Twitter Permanently Suspends Alex Jones, Infowars

Twitter permanently suspended the accounts of Alex Jones and his site, Infowars, on Thursday, Buzzfeed reports.

“We took this action based on new reports of tweets and videos posted yesterday that violate our abusive behavior policy, in addition to the accounts’ previous violations,” Twitter said in a statement.

The social media company appeared to be motivated by a series of tweets which contain Periscope video of Jones accosting CNN’s Oliver Darcy. In the clips, Jones calls Darcy “the equivalent of like the Hitler Youth” and likens him to “a possum that crawled out of the rear end of a dead cow,” according to Buzzfeed.

Twitter added, “as we continue to increase transparency around our rules and enforcement actions, we wanted to be open about this action given the broad interest in this case. We do not typically comment on enforcement actions we take against individual accounts, for their privacy.”

This is not the first time Twitter has taken action against Jones: On August 15th, the company suspended his account for a week after he posted a video urging people to ready their “battle rifles.” However, Infowars was allowed to continue tweeting while Jones was suspended.

Until today, Twitter’s decision to allow Jones to (mostly) continue his operations on the platform contrasted the actions of other large media companies. Apple recently removed a number of Jones’ podcasts from iTunes; YouTube, Facebook and Spotify also got rid of Jones’ content due to policy violations. But Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey maintained that “[Jones] hasn’t violated our rules.”

Twitter took a more aggressive stance on Thursday. “We will continue to evaluate reports we receive regarding other accounts potentially associated with @realalexjones or @infowars,” the company said in its statement, “and will take action if content that violates our rules is reported or if other accounts are utilized in an attempt to circumvent their ban.”