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 Jones retweeted and shared several abusive tweets she
received Monday before telling her 250,000 followers: "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."
Among those banned Tuesday was Breitbart tech editor Milo
Yiannopoulos, who has been a controversial figure on the site
and helped lead the abuse against Jones. Yiannopoulos did not
immediately respond to a request for comment.
Twitter has long come under criticism for not doing enough to
police abusive behavior on the often-freewheeling messaging
service. Other celebrities have taken issue with abuse on the
site, including writer and actress Lena Dunham, who said in
September she had hired someone to tweet on her behalf because
it was no longer a "safe space" for her.
Twitter said in a statement Tuesday that it had seen an "uptick"
in the number of accounts violating its abuse and harassment
policies over the past 48 hours, noting it had enforced its
policies either by issuing warnings or permanently suspending
users.
"We know many people believe we have not done enough to curb
this type of behavior on Twitter. We agree," Twitter said in the
statement. "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."
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Jones shared some of the racist tweets targeted toward her, many of
which compared her to an ape. User YellowArmedImposter wrote, "Your
Ghostbusters isn't the first to have an ape in it," which Jones
shared with the comment: "I just don't understand."
Jones, who is also a regular cast member on Saturday Night Live,
publicly pondered over several tweets what would prompt people to
"spew hate."
"I used to wonder why some celebs don't have Twitter accts now I
know," she wrote in one tweet. In a separate post, she added:
"Twitter I understand you got free speech I get it. But there has to
be some guidelines when you let spread like that."
(Reporting by Yasmeen Abutaleb abd Dustin Volz Editing by Jonathan
Weber and Nick Macfie)
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