Remember when hip-hop sensation Iggy Azalea quit Twitter because of constant trolling and abuse? Another celebrity quits Twitter. It’s for the very same reason.
Leslie Jones, star of the new Ghostbusters and Saturday Night Live, signed off Twitter due to many abusive tweets that came her way. Some are so racist and sexually offensive I won’t dare quote them. Jones fought back. She reported some of her abusers. But the more she did that, the more vicious the tweets got. Not only did Jones sign off, she called for action. She calls for stronger guidelines to crack down on hate speech. She urged fellow Twitters to report hate speech. In her final tweets Jones said, “I didn’t do anything to deserve this. It’s just too much. It shouldn’t be like this. So hurt right now.” Some Twitter users were found out and suspended permanently. A Twitter spokesperson vows his company will do more to fight Twitter abuse. One suspended Twitter user is Breitbart editor and conservative commentator?Milo Yiannopoulos. Yiannopoulos denied any abuse.??Milo Y. claims his suspension was politically based. He criticized Twitter. Yinnopoulos said he was targeted because he was a conservative. He even hinted he’s part of a left-wing witch hunt.
It shouldn’t take a celebrity to remind us about proper social media etiquette. Twitter should not be a place to spit venomous hatred. And cowards hide behind fake names and pictures to spew it. That’s the real tragedy here. I’d like to see one of those abusers confront Jones face to face. But we have to be careful when we say, ‘curb hate speech’. Milo Y. may have a point. Let’s not turn hate speech into a witch hunt. How can we crack down on abusive tweets without interfering with free speech? I’ve seen some of the tweets Jones got. Some are really vile and perverse. That has no place on Twitter. But if someone doesn’t like Ghostbusters, and posts a constructive criticism about the movie, that should not be censored. Let’s be respectable about it. Will this case make Twitter a safer place? Or is this an attempt to stifle our First Amendment rights?