iTunes.
Spotify.
Facebook.
YouTube.
All these top platforms and more on Monday banned conspiracy theorist and fake news promoter Alex Jones, primarily for hate speech.
Conspicuous in its absence? Twitter.
Alex Jones has spent years falsely claiming the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting that took 26 lives, including 20 young children, was a “false flag” operation and that “no one died” there. He’s made life hell for parents who lost children in the massacre. Just today we learn his attorney is trying to publicize the home addresses of two of the parents who lost their children to a madman shooter at the Connecticut school.
Jones has spent years attacking LGBTQ people.
He promoted the dangerous “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory.
He’s been called a racist and part of the alt-right.
And he’s still on Twitter.
Why?
Here’s what Twitter co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey says to defend the decision to not oust Jones:
A top Maine newspaper blasted the Twitter chief:
Jack Dorsey’s insistence that journalists should be the firewall to fend off fake news purveyors is just not good enough for many who are furious that Twitter has not banned Alex Jones.
And Dorsey’s claim that it’s up to journalists to police the social media site was so brazen and unfair he was forced just hours ago to try to make amends:
But many on the social media site are angry, and are taking to Twitter to show why the Twitter CEO’s thinking is just plan wrong.
Using Dorsey’s tweet suggesting it’s up to journalists to refute fake news, some are tweeting wild accusations and finding other ways to mock the Twitter co-founder, hoping to make change – and presumably to get Twitter to boot Alex Jones.
For example:
More:
Others are attacking Dorsey’s decision outright, and finding ways to express their anger and outrage: