Michelle Castillo
CNBC
Breitbart technology editor Milo Yiannopoulos called Twitter out for deleting his account over what he claimed was biased and unwarranted cause. He said if the social network continues this behavior, Twitter investors should be worried.
“If Twitter does change the rules to clamp down on the most fun people, interesting people, on its platform, people are going to leave,” Yiannopoulos said on CNBC’s “Power Lunch” on Wednesday.
The controversial journalist, who went by @Nero on Twitter, was banned from the social network on Tuesday for allegedly tweeting abusive comments towards specific users and inciting others to do so.
The most recent campaign was directed towards actress Leslie Jones, who starred in the all-female cast of the rebooted “Ghostbusters” movie. Jones tweeted on Tuesday that she was quitting Twitter due to the abuse.
I leave Twitter tonight with tears and a very sad heart.All this cause I did a movie.You can hate the movie but the shit I got today…wrong
— Leslie Jones 🦋 (@Lesdoggg) July 19, 2016
Yiannopoulos said he never sent sexist or racist tweets towards Jones, and the only “proof” out there was that he teased the actress on Twitter because he didn’t like her movie. He also said that any tweets from others because of his actions is not his fault.
“Some of that is disgusting,” he admitted. “But I’m not responsible for what other people post on Twitter.”
This isn’t the first time Yiannopoulos has been involved in an online harassment— otherwise known as trolling —scandal. The conservative journalist has made a name for himself for his outspoken conservative views on what he perceives are unfair advantages towards women, ethnic minorities and the LGBT community, despite being openly homosexual himself.
He was one of the journalists involved in the “Gamergate” controversy, speaking out against what he called “feminist programmers and campaigners, abetted by achingly politically correct American tech bloggers.”
He’s also founded a scholarship specifically for white men in order to give them an “equal” advantage against other genders and ethnicity.
Yiannopoulos said he believed that this recent ban was due to a “systematic campaign against conservative and libertarian points of view on Twitter.” He blamed Twitter for making a faulty product that didn’t account for alternate points of view.
“If Twitter had built tools from people who didn’t like to hear from each other, this would never had happened,” he said.
Earlier on Tuesday, Yiannopoulos called the Twitter suspension “cowardly” in his first statement.
“With the cowardly suspension of my account, Twitter has confirmed itself as a safe space for Muslim terrorists and Black Lives Matter extremists, but a no-go zone for conservatives,” he said. “Twitter is holding me responsible for the actions of fans and trolls using the special pretzel logic of the left. Where are the Twitter police when Justin Bieber’s fans cut themselves on his behalf? 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. This is the end for Twitter. Anyone who cares about free speech has been sent a clear message: you’re not welcome on Twitter.”
Twitter’s rules state that while it supports everyone sharing ideas, there are some “limitations on the type of content and behavior that we allow.” A Twitter spokesperson said it does not comment on individual accounts, for privacy and security reasons.
The spokesperson added in a 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.”
“We know many people believe we have not done enough to curb this type of behavior on Twitter. 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.”
While Yiannopoulos acknowledged that Twitter should be allowed to run its company the way it wants, he said it shouldn’t claim to be a bastion of free speech.
“Twitter is a private company, and it’s entitled to do what it likes,” he said. “The problem is it’s lying to its users.”