Twitter Bans Racist Trolls Who Attacked Leslie Jones – as CEO Reaches Out to Ghostbusters Star
The accounts of Twitter users who led the harassment against Jones have been permanently suspended
The CEO of Twitter is trying to make things right with Leslie Jones.
The Ghostbusters star was the target of a recent attack of racist and offensive comments on Twitter that left Jones with “tears and a very sad heart.”
The tweets caught the attention of Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey, who sent Jones, 48, a message asking her to get in touch with him.
“Hi Leslie, following, please DM me when you have a moment,” he wrote.
According to Buzzfeed News, Twitter also permanently suspended conservative writer and Breitbart.com tech editor Milo Yiannopoulos, who they said led a harassment campaign against the Saturday Night Live actress.
Twitter also released a statement in which they said they were investigating ways to improve their process of reviewing abusive behavior on the social media site and will continue to work on their policies.
“People should be able to express diverse opinions and beliefs on Twitter,” the statement read. “But no one deserves to be subjected to targeted abuse online, and our rules prohibit inciting or engaging in the targeted abuse or harassment of others. 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.”
It continued, “We know many people believe we have not done enough to curb this type of behavior on Twitter. We agree. We are continuing to invest heavily in improving our tools and enforcement systems to better allow us to identify and take faster action on abuse as it’s happening and prevent repeat offenders.”