Twitter Responds To Abuse Of Leslie Jones; Bans User For Life And Introduces Verification For All

Twitter has promised to take action against abusive accounts after Ghostbusters star Leslie Jones shared the onslaught of hate-speech she receives on a daily basis.

Jones, the breakout Saturday Night Live star who plays Patty in Paul Feig’s all-female Ghostbusters reboot, spent much of Tuesday sharing disturbing, racist Tweets from anonymous abusers, causing her to leave Twitter “with tears and a very sad heart.”

The hashtag #LoveForLeslieJ attempted to bring her back to the platform, though the entire ordeal reminded many that Twitter has regularly failed to put an end to abusive accounts, particularly those targeting women. (Remember #GamerGate?)

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey indicated that a change was coming after reaching out to Jones (via Twitter, obvs).

The company then released the following statement:

“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.”

One such account belonged to Milo Yiannopoulos, who, under the account @nero, led the torrent of abuse directed at Jones, Buzzfeed reports. He has been banned for life.

“We know many people believe we have not done enough to curb this type of behaviour on Twitter,” Twitter’s statement continues.

“We agree. 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. We have been in the process of reviewing our hateful conduct policy to prohibit additional types of abusive behavior and allow more types of reporting, with the goal of reducing the burden on the person being targeted. We’ll provide more details on those changes in the coming weeks.”

One of those changes is being implemented immediately: Verification for all!

Though the ‘Verified’ tick was previously just for high-profile personalities seeking to differentiate themselves from imposters, it will now become available to anyone who provides Twitter with their verified phone number, confirmed email address, accurate profile picture, birthday and website.

Twitter may also request that you “scan and upload a legible copy of your government-issued ID… to confirm your identity”.

Some may balk at these requirements and it’s not yet known what Twitter can and can’t do with this private information. There is also a question to be raised as to what happens to “unverified” accounts, and whether or not this will actually stem the number of anonymous ‘eggs’ who spout abuse.

But hopefully Twitter continues exploring ways to end hate-speech on their platform and create a safe environment for users, or eventually they will have no subscribers left, verified or not.

Verification roll-out begins today, extending globally over the week.

Photo: Sony.