Elon Musk reinstated Alex Jones on X, citing a poll on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter that showed 70.1% of respondents favored bringing back the Infowars host.
"Vox Populi, Vox Dei," Musk wrote beneath the poll posted Saturday, sharing the Latin saying meaning the voice of the people is the voice of God.
"The people have spoken and so it shall be," Musk then wrote early Sunday after more than 1.9 million people voted, according to the platform results.
A few hours later, Jones' posts were visible again, and he retweeted a post about his video game. In 2022, Jones was ordered to pay nearly $1 billion to families of the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting for spreading lies about the 2012 massacre.
ELON MUSK TELLS ADVERTISERS WHO LEFT X: 'GO F--- YOURSELF'
InfoWars founder Alex Jones outside court on Sept. 21, 2022 in Waterbury, Connecticut. He was sued by several victims' families for causing emotional and psychological harm after they lost their children in the Sandy Hook massacre (Joe Buglewicz/Getty Images)
The account @RealAlexJones had more than 821,100 followers on X as of Sunday morning. When Jones was banned in September 2018, he had about 900,000 followers on Twitter, and Infowars had about 430,000, according to the Associated Press.
In 2018, Twitter permanently banned Jones and his Infowars show, saying an unrelated video he shared violated the company's policy for abusive behavior.
The move came just a day after Twitter's then-CEO Jack Dorsey had testified before Congress about alleged bias against conservatives on the platform. Jones shared a video of himself yelling at CNN journalist Oliver Darcy for some 10 minutes in between the two congressional hearings where Dorsey testified.
Before Musk's takeover, Twitter had rarely banned anyone not associated with former President Trump, allowing international despots like Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and even terrorist groups to remain.
Musk, who purchased Twitter in October 2022 with the goal of restoring freedom of speech to the platform, said the move to reinstate Jones was about protecting free speech. In response to a user who posted that "permanent account bans are antithetical to free speech," Musk wrote, "I find it hard to disagree with this point."
The billionaire Tesla CEO also said it is likely that Community Notes, X's crowd-sourced fact-checking service, "will respond rapidly to any AJ post that needs correction."
Jones previously claimed on his Infowars show that the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, that killed 20 children and six educators never happened and was staged in an effort to tighten gun laws. Relatives of many of the victims sued Jones in Connecticut and Texas, winning nearly $1.5 billion in judgments against him.
Elon Musk speaks during the New York Times annual DealBook summit on Nov. 29, 2023 in New York City. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
In October, a judge ruled that Jones could not use bankruptcy protection to avoid paying more than $1.1 billion of that debt.
Relatives of the school shooting victims testified at the trials about being harassed and threatened by Jones’s followers, who sent threats and even confronted the grieving families in person, accusing them of being "crisis actors" whose children never existed. Jones is appealing the judgments, saying he didn’t get fair trials and his speech was protected by the First Amendment.
Musk previously said he would not let Jones back on the platform despite repeated calls to do so.
Last year, Musk pointed to the death of his first-born child and tweeted, "I have no mercy for anyone who would use the deaths of children for gain, politics or fame."
Restoring Jones' account comes as Musk has seen several big brands, including Disney and IBM, stop advertising on X after a report by liberal advocacy group Media Matters said ads were appearing alongside pro-Nazi content and white nationalist posts. Musk himself was accused of endorsing an antisemitic conspiracy theory by responding to an X user.
Alex Jones appears on a video screen during videotaped testimony during the seventh hearing on the House Jan. 6 select committee on July 12, 2022. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
Musk later apologized and visited Israel, where he toured a kibbutz attacked by Hamas terrorists and held talks with top Israeli leaders. But in an on-stage interview late last month at The New York Times DealBook Summit, Musk told company CEOs instating an advertising boycott, and essentially trying to "blackmail" him with money, "Go f--- yourself."
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After buying Twitter last year, Musk said he was granting "amnesty" for suspended accounts and has since reinstated Trump; Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West; and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who was kicked off the platform for violating its COVID-19 misinformation policies.
Trump, who was banned following the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, has his own social media site, Truth Social, and has only tweeted once since being allowed back on X.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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