Tech

Twitter CEO: 'I don't know' if ban will change Alex Jones' behavior

Key Points
  • Alex Jones was banned for seven days from Twitter after he called on people to take up arms, CEO Jack Dorsey said in an interview with NBC News.
  • Twitter had previously defended its decision to keep Jones on its platform, saying he hadn't violated its rules.
  • Bans have shown to impact or change behavior, but Dorsey didn't know if it would work on Jones.
Jack Dorsey
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

An Alex Jones tweet that linked to content encouraging violence led to his temporary ban on Twitter, CEO Jack Dorsey said in an interview with NBC News.

But while the company has seen temporarily or permanently barring people from its platform has the ability to "impact and change behavior," Dorsey said he doesn't know if it will have an effect on Jones.

"Whether it works within this case to change some of those behaviors and change some of those actions, I don't know," Dorsey admitted. "But this is consistent with how we enforce."

Twitter suspended Alex Jones on Tuesday for seven days after he violated the company's policies. This was a reversal from its previous defense of allowing the conspiracy theorist on its platform because he hadn't broken its rules. Twitter was one of the last major platforms not to remove Jones from its platforms, after Apple, Facebook, Pinterest, Spotify and YouTube removed some or all Jones-related content.

The tweet in question linked to a video in which Jones called for people to have their "battle rifles and everything ready at their bedsides." That video, which is on Twitter-owned Periscope, was not removed.

"There's a number of actions that we believe help a call to incitement to violence," Dorsey said. "And those are the things that we need to make sure that we're taking action on."

The full interview will air on NBC Nightly News on Wednesday.

Disclosure: CNBC and NBC Nightly News share the same parent company, NBCUniversal.

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