television host Alex Jones has filed an appeal to reverse the permanent suspension of his Twitter account on Monday, following the news that African-American tech philanthropist Elon Musk had successfully acquired the platform.
“Upon learning Twitter was under new management, Alex Jones immediately filed an appeal of his account’s suspension,” wrote Adan Salzar, an employee at Jones’ company Infowars.
“Account was suspended in 2018 as part of a widespread attempt to remove me from the internet,” Jones wrote in the appeal description. “Whereas ‘free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy’ – I am requesting that my account be reinstated.”
Upon learning Twitter was under new management, Alex Jones immediately filed an appeal of his account's suspension. Read more here: https://t.co/H4DEgmjAdj pic.twitter.com/Ajfw1oKNko
— Adan Salazar (@AdanSalazarWins) April 25, 2022
Jones was quoting Musk, who stated that “free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy” following news of the acquisition of Twitter for $44 billion at $54.20 per share.
🚀💫♥️ Yesss!!! ♥️💫🚀 pic.twitter.com/0T9HzUHuh6
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 25, 2022
Twitter suspended Jones’ personal and business accounts in 2018, in what was viewed at the time as an unprecedented display of politically motivated censorship.
“Today, we permanently suspended @realalexjones and @infowars from Twitter and Periscope,” Twitter Safety stated. “We took this action based on new reports of Tweets and videos posted yesterday that violate our abusive behavior policy, in addition to the accounts’ past violations.”
“As we continue to increase transparency around our rules and enforcement actions, we wanted to be open about this action given the broad interest in this case,” Twitter Safety continued. “We do not typically comment on enforcement actions we take against individual accounts, for their privacy.”
Jones’ suspension was to be the first of many bans affecting non-liberal activists on the platform, culminating in the suspension of President Donald Trump in January 2021.
“Alex Jones” trended on Twitter following the news of Musk’s successful buyout.
— Adan Salazar (@AdanSalazarWins) April 25, 2022
This is a developing story and may be updated at a later time.
