Steve Kovach July 23, 2016 at 05:00AM
Vile, abusive comments on Twitter aren't new, but seeing Twitter actually take action against them is a rare occurrence.
Milo Yiannopoulos, the Breitbart tech editor and professional alt-right internet commenter, was permanently booted off Twitter Tuesday for fomenting racist and abusive attacks against "Ghostbusters" and "SNL" star Leslie Jones.
He deserved it.
Many of the tweets Yiannopoulos and his followers posted are too disgusting to show here.
She was called an ape. She had photos of her with semen on her face tweeted at her. Yiannopoulos called her a black man. Yiannopoulos even posted screenshots of doctored tweets from Jones in a sorry attempt trying to paint her as a white-hating racist, prompting even more disgusting tweets directed at Jones.
The attacks all stem from the fact that a subculture on Twitter had issues with an all-female reboot of "Ghostbusters." Their complaints have been rumbling since the movie was first announced, but they decided to channel their anger against the only African-American lead in the movie this week now that it's in theaters.
It's an important lesson for Twitter and its users as the company struggles to figure out how to mitigate abuse and harassment on its service. It's also an important lesson for Yiannopoulos and his followers. This isn't a free speech issue, as Yiannopoulos has claimed. It's about a company creating a product that its customers feel safe using.
Twitter isn't completely safe today, but deleting the account of someone like Yiannopoulos and barring him access to a network of his followers who seem dedicated to this kind of abuse is a wake up call. Yiannopoulos has been the nexus of a lot of harassment on Twitter — his account has been suspended before and his verification status taken away — and should serve as an example to other lower-profile users on the social network who consider following his example.
But Twitter has a responsibility too, and it should use this incident as a launching-off point to make good on its repeated, yet seemingly empty promises to fix the abuse problem that's poisoned the network.
In a statement to Business Insider regarding Yiannopoulos' ban Tuesday, Twitter 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.
Over the past 48 hours in particular, we've seen an uptick in the number of accounts violating these policies and have taken enforcement actions against these accounts, ranging from warnings that also require the deletion of tweets violating our policies to permanent suspension."
Twitter also said it's reviewing its policies "to prohibit additional types of abusive behavior."
So far, Twitter has failed miserably at taking reports of abuse seriously. It wasn't until Jones publicly complained to her 265,000 followers, quit the service, and had a personal conversation with CEO Jack Dorsey that Twitter took action. Meanwhile, I've seen plenty of cases over the years where my friends and other people I follow on Twitter report horrible incidents of harassment only to get a sorry-we-can't-help-you message back from the company.
Unfortunately, Twitter's Yiannopoulos ban feels more like an effort to squash some bad publicity than a serious attempt to combat rampant abuse on the network. The good news: Twitter now has the opportunity to use this incident as a rallying point to finally make real steps to fix the problem.
In the meantime, people on Yiannopoulos' side are having a hard time figuring out the difference between free speech and outright abuse.
In a statement to his own publication, Yiannopoulos said, "Twitter is holding me responsible for the actions of fans and trolls using the pretzel logic of the left."
"Like all acts of the totalitarian regressive left, this will blow up in their faces, netting me more adoring fans. We're winning the culture war, and Twitter just shot themselves in the foot," he added. "This is the end of Twitter. Anyone who cares about free speech has been sent a clear message: you're not welcome on Twitter."
He made similar arguments in an interview with Business Insider on Wednesday.
There are two problems with his defense.
1.) Yiannopoulos has built a career on prodding his Twitter followers towards targets of the alt-right. To believe his "ho-hum I was just typing" defense to Breitbart either means he's completely ignorant of the kind of following he attracts (doubtful based on how he brags about it), or he's aware of the influence he has on his followers, and that they seem eager to harass on his behalf.
2.) Yiannopoulos doesn't seem to understand what free speech means on a platform he doesn't control. He and his followers don't get to decide what's abusive and what's not. The victim does. And that victim is welcome to report that abuse to Twitter for review.
When horrible comments hit such a volume and such a level of disgust as they did in Jones' case, you can't call it anything but an abusive attack.
Yiannopoulos himself identified that problem about four years ago, writing for The Kernel about how "The internet is turning us all into sociopaths."
In that piece, Yiannopoulos concludes:
So perhaps what’s needed now is a bolder form of censure after all, because the internet is not a universal human right. If people cannot be trusted to treat one another with respect, dignity and consideration, perhaps they deserve to have their online freedoms curtailed. For sure, the best we could ever hope for is a smattering of unpopular show trials. But if the internet, ubiquitous as it now is, proves too dangerous in the hands of the psychologically fragile, perhaps access to it ought to be restricted. We ban drunks from driving because they’re a danger to others. Isn’t it time we did the same to trolls?
Perhaps 2016 Yiannopoulos should listen to 2012 Yiannopoulos.
The right to free speech means the government can't come after you for what you say. (Even then, that doesn't apply to all speech, like credible threats.) Free speech doesn't mean a private platform like Twitter can't kick you off for being an abusive troll. This classic xkcd comic explains that logic pretty well.
Twitter's move is not about silencing the right, as Yiannopoulos claims. Twitter wouldn't have deleted his account for suggesting the US build a wall to block Mexicans from coming into the country or banning Muslim immigration or posting any other Trump talking point he wants to parrot — although those ideas might seem vile.
Twitter has a responsibility to its users to weed out abusive accounts. Users have a responsibility to understand their right to free speech on the platform doesn't include the right to harass other members or, in Yiannopoulos' case, slyly encourage it.
But there's also the slippery slope argument: If you ban racist trolls, do you also ban people calling for violent protests against the police? Do you ban users harassing journalists for stories they write? Where do you draw the line and who gets to draw it?
There's at least one sign that Twitter is laying the groundwork to filter abuse other than banning people. On Tuesday, Twitter opened up its verification system so anyone could apply for that blue check mark. In theory, you can see Twitter moving to a place where many or most accounts are tied to a person's true identity, which would make it easier for it to filter out tweets from non-verified users. The trolls will still be able to use Twitter, but they'll be stuck in a corner of the service that's practically invisible to most people.
Until then, Tuesday's episode is a lesson for everyone. Twitter learned it has a fundamental harassment problem. Yiannopoulos learned the limits of fomenting that harassment. And we all learned Twitter will remain an awful place for a lot of people until something is fixed.
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Milo Yiannopoulos deserved to be booted off Twitter for life from Business Insider: Steve Kovach
