Elon Musk welcomes back conspiracy theorist Alex Jones to X

Millionaire Elon Musk has reinstated far-right American conspiracy theorist Alex Jones on his social media platform X.

Elon Musk had promised never to let Alex Jones back on his social media platform X. Picture: AFP

Billionaire Elon Musk has reinstated far-right American conspiracy theorist Alex Jones on his social media platform X, a year after vowing never to let him return.

Jones, who claimed a school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut – in which 20 children and six teachers were murdered in cold blood – was a hoax, was banned from the platform in 2018 for ­violating its “abusive behaviour policy”.

He was also sued by families of the victims of the Sandy Hook school shooting and ordered by a judge in the case to pay up more than a billion dollars in damages last year.

Mr Musk had promised never to let the Infowars host back on the social media platform, which he bought last year for $US44bn ($67bn).

But following a poll Mr Musk conducted on X asking whether Jones should be reinstated, to which two million users responded, he flipped that decision.

“I vehemently disagree with what he said about Sandy Hook, but are we a platform that ­believes in freedom of speech or are we not?” the SpaceX founder said on X.

But Shannon Watts, founder of the group Moms Demand ­Action group that pushes for tighter gun laws, said that “defamation is not free speech”.

Mr Musk’s decision comes the same week that the Sandy Hook families commemorate the 11th anniversary of the ­December 14 shooting, which Jones alleged was staged to allow the government to crack down on gun rights.

His followers harassed the ­bereaved families for years, ­accusing parents of murdered children of being “crisis actors” whose children had never existed.

It also came a week after Mr Musk had responded to advertisers pulling out of X because of far-right posts and hate speech, including an apparent endorsement by Mr Musk of an anti-­Semitic tweet.

Asked whether he would ­respond to the advertising ­exodus, Mr Musk told journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin that the ­advertisers could “go f..k yourself”.

X makes most of its money from advertising and for years has been an important platform for large brands to communicate with customers.

Jones, who has a million followers on X, returned to the site with his first post re-tweeting Andrew Tate, the controversial former kickboxer facing rape and human trafficking charges in Romania, in which he hailed Jones’s “triumphant return”.

AFP