He may have been called “one of the rising stars of libertarian and conservative media” but the Breitbart blogger, Milo Yiannopoulos, is now verily persona non grata on Twitter Inc. The British journalist, who tweeted as @Nero, received a permanent ban from Twitter for continual abuse of Leslie Jones relating to her role in the reboot of the Ghostbusters movie.

Yiannopoulos, who gives himself the epithet “the most fabulous supervillain on the internet”, had amassed more than 338,000 followers on Twitter and seemed to be as liked as much as he was disliked. After having his status unverified earlier this year critics had called out Twitter for pandering to social just warriors, and at the time others believed the moderating of a man that frequently harasses feminists was entirely just.

It seems the much admired and despised perennial poster saw himself as a kind of internet iconoclast, saying in one interview that he wanted “to push the bounds of what can be said on the internet.” He did just that; a consequence has been one of his most useful digital soapboxes being whipped away from under his stampeding feet.

Milo Yiannopoulos

A high profile ban such as this will surely have a backlash, and so it came with a statement by Twitter to the public:

“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 its 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.”

Yiannopoulos responded on the site he edits, breitbart.com:

“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.”

“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.”

The aggrieved Ghostbusters star Leslie Jones shared her own tweet following the ban:

“Lord have mercy … white people shit.”

It’s no surprise that this also provoked a backlash, with users responding that this was also troll-ish behavior.

As Google Inc. Facebook Inc. and Microsoft crackdown on content that might be deemed “hate speech”, that could arouse violence or hatred, Twitter’s restriction on what it sees as bad free speech could well be seen in a negative light even by non-followers of bloggers with an acid tongue, a move that undermines a basic human right.

Yiannopoulos believes, “This is the end for Twitter. Anyone who cares about free speech has been sent a clear message: you’re not welcome on Twitter.”

We shall wait and watch the fallout of all this to see if he is right, or perhaps has delusions of grandeur. Followers of the brazen blogger have already created the hashtags #FreeMilo and #FreeNero on Twitter, apparently accumulating 20-30 tweets every minute.

Photo credit: Official Leweb Photos; Magnus Brath via Flickr