file – in this picture from September 5, 2018, the conspiratorial right-wing Alex Jones walks through the halls of the Capitol after listening to the testimonies of the operational Director of Facebook Sheryl Sandberg and the CEO of Twitter Jack Dorsey in a Senate panel. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
NEW YORK (AP) – Permanent suspension on Twitter of the conspiratorial right-wing Alex Jones again highlights the difficulties faced by social networks in consistently applying its rules against harassment and other similar behaviors. The social platform took the action Thursday against Jones and his “abusive behavior” Infowars program, citing videos placed on Wednesday in which is seen stalking for 10 minutes to the journalist of the CNN Oliver Darcy in the corridors of the Congreso.Jones it has behaved Similarly many times before: calling the survivors of the massacre at the school in Parkland, Florida, “actors” and saying that the massacre at the Sandy Hook elementary school in 2012 was false. Videos of the most recent incident show Jones calling Darcy “a Possum that came out the back of a dead cow”. Twitter measurement took place after decisions of Facebook and YouTube, Apple, Spotify limit or remove the material from Jones’s services, but Twitter went further, saying that it will continue to monitor reports about other accounts associated with Jones or Inforwars and will take measures if it concludes that they try to evade the suspension.v class = “ck-related-news” > Jones did not respond in time to requests for comment. It had 900,000 followers on Twitter. Infowars had 430,000. Democratic Rep. Frank Pallone praised the decision in a Tweet to Twitter. “I am glad that Twitter is taking steps to put an end to the abusive behavior of Alex Jones & Infowars,” said the tweet. “The Tweets created to threaten, defame, degrade and mute individuals have no place in this platform”.
Twitter had previously suspended Jones for one week, but until now had resisted more mute it. Other technology companies have limited Jones, suspending it for a longer time and removing its pages and podcasts.
Some critics say that there is still a lack of transparency in the way in which social networks implement their policies. Media Matters of America, an organization dedicated to criticizing conservative media, nonprofit said that “it was time”, but said that conduct was “normal” for Jones.David Greene, director of civic freedoms of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) ), he said that the suspension of Jones is almost a distraction from the real debate that he believes that it should be about how the content on platforms controlled by a few giant companies is moderated. Greene said that you can not tell if what Jones published the day before is worse than he has done previously. EFF supports the idea of a series of principles of moderation of content for all social networking companies, calling the revelation of figures on measures taken, clear notifications to users that explain when and why your messages are removed and an appeals process that is reviewed by people. Twitter critics called attention to the moment in which the measure was taken: “Alex Jones was allowed to harass the parents of Sandy Hook for six years without consequences”, tweet a user. “Harassed to Jack Dorsey one day and he was expelled from Twitter.” In this note: United States New York Twitter Alex Jones
