Leslie Jones Quits Twitter After Spending a Day Battling Racist Twitter

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For over 24 hours Leslie Jones took time away from what should have been one of the high points of her life to strike back against racism on Twitter.

Jones' Ghostbusters opened at U.S. box offices with $46M and ended up coming in at the number 2 position.

But instead of focusing on that, Jones was fighting the sea of eggs and dog avis who hurled slurs and epithets at her on social media.







When it became too much, she decided to remove herself from the platform.




"I leave Twitter tonight with tears and a very sad heart," she wrote.

































It occurs on a smaller scale, but even marginally visible Black women experience the kind of abuse Leslie endured. Tweets to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Twitter's Support and Safety yielded undesirable results. The onslaught continued.

When Buzzfeed reached out to Twitter for a statement, a spokesperson confirmed they've seen the complaints and are working on a solutions.

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. We rely on people to report this type of behavior to us but we are continuing to invest heavily in improving our tools and enforcement systems to prevent this kind of abuse. We realize we still have a lot of work in front of us before Twitter is where it should be on how we handle these issues."

The hashtag #LoveforLeslieJ was created as a way for supporters to send love to the comedian. But the hashtag should not have to exist.

Photo by Gregg DeGuire/WireImage