Twitter Permanently Suspends User Following Leslie Jones Harassment
From it’s initial announcement to its release, the new Ghostbusters film with an all-female leading cast has had more than it’s fair share of criticism. Far more. But now that it’s come out and it turns out it’s not even that bad, most of the universal panning that people anticipated turned out to just be a few disgruntled Internet users. Unless you’re Leslie Jones.
For an entire day, Jones used her Twitter account to bring attention to all of the racist, sexist and downright disgusting comments she was targeted with, many of which came from anonymous users commonly referred to as “trolls.”
“You have to hate yourself to put out that type of hate,” Jones wrote during the campaign. “I mean on my worst day I can’t think of this type of hate to put out.”
Twitter was aware of the situation and, while some feel that it came too late, they stepped in to try and remedy the issue by suspending users that were reported for going against their listed terms of service. They ended up permanently suspending Milo Yiannopoulos, an editor for Breitbart.
“This type of abusive behavior is not permitted on Twitter, and we’ve taken action on many of the accounts reported to us by both Leslie and others,” the website said, according to the New York Times.
“We rely on people to report this type of behavior to us, but we are continuing to invest heavily in improving our tools and enforcement systems to prevent this kind of abuse. We realize we still have a lot of work in front of us before Twitter is where it should be on how we handle these issues.”
Fortunately, many came out to show support Jones as she became the target of a growing amount of Internet harassment that didn’t seem like it would stop any time soon. However, there’s no saying how long the effects of the exchanges will stay with her. Hopefully, not long.
Photo Credits: Wiki Commons