It did not take long for Twitter’s CEO Jack Dorsey to crack down on the users trolling Ghostbusters star Leslie Jones. Jones sent out a series of several tweets claiming she had been harassed in regards to her starring role in the new remake of Ghostbusters, released on Friday. The film, which features an all-female cast, has been moderately well received by critics. The film angered viewers that felt the film did not tribute the original 1984 hit that many people loved and focused rather on female politics instead.
Rule number one for a celebrity on twitter should be to never read their commenters. It only means trouble. Jones did not do that and was somehow taken by surprise at the trollers that commented on her tweets. She spent the entire day on Monday replying to trolls and asked the twitter community to stop spewing hate. That is when Dorsey tweeted to Jones asking them to keep in contact.
Among the supposed trollers was famed Breitbart news technical supervisor Milo Yiannopoulos. Milo is known for his provocative statements and has often been hailed and demonized from various political commentators. Yiannopoulos, who is gay, and has spent his whole career redefining gay stereotype thinking in politics, and has said some things on social media in the past that have violated privacy terms, but to his defense, there is no evidence that he made remarks to Leslie Jones’ account. Before he was permanently banned from Twitter, he was on his way to a themed ‘Gays for Trump party after the convention in Cleveland.
“Some people are going to find this perfectly acceptable,” Yiannopoulos said. “Anyone who believes in free speech or is a conservative certainly will not.”
Twitter took responsibility for the series of incidents that has gone unrecognized and admitted that they needed to do a better job at monitoring profane content among its users. It, however, makes no sense for the platform to ban Yiannopoulos or target him after there have been many users involved with the supposed racist remarks thrown at Ms. Jones. Neither were the tweets of the trollers released to the public.
“With the cowardly suspension of my account, Yiannopoulos added, Twitter has confirmed itself as a safe space for Muslim terrorists and Black Lives Matter extremists, but a no-go zone for conservatives.”
In fact, it is evidenced that Ms. Jones herself has spewed racist tweets in her past as exampled:
http://twitter.com/Englishpapist/status/755701715438018561
The user hashtag #FreeMilo was trending on Twitter after news broke of the suspension.
