20 Jul 2016

Twitter accused of inaction over on-line hate campaigns

From Afternoons, 1:13 pm on 20 July 2016
Leslie Jones

Leslie Jones Photo: twitter

Twitter is under fire for not doing enough about on-line harassment following another targetted campaign of racial and sexual abuse, this time against a black US actress and comedian.

Leslie Jones, who stars in the all female remake of Ghostbusters, had pleaded with twitter to help her after being bombarded with hateful and abusive messages and images - many of which cannot be repeated on air.

This comes as a new study of 500 New Zealand women by security company  Norton found three quarters of those under 30 had experienced on-line harassment, and one in four had been threatened with rape, sexual assault or death.

After Leslie Jone's retweeted many of the vile messages she'd received,  many other well known women have since spoken out about harassment - and people around the world have been tweeting their support of her, via the twitter hashtag #LoveforLeslieJ

That was created by New York Marissa Rei, the creator #BlackOutDay - who has suffered this kind of abuse herself, and wanted to take action