‘The people have spoken’: Elon Musk restores the X account of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones after poll

Elon Musk said the account of right-wing extremist Alex Jones would be reinstated on X, formerly known as Twitter, reversing a 2018 decision by the company’s previous management to deplatform the notorious conspiracy theorist after he repeatedly broke rules prohibiting harassment and hate.

On Saturday morning, Musk posted an unscientific poll to his account asking users of the platform if Jones should be reinstated. By Saturday evening when the poll closed, about 70% of nearly 2 million respondents had voted “yes.”

Early Sunday morning, Musk replied to the poll saying, “The people have spoken and so it shall be.”

Jones’ account was active as of early Sunday morning.

The move from the billionaire Musk, who has promoted conspiracy theories himself and elevated a number of extremist voices since taking over the platform, is likely to impact X even further as companies distance themselves from the troubled platform, which has seen hate speech and conspiracy theories surge in the wake of his decisions.