‘Ghostbusters’ star Leslie Jones calls attention to Twitter harassment
Twitter’s CEO on Monday night reached out to comedian Leslie Jones after she highlighted the harassment she had been receiving on the social media platform.
“Hi Leslie, following, please [direct message] me when you have a moment,” Jack Dorsey tweeted to Jones, who had documented the racist and sexist tweets being directed at her account.
{mosads}Jones, a star of the new “Ghostbusters” remake and a cast member on “Saturday Night Live,” tweeted screenshots of many instances of harassment Monday.
Some Twitter users sent Jones, who is black, pictures of apes and monkeys and hurled insults at her. She said Twitter should bolster its anti-abuse policies — a frequent call among users.
“Twitter I understand you got free speech I get it,” she wrote in a series of tweets. “But there has to be some guidelines when you let spread like that.
“You can see on the profiles that some of these people are crazy sick. It’s not enough to freeze [their account]. They should be reported.”
Twitter pledged to keep investing in anti-harassment tools in a statement issued in response to Jones’s complaints.
“This type of abusive behavior is not permitted on Twitter, and we’ve taken action on many of the accounts reported to us by both Leslie and others,” said a Twitter spokesperson.
“We rely on people to report this type of behavior to us but we are continuing to invest heavily in improving our tools and enforcement systems to prevent this kind of abuse. We realize we still have a lot of work in front of us before Twitter is where it should be on how we handle these issues.”
Jones has become increasingly prominent thanks to her well-received performances on television and her appearances in major films. The “Ghostbusters” remake featuring Jones has been the subject of anger in some quarters of the internet because it features four women as the titular characters.
Twitter has struggled to adequately deal with harassment for longer than that.
Jones, for her part, has not tweeted since early Tuesday morning, when she sent this message: “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 s*** I got today…wrong,” she wrote.
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