Twitter bans conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, Infowars from tweeting for seven days

Twitter Inc has banned US conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and his website Infowars from tweeting for seven days, saying their tweets violated company’s rules against abusive behaviour.

The microblogging site said it had asked Jones late Tuesday to delete the tweet that contained a video, which according to a company spokesman had a segment that is an “incitement to violence”.

As of Wednesday, the tweet has disappeared from his account.

The Infowars account repeated the same content that Jones had posted on Tuesday night and the company took a similar action on Wednesday, the spokesman said.

The temporary ban means Jones and Infowars can browse and send direct messages to followers, but would not be able to tweet, retweet, or like.

Twitter’s rules against abusive behaviour say that a user may not engage in the targeted harassment of someone or incite other people to do so.

Last week, major tech companies including Apple, Alphabet’s YouTube, and Facebook took down podcasts and channels from the Infowars author, saying he broke community standards.

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