Breaking with other companies like Facebook and YouTube, Twitter has refused to remove Alex Jones and InfoWars from its platform, saying that the posts do not violate Twitter’s rules.
However, upon closer inspection, many of the posts do seem flagrantly in violation of Twitter’s user rules, as they include Jones’ denigrating people on the basis of their gender or religion, as well as episodes of him harassing or encouraging violence against them, according to a Thursday CNN report.
What’s more, Twitter’s vice president for trust and safety Del Harvey reportedly said in an internal email that if Jones had demonstrated some of the behavior on Twitter that he had on Facebook and YouTube, he would definitely have been booted. However, CNN found that all the content that prompted the other companies to ban Jones was also posted to Twitter.
Twitter’s policy spells out that: “You may not engage in the targeted harassment of someone, or incite other people to do so. We consider abusive behavior an attempt to harass, intimidate, or silence someone else’s voice.” It also bans “hateful conduct” “on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease.”
On Twitter, Jones and his media company’s tweets calling Parkland shooting survivor David Hogg a Nazi, asserting that homosexuality and pedophilia are connected and threatening to “destroy” drag queens, among many other things, would seem to be in clear violation of those policies.
