'Ghostbusters' Star Leslie Jones Quits Twitter After Online Harassment
— -- Actress Leslie Jones announced on Twitter overnight that she's leaving the popular social media platform, citing a barrage of online harassers.
"I leave Twitter tonight with tears and a very sad heart," Jones tweeted. "All this cause I did a movie. You can hate the movie but the [s---] I got today. Wrong."
Jones is one of the stars of the new "Ghostbusters," which was released this weekend and has been the target of attacks for its all-female leads. But Jones, 48, in particular, has been bombarded with racist and misogynist comments. She fought back on Twitter Monday.
Jones said she had been likened to "apes" and sent obscene photos, and noted that she was blocking the abusive Twitter users.
But then she changed her mind, saying she was going to stop blocking the trolls so her fans "can go through my feed yourself and see the bs. You won't believe the evil."
"Exposing I hope y'all go after them like they going after me," she tweeted before posting some of the worst offenders, including what appeared to be a fake Twitter account by someone posing as Jones and posting racist and sexist tweets.
"I'm not stupid to not know racism exists," Jones wrote. "And I know it will probably live on way after me. But we have to make people take responsibility for the hate they spew. We have to stand up to it."
She also called on Twitter to do something, to which the social media site responded, "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."
Many of her followers and some of her famous friends, including Judd Apatow, "Star Wars" star John Boyega, comedian Loni Love and "Ghostbusters" director Paul Feig, did come to her defense.
Note: Some of the links below may contain offensive language.
Twitter released a statement late Tuesday addressing the incident:
"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."
