Twitter Inc said Tuesday it had moved to permanently suspend a number of user accounts for abuse and harassment after Ghostbusters actor Leslie Jones on Monday drew renewed attention to the issue and announced she would quit the social media site. The film and its stars have come under fire from various parts of the Internet for months, after it was first revealed that the reboot of the 1984 film would feature an all-female cast.
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Milo Yiannopoulos, who is a tech editor for the conservative web site Breitbart, has always been known for his conservative and alternative views on Twitter and for convincing his followers to troll certain Twitter accounts to express their conservative views, often going beyond what most consider acceptable behavior. The tweets started to flood Jones’ timeline following an exchange with Yiannopoulos during which he calls her “illiterate”. “All this ’cause I did a movie”.
Twitter’s statement didn’t mention Yiannopoulos by name and that it has a “process of reviewing our hateful conduct policy to prohibit additional types of abusive behavior and allow more types of reporting, with the goal of reducing the burden on the person being targeted”. “Over the past 48 hours in particular, we’ve seen an uptick in the number of accounts violating these policies and have taken enforcement actions against these accounts, ranging from warnings that also require the deletion of Tweets violating our policies to permanent suspension”.
Milo Yiannopoulos has been permenantly banned from Twitter following Leslie Jones’ reports of abuse.
“This is the end for Twitter”, he wrote.
“He just sent a very clear message to the entire user base of Twitter, which is if you believe in mischief and dissidence and fun and free speech, you’re not welcome on Twitter”.
In a series of posts Monday night, Jones said she had been pummeled with racist tweets. But when the situation got completely out-of-hand, she began posting the attacks from online trolls hoping to draw attention to the abuse she was facing, New York Magazine reported. “You can hate the movie but the shit I got today… wrong”, said Ms. Jones, who has 250,000 followers. “But there has to be some guidelines when you let spread like that”, she wrote on a separate tweet.
Other celebrities also complained about the abusive behaviors of other users on Twitter’s platform.
Jones’ tweets prompted a response from Twitter’s chief executive Jack Dorsey, who urged Jones to contact him.
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“People should be able to express diverse opinions and beliefs on Twitter”, a company spokesperson said in a statement provided to BuzzFeed News. Its spokesman said the company plans to say more about how it will do this in the coming weeks.
