Comedian Leslie Jones has been subjected to a barrage of racist abuse on Twitter following the opening weekend of the new Ghostbusters film. The actress, who stars in the reboot, retweeted many of the offensive messages, highlighting the platform's ongoing struggle to control hate speech.
Jones addressed the attacks directly on Monday, describing many of the comments as coming from "ignorant children." She expressed shock at the volume of hate, saying, "I see the words and pics and videos. Videos y’all. Meaning people took time to spew hate." She had previously considered quitting Twitter in March due to early trolling but was persuaded to stay by director Paul Feig.
Feig responded to the latest wave of abuse on Monday, tweeting: "Leslie Jones is one of the greatest people I know. Any personal attacks against her are attacks against us all," and encouraged supporters to use the hashtag #LoveForLeslieJ. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey also reached out to Jones, and the company issued a statement saying it had taken action on many of the reported accounts. "We realise we still have a lot of work in front of us before Twitter is where it should be on how we handle these issues," a spokesperson said.
The abuse is part of a wider pattern of online harassment directed at the film's female cast. Earlier, a campaign sought to make the trailer the most disliked in YouTube history, and a Guardian reviewer faced criticism for awarding the film four stars. A 2014 study by Demos found that around 10,000 racist or ethnic slurs were used daily on Twitter, with up to 2,000 directed at individuals.
