Twitter put Alex Jones on the naughty step with a 7-day ban
- Twitter has locked Alex Jones' account for seven days after the Infowars host broke the company's rules.
- The conspiracy theorist will be unable to tweet and can only read posts from people he follows.
- Amid significant pressure to follow Apple, Facebook, and YouTube in deleting Jones' account permanently, it appears that Twitter is keeping a watching brief.
Twitter has put Alex Jones in the sin bin for seven days after the Infowars host broke the company's rules.
Amid significant pressure to follow Apple, Facebook, and YouTube in deleting Jones' account permanently, it appears that Twitter is keeping a watching brief, rather than punishing him retrospectively.
The social network has decided to freeze his account for seven days, meaning he will be unable to tweet and can only read posts from people he follows.
The conspiracy theorist's offending tweet linked to a Periscope video in which he told viewers to get "battle rifles" ready, said BuzzFeed reporter Ryan Mac.
A Twitter spokesman said: "We can confirm that the account currently has limited functionality. We haven't suspended the account but are requiring Tweets which contained a broadcast in violation of our rules are deleted."
You can watch Jones' comments here:
Twitter's ban did create some confusion when Jones' account starting tweeting again on Tuesday evening, but a spokesman told Mac that these were scheduled tweets from his Tweetdeck account.
Twitter has stood by Jones amid journalists pointing out that his previous tweets may have violated the company's rules. This was despite Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey saying journalists have an important role to play in bringing wrongdoing to the firm's attention.
Dorsey is under significant pressure to oust Jones permanently. A campaign, started by #grabyourwallet consumer activist Shannon Coulter, has gone viral, encouraging Twitter users to block every Fortune 500 company with a Twitter presence. The hope is that this will impact Twitter's ad revenue.
Dorsey has said, however, that the social network will not be cowed by outside pressure. "If we succumb and simply react to outside pressure, rather than straightforward principles we enforce (and evolve) impartially regardless of political viewpoints, we become a service that's constructed by our personal views that can swing in any direction. That's not us," he said.