Twitter permanently banned conservative journalist Milo Yiannopoulos for allegedly violating its “hateful conduct policy” on Tuesday night. The banishment stemmed from Milo’s role in Tweets that he sent to Leslie Jones over her role in the Ghostbusters reboot.
These appear to be the most recent tweets from Yiannopoulos to Jones.
Tfw the one time Milo barely does anything will get him purged by the overlords
Seriously, these tweets are tame pic.twitter.com/jy6p1Sepow
— Dark Intelligence (@Dark_Intell) July 19, 2016
These tweets aren’t particularly nice, but those are extremely innocuous when you consider the vile cesspool that Twitter can be.
Apparently, some of Milo’s 338,000 Twitter followers took his lead and attacked Jones as well. Some of the users did send despicable and racists tweets that have no place anywhere in society.
Then someone created fake tweets to make it appear that Jones said racist remarks.
Jones tried to fight the hatred.
Cause I have every right to be offended and pissed. So for right now I have to take a break. All this hatred giving me the blues! Outty 5000
— Leslie Jones 🦋 (@Lesdoggg) July 19, 2016
Twitter I understand you got free speech I get it. But there has to be some guidelines when you let spread like that. You can see on the
— Leslie Jones 🦋 (@Lesdoggg) July 19, 2016
Twitter’s co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey reached out to Jones personally.
Hi Leslie, following, please DM me when you have a moment
— jack (@jack) July 19, 2016
But eventually, she left Twitter.
I leave Twitter tonight with tears and a very sad heart.All this cause I did a movie.You can hate the movie but the shit I got today…wrong
— Leslie Jones 🦋 (@Lesdoggg) July 19, 2016
Twitter permanently banned the right-wing editor for Breitbart.com.
Twitter released a statement regarding the incident:
People should be able to express diverse opinions and beliefs on Twitter. 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.
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. We have been in the 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. We’ll provide more details on those changes in the coming weeks.
Yiannopoulos responded on his Facebook page:
Twitter just declared war on free speech — and, in the process, signed its own death warrant. The message to libertarians, conservatives and anyone who loves mischief, irreverence and fun is clear. You’re not welcome any more.
The #FreeMilo hashtag still trending on Twitter at #3 Worldwide and #2 in the United States. Censoring me always ends up giving me a larger total platform.
He also shared these two photos regarding his banishment.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BIEwvF1AH42/?taken-by=milo.yiannopoulos&hl=en
Heat Street asked Milo if he has any regrets for attacking Jones.
“No, of course, I don’t have any regrets. But feminists on the other hand should have regrets that they have taught strong women that they are victims and attacked people for having different opinions to them on Twitter.”
Milo, a self-identified homosexual who is one of the rising stars on the alt-right scene, defended accusations that he was racist.
“I keep getting accused of being a white supremacist. But if that’s the case, I must be the first black-dick-sucking white supremacist in history.”
Milo, the self-proclaimed “most fabulous supervillain on the internet,” has been suspended from Twitter in the past and has a history of being dangerously provocative.
Supporters of Milo created the #FreeMilo and #FreeNero hashtags and it has been a trending topic since Tuesday night.
https://twitter.com/RealDeanCain/status/755755436482060288
Suspending the top gay conservative voice of the world??
Great move @jack, Very tolerant of you!!#FreeMilo
— Baked Alaska (@bakedalaska) July 20, 2016
https://twitter.com/KassyDillon/status/755711870850437120
Known jihadists were using Twitter to recruit UK brides via Kik. I reported to top terror cops. Accounts not closed for weeks #freemilo
— Martin Daubney 🇬🇧 (@MartinDaubney) July 20, 2016
https://twitter.com/MentalityMag/status/755598482161950720
https://twitter.com/LeahRBoss/status/755628182326435840
Milo is banned, but the person who threatened to come to my house & attack me (who I reported to Twitter) still has an account. #FreeMilo
— Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) July 20, 2016
https://twitter.com/scrowder/status/755604167545221121
https://twitter.com/LibertarianBlue/status/755599216257347584
Gavin McInnes, conservative personality and co-founder of Vice Media, said, “This has nothing to do with Milo and everything to do with PC fascism.”
There were others who were calling for Milo’s account to be removed from Twitter with #BanNero.
https://twitter.com/wilw/status/755549231356665857
A large part of Twitter's harassment problem would disappear if @nero was banned from the platform #BanNero https://t.co/ewil3ozHNg
— Graham Linehan (@Glinner) July 19, 2016
https://twitter.com/ChrisWarcraft/status/755236250513240064
Milo was a threat to the free speech of the women & ethnic minorities he targeted in hate storms. His removal is a net gain for free speech.
— Ian Dunt (@IanDunt) July 20, 2016
Absolutely no one deserves to be abused, and Twitter does have issues with hateful speech. However, Twitter does have measures in place so that you can not only report the awful vitriol, but also block or mute the internet trolls.
Twitter is not a public utility, it is a privately-owned company, so it does not have to ensure that their users receive rights such as those granted by the First Amendment.
However, a dialogue has been opened and questions remain. Was what Milo said hate speech? Is being offensive punishable by a permanent ban? Was Milo unjustifiably singled out because of his political allegiances?
Just another day in the wonderful world that is Twitter.