Twitter has promised to crack down on "targeted abuse and harassment," and it appears to be serious about it: A conservative writer accused of leading a hate campaign against Ghostbusters star Leslie Jones was banned from the site Tuesday, BuzzFeed reports. Milo Yiannopoulos, Breitbart.com's tech editor, was accused of encouraging racist and sexist harassment of Jones, who said the online abuse made her feel like she was in a "personal hell." Twitter spokesman Nu Wexler says that after a rise in reports of targeted abuse, the company has "taken enforcement actions against these accounts, ranging from warnings that also require the deletion of Tweets violating our policies to permanent suspension," Bloomberg reports.
Wexler says Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey—who contacted Jones after she said the abuse had forced her off the site—has made dealing with abuse a priority. "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," he says. Yiannopoulos, who had 338,000 followers, slammed the suspension as a "cowardly" act that shows Twitter "is a safe space for Muslim terrorists and Black Lives Matter extremists, but a no-go zone for conservatives." "Like all acts of the totalitarian regressive left, this will blow up in their faces, netting me more adoring fans," he predicted. Jones' supporters, meanwhile, have been tweeting encouragement under the hashtag #LoveForLeslieJ, reports the AP. (More Leslie Jones stories.)
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