This isn’t so much an official response from Musk on the issue of bringing Alex Jones back as it is just a response, and one that he appears to mean.
Musk posed the question “what should Twitter do next” and someone responded that he should bring back Alex Jones:
Bring back Alex Jones!!!!
— OriginolleY (@HardcoreNolley) November 18, 2022
To which Musk responded “no”:
No
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 18, 2022
So I guess that settles it. Alex Jones won’t be allowed back on Twitter.
Musk also put out his new policy on moderating content, which he calls ‘freedom of speech but not freedom of reach’:
New Twitter policy is freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach.
Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted & demonetized, so no ads or other revenue to Twitter.
You won’t find the tweet unless you specifically seek it out, which is no different from rest of Internet.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 18, 2022
He noted that this only applies to specific tweets and not the entire account:
Note, this applies just to the individual tweet, not the whole account
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 18, 2022
I guess then the question becomes what exactly constitutes hate speech. Is it a user referring to someone else as their biological gender rather than their fake preferred gender? Is it someone saying that transgenderism is a mental illness? Is it someone saying they disagree with homosexuality? Because at the end of the day if their underlying policy on what constitutes hate speech doesn’t change, then some of his nutjob employees will be ‘max deboosting’ and ‘demonitizing’ a lot of tweets, and that still won’t be good.