Twitter announced that it has banned Breitbart tech editor Milo Yiannopoulos from the site after he and his followers attacked Ghostbusters star Leslie Jones hours earlier.
Yiannopoulos encouraged his fans to go after the actress with hateful messages and even trolled her himself. Hours after the abuse occurred, Jones tweeted, “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.”
The social media site then stepped in and suspended him.
In a statement to BuzzFeed News, a Twitter spokesperson said, “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.”
While many have praised the action by Twitter of banning Yiannopoulos, his supporters are bashing the decision and have started the hashtag #FreeMilo.
Yiannopoulous is the voice of what is known as the “alt-right” movement, which consists of right-wing supporters who rely heavily on Internet memes to get their messages out there. The Breitbart editor himself has used the micro-blogging site to push his own agenda in the past. With this ban though, he will no longer be able to do that via Twitter.