*Leslie Jones is the latest celebrity to fall victim to hackers, making many wonder if Twitter will examine its harassment policy. On Wednesday, Jones’ website had to be taken down after hackers hijacked it and posted nude photos of the comedian, along with other personal information such as her phone number and passport information.
Since March, the “Ghostbusters” and “Saturday Night Live” star has been the target of an ongoing racist cyberbullying campaign that has moved from Twitter to her personal website.
Jones quit Twitter during the ordeal, but not before saying how hurt she was over all the hate. In late July, she spoke with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, who later condemned the attacks against the star, saying, “we need to do better.”
TheWrap.com notes that the admission came after he said last year in an internal company memo: “We suck at dealing with abuse and trolls on the platform, and we’ve sucked at it for years.”
“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,” a Twitter spokesperson told TheWrap.
READ RELATED STORY: Leslie Jones Victim of Website Hack; Nude Pics, ID, Passwords & More Posted
The cyberbullying incidents aren’t isolated to Jones and celebrities, but Leslie’s situation is causing several outlets and ordinary citizens to put pressure on the struggling social media platform to step up its efforts against such attacks.
Buzzfeed has pointed out how Twitter’s policies on harassment have been lax since its founding nearly a decade ago. Although the site has certain policies around verified accounts, trolls can still register anonymously.
Twitter recently rolled out a feature that allows all users to limit notifications to only people they follow. There’s also a setting designed to weed out offensive or uninteresting posts. Jones has access to both of these features but got harassed anyway. Users believe Twitter needs to do better.
“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,” the Twitter spokesperson told TheWrap.
“We have been in the process of reviewing our policies 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.”
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