Twitter on Tuesday put temporary limits on the account of Alex Jones, a move that marks the latest restriction by a Silicon Valley company on the controversial conspiracy theorist and radio host.
Twitter confirmed to NBC News that Jones’ Twitter account was put in "read-only mode" as of Tuesday, meaning that he can browse Twitter posts but can’t interact with them and can’t tweet himself. The restrictions, which were earlier reported by the tech news site CNET, are scheduled to last seven days.
The company said that Jones, who runs the website Infowars, violated a Twitter policy and was required to delete an offending tweet that contained a video in which he told his listeners to get “battle rifles” ready.
Watch Lester Holt's interview with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey on NBC Nightly News on Wednesday night.
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Facebook, YouTube and Apple earlier this month took steps to remove Jones from their services. Since then, Jones has been railing against these companies, claiming that he is being censored for his political views.
Jones has been criticized for conspiracy theories including falsely claiming that the 2012 mass killing at Sandy Hook Elementary School was staged. Jones is being sued for defamation related to the claim. The claims have also led to the harassment of people in the Sandy Hook community.
Facebook said in early August it removed four pages belonging to Jones “for repeatedly posting content over the past several days that breaks [the company’s] Community Standards."
YouTube said in terminating Jones' main account, which had 2.4 million followers, that all users agree to comply with the site’s terms of service and community guidelines, and that "When users violate these policies repeatedly, like our policies against hate speech and harassment or our terms prohibiting circumvention of our enforcement measures, we terminate their accounts."
Apple and Spotify both removed Jones' podcasts from their respective services. Over the weekend, video hosting service Vimeo removed two accounts belonging to Infowars.com for violating its terms of service, Variety reported.
After the actions of Google, Apple and Facebook, Twitter's reluctance to remove Jones from its service drew criticism. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said when the other companies took steps to remove accounts linked to him that Jones had not violated any of Twitter's rules, but CNN found a variety of violations that were then removed by someone with access to his accounts.
