Anti-semitism gets a free pass on Twitter, but conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and company do not.
On October 22, Twitter suspended 18 accounts that were affiliated with conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and Infowars, in a follow up move to the platform’s ban on Alex Jones’ ban on September 6. Twitter had then warned that any accounts linked to Jones and Infowars would be removed. The 18 accounts allegedly were given numerous warnings after many violations.
Not surprisingly, Twitter was influenced by another liberal media outlet in this decision. Just as when CNN and Oliver Darcy influenced the ban on Alex Jones, the Daily Beast’s reporting on accounts linked with Infowars heavily pushed Twitter to take action. The article, written by Will Sommer, reported that “two months after Jones and InfoWars were supposedly shunned, a number of accounts remained live and tweeting.”
The piece went on to name several accounts still linked with Infowars that were at the time tweeting regularly. “Smaller accounts like InfoWarsReports have filled the gap by promoting misinformation and conspiracy theories published by Jones and InfoWars to its nearly 27,000 followers,” wrote Sommer.
[ads:im:1]
Yet, for some baffling reason, when Minister Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam referred to the Jewish people as “termites” in a video embedded on his Twitter account, the platform determined that his abusive speech was not a violation of the Terms of Service. When asked by Buzzfeed, Twitter responded that Farrakhan had not violated anything. Even Facebook had removed Farrakhan’s offending video. Still not a move from Twitter.
[ads:im:2]
