Last week, the widely anticipated and surprisingly controversial all-female Ghostbusters reboot opened to mostly positive reviews and mediocre box office.
But it wasn’t the quality or popularity of the film that drew the most attention on social media in the days following its release.
Sadly, the bulk of the attention on Twitter went to the appalling attacks against Leslie Jones, a beloved SNL castmember and one of the four wildly talented leads of the film.
One of Jones’ more outspoken critics was “alt-conservative” Breitbart News columnist Milo Yiannopoulos, who has now been banned from the popular micro-blogging site after Jones reported some of his more offensive tweets.
“People should be able to express diverse opinions and beliefs on Twitter,” a company spokesperson said in a statement provided to BuzzFeed News.
“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 move has sparked an intense debate online with many – even some who disagree with Yiannopoulos – expressing their belief that the ban constitutes a troubling imposition on the popular web personality’s freedom of speech.
While the right to tweet is obviously not protected by the Constitution, for web professionals, access to the major social media sites has become necessary to the point that a suspended account is on par with having one’s phone service taken away.
That’s not to say Twitter, Facebook and Instagram shouldn’t exercise their right to remove users due to the nature of the content that they post, but in the interest of maintaining an open dialogue and avoiding an online nanny state, users should be suspended only in cases of bigoted hate speech or persistent harassment.
Whether Yiannopoulis’ tweets fall under either category is a matter that the online community cannot seem to agree on.
“This is the beginning of the end for Twitter,” Yiannopoulos said in a statement about his suspension. “Some people are going to find this perfectly acceptable.”
“Anyone who believes in free speech or is a conservative certainly will not.”
The hashtag #FreeMilo began trending shortly after news of Yiannopoulos’ suspension went public.
