After posting videos and tweets heckling reporters and members of Congress yesterday (Sept. 5), Twitter has banned alt-right provocateur Alex Jones from its platform, as well as his website Infowars.
The tactic, which Jones speaks about often on his show as “deplatforming,” seems to work: Jones lost about half of his audience after being kicked off mainstream social media sites like Facebook and YouTube last month, an analysis by the New York Times shows.
Not only are Jones and Infowars’ accounts permanently banned on Twitter, but Jones himself is banned from the service. Any account he creates will be suspended, and any account he tweets from will be too, according to a statement from Twitter supplied to Buzzfeed News.
Twitter had previously been reluctant to ban Jones, saying that reports of inappropriate behavior had not come through the right channels at the time he was tweeting. When CNN provided examples of tweets that violated the company’s terms of service, Twitter still didn’t budge, instead giving him a one-week timeout.
It’s possible, even likely, this is the outcome Jones wanted, allowing him to further play the role of victim and draw attention to himself.
Now, true fans of Jones will have to visit his website, just like their forefathers did in the days of internet yore.