Michelle Marie, who is originally from Oxford in England but lives in Mayo, was the victim of a barrage of abuse on Monday.
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Ms Marie described herself as a mother, blogger and plus-size model and said Ireland “has my heart”.
However, the trolls then started abusing her because she was black.
The accounts that have trolled Marie have since been temporarily suspended by Twitter for hate crime, and it is suspected that strict action will be taken from now on to prevent further abuse of it’s users.
She received racist slurs, telling her to return to “return to your ancestral lands”, as well as comments criticising her body size and shape.
Despite all the negative responses, Marie has received an outpouring of support from other Twitter users, including one who said he was “really disappointed that Twitter doesn’t clamp down on this [type of trolling]”. “Truly sorry for the disgusting racism and ignorance you’re experiencing”. “These tweets are frightening”.
Run by Irish Central, the curator of the tweets changes each week, and in this week’s case, it was being run by an English-born black woman, Michelle Marie, who now lives in Lough Mask, Co Mayo.
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“A few people are finding issue with be being black and running the Ireland account, so let me just address that for a minute…” she wrote. Clearly racism. What scumbags. “I am fortunate that experiencing this level of hate is a rarity, but for too many it’s a daily reality”, she said.
