Twitter Temporarily Restricts InfoWars' Alex Jones Account

(Bloomberg) -- Twitter Inc. is the latest social network to take action against far-right commentator Alex Jones, temporarily limiting his account after he tweeted a link to a video that violated company policies against abusive behavior.

The ban is not extensive. Jones will still be able to browse Twitter and send direct messages to his followers; however he won’t be able post publicly for seven days. The Twitter account for his show @InfoWars remains active.

“On Twitter we’ve been so careful,” he said in a video on the @InfoWars account, adding that Twitter Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey is “toying with us” like a cat and a mouse.

A Twitter spokesman confirmed the account has limited functionality. “We haven’t suspended the account but are requiring tweets which contained a broadcast in violation of our rules are deleted,” he added in a statement.

Dorsey said earlier in August that Jones and his affiliate accounts would be permitted to continue to use Twitter because they hadn’t violated the social-media company’s policies. The moves seemed at odds with those of Facebook Inc. and Google’s YouTube, which pulled the conspiracy theorist off their platforms after concluding that his content violates hate speech and harassment policies.

Twitter has been criticized by the media and its own employees for allowing content from Jones that violates its own rules, including engaging in harassment. On Aug. 8., Del Harvey, Twitter’s head of trust and safety, wrote in a memo to employees that “Alex Jones has indeed posted inflammatory (and reprehensible) content -- including accusing people impacted by Sandy Hook of being crisis actors.” She added that, "we’re shifting our timeline forward for reviewing the dehumanization policy with staff and will be doing so this week."

To contact the reporters on this story: Nour Al Ali in Dubai at nalali1@bloomberg.net;Selina Wang in San Francisco at swang533@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Christopher Kingdon at ckingdon@bloomberg.net, Giles Turner, Nate Lanxon

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