Tech billionaire Elon Musk is letting users of his online service X, formerly Twitter, vote in a survey on whether the account of US conspiracy theorist Alex Jones should be restored.
Musk launched the 12-hour survey in a tweet on Saturday. “Vox populi, vox dei” (People’s voice (is) God’s voice), he wrote.
Jones has been banned from the platform since 2018. The founder of the right-wing website Infowars had violated the guidelines and had previously been banned from other platforms such as Facebook and YouTube. Most recently, Jones was ordered to pay billions of dollars in damages in several lawsuits over his false claims about a massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Jones had claimed for years that the December 2012 shooting was staged by actors. A 20-year-old shot 20 schoolchildren and six teachers in Newtown, Connecticut, on the east coast.
It is not Musk’s first survey of this kind. Last November he had a vote on whether the former US President Donald Trump can operate on the short message service again. Trump’s account, which was blocked after encouraging his rioting supporters during the storming of the Capitol in January 2021, was reactivated by Musk after a close poll. However, with one exception, Trump has not yet used the account again, but instead posts on his own platform “Truth Social”.
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SAN FRANCISCO/WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX)
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