Twitter Have Permanently Banned Conservative Writer Milo Yiannopoulos

The State Press

There has been friction between Milo Yiannopoulos and Twitter for a while now. At the beginning of the year, he lost his Twitter verification status and in March he took his issues with Twitter's hate speech policies to the White House. Now Yiannopoulos has been banned after he was considered to have incited his followers to send the Ghostbusters actress Leslie Jones with racist and demeaning tweets. The influx of tweets has caused Leslie Jones to quit Twitter and the staff of Twitter have decided that Yiannopoulos has taken things too far this time.

If this was the first time that Yiannopoulos had done something like this Twitter probably wouldn't be doing anything about it. That in itself is an issue. A lot of people on social media were complaining about how Twitter should have done something, how it wasn't right that users were getting away with this. Now someone is being punished for it but have they picked the wrong person? Yiannopoulos was removed as he has been reported many times for hate speech, but many people believe that what he was saying and doing does not constitute as so. In the case of Leslie Jones, she should have been willing to put up with it as according to them, her reason for being upset were just because people didn't like the movie she was in. It was more than that and maybe Yiannopoulos didn't say anything terrible to her himself, but we cannot see that now as his account has been suspended.

Twitter have always said that it's difficult for them to decide what constitutes as hate speech. They want users to be able to say what they like on the service but they can't allow them to attack people either. What Leslie Jones experienced was an attack and if Yiannopoulos did encourage it, then it makes sense that he was reported. There is a possibility that he did nothing but it does seem unlikely considering the uproar before if they'd banned him without seeing what he'd actually done.

Yiannopoulos is claiming that this was a mistake by Twitter and that this is proof that Twitter does not allow free speech if you're right-wing. Twitter, on the other hand, have stated that they know  they haven't done enough to kerb the recent harassment but have said they've taken actions against some of the users breaking the terms and conditions. Twitter have done their best but in this case, that might not be enough. Yiannopoulos isn't sure what he's going to do now or if he wants his account back but he's certainly going to let everyone know what he thinks about Twitter.

Rosina Brooker

Rosina is a Songbird writer with a degree in Creative Writing. She's trying to focus on her novel on the side but is glad to be playing around with apps and writing about them in the mean time! Follow her @Songbird_Rosina

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