*Before signing off from Twitter early Tuesday, after receiving a barrage of racist and hateful tweets, “Ghostbusters” star Leslie Jones urged the social networking service to do more to eliminate hate speech.
And Twitter has responded.
According to the Associated Press, chief executive Jack Dorsey sent Jones a message asking her to get in touch with him. It was followed Twitter’s release of an official statement denouncing the racist behavior:
“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 spokesperson for Twitter. “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.”
“Ghostbusters,” which also stars Melissa McCarthy, Kirsten Wiig and Kate McKinnon, has generated an unusual amount of vitriol online, with many anonymous commenters targeting its female stars, reports the AP.
The most vile, however, was directed toward Leslie, where racial slurs and racist imagery could be added to disparage the film’s lone African American ghostbuster.
“I feel like I’m in a personal hell,” tweeted Jones amid the Twitter attack. “I didn’t do anything to deserve this. It’s just too much. It shouldn’t be like this. So hurt right now.”
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