Journalist Banned By Twitter Amid ‘Ghostbusters’ Controversy

After she was unjustly harassed, ‘Ghostbusters’ star Leslie Jones took Twitter to task and had one of the hate mob members, a British tech journalist, removed from the social media giant.

Sticks and stones may break my bones but Twitter will never hurt me.

According to ABC News, Leslie Jones, who recently starred in Paul Feig‘s Ghostbusters, has called for Twitter to ban one of her detractors, and upon request, has been granted just that.

The man in question is Milo Yiannopoulos, tech editor of the British site Breitbart.com. While the social personality is apparently known for his hard-edged personality, apparently Twitter believed Yiannopoulos took things too far when they banned the man.

Here is the statement Twitter gave in responses to the ban of Yiannopoulos:

"“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,” Twitter wrote in a statement to ABC News. “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."

Twitter went on to add, after ABC News asked for comment:

"“We know many people believe we have not done enough to curb this type of behavior on Twitter. We agree,” the statement read. “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."

Check out some of the tweets from ousted editor, which led to the Twitter ban, below:

In response to the ban, the British journalist came out with this statement:

"“I did nothing wrong. Twitter has suspended me without evidence of wrongdoing and without explanation while allowing the most appalling abuses to continue on its platform. This is political, plain and simple. Leslie Jones ain’t afraid of no ghost — but evidently she’s allergic to bad reviews. My suspension has made one thing clear — Twitter doesn’t stand for free speech. What they do stand for is a carefully crafted facade of leftist approved ideas, and conservatives that don’t stray too far from safe (globalist) ideas. Like so many platforms before them, their efforts to enforce group think will be their undoing,”"

Man can’t we all just get along. While I don’t believe Yiannopoulos said anything to the extent that others did, like referring to the African-American actress as an Ape or Orangutan, he’s still a troll who shouldn’t be allowed to trash someone and then claim free speech.

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While Yiannopoulos isn’t American, every county that has ever had to fight for their freedom and right to expression should take offense with Milo Yiannopoulos. Some countries don’t grant their citizens freedom of speech, and instead of being positive, Yiannopoulos would rather break people down with hurtful words. For my money, this ban was justified.