TWITTER HAS SUSPENDED the personal account of far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones for a week.

The social network took the decision after Jones published a video in which he was deemed to have incited violence.

According to The New York Times, he is reported to have said in the video: “Now is time to act on the enemy before they do a false flag.”

Jones will be unable to tweet or retweet from his personal account for seven days, though he will be able to browse Twitter.

However, the Twitter account for his Infowars show has not been hit by the suspension.

Among the conspiracy theories Jones has peddled are charges that the US government was behind numerous terrorist attacks, including the 11 September 2001 strikes on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

His suspension comes a week after Twitter’s CEO Jack Dorsey defended a decision to allow Jones to continue to use the platform, arguing that he hadn’t broken user rules.

Apple, Facebook, Spotify and YouTube had all previously banned Jones on the grounds that he engages in hate speech.

At the time, Dorsey said in a tweet: “We’re going to hold Jones to the same standard we hold to every account, not taking one-off actions to make us feel good in the short term, and adding fuel to new conspiracy theories.”

In March, Dorsey promised to improve the standard of conversations on Twitter, after the network became dogged by claims that it was filled with bots and troll accounts.

Up to 70 million accounts were subsequently removed from the network in May and June.

© – AFP, 2018