Elon Musk said he “will consider” reversing his decision to maintain the ban on conspiracy theorist Alex Jones from the X social media platform.
Jones, the host of the far-right InfoWars website and podcasting platform, has spread the claim that the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School was a hoax.
Last year, a jury ordered Jones to pay $1.44 billion in damages to the families of the victims of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook that claimed the lives of 26 people, most of them children.
Jones was a guest this week on Tucker Carlson’s new show, which is streamed on X.
In a videotaped message streamed on X, Jones urged Musk to watch his interview with Carlson, who was fired by Fox this year.
“Elon Musk says he’s a free speech absolutist but still hasn’t let me back on Twitter with my own channel,” Jones said on Thursday.
Jones said that while “I’m not even mad at Elon Musk,” he hopes he will “hear from me [about] why I was really banned from Twitter.”
Musk pledged in an X post that he will “hear him out.”
Earlier on Thursday, an X user implored Musk to restore Jones’ account since doing so “would make the machine rage.”
In response, Musk wrote: “Will consider.”
“In general, since this platform aspires to be the global town square, permanent bans should be extremely rare,” Musk wrote on Thursday, adding that anything Jones said could be corrected by “Community Notes,” the crowd-sourced fact-checking feature.
Musk then suggested taking a poll of X users who would weigh in on whether to allow Jones back onto the platform.
As of Friday morning, most than 26,000 X users voted in the poll. An overwhelming majority — 90% — said they supported Jones’ reinstatement, prompting Musk to observe: “Interesting.”
When an X user noted that Jones was first suspended by the company that was then known as Twitter in 2018 for saying CNN’s Oliver Darcy had the “eyes of a rat,” Musk opined: “That is certainly not a valid reason for suspension.”
That same year, Apple removed InfoWars from its App Store due to what the company called “offensive, insensitive, upsetting, intended to disgust or in exceptionally poor taste.”
Months earlier, Facebook, YouTube and other tech platforms blocked the InfoWars site from their services.
Carlson’s 90-minute-long interview with Jones was billed as a talk with “the world’s most dangerous man, the most censored man in the English language.”
Musk, who acquired Twitter last year for $44 billion in order to restore free expression on the platform, declined to allow Jones back onto the site after he bought the company — citing the death of his firstborn.
“My firstborn child died in my arms,” Musk tweeted last November in response to Kim Dotcom, the internet entrepreneur, who implored the mogul to restore Jones’ account.
“I felt his last heartbeat,” Musk tweeted, adding: “I have no mercy for anyone who would use the deaths of children for gain, politics or fame.”
Musk, who lashed out at Disney CEO Bob Iger and other advertisers who fled X following a controversial post in which the mogul appeared to endorse antisemitic conspiracy theory, appears to have softened his position on Jones.
Last year, he responded with “No” when an X user suggested that he reinstate Jones’ account.
The Post has sought comment from Jones.