Professional tragedy troll Alex Jones went to WashingtonWednesday to claw back the attention he’s lost since Facebook, Apple, YouTube, Spotify, and other tech giants booted him from their services last month. He stalked behind Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey as they testified to the Senate, accosted senator Marco Rubio during a post-hearing interview, berated a CNN reporter as he stood in the hallways, and broadcast it all on Twitter, the last platform that would have him.
And it backfired.
On Thursday, just a day after Jones brought his circus to Capitol Hill, Twitter announced it was finally banning Jones and his conspiracy site InfoWars, citing “new reports of Tweets and videos posted yesterday that violate our abusive behavior policy.” That policy prohibits “excessively aggressive insults that target an individual, including content that contains slurs or similar language.” Dorsey had previously defended Twitter’s decision to allow Jones to continue operating on the platform, saying Jones hadn’t violated Twitter’s policies.
But in early August, CNN reporter Oliver Darcy publicly pointed out a number of instances in which Jones had, in fact, violated those policies, leading Jones—or someone on his team—to delete the tweets in question. Days later, Twitter forced Jones to delete another offending tweet and put his account in read-only mode for a week. The time-out lifted, and Jones’ account lived on.
Ironically, it was the initial CNN story—or rather, Jones’ unhinged response to it—that proved his eventual undoing. On Wednesday, just before Dorsey was set to testify at his second congressional hearing of the day, Jones approached Darcy as he waited in line with media colleagues to be let into the hearing room. Jones, flanked by his entourage, cornered Darcy, jabbed a phone in his face, and harassed the reporter for more than 10 minutes about his work, his employer, and his looks, saying he has the “eyes of a rat.” The entire ordeal streamed on Periscope, which is owned by Twitter.
(Excerpt) Read more in: Wired