Actress and comedian Leslie Jones — who’s on “Saturday Night Live” and starring in the new “Ghostbusters” movie — left Twitter in tears Monday night.
Actress Leslie Jones was bullied off Twitter by racist trolls
An unfriendly reminder that Twitter still has an abuse problem.
Alberto E. Rodriguez / Getty Images
Twitter trolls spent the evening sending her racist tweets and images, and other users impersonated her on the service to write vile things. Her public pleas for them to stop even prompted Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to reach out and try to get in touch with her.
We don’t know if they ever connected, but Jones signed off Twitter a few hours later with a heartbreaking message.
“I leave Twitter tonight with tears and a very sad heart,” she wrote. “All this cause I did a movie. You can hate the movie but the shit I got today...wrong.”
Jones’s departure is yet another sad reminder that Twitter hasn’t figured out a way to handle abuse on its platform. It’s bad for business to have users pushed out by other users. It’s bad for humanity, too. And you know it’s a major problem when high-profile, likable celebrities get chased off your service.
Jones is not the first celebrity user to be bullied off Twitter. Singer Adele and actress Lena Dunham both publicly quit Twitter in the past (although they are both back tweeting).
Update: This post has been updated.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
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