Elon Musk has restored the X account of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, pointing to a poll on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter that came out in favor of the Infowars host who repeatedly called the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting a hoax.
It poses new uncertainty for advertisers, who have fled X over concerns about hate speech appearing alongside their ads, and is the latest divisive public personality to get back their banned account.
Musk posted a poll on Saturday asking if Jones should be reinstated, with the results showing 70% of those who responded in favor. Early Sunday, Musk tweeted, “The people have spoken and so it shall be.”
A few hours later, Jones' posts were visible again and he retweeted a post about his video game. He and his Infowars show had been permanently banned in 2018 for abusive behavior.
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Musk, who has described himself as a free speech absolutist, said the move was about protecting those rights. In response to a user who posted that “permanent account bans are antithetical to free speech,” Musk wrote, “I find it hard to disagree with this point.”
The billionaire Tesla CEO also tweeted it's likely that Community Notes — X's crowd-sourced fact-checking service — “will respond rapidly to any AJ post that needs correction.”
It is a major turnaround for Musk, who previously said he wouldn’t let Jones back on the platform despite repeated calls to do so. Last year, Musk pointed to the death of his first-born child and tweeted, “I have no mercy for anyone who would use the deaths of children for gain, politics or fame.”
Jones repeatedly has said on his show that the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, that killed 20 children and six educators never happened and was staged in an effort to tighten gun laws.
Relatives of many of the victims sued Jones in Connecticut and Texas, winning nearly $1.5 billion in judgments against him. In October, a judge ruled that Jones could not use bankruptcy protection to avoid paying more than $1.1 billon of that debt.
Relatives of the school shooting victims testified at the trials about being harassed and threatened by Jones’ believers, who sent threats and even confronted the grieving families in person, accusing them of being “crisis actors” whose children never existed.
Jones is appealing the judgments, saying he didn’t get fair trials and his speech was protected by the First Amendment.
Restoring Jones' account comes as Musk has seen a slew of big brands, including Disney and IBM, stop advertising on X after a report by liberal advocacy group Media Matters said ads were appearing alongside pro-Nazi content and white nationalist posts.
They also were scared away after Musk himself endorsed an antisemitic conspiracy theory in response to a post on X. The Tesla CEO later apologized and visited Israel, where he toured a kibbutz attacked by Hamas militants and held talks with top Israeli leaders.
But he also has said advertisers are engaging in “blackmail” and, using a profanity, essentially told them to go away.
“Don’t advertise,” Musk said in an on-stage interview late last month at The New York Times DealBook Summit.
After buying Twitter last year, Musk said he was granting “amnesty” for suspended accounts and has since reinstated former President Donald Trump; Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, following two suspensions over antisemitic posts last year; and far-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who was kicked off the platform for violating its COVID-19 misinformation policies.
Trump, who was banned for encouraging the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection, has his own social media site, Truth Social, and has only tweeted once since being allowed back on X.
Alex Jones is the latest big defamation case, but here are 5 others you should know
Palin v. New York Times
Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin pushes past members of the media as she leaves Federal court, Thursday, Feb. 3, 2022, in New York.
Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin sued the Times over a 2017 opinion piece that incorrectly suggested a map published by her political action committee helped incite a 2011 mass shooting in Tuscon, Arizona, in which six people were killed and 14 wounded, including then-U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. The Times corrected the piece within a day and claimed it was an “honest mistake,” but Palin, the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee, accused the paper of deliberately or recklessly inserting the falsehood to harm her reputation. While the jury was deliberating, the judge announced he was going to dismiss the case because Palin had failed to present evidence that the newspaper’s conduct met the Sullivan standard. Palin is appealing the ruling and has suggested the case could be a vehicle for overturning Sullivan. Some conservative judges and commentators have said they believe that legal protection has fostered liberal bias in the media, and Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch have said it’s time to reexamine the standard and possibly make it easier to sue the press.
Dominion Voting Systems Inc. v. Fox News
Supposedly liberal media outlets aren’t the only ones claiming protection from defamation claims. Fox News is facing a $1.6 billion suit by Dominion Voting Systems filed for broadcasting false claims by allies of then-President Donald Trump that the company’s voting machines were rigged to flip votes for him to Joe Biden. The conservative network claims it was merely reporting the news by interviewing those making the claims, like former Trump campaign lawyer Sidney Powell and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who are also being sued for defamation. Dominion has highlighted evidence suggesting Fox knew the claims were false — including an alleged phone call by Rupert Murdoch a few days after the election in which the Fox Corp. chairman told Trump he had lost. Dominion also recently subpoenaed former Attorney General Bill Barr, who publicly pushed back on Trump’s election fraud claims. In its suit, Dominion suggested Barr’s statements put Fox on notice that the fraud claims were false.
Unsworth v. Musk
Elon Musk arrives for the 2022 Met Gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 2, 2022, in New York. (Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images/TNS)
Among the more notable times Elon Musk got into trouble on Twitter was his exchange with British cave diver Vernon Unsworth, who participated in the rescue of a youth soccer team that became trapped in cave by floodwaters. Unsworth sued Musk for defamation, seeking $190 million damages, after the billionaire called him a “pedo guy” in a tweet. The tweet had been in response to Unsworth’s criticism of Musk’s proposal to rescue the team using a miniature submarine. After the children were rescued without Musk’s help, Unsworth said on CNN that the Tesla chairman’s proposal was a “PR stunt” and suggested he “stick his submarine where it hurts.” Though Unsworth testified that he felt he had been “branded as a pedophile,” the jury sided with Musk in finding that the insult wasn’t intended to be taken seriously.
Beef Products Inc. v. ABC News
South Dakota-based meat processor Beef Products Inc. sued ABC News in 2012 over news reports that described their “finely textured beef product” as “pink slime.” Beef Products claims the reports led customers to mistakenly believed the product wasn’t meat and wasn’t safe to eat, and sales plummeted from about 5 million pounds per week to less than 2 million pounds after grocery chains around the country said they’d stop carrying products that contained it. Beef Products sought $1.9 billion in damages, but that amount might have tripled under a South Dakota law against disparaging agricultural products. The suit went to trial in June 2017, but the Walt Disney Co., the parent company of ABC News, announced it had agreed to pay $177 million to settle the case before the jury rendered a verdict.
Carroll v. Trump
E. Jean Carroll in the New York State Supreme Court on March, 4, 2020. (Alec Tabak/New York Daily News/TNS)
New York advice columnist E. Jean Carroll, said in a 2019 article that Trump sexually assaulted her in the 1990s in a Manhattan department store dressing room. The then-president subsequently told reporters that Carroll’s account wasn’t true and she wasn’t his “type.” Carroll responded by suing him for defamation for calling her a liar. Trump’s lawyers have advanced a series of arguments to stall or dismiss her suit, the most intriguing of which has been the claim that his statements about Carroll fell within his official duties as president and are therefore immune from civil suits. Trump got some surprise backing for this position when Biden’s Justice Department took up the previous administration’s attempt to end Carroll’s suit. Though Trump’s remarks were “crude and disrespectful,” the Justice Department said in a court filing last June, “speaking to the public and the press on matters of public concern are undoubtedly part of an elected official’s job.” The trial judge rejected that argument but it’s now under appeal.
