Milo Yiannopoulos Banned From Twitter After Leslie Jones Tweets

Milo Yiannopoulos, the controversial journalist employed by conservative media outlet Breitbart, has been permanently suspended from Twitter following the Leslie Jones tweet attack.

Twitter Bans Milo Yiannopoulos

Yiannopoulos wrote a highly critical review of Jones’ new film Ghostbusters – but didn’t stop there. He went on to lead a harassment campaign on Twitter against the Saturday Night Live star. As a result, Jones was inundated with racist tweets that proved so demeaning that Jones decided to take a break from the social media app altogether. Before signing off, Jones retweeted some of the hateful messages she was receiving:

“I use to wonder why some celebs don’t have Twitter accts now I know. You can’t be nice and communicate with fans cause people crazy,” Jones wrote. Her last tweet reads, “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.”

Twitter ultimately determined that Yiannopoulos was the ringleader of the hate and decided to suspend him.

“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,” the company said in a statement. 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.”

Yiannopoulos, predictably, is unhappy with Twitter’s decision. In his own statement on Breitbart, he chastises the company for being “cowardly,” and a “no-go zone” for conservatives.

“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,” Yiannopoulos wrote. “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.”