Twitter's CEO tries to explain not suspending Alex Jones

Over the last few days, platforms like Apple Podcasts, Facebook, YouTube and Spotify decided they'd had enough of Alex Jones and InfoWars and pulled his access. Twitter was not among them, saying that InfoWars is not "currently violating our policies."

Tonight its CEO Jack Dorsey tweeted a thread trying to clarify things, as he occasionally has when explaining changes in its policy or stating once again why some bad actor will be allowed to remain on the platform. The Twitter Safety account also provided information on the company's policy, explaining that while "We prohibit targeted behavior that harasses, threatens, or uses fear to silence others and take action when they violate our policies...If individuals are not targeted (e.g. @ mention, tagged in a photo, etc.), we allow a wide range of content as long as it doesn't cross the line into threatening violence." This may explain why Jones' exhortations about parents of children killed in school shootings aren't enough to get him banned, simply because he did not @ mention them.

About InfoWars, Dorsey said: "We're going to hold Jones to the same standard we hold to every account, not taking one-off actions to make us feel good in the short term, and adding fuel to new conspiracy theories." He closed by saying "it's critical journalists document, validate, and refute such information directly so people can form their own opinions."

So while journalists do the work of refuting misinformation that Dorsey's service participates in spreading, he linked to a blog post about "The Twitter Rules: A Living Document" that explained whenever it adds new rules someone might be asked to delete a tweet that's now in violation, but they wouldn't face further enforcement.

Source: Jack Dorsey (Twitter), Twitter Blog



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