The Daily Beast reports today that, after weeks of hemming, hawing, and the odd bit of Congressional testimony, Twitter has finally, permanently banned Alex Jones and his show InfoWars from its platform. The decision comes as the social media company has faced mounting pressure to kick Jones off the service, and continued resistance from CEO Jack Dorsey, who frequently positioned his refusal to ban Jones as a moral stand against internet peer pressure.
But now, it sounds like “all the cool kids are doing it” has finally had its day in court, as Twitter announced today that Jones was banned, after posting a live video in which he told a CNN reporter he had “the eyes of a rat”—because apparently that’s the last straw here, and not, say, the real-world damage caused by Jones’ accusations against the parents of murdered children, or his consistently xenophobic rhetoric. It was the rat-eyes thing. Sure.
Twitter has said it’s committed to now keeping Jones off the platform, both as a measure to punish that kind of content, and also, presumably, so that people will stop screaming at them about this topic all of the time. That may be a lost cause, though, given that the decision to ban Jones for this, of all things, only emphasizes the fact that the company cares only about the language with which its users express themselves, and not the harm that they do while utilizing its. But hey, fuck it, whatever works.