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Twitter Finally Bans Milo Yiannopoulos After His Sickening Harassment of Leslie Jones

By Brian Richards | Social Media | July 20, 2016 |

By Brian Richards | Social Media | July 20, 2016 |


Milo Yiannopoulos, technology editor for Breitbart, conservative commentator, and talking pile of smegma, who has been known for numerous incidents of abuse and harassment on Twitter as @Nero and who was largely responsible for inciting his followers to send racist tweets to actress/comedian Leslie Jones, was finally placed on permanent suspension by Twitter after many other users and news articles called attention to the harassment that Leslie was dealing with, and also to the uselessness and inadequacy of Twitter’s Terms Of Service when it came to dealing with reports of abuse and harassment.

As expected, Milo, who looks like the villain in an Eighties teen comedy, responded with all of the maturity and introspection one could expect from him after all these years:

“With the cowardly suspension of my account, Twitter has confirmed itself as a safe space for Muslim terrorists and Black Lives Matter extremists, but a no-go zone for conservatives. Twitter is holding me responsible for the actions of fans and trolls using the special pretzel logic of the left. Where are the Twitter police when Justin Bieber’s fans cut themselves on his behalf? Like all acts of the totalitarian regressive left, this will blow up in their faces, netting me more adoring fans. We’re winning the culture war, and Twitter just shot themselves in the foot. This is the end for Twitter. Anyone who cares about free speech has been sent a clear message: you’re not welcome on Twitter.”

And the many people who came out in support of Milo, who looks like a villain in a James Bond film, responded with the same level of maturity. Especially since they showed their support through the hashtag #FreeMilo, even though I’m sure these same people ready to die on the hill that is Milo Yiannopoulos were nowhere to be seen or heard in any discussions of #BlackLivesMatter, #SayHerName, or #YouOKSis:

Despite the many cheers that occurred once Milo “soon-to-be-a-victim-of-getting-an-ax-to-the-face-by-Patrick Bateman” Yiannopoulos was finally Spartan-kicked off of Twitter, there was also plenty of anger and indignation over the fact that not only did it take this long for his account to be suspended, but that it took blatant and constant harassment and racism towards a famous Black woman for Twitter Support and Twitter Safety to get off their asses and do their jobs. Twitter seemed to notice this as well, hence their statement in response to Leslie’s online abuse and Milo’s suspension:

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.

There have been, and there continues to be, far too many examples of women on Twitter (Black women, especially) not receiving any of the help or attention they need or want in dealing with stalkers and trolls who are determined to make their lives and their time on Twitter an absolute living hell. After everything that Leslie Jones has been through (and everything that Twitter has done to show her plenty of love, support, and appreciation via the #LoveForLeslieJ hashtag started by Twitter user @MarissaRei1), here’s hoping that Twitter finally decides to step its fucking game up like we’ve been asking it to for years and do everything possible to help and protect the women who use it, whether they’re famous and have name recognition or not.

And because I’m somewhat petty and couldn’t resist one last dig at Milo Yiannopoulos, who looks like he decided to cosplay as Draco Malfoy every day for the rest of his life:

via GIPHY